Editorials
Dear ‘Diary of a Madman’: Vincent Price, Priceless Memories, and the Perfect Horror Movie
While horror films explore all sorts of different frights, the tale created in Diary of a Madman brings about the most fearsome of horror: losing control over oneself. The movie stars Vincent Price as Magistrate Simon Cordier, who finds himself up against the evil Horla, and features Nancy Kovack playing his love interest, Odette Mallotte. Diary of a Madman serves Vincent Price’s versatile acting ability, with intricate set design, horror, and campiness together to create a piece that is remarkable on its own and even more enjoyable in good company.
The company you keep as you watch a movie can significantly alter your outlook on the film. Because of this, my heart automatically went to one place when given the task of composing a love letter to a horror movie.
A living room in my mother’s house, with candles lit and Halloween décor abound, with Turner Classic Movies playing in the background the whole month of October. Listening to my mom imitating Renfield in Dracula(1931), her recounting theaters handing out barf bags at showings of Mark of the Devil, and quoting lines from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Many memories were formed over so many Halloween seasons, but if one film were to be the epitome of this experience, it would undoubtedly be Diary of a Mad Man.
While horror films explore all sorts of different frights, the tale created in Diary of a Madman brings about the most fearsome of horror: losing control over oneself. The movie stars Vincent Price as Magistrate Simon Cordier, who finds himself up against the evil Horla, and features Nancy Kovack playing his love interest, Odette Mallotte.
Diary of a Madman serves Vincent Price’s versatile acting ability, with intricate set design, horror, and campiness together to create a piece that is remarkable on its own and even more enjoyable in good company.
The Horror of Madness
The concept that reality isn’t what we perceive it to be is one of the most haunting. Therefore, a horror tale that amasses any descent into madness is automatically beloved by me. Doubly so when it is a supernatural entity causing the insanity, such is Diary of a Madman’s antagonist: The Horla.
Starting with a funeral for one Simon Cordier, the attendees are instructed by a letter from Simon just before his death to read his diary after he’s been buried. Vincent Price’s voice begins: “I speak to you from beyond the grave….” From there, viewers learn the tragic tale of Simon Cordier; how he became trapped within the clutches of a creature with no other want than to control and weaken the wills of humankind.
The ever-present omnipotent Horla drives the story, while the knowledge of the eventual death of the magistrate simmers in the background, which kept my mother and I’s attention locked onto the screen. Then, at the helm of all that suspense is the horror icon himself: Vincent Price.
The Versatility of Vincent Price
Vincent Price’s impact on decades worth of horror cannot be denied. He is synonymous with so many classic scary movies that, naturally, a film starring him would be the first to come to mind from the days of TCM marathons with my mother.
Like many 90’s babies, Edward Scissorhands was a childhood favorite, so this film was not my introduction to Vincent Price. However, the movie did introduce me to his incredible range as an actor.
Watching Vincent Price transform from a confident, good-natured magistrate into a wild-eyed murderer is impressive, to say the very least. But he didn’t stop there. He drops back into his role of Magistrate Simon, though this time in a corrupt and manipulative form. It ends with him laughing maniacally, his transformation into a madman complete. However, not just Vincent Price’s acting aided in creating a perfect horror film.
The Diary of a Madman Set
The beauty of this movie is undeniable. Each set is meticulously crafted with beautiful furniture fit to match the 1886 setting. Watching the film feels like a time machine within a time machine: an older time reenacting an even older time.
Moreover, the film features the most beautiful cameo necklace I have ever seen as Simon Cordier gifts the cameo that once belonged to his long-deceased wife to his new lover.
If I remember nothing else about this movie, I will remember how my mom laughed at my obsession with this necklace. If that necklace were mine, I think I would rise from the grave to reclaim my ownership.
Aside from presenting gorgeous backdrops, the setting worked in silence to reveal hidden truths about the characters and create a frightening atmosphere.
The Truth Hidden in Plain Colors
Diary of a Mad Man possesses this peculiar quality, much like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, where in hindsight, it feels like it was made in black and white despite the film being entirely in color.
In fact, colors are used symbolically throughout the entire movie. Red is often associated with goodness, as Cordier’s magistrate robes are red, as is the cloth on which a plot-turning crucifix sits, as are the outfits of characters acting in good nature. When Simon Cordier is at the peak of his goodness, he wears red and sits on a red chair.
Browns and blues are the colors worn by characters with a neutral disposition, not acting in any amount of supreme kindness or ill intent. The only exception to this rule seems to be Vincent Price, who adorns the neutral colors as he hangs in the balance between his goodness and The Horla’s evil influence.
Green is the most recurring representation of someone’s disposition, as characters’ eyes glow green when The Horla possesses them. More than that, though, green shows up consistently in both set design and costumes, presenting a commentary on the perceived evils of humankind.
Jeanne (Elaine Devry) wore green when she sought after a married man, and Odette wore green when she was being materialistic and intentionally deceptive with both Simon and her husband (Chris Warfield). The most intense representation of green comes from Simon Cordier’s home.
The walls, furniture, and décor all adorn green hues, representing the wrongness within the home’s history and the fact that as much as the magistrate tried to suppress his harsh past, he wore it all over his walls.
Interestingly, his office is red and green, offering insight into his mental state at work. As he surrounds himself with the red books and the cherry wood desk, working diligently as a magistrate, the evil green underbelly is ever-present, especially in the background.
An intelligent horror film where you can learn so much more, not by the character’s words or actions, but the background of the scenes is a rare find. Films like this offer something new to viewers every time they watch them, and any movie that does that so beautifully automatically has my adoration.
The Unspoken Horror
The artistic choice on set did much more than represent characters’ intentions or put on a pretty show. The horror movie masterfully utilized the setting to make scenes more unsettling. Whether it was the statue heads that seemed to be watching Simon create a sculpture of Odette, the heavy cobwebs in the abandoned attic or the open windows that ensure The Horla could enter undetected; these seemingly unimportant details only amplify the pre-existing horror.
Necessary Camp
For all the serious subject matter, the film is not without its campiness, as Vincent Price’s overdramatic reactions to The Horla’s voice are borderline comical. Although, it’s that sort of campiness that allows it to embody all the elements of what TCM marathons with my mom were to me: renowned actors, beautiful settings, intrinsic horror, and the moments we can make fun of together. Understand that no movie is without its laughable moments when watching it with someone who makes you laugh.
Dear Diary, Dear Mom
In 2009 my mom was diagnosed with leukemia (CML, which progressed to AML). After experimental round-the-clock chemo treatment and two bone marrow transplants, she beat that horrible cancer. But the victory came at a price, as the bone marrow transplants resulted in her developing Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD), primarily affecting her joints, stomach, eyes, and more. As her health has declined, I understand firsthand the value of seemingly unimportant moments and am eternally grateful to share these irreplaceable memories with my mother.
This film reminds me of just who I can thank for my innate love of this spooky genre. Movies have this unique quality that just as they encapsulate the actors and dialogue within a timeless recording, as do our memories record where we were the first time that we enjoyed a particular movie.
Every time I watch the film, I am transported back in my memory to a time, a person, and a movie, that I will always hold close to me. No matter where life takes us, we will always have the night we watched Diary of a Madman together.
If you haven’t seen it or, like me, are now craving a re-watch, stream it today on Paramount+.
Editorials
What’s in a Look? The Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy
The Jason Voorhees redesign sparked heated debate, but is the backlash overblown? Dive into Friday the 13th’s formula and fan expectations.
If you’re a longtime reader of Horror Press, you may have noticed that I really really like the Friday the 13th franchise. Can’t get enough. And yet, I simply couldn’t muster a shred of enthusiasm for piling hate on the new Jason Voorhees redesign that Horror, Inc. recently shared with an unwitting public.
Why the Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy Feels Overblown
Hockey mask? Check. Machete? Check. Clothing? Yeah, he’s wearing it. I really didn’t see the problem, but very many people online pointed out all the places where I should. The intensity and specificity of the critiques shot me right back to 2008, reminding me distinctly of watching Project Runway with my friend’s mom while I waited for him to get home from baseball practice. What, just me?
But the horror community’s sudden transformation into fashion mavens got me thinking about other things, too: the character of the franchise as a whole, how Jason Voorhees fits into it, and why I feel like this reaction has been blown out of proportion. (A disproportionate reaction to a pop culture thing? On my Internet? Well I never.)
What Does A Jason Look Like, Anyway?
What confused me the most about this reaction was something I couldn’t quite get a bead on. What does Jason Voorhees look like? His look, both masked and unmasked (especially unmasked), changes wildly from film to film, even when he’s played by the same person (in three consecutive movies, Kane Hodder played a hulking zombie Jason, a shiny slime monster Jason, and a Jason who was mainly seen in mirrors and looked like his face was stung by a thousand bees). And then there’s the matter of him being both a zombie child and a bagheaded killer before receiving his iconic hockey mask.
However, if you synthesize the various forms of the character into the archetypical Jason Voorhees, the one that most people might visualize in their head when told to imagine him, the result doesn’t not look like this new redesign. Frankly, I even think “redesign” is too strong a word for what this is. This image shows a dude in outdoorsy clothes wearing a hockey mask. It looks enough like “Jason Voorhees” to me that my eyes just slide right off of it.
What Do We Expect From Friday the 13th, And What Do We Need?
Ultimately, many people clearly disagree with my assessment of this redesign, which led me to ponder the franchise as a whole. If there’s something to complain about with this new look, that implies that there is a “right” way and a “wrong” way to be a Friday the 13th movie.
This I can agree with. While the franchise is wide-ranging and expansive to the point that it has included Jason going to space, fighting a dream demon, and taking a cruise ship from a New Jersey lake to the New York harbor, the movies do still follow a reasonably consistent formula.
Step 1: Generate a group of people in a place either on the shores of Crystal Lake or in Crystal Lake township (they can travel elsewhere, but this is where they must start).
Step 2: Plunk Jason down near them, give him a variety of edged weapons, and watch what happens. One girl survives the onslaught, and sometimes she brings along a friend or two as adjunct survivors. Bada bing, bada boom, you have yourself a Friday the 13th movie.
If you fuck with that formula, you’ve got a problem. But beyond that, there’s really not a hell of a lot that the movies have in common. Sometimes you have a telekinetic final girl, other times you have a child psychologist. Sometimes the dead meat characters are camp counselors, but other times they’re partiers or townies or students attending space college.
Hell, even the people killing them aren’t always the same. Look at Pamela Voorhees in the original movie or Roy in A New Beginning.
So why this protectiveness around the minutiae of Jason’s look?
It’s Us, Hi, We’re The Problem, It’s Us
I don’t mean to discount everyone’s negative opinions about this Jason redesign. There are a multitude of aesthetic and personal reasons to dislike what’s going on here, and you don’t have to turn that yuck into a yum just because I said so. But I think we’ve had online fandoms around long enough to see how poisonous they can be to the creative process.
For instance, was The Rise of Skywalker a better movie because it went down the laundry list of fan complaints about The Last Jedi and basically had characters stare into the camera and announce the ways they were being fixed?
Look, I’m not immune to having preconceived disdain for certain projects. If I’m waiting for a new installment in a franchise and all that I’m hearing coming out of producers’ mouths is “prequel” and “television show,” those are fighting words.
However, the constant online pushback to projects that are in early development might be one reason it has taken us so long to actually get more Friday the 13th (I’m talking in addition to the long delays amid the lawsuit, of course). It’s been more than a decade and a half without a new Jason vehicle, and that time keeps on stretching longer and longer.
What Fans Really Want From a New Jason Voorhees Movie
Instead of just letting the creative tap flow and having a filmmaker put out the thing they want to make, then having somebody else take the wheel and do that same thing for the next installment, it seems like producers are terrified of making the wrong move and angering the fans, which has prevented them from actually pulling the trigger on much of anything.
Look, we survived A New Beginning. And Jason Takes Manhattan. Even Jason Goes to Hell. A controversial misstep can’t kill the immortal beast that is Friday the 13th. I say let’s just let them make one. Having something tangible to complain about is better than having nothing at all.
Editorials
Monstrous Mothers: Unveiling the Horror in ‘Mommie Dearest’ and ‘Umma’
The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?
I challenged myself to fill a gap in my cinema history this month and watched Mommie Dearest. I was very familiar with the movie due to how many drag queens reference it and because of Joan Crawford’s villainous reputation. However, I had never seen it in its entirety before, which is weird because I write about my own maternal baggage often. Without ever seeing the film, I knew this movie, categorized as a drama, belonged under my favorite genre label. Some sources even try to meet in the middle and classify it as a psychological drama, which is a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting to remove itself from what it actually is. After all, what else should we call a film about being abused by the person who should love us most other than horror?
Does Mommie Dearest Belong in the Horror Genre?
The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?
Mommie Dearest recounts a version of Christina Crawford’s upbringing by Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford. It depicts her as an unstable, jealous, manipulative woman who only holds space for her beliefs. As with most abusive parents, she takes out her frustrations and feelings of inadequacy on those around her. Specifically, those who cannot fight back due to the power dynamics at play. This version of Joan is a vicious bully, which feels familiar for many people who grew up with an abusive parent. How many of us never knew what would set our parental monster off, so just learned to walk on eggshells? How many of us grew up believing we were the problem for way longer than we should have? How many of us normalized the abuse for so long that it carried over into adulthood, letting us believe being mistreated is just part of living?
Watch the trailer for Mommie Dearest
The Lasting Impact of Abusive Parents in Horror Movies
While my mother wasn’t the active bully in our home, part of my struggle with her is her complicitness in the hell she helped create for all of us. Which is why, while I don’t think Mommie Dearest is a great film, I believe it’s a decent horror flick. It made me want to revisit a better movie, Umma, that also dealt with motherhood, mental illness, and trauma. Iris K. Shim’s 2022 PG-13 horror sees Sandra Oh playing a single mother who has not healed. After growing up with her own mother, who was especially cruel to her, she has built her world around that trauma and forced her daughter to live within its walls with her. As someone who was severely homeschooled by a woman who still really needs to find a therapist, Umma hits me in my feelings every time.
Watch the trailer for Umma below
Maternal Monsters: A Common Thread in Psycho, Hereditary, and More
Before the film starts, Oh’s character, Amanda, has turned her back on her family and cultural heritage. She has built a life that she’s not really living as she hides in her home, afraid of electricity due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mom. So, when her uncle shows up with her mother’s ashes, she is triggered and haunted. All of the issues she hasn’t dealt with rush to the surface, manifesting in ways that begin turning her into her deceased mom. Amanda does eventually force herself to confront her past to avoid becoming her mother and hurting her daughter. So, while Umma is different from Mommie Dearest, it’s not hard to see they share some of the same DNA. Scary moms make the genre go round which is why movies like M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters, Serial Mom, Mother, May I?, and so many others will always pull an audience by naming the monster in the title.
I doubt I am the first person on Norma Bates’ internet to clock that some of horror’s most notorious villains are parents, specifically moms. I’m also sure I cannot be the first person to argue Mommie Dearest is a horror movie on many levels. After all, a large part of the rabid fanbase seems to be comprised of genre kids who grew up wondering why the film felt familiar. However, I hope I am the first to encourage you to watch these two movies if your momma trauma will allow you to hold space for a couple more monstrous mothers this month. Both have much to say about how we cope with the fallout of being harmed by the people who should keep us safe.
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