ISSUE #29
BEAM FROM THE BOOTH | GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY
[EDITED BY: GRIFFIN SHERIDAN]
Hello and welcome back to an all-new installment of BEAM FROM THE BOOTH brought to you by GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY!
WOW! What a week it was for us at GRFS. We hosted two events last week, with both exceeding all our expectations. So many of you showed up to see if POSSESSION was as off-the-wall as you’d heard (spoilers: it is)...and our EVIL DEAD II on VHS/TAPE SWAP event was an absolute blast. A huge thanks to our friends at B-Movie Euphoria and Static Tape for helping us put that event on, and thank you to those who came out to help make both evenings a night to remember.
Speaking of screenings, we have another one coming up THIS FRIDAY (10/13): FRIDAY THE 13th PART III… IN 3D!
Oh, boy. Those who caught Jaws 3 in 3D at Wealthy Theatre last summer will know this is going to be so much fun. And what better way to spend Friday the 13th than in a dark theatre watching Friday the 13th? Check out our own Nicholas Hartman’s official foreword to the film further down below.
Now, before we get to the rest of the goodness that awaits you in this issue, we wanted to remind you that the OPEN PROJECTOR NIGHT: EXPERIMENTAL exhibition has officially opened at the GRAND RAPIDS ART MUSEUM. This first selection of short films will play through November 26th. The second set will run from November 28th through January 14th, 2024. Be sure to stop into the GRAM at least a couple times over these next few months to witness all the incredible talent on display in these short films.
David Blakeslee is getting us started this week with some reactions from our screening of POSSESSION...
THE POSSESSION AFTERWORD
[BY: DAVID BLAKESLEE]
So what do I have to say about Possession? First, I have to express profound appreciation for my colleagues in GRFS who found a way to book this film and bring it to town. Possession has seemingly been growing in stature over the past decade as an essential work of extreme cinematic art, a film that holds deep meaning to a surprising number of viewers. It’s listed on the Letterboxd Top 4 lists of over 11,000 members of that site, and I can only assume that some of those folks made it to Wealthy Theatre the other night. What a great privilege it is for us to bring Possession to our community!
As for the film itself: I hadn’t seen it before, though I was highly familiar with the abundance of memes, gifs, and pop cultural references surrounding Possession (and in particular the radiant beauty and dissociative gaze of Isabelle Adjani). Based on the esteem expressed by many in the online film world and a few that I’ve interacted with directly, I entered the viewing with high expectations — which were fulfilled and surpassed in many ways.
I anticipated an intensely powerful, emotionally wrenching performance from Isabelle Adjani, though I didn’t expect that she would be going full-tilt pretty much from start to finish...or that she had a dual role in the story. Her presence in this film is remarkable, so riveting and excruciatingly raw; also incredibly risky, not only to her professional reputation after taking on such a histrionic role but also her personal well-being as she had to summon up so many profoundly disturbed emotions and push her body to physical extremes. She had to rehearse all that, who knows how many times? Contemplation of whatever life experiences Adjani had endured that allowed her to tap into and project such emotions stirred within me waves of empathy — not only for her but for so many viewers who have expressed in various ways how strongly they identify with her character.
And while I had every reason to believe going into the screening that the visceral horror elements would be conveyed with a degree of aesthetic and artistic merit, I was again very favorably impressed by the dynamic camerawork, the eerie atmospherics, and the complex layering of so many varied elements of social and cultural context: allusions to politics, religion, marriage and parenting pressures, repressed and unfulfilled desires, our inability to control or even fully know or trust the people who are closest and most important in our lives. This is a production that looks great and is capable of holding up under the scrutiny of multiple viewings, even as harrowing and relentless as it is.
Watching Possession for the first time in the company of just under 100 people at Wealthy Theatre could only have an intensifying effect compared with a home viewing experience, as much as I recognize the advantages of being able to instantly rewatch scenes or even just hit the pause button to take a deep breath or two. Sitting in that riveted audience, I felt tension in the atmosphere enhanced by a feeling of anticipation for certain scenes that I could pick up from the repeat viewers around me, and a palpable sense of accumulating dread shared by my fellow first-timers as we anticipated the ascent to some new peak of horrific explication that would land us we knew not where. Though I’m usually not too concerned about avoiding spoilers and often do extensive research on classic films that I’m about to take in my initial viewing, I’m definitely glad that I never did read a synopsis or summary of Possession’s main sequence of events.
With all that said, and acknowledging how easy it would be for me to join in the chorus of acclaim that Possession has generated (particularly in recent years as the film has been embraced by an emerging generation of psychological-art-horror aficionados), I do want to emphasize just how disturbing, distressing, and unsettling this movie truly is. Many viewers will doubtlessly experience a degree of catharsis that could be regarded as having therapeutic or liberating benefit. For others though, the main takeaway from even a partial viewing (I am aware that there were some walkouts) is more likely to be revulsion or unalleviated pain and sadness as particular scenes or even their metaphorical reference points stir up long-suppressed memories or tap sensitive regions of our wounded psyches. Director Andrzej Żuławski made an unyieldingly aggressive and confrontational movie, presumably in pursuit of a personal vision that sought to connect with an audience, for sure, but he was clearly not terribly concerned about practicing restraint in his expression for the sake of enhancing the film’s commercial prospects with mainstream audiences simply looking for a night of chills and thrills at the local cinema. It’s perfectly OK and understandable to dislike this film, even to take it personally as a form of assault with an artistic weapon! I don’t think Żuławski himself would strongly disagree with such a reaction.
There’s a lot more that I could say about Possession, and I will most certainly find my outlet, though for the purpose of this column, I’m content to keep it short. A lot of my debriefing already occurred that night in the aisles and lobby of Wealthy Theatre as I engaged with others in a group chat that felt at times like a post-traumatic event debriefing session. The conversations brought a degree of relief and mutual understanding that I greatly appreciated after a night of sensory overload — another benefit of the efforts that GRFS put into making such an opportunity possible for our local cinephile community.
RESULTS: IS EVIL DEAD II A SEQUEL OR REMAKE?
Last week, we asked the question that has stalked Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II since its release: is it more of a sequel or a remake? Here are the poll results:
Well there you have it, folks: of the seven of you (just seven? c’mon now) who weighed in, 57% of you said Evil Dead II is more sequel than remake whereas 43% of you said it may as well be a remake. We have a clear winner, but I find there is sound reasoning for both options.
Raimi always envisioned a sequel to The Evil Dead to send its leading man, Ash Williams (played profoundly by Bruce Campbell), back in time on a medieval adventure to defeat the deadites. Fans of the franchise know that sounds more like the third entry in the series, Army of Darkness. Evil Dead II was more or less commissioned by producer Dino De Laurentiis to be a twin of the original film, skeptical of the potential financial returns from Raimi’s journey-through-time concept.
In many ways, Evil Dead II does play much like its predecessor but with 100% more Three Stooges. In that sense, I’ve always found Evil Dead II to be the perfect middle chapter for the trilogy, gracefully transitioning the tone of The Evil Dead into that of Army of Darkness; Raimi and co. have always been geniuses of genre to me.
On the other hand, in its function, it IS a sequel. While the first five minutes or so are spent giving a slightly revised recap of the events of the first film, Raimi follows that with literally stitching the final shot of the first film into new material, so as to seamlessly connect the two stories — the finer details aside. Evil Dead II picks up right where The Evil Dead left off. It was just one very long day for Ash Williams.
But don’t take it from me. Here’s what the man himself has to say about the ongoing sequel/remake debate:
THE FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III FOREWORD
[BY: NICHOLAS HARTMAN]
Most children look up to firefighters, action heroes, detectives etc. Me? Nah, I wasn’t a “normal” child. I spent my youth on my parents’ living room floor, wrapped up in a sleeping bag, drinking soda, stuffing my face with pizza, watching movies, and — for some reason — idolizing the antagonists.
Most children wanted to be Luke Skywalker; I wanted to be Darth Vader. Most children wanted to be Batman; I wanted to be the Joker. Most children hid under their sheets at the face of terror, the face of Jason Voorhees. Me? No way, I wanted to be him.
Am I a homicidal maniac? No, absolutely not. I can’t even kill a spider lingering in my kitchen. However, as a child I wanted to wear his mask, I wanted to wear his clothes, I wanted to be mysterious, and I wanted to scare my peers. In fact, when I was a kid, I attended a birthday party and thought it would be funny to scare my friends.
I had the clever idea of putting on the Ghostface mask from Scream (1996) and trying to spook those at the party. Well, long story short: I tried to jump scare a friend and he threw a basketball directly at my face out of fear. It knocked me on my butt and gave me a bloody nose. The fear in his eyes was priceless. Totally worth it. Maybe I am a little crazy...
Anyway, as an adult, anytime I see Jason on the screen my blood begins to pump with excitement and my heart begins to swell. Jason Voorhees brings me back to my childhood, to my parents’ living room floor. Jason Voorhees isn’t just a killing machine, he’s a form of nostalgia and reminds me of my youth.
Sure, I could go into details about Friday the 13th Part III, but I’m not going to give spoilers or bore you with film history/theory because that’s not what the ‘Friday the 13th’ series is all about. You know what it is: it’s blood, sex, and rock’n’roll. It’s cold dark rainy nights filled with murder, horny teenagers, and it’s a horror formula that never seems to get old...well, at least for me that is.
With that being said, we hope you celebrate the actual Friday the 13th day this year with us at a very special screening of Part III in 3D — A NEW DIMENSION IN TERROR!
UPCOMING EVENTS
FRIDAY THE 13th PART III in 3D (Miner, 1982)
WHAT: Celebrate a spooky Friday the 13th with us as we present: Friday the 13th: Part III in 3D on the big screen! (3D glasses provided with ticket purchase)
WHEN: Friday, October 13th, 8:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
OPEN PROJECTOR NIGHT: HALLOWEEN EDITION
WHAT: Highlighting short films specifically of the horror/spooky genre from Michigan filmmakers.
WHEN: Wednesday, October 18th, 8:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
FILM SOCIETY PITCH NIGHT
WHAT: An extension of our FILM SOCIETY ROUNDTABLE social events —20 screenwriters will have the opportunity to pitch their script to independent filmmakers.
WHEN: Thursday, October 19th, 6:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
And so we’ve arrived at the end of another BEAM FROM THE BOOTH! We appreciate you taking the time to read it and truly hope you’ll continue to do so. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to get each issue in your inbox every SUNDAY, and stay up-to-date on all things GRFS.
Plus, join us on social media! We’d love to chat with everyone and hear YOUR OWN thoughts on everything above (you can also hop in the comments section below).
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Look for ISSUE #30 in your inbox NEXT SUNDAY, 10/15!
Until then, friends...
