On George A. Romero's Season of the Witch and There's Always Vanilla

There seems to be interesting news happening for George A. Romero fans - none of it exactly cutting-edge reporting here, but some readers of my blog might not have noticed a few developments, and it pertains to a film I want to write about, Season of the Witch, so I might as well delve a little. 

The Amusement Park is now streaming on Shudder, which I don't get, but which one can try for seven days free... so that might be worth a look. It was filmed as an educational movie on elder abuse, starring the actor who played Tateh Cudah in Romero's vampire film, Martin. I know too little to comment, but its rediscovery awhile back was greeted with great enthusiasm, so I'm expecting it is quite good. It's the fifth film in Romero's filmography, made in 1975 between The Crazies and Martin.  

Of course, very few people have seen the alleged 3.5 hour long b&w alternate cut of Martin - a more recent discovery, which is undergoing restoration or digitization or somethin'. No sense of the timeline there or what plans there are for the film; I await further news, along with many other fans.

As for films that have been available for some time, but that I still haven't yet seen, there's always There's Always Vanilla, though I just watched the first few minutes of it on the b-side of the old Anchor Bay DVD of Season of the Witch. I wonder how many people are like me on this front? I have owned that disc for so long - maybe 20 years? - without ever flipping it over to see the bonus feature that my actually having watched a bit of it yesterday feels like news. Described, depending on which box art you trust, as "a romantic comedy" or "a bittersweet drama," which Romero made in-between Night of the Living Dead and Season of the Witch, There's Always Vanilla, too, was lost, I believe, for some time - or perhaps just "forgotten?" Romero himself wasn't a big advocate for the film, apparently saying it was a "total mess." 

Romero may be being unkind to his own work, here, but his dismissal of the film is one reason I haven't rushed to see it. The "messy" element  - bearing in mind that I've only seen the first fifteen minutes or so - may relate to a few trippy, associative edits that may eventually pay off in terms of meaning (but I dunno): there's a beginning that involves a balloon floating tied to some sort of flying device (?), images of which are intercut with that of some sort of perpetual motion machine operating on a city street. I had no clue what any of that was about, especially since the narration, describing the machine, actually begins during the images of the balloon, so you aren't even sure what is being talked about - is the machine the thing the balloon is attached to? What the hell is it? No, wait, it must be this machine on the street, but what the hell is that? Is this a metaphor for something? What about the balloon, why did... No, wait, now they've moved on. Will we come back to this? Will we ever see the balloon again or know what it means...? But the impression isn't one of incompetence, necessarily - it seems like it's deliberately jarring and slightly enigmatic filmmaking, a "one hand clapping" gesture, done for a reason as yet unclear to me. I'd need to see the whole film to know for sure. 

So "mess" I cannot speak to - but it seems ambitiously crafted, in fact, and actually looks a bit better and bigger-budgeted than Season of the Witch. One thing, though, is certain: it and Season of the Witch are the most dated of any of Romero's movies. Play a clip of of either film to someone with a sense of cinematic history and they'll place them in a window between 1969 and 1973. The dialogue, the photography, the editing and the acting all smack of the cinema of that era - which in a way is kind of interesting to see: with There's Always Vanilla, you kinda expect Elliot Gould to materialize, or for there to be a montage involving bubbles being blown in a park, perhaps as set to the music of BJ Thomas or Burt Bacharach. The words "groovy" may be used, or "far out." At one point I even thought I glimpsed Mark Frechette of Zabriskie Point. Between the "looking dated" and "looking like it might require some mental effort to process," the film actually looks less like fun and more like work... 

...except it seems like work that's maybe worth doing, at least if you're a Romero fan. For one thing, There's Always Vanilla stars several people from other Romero films, including Ray Laine, the charismatic actor who plays Greg, the swinging young associate professor who "balls" the protagonist of Season of the Witch. Only 52 at the time of his death, back in the year 2000 - which makes him an old-looking 20-something at the time of these films - Laine did not make many movies, with his last role being in the Peter Hyams' 1995 Die Hard "adaptation," Sudden Death - which I've seen a couple of times without realizing Laine was in it, as one of Powers Boothe's henchmen. Laine, like many of Romero's regulars, it seems, was also involved in local theatre in Pittsburgh, which makes sense, as he's a very compelling actor, in fact, who brings to mind Seymour Cassell in Cassavetes' Faces, a film that Season of the Witch periodically reminds me of (!). So he's a talented unknown, basically, but if you enjoy him in Season of the Witch - and I do - there's good reason to be curious about his earlier role...

Night of the Living Dead cast members also pop up in There's Always Vanilla: Judith Ridley, the young woman in Night of the Living Dead who is hiding in the basement with her boyfriend and the Coopers, is here under another name; there's also Russell Streiner who - besides being Ridley's husband - has a habit of turning in uncredited roles in Romero films, including Johnny in the original Night of the Living Dead - the "coming to get you, Barbara" guy - and the sheriff in the Savini remake (which I just re-visited and wrote about, here, without having recognized Streiner in it). He's directed a film of his own - there's a bit of a "Pittsburgh rabbithole" here - and worked with NOTLD co-author John Russo as a teacher at Russo's Movie Academy. 

One or two frequent Romero associates in the cast still may not make it a must-see, but looking through the IMDB, there are other familiar names. Bill Hinzman, the "first" zombie in the cemetery in the 1968 NOTLD is in there, too; Hinzman also directed his own films and had other involvement in the Pittsburgh scene, as well as a bit of a lasting career in low-budget horror. Similarly, There's Always Vanilla screenwriter Rudy Ricci directed a feature of his own called The Liberation of Cherry Janowski, which co-stars David Emge, the "flyboy" from the original  Dawn of the Dead (which Ricci appears in as a biker). These seem to be the names of cast members of There's Always Vanilla that have the largest roles in other Romero films, but several other names in the cast, if you click on them on IMDB, show actors who only have one or two other credits to their name, but they're all Romero films - including plenty of folks who were zombies in NOTLD.

The rabbithole effect when you start delving, here, feels a bit to a Vancouverite like looking through the filmography of people tied to Bruce Sweeney, for example, and how it branches out and overlaps with the careers of other filmmakers - like Carl Bessai - or actors who have had small roles in big productions and starring roles in local ones (Gabrielle Rose, Tom Scholte - himself also a filmmaker). Just like we have a local music scene, we have our on local cinema scene - and I'm guessing most major cities do, that there's nothing so exceptional about Vancouver (or Pittsburgh) that they support this sort of journey down the rabbithole. What's unusual with Pittsburgh is that, due to Romero's more widely-appreciated films, the rabbithole has a doorway, an easy access point for people like me who get curious. Night of the Living Dead leads to Season of the Witch leads to There's Always Vanilla, which in turn leads to The Liberation of Cherry Janowski (AKA The Booby Hatch) or The Devil and Sam Silverstein, then before you know it you're trying to see every movie Ray Laine or David Emge or Ann Muffly acted in...  which is actually kind of doable, in the sense that there are only one or two other titles in their filmographies, in some cases, but on the other hand, is also kind of impossible, because... how are you going to see those films, which probably never came out on VHS, aren't on Tubi, and probably aren't ever going to come out on DVD or blu, even if prints of them still exist somewhere...?

Maybe that's another reason I've resisted There's Always Vanilla, because I sense that if I got into it as the next logical step in my interest in Romero's  horror output, it opens the door to a bunch of other movies that are going to be hard to track down and not necessarily shed that much light on the movies I'm actually interested in (the horror films Romero made up to Monkey Shines). Except There's Always Vanilla is actually directed by Romero, and not only has familiar names in the cast and crew, it also seems to make some commentary on the media, a theme which is actually present (most visibly in Dawn of the Dead, of course) throughout Romero's films, where radio and television always play some role... 

So maybe it's time to watch that. I'd really just rather re-watch Season of the Witch, however - which you can see for free (with commercials, just like the good ole days) on Tubi... because that film is very interesting, very rich, and while it is clearly very low budget (and dated), it's quite potent from a number of different angles. Romero apparently described it as feminist horror film; I've actually called it as much myself. 

The film isn't perfect. It has some of that "dated" early 70's feel I mention above. It also looks quite low budget - because it was, which means not all of its more "daring" elements, like its somewhat surreal dream sequences, are executed as effectively as one might like, feeling at times like the elements in them have been chosen in part based on what could be conveyed cheaply ("and to show her frustrations with her marriage, we'll have her walk behind Jack on a forested path and have her getting hit by the branches that he bends back" - inventive stuff, really, and effective if you make the decision to ride with it, but its the sort of invention that is borne of humble means, and these also show through. Not everyone has an easy time with cheap-looking cinema!). 

And it's not just a question of execution. I know there are Wiccans out there who take exception to a scene where the main character of the film - a dissatisfied housewife who gets involved with a coven and finds her life changing - writes the Lord's Prayer backward as part of a conjuration; the confusion between Satanism and Wicca irks them, and stands out, since so many of the other ritual elements aren't that far off the mark. Romero gets so much right, he deserves to be faulted when he gets something quite wrong.

And while there are some truly fine performances - Ray Laine being one of them, but also Ann Muffly, pictured above in the role of Shirley - the lead actress, Jan White, is somewhat stiff throughout. It's not entirely inappropriate to her character, as a stifled housewife trying to embrace her repressed sexual side, but she still comes across as kind of pinched, squinty and mean, no matter what part of her character arc we find her on, not because of anything she does, but just from how she seems to look - some people just have cold faces! We want her character to succeed because of the nature of the journey she is on, from repression to self-expression, and recognize that her journey is meant to have analogues with our own - she is very clearly the protagonist, and we accept her as such - but it's not because we ever really like her or like to watch her. It doesn't even look like her image on the poster - I'm pretty sure that the marketers ditched their lead and used Joedda McClain, who plays White's daughter, even though she is a very minor character with an even smaller filmography than White.

White's chilliness is not improved by putting her alongside Laine and Muffly, who are very likeable, warm and watchable, even if they at times are antagonistic characters, and almost approach scenery-chewing levels of Cassavetean intensity in one key scene (the "Faces" moment, where Greg tricks an already drunk Shirley into thinking she's smoking a joint, and she lets loose). Setting White's character alongside such emotive fireworks only underscores the actress' own lack of expressiveness and risks getting us to root for the wrong people. In the end, much of White's transformation, from stifled housewife to self-confident, sexually self-possessed occultist, seems to be handled not through acting, but via costume, hairstyle, and makeup, reminding me of that scene in Point Break where Kathryn Bigelow gets a character to comment on the emotions we're meant to be seeing in Keanu Reeves' quite blank face, like the wardrobe changes were pushed further to compensate for a lack of a sense of the character herself changing. None of it is enough to ruin the film - and I'm very conscious that Jan White is still alive and might read these words - but, sorry, Season of the Witch kind of succeeds despite White's performance, not because of it. 

Doesn't matter. The remarkable things about the film are truly remarkable. That Cassavetes moment - you have to see it (and have seen Faces) to understand - taps into female anger at aging, at being "over the hill," in a way that one very seldom sees encountered in cinema (in fact, the only other analogues I can think of are Opening Night, another Cassavetes, and possibly Fassbinder's Angst vor Der Angst, though the enemy there is more domesticity and marriage than it is aging, if I recall). Maybe if I watched more female-directed dramas about middle aged women, I'd see more of it, but generally with mainstream filmmaking in America, the theme of women aging seems almost a taboo area, like there's more of an effort to DENY the effects of aging than there is to confront and foreground them (the day will come when even Scarlett Johansson has wrinkles and grey hair, but Hollywood will take pains to hide them for as long as humanly possible; now 37, she'll be playing characters in their 30's until she's well into her 50s, probably - longer if she gets work done). This willingness to speak the unspeakable and delve into emotionally uncomfortable waters, and to really push a performance in the name of so doing, seems to belong more to live theatre than cinema - especially so given that the scene in question, the "fake pot-smoking" lingers in the same set, Joan's living room, for a very long time... It would be pretty easy, in fact, to do a stage version of this film, given its economy of locations...

There's also a very striking masturbation scene. It's not subtle - very little in Romero is subtle, ever - but it sure is memorable: White's character, said housewife - returns home unexpectedly, having told her daughter and Greg (Laine) that she's taking Shirley (Muffly) home and will probably stay over. Nikki, her daughter (played, as I say, by the very able Joedda McClain, who is good enough in the role that it's surprising to realize it's the only thing she ever did, filmwise), told she and her boyfriend have got the house to herself, does what any 20-something year old woman would do, and takes Greg to bed. When Joan (White's character) returns home, she hears them fucking, but having nowhere else to go - she and Shirley have had a fight - goes quietly upstairs to her bedroom. It's bad enough that she lies there in silence listening to her daughter's moans, but Romero - in one of his most potent bits of filmmaking - pushes the scene further, and cuts between Joan lying on the bed, beginning to explore her body, to images of an almost demonic-seeming bull statue overlooking the bed (the film makes excellent use of knickknacks, also including a mischievous figure on a lamp who "watches" during Joan's first attempt at ritual, which I put a screen cap of at the top of this post). Of course there's also a storm blowing outside, billowing curtains, dramatic thunderclaps, etc (like I say, not subtle stuff). The scene builds to a dramatic, uh, climax, whereupon the daughter bursts in the room and angrily demands of her mother, "How long have you been here?"

Just on the strength of that one scene, you can see why there was an attempt to distribute the film as softcore porn. Hungry Wives is an awful title, unfair to the richness of the film and much less clever than Jack's Wife, the other alternate title - but it's not actually entirely unwarranted by the plot of the film. Joan IS a hungry wife, and the plot of the film does revolve around an older, frustrated housewife seducing a younger man - so, well, you can see what the sleaze-merchants were thinking. I don't know if extra material was added to the Hungry Wives cut - there's very little nudity in the film, and it's quite hard to imagine anyone masturbating to it, unless the idea of being watched by a demonic bull figurine turns you on...

And in fact, aside from (obviously) The Graduate, which Romero deliberately riffs on a couple of times, about the only other film that I can readily recall where I've seen a film where a mother and daughter compete for the affections of the same man is, in fact, a porno called If My Mother Only Knew - one of the more character-driven porn films out there, wherein Honey Wilder - having spied on her daugher (Amber Lynn) having sex with her boyfriend (Tom Byron), ends up seducing him, whereupon, in true hardcore fashion, Amber "pays her back" by fucking her stepdad (John Leslie). Probably there are other pornos - I haven't seen the Taboo series - that have a similar plot; I'm personally kind of disturbed by the sheer volume of incest-themed or step-parent themed porn out there, so forgive my lack of expertise in these matters. All I can say is, while - in Season of the Witch - there is nothing remotely arousing about watching Joan bring herself to orgasm while listening to her daughter and the man that Joan will herself later have an affair with, it's still one fucked-up, memorable, transgressive scene, maybe the greatest-ever female masturbation scene in a horror film (why is there no Academy Award for that?). From the moment Joan enters the front door, you watch the film in building suspense: Oh, God, she can hear them... oh God, she's going up the stairs... oh, God, she's lying on the bed... oh, God, she's not going to... Oh, God, yes she is! Erika, watching the film with me, was very unsettled by it, too. It does make one wonder what it might have been like if the film had been made by someone who actually WAS interested in transgressive pornography - Zebedy Colt, say, one of the few genuinely interesting porn filmmakers I've encountered. (I am happy to see that my article on Zebedy Colt from a few years ago has had over 1000 views. Happy to be of service, folks). 

I'm going to leave the rest of the film mostly unremarked upon, in the interest of being spoiler-free. I won't write at length about parallels with films like Dancing in the Dark (no, not the von Trier film, but a moving Canadian film about a stifled housewife) or The Soft Skin (mostly about a businessman having an affair, but his wife gets to, um, assert her point of view at the end), though they do have a bearing (Truffaut fans have now been spoilered, I guess, but don't read further if you didn't get the reference). And to some extent, I *can't* really sum up what the film all means, anyhow, because though on the level of story everything resolves quite dramatically, on the level of theme, I'm left with more questions than answers (not in such a way as to be unsatisfying, but enough that I'd be risking being corrected if I chose too narrow an interpretation; Romero may not be subtle, but he doesn't mind a bit ambiguity). Is Romero on the side of Greg after their final romp, complicit in ridiculing Joan for making a big mumbo-jumbo mystery out of something that Greg himself tells her is "just balling, lady"...? He certainly could be - he allows viewers to take that position, to be sure - but it need not be the only position audiences are invited to inhabit. Is Romero quietly mocking Joan at the end of the film, hinting (okay, maybe a bit subtly) that she's traded enslavement to her husband in for a sort of figurative enslavement to the coven - or is he on her side, happy that she's found a healthier, more fulfilling (if somewhat weirder) way of relating to the world? (Are we supposed to read her as empowered, or lost? She does seem quite a bit happier in the film's final moments than she is at the outset). Her social status and self-comfidence definitely improve as a result of her interest in occultism, too, but is there a bit of skepticism on Romero's part about the uses of witchiness among bored housewives to elevate ones social status and/or sense of self-worth? Is he hinting that she's more interested in jockeying for position amongst her peers than she is genuinely interested in magic? And do Joan's nightmares of a demonic intruder continue after the film's startlng (but in hindsight inevitable) climax, or are they ultimately resolved by it...?

 

I suspect different people will have different takeaways, depending on what they make of the topic of witchcraft, but they're all provocative questions. I admire that Romero is careful enough in how he frames them to not tip the scales too far when it comes to privileging any one reading of the movie; even if he isn't letting the coven or Joan off scot-free, even if he does have at least some skepticism about Joan's journey,  I do think Season of the Witch is easily properly described as a feminist film, just in terms of the issues it brings to the screen. Sometimes the value in a work of art is not in what it says, but the conversations it inspires afterwards. And it is easily as interesting and rewarding as either The Crazies or Martin. It might even be my favourite of the three.   

But a final scene needs remarking on. I utterly love that the use of Donovan's song "Season of the Witch" is reserved for only one scene in the film, where Joan goes shopping. Having acquired the rights to the song presumably means that Romero could have used it elsewhere - but mostly he settles for bloopy, bleepy avant-garde electronica for his score, safeguarding the impact of the moment when the song kicks in. And seriously, how many horror movies make a noteworthy set-piece out of a woman going shopping? Shopping is another one of those aspects of daily life that is hugely significant to self-expression, to self-realization, even to education (I've learned easily as much about culture from clerks at video, book, and record stores as I have from formal study). We're all lost in the supermarket, these days. But as important as shopping is, though, it somehow is very seldom represented in realistic terms in genre film. I actually kind of feel excitement during the shopping scene, which the music intensifies; watching Joan select potions and tools for ritual feels a bit like I might, browsing the stock at Videomatica or Red Cat...

Season of the Witch does have its issues.The Arrow blu seems to be a significant improvement, if the stills at DVDBeaver are any indication; certainly they put Jan White right where she belongs on the box art, and amplify her scary aspects a bit. But it doesn't seem quite so big an improvement for me to want to invest $45 or so on the upgrade. Anyone looking for a Christmas gift idea for me should note that I also don't have the blu-ray of the original Romero version of The Crazies, either - I'm generally slow to upgrade when it comes to movies that just never looked all that good to begin with, where your final comment will be, at best, "it still looks pretty bad, but it's an improvement over the previous version." But if you don't own any version of the film - well, there's always Tubi, but I highly recommend checking it out by SOME means... because whatever its issues, ultimately, it's just great.