Editorials
Unpacking the Black Zodiac: Cataloging the Spirits of ‘Thirteen Ghosts’
In a recent article, I talked about the legacy of William Castle and the many gimmicks he used to promote his horror films. One gimmick I neglected to mention was the Ghost-Viewer cards distributed for one of Castle’s most popular film, 13 Ghosts. Since the film’s plot involved pairs of “Spectral Viewers” which allowed the Zorba Family to see who and what was haunting them, Castle thought it was only fair to allow audiences to experience something similar. Through careful applications of red and blue filters, viewers could make the ghosts appear and disappear; the red cellophane slit of the cards would make the ghosts that were shot in red more visible as a result, while the blue cellophane would cause them to disappear into the background of the film which was tinted blue.
13 Ghosts, as that article also pointed out, was one of the only remakes made by Dark Castle Entertainment to reimagine Castle’s horror filmography in a new light. And the new light that screenwriters Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio shined down on the film was incredible. In place of the film’s campier headless men and undead circus lions, horrors were peeled from their purgatory states and trapped in October glass cases. Brought to life by the designs of effects artist Howard Berger, each ghost really came to life (or unlife, I suppose) as they got that weighty physical presence that Beck shunned the use of CGI ghosts for.
Each of the twelve ghosts in this film, dubbed the Black Zodiac, has their own special intricacies and quirks. On top of that, they each have a backstory, recapped as a special feature on the home release of Thirteen Ghosts (narrated by their captor Cyrus Kriticos himself). So today, I’ll be cataloging their origins and ranking all of them. I’ll be ordering the ghosts by the effectiveness of their design, and overall how impactful they are, both on screen and in their story. This isn’t trying to determine which ghost is the scariest, just the one that stands out the most. Beginning with the weakest first…
12 THE WITHERED LOVER
Jean Kriticos, the wife of the film’s protagonist Arthur Kriticos, was the last ghost to be “created”, but not the last to be collected. Her death was as sad as they come: a fireplace mishap set their Christmas tree aflame, resulting in a catastrophic housefire. Though Jean initially made it out, her burns proved too great to heal, so she was lost.
This is by far the worst of the ghosts Cyrus decided to capture, not just on moral grounds but because she’s mostly underwhelming compared to all the ghosts around her. She shows up for a sliver of the runtime, and while the prosthetic work in her makeup is fine, it lacks the feeling of a truly tortured spirit like her counterparts.
11 THE TORSO
Jimmy Gambino had a gambling addiction. As he fell deeper and deeper into the world of sports betting, he began to live bet to bet. Squandering all his winnings, he eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and became a bookie to keep himself afloat.
Jimmy’s demise was brought on when he was approached by a mobster wanting to put a big bet down on an underdog fighter. Knowing he couldn’t possibly cover it, Jimmy still accepted the deal in a desperate ploy to make some money. As mobsters are want to do, the match was rigged, and Jimmy was sent to sleep with the fishes when he couldn’t scrounge up the cash for his associates. As his name would imply, he didn’t end up making his way to the ethereal plane intact, with his body being just as destroyed in death. Brutal.
The Torso’s backstory does have a lot of humanity to it, which makes it compelling, and the three-piece design of his severed limbs, head, and torso is gnarly. But he gets beaten out by just everyone else because they manage to do the same while being especially visually striking and much more memorable.
10 THE TORN PRINCE
The only other teenage ghost aside from Susan Legrow, Royce Clayton was on a fast track to a number of college scholarships thanks to his natural talent for baseball. Still, Royce was a risk-taker who stylized himself as a greaser. This involved taking on dangerous car races, and in the exact turn of events you would expect, things went bad. A rival cut his car’s brakes, and the ensuing accident sent him to the afterlife with his baseball bat and all.
He is a greaser, he is a ghost. He’s a greaser ghost.
Not a whole bunch going on in the way of a backstory either, but still aesthetically appealing enough with his whole baseball bat and greased hair schtick.
9 THE FIRST-BORN SON
The simplest of the specters, Billy Michaels’ origins can be summed up in two sentences: Billy loved playing Cowboys and Indians until a neighbor boy decided to up the ante by using a real bow and arrow. Billy didn’t win the quick draw.
A bleak fate for the youngest ghost in the gallery, but certainly not the most painful. Billy does at least get the nasty wound, creepy kid factor, and a cool era appropriate outfit to make him stand out, so he gets one spot above Jean, Jimmy, and Royce.
8 THE ANGRY PRINCESS
Definitely one of the bolder ghost designs in the film, though the surface level risqué of her look has a heartbreaking origin. Suffering from extreme body dysmorphia and some form of PTSD due to her numerous violent partners, Dana Newman wrestled with her sense of self and body image her entire life. Despite having supernaturally good looks, it simply wasn’t enough.
So when she landed a job as a receptionist at a cosmetic surgery clinic, she made arrangements to be paid in surgical procedures instead. Eventually, Dana attempted an impromptu surgery to fix a nonexistent issue with her eye, but only blinded herself in the process. The resulting failure caused her to take her own life.
The Angry Princess is probably the design that got burned into most people’s heads because of the juxtaposition between beauty and grotesqueness she embodies. Personally, I feel like her backstory carries that design and gives it some real life that, out of context, would be just a kind of cool horror movie villain.
7 & 6 THE DIRE MOTHER AND THE GREAT CHILD
A packaged deal, these two ghosts are a mother-son duo who share backstories. Margaret Shelburne, who would become the Dire Mother, was born with dwarfism and spent her whole life being ridiculed and abused for it. With nowhere to turn, she joined the circus as a sideshow attraction. She eventually had a child by one of her abusers who worked alongside her, naming the baby Harold.
Overly protective and unwilling to let him grow up, Margaret overfed Harold and kept him isolated from the outside world the best she could, “babying” him until he grew to monstrous proportions with an infantile mind. When her fellow circus performers accidentally killed her in a dangerous prank that involved trapping her in a bag, a mentally stunted and emotionally damaged Harold went on a rampage and killed the entire circus. He was eventually taken down by a mob led by the circus’s ringleader, and reunited with his mother as spirits, where they formed two more pieces in Cyrus Kritico’s master plan.
There is a shock value to these two when you first see them in the film, and their designs make you ask the question every designer wants people to ask about their characters: what’s their deal? They pique curiosity while balancing between the frightening and sympathetic; a perfect haunting duo.
5 THE BOUND WOMAN
A beautiful young prom queen with a promiscuous streak, Susan Legrow’s life was one of many trysts and flings as the town’s heartbreaker. Eventually, Susan’s chronic infidelity would trigger the psychotic reaction of her then-boyfriend Chet. He would seek revenge by killing the man she cheated on him with, torturing and binding Susan, and burying her under the school’s football field.
There’s a very palpable discomfort that comes with looking at all the ghosts in the top five, and Susan’s state of eternal distress is particularly bad in a way that is almost worse than a ghost who can straight-up attack you. With the exposed bone and choked expression that Laura Mennell subjects viewers to, The Bound Woman has some serious nightmare fuel potential that rounds out the frights of the other eleven ghosts perfectly.
4 THE JUGGERNAUT
Born with gigantism, Horace Mahoney was seemingly the strongest of all the phantoms in Cyrus’s collection, and the one that proved the most trouble in capturing. Ostracized by others, Horace grew up deeply maladjusted, with the only person who accepted him being his father. The two worked alongside each other in the family’s junkyard for the remainder of his life.
But with his father’s passing, Horace’s true nature was unleashed: he became a notorious serial killer known as The Breaker, who would systematically break every bone in his victim’s bodies. His killings were eventually stopped by police, who had to shoot him upwards of 50 times and lost several officers in their attempt to apprehend him. He certainly ended up living to (and dying by) the name.
John De Santis is one of Hollywood’s quintessential “Big Guy” character actors. He’s been in so many projects over the years, and still, his work as The Juggernaut will be what he is remembered for. He really slipped into the role of the shockingly violent and surprisingly creepy phantom like a glove, so he deserves all his flowers for his portrayal here.
3 THE PILGRIMESS
The ghost with the worst luck on this list is curiously the one with the best luck as well. She is also the oldest of the spirits, as she’s one of the earliest English colonists of the Americas. In life, she was known as Isabella Smith, a woman who didn’t curry much favor with other colonists for being “an outsider”, presumably of a different religious background than the others.
After a string of livestock deaths and the passing of the town’s preacher, her fellow pilgrims accused her of being a witch, and eventually set a barn she was in on fire. When she survived the fire completely unscathed, either out of sheer luck or actual witchcraft, she only suffered a much more prolonged demise: she was locked in a pillory, stoned, and starved to death over the course of weeks.
This might be an odd pick for the #3 spot, especially ahead of The Juggernaut, but I think these three ghosts could carry their own films. There is an undeniable charm in having ghosts from beyond the 20th century in this film too, which makes it feel like a proper old campfire story. The Pilgrimess is a perfect example of a persecuted person from another time, dragged screaming and locked up to the future, trapped in a never-ending prison. There’s double the dramatic irony as well, since she is both trapped in her pillory and simultaneously trapped in Cyrus’s machine; extremely rough, extremely cool execution.
2 THE JACKAL
The most feared ghost by fans of the film, The Jackal is also one of the most tragic due to the origins of his distinct look. Abandoned as a child, Ryan Kuhn became a listless serial killer who targeted young women and prostitutes. Despite his bloodlust, Kuhn was aware of his sickness and even tried to cure his compulsions by voluntarily submitting himself to an asylum.
No matter how strong his restraints were, Kuhn would escape them, until eventually, his doctors had a cage placed over his head along with his straitjacket to prevent him from savaging anyone with his teeth. He succumbed to a fire that consumed the asylum, being the sole victim; Cyrus mentions in his notes that Kuhn’s death was most likely voluntary as well, assuming he would get some peace in death. He was sadly very wrong.
The best physical acting in the film, Shane Wyler made the Jackal the face of Thirteen Ghosts, and he deserves all the credit in the world for it. He’s just so kinetic and charged up with every moment he’s on screen, and that torn-open cage is a really nice inversion of the classic masked monster that shows you all the fine detail in his face. It’s an ideal design, with an ideal portrayal.
1 THE HAMMER
A spirit from the 1890s, George Markley was originally a gentle giant of a man and a blacksmith on the American frontier. However, being an African American in a predominantly white town, Markley and his family were far from welcome by the townspeople. After he was accused of theft, both of his daughters and wife were killed by an angry group of bigots.
George would go on to avenge his family with extreme violence, killing the man who had accused him of theft and his cohorts with a tool of his trade: a hammer. George was killed by an angry mob in turn, who impaled him with hundreds of nails and railroad spikes, before replacing his hand with the head of his hammer in a final attempt to defile him and his legacy. However, Markley’s vengeance never ends.
Now this, this is the one. If that Thirteen Ghosts television series ever comes to fruition, this is the one ghost I would want to see the most of. He has a classic ghostly backstory, his design conveys a painful and torturous death, and the makeup and numerous pieces of prosthetics meld perfectly, it all just synergizes to make the perfect spirit. It reeks of someone who has unfinished business sticking around to get revenge, and moreover, a ghost you can root for.
Some might consider it over-designed with the abundance of moving parts, but it is just the right amount of insane for me to match Markley’s backstory and make the best of the twelve.
***
Do you agree with the rankings? Do you have a favorite ghost from Thirteen Ghosts you’d like to see in the TV series? Or do you have thoughts on the movie in general? Be sure to tell us in the comments on Instagram, the replies on Twitter, and anywhere else you can find us under the tag @HorrorPressLLC! And for more articles like this one, stay tuned to HorrorPress.com for the latest in everything horror this season!
As a horror fan, I tend to think about remakes a lot. Not why they are made, necessarily. That answer is pretty clear: money. But something closer to “if they have to be made, how can they be made well?” It’s rare to find a remake that is generally considered to be better than the original. However, there are plenty that have been deemed to be valuable in a different way. You can find these in basically all subgenres. Sci-fi, for instance (The Thing, The Blob). Zombies (Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead). Even slashers (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, My Bloody Valentine). However, when it comes to haunted house remakes, only The Woman in Black truly stands out, and it is shockingly underrated. Even more intriguingly, it is demonstrably better than the original movie.
The Original Haunted House Movie Is Almost Always Better
Now please note, I’m specifically talking about movies with haunted houses, rather than ghost movies in general. We wouldn’t want to be bringing The Ring into this conversation. That’s not fair to anyone.
Plenty of haunted house movies are minted classics, and as such, the subgenre has gotten its fair share of remakes. These are, almost unilaterally, some of the most-panned movies in a format that attracts bad reviews like honey attracts flies.
You’ve got 2005’s The Amityville Horror (a CGI-heavy slog briefly buoyed by a shirtless, possessed Ryan Reynolds). That same year’s Dark Water (one of many inert remakes of Asian horror films to come from that era). 1999’s The House on Haunted Hill (a manic, incoherent effort that millennial nostalgia has perhaps been too kind to). That same year there was The Haunting (a manic, incoherent effort that didn’t even earn nostalgia in the first place). And 2015’s Poltergeist (Remember this movie? Don’t you wish you didn’t?). And while I could accept arguments about 2001’s THIR13EN Ghosts, it’s hard to compete with a William Castle classic.
The Problem with Haunted House Remakes
Generally, I think haunted house remakes fail so often because of remakes’ compulsive obsession with updating the material. They throw in state-of-the-art special effects, the hottest stars of the era, and big set piece action sequences. Like, did House on Haunted Hill need to open with that weird roller coaster scene? Of course it didn’t.
However, when it comes to haunted house movies, bigger does not always mean better. They tend to be at their best when they are about ordinary people experiencing heightened versions of normal domestic fears. Bumps in the night, unexplained shadows, and the like. Maybe even some glowing eyes or a floating child. That’s all fine and dandy. But once you have a giant stone lion decapitating Owen Wilson, things have perhaps gone a bit off the rails.
The One Big Exception is The Woman in Black
The one undeniable exception to the haunted house remake rule is 2012’s The Woman in Black. If we want to split hairs, it’s technically the second adaptation of the Susan Hill novel of the same name. But The Haunting was technically a Shirley Jackson re-adaptation, and that still counts as a remake, so this does too.
The novel follows a young solicitor being haunted when handling a client’s estate at the secluded Eel Marsh House. The property was first adapted into a 1989 TV movie starring Adrian Rawlings, and it was ripe for a remake. In spite of having at least one majorly eerie scene, the 1989 movie is in fact too simple and small-scale. It is too invested in the humdrum realities of country life to have much time to be scary. Plus, it boasts a small screen budget and a distinctly “British television” sense of production design. Eel Marsh basically looks like any old English house, with whitewashed walls and a bland exterior.
Therefore, the “bigger is better” mentality of horror remakes took The Woman in Black to the exact level it needed.
The Woman in Black 2012 Makes Some Great Choices
2012’s The Woman in Black deserves an enormous amount of credit for carrying the remake mantle superbly well. By following a more sedate original, it reaches the exact pitch it needs in order to craft a perfect haunted house story. Most appropriately, the design of Eel Marsh House and its environs are gloriously excessive. While they don’t stretch the bounds of reality into sheer impossibility, they completely turn the original movie on its head.
Eel Marsh is now, as it should be, a decaying, rambling pile where every corner might hide deadly secrets. It’d be scary even if there wasn’t a ghost inside it, if only because it might contain copious black mold. Then you add the marshy grounds choked in horror movie fog. And then there’s the winding, muddy road that gets lost in the tide and feels downright purgatorial. Finally, you have a proper damn setting for a haunted house movie that plumbs the wicked secrets of the wealthy.
Why The Woman in Black Remake Is an Underrated Horror Gem
While 2012’s The Woman in Black is certainly underrated as a remake, I think it is even more underrated as a haunted house movie. For one thing, it is one of the best examples of the pre-Conjuring jump-scare horror movie done right. And if you’ve read my work for any amount of time, you know how positively I feel about jump scares. The Woman in Black offers a delectable combo platter of shocks designed to keep you on your toes. For example, there are plenty of patient shots that wait for you to notice the creepy thing in the background. But there are also a number of short sharp shocks that remain tremendously effective.
That is not to say that the movie is perfect. They did slightly overstep with their “bigger is better” move to cast Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role. It was a big swing making his first post-Potter role that of a single father with a four-year-old kid. It’s a bit much to have asked 2012 audiences to swallow, though it reads slightly better so many years later.
However, despite its flaws, The Woman in Black remake is demonstrably better than the original. In nearly every conceivable way. It’s pure Hammer Films confection, as opposed to a television drama without an ounce of oomph.
There are only so many times I can get away with burying the lede with an editorial headline before someone throws a rock at me. It may or may not be justified when they do. This article is not an attempt at ragebaiting Scream fans, I promise. Neither was my Scream 3 article, which I’m still completely right about.
I do firmly believe that Scream 2 is, at the very least, the last Scream film I’d want to watch. But what was initially just me complaining about a film that I disregard as the weakest entry in its series has since developed into trying to address what it does right. You’ve heard of the expression “jack of all trades, master of none”, and to me Scream 2 really was the jack of all trades of the franchise for the longest time.
It technically has everything a Scream movie needs. Its opening is great, but it’s not the best of them by a long shot. Its killers are unexpected, but not particularly interesting, feeling flat and one-dimensional compared to the others. It has kills, but only a few of them are particularly shocking or well executed. It pokes fun at the genre but doesn’t say anything particularly bold in terms of commentary. Having everything a Scream movie needs is the bare minimum to me.
But the question is, what does Scream 2 do best exactly? Finding that answer involves highlighting what each of the other sequels are great at, and trying to pick out what Scream 2 has that the others don’t.
Scream 3 Is the Big Finale That Utilizes Its Setting Perfectly
Scream as a series handily dodges the trap most horror franchises fall into: rehashing and retreading the same territory over and over. That’s because every one of its films are in essence trying to do something a little different and a little bolder.
Scream 3 is especially bold because it was conceived, written, and executed as the final installment in the Scream series. And it does that incredibly well. Taking the action away from a locale similar to Woodsboro, Scream 3 tosses our characters into the frying pan of a Hollywood film production. Despite its notorious number of rewrites and script changes (one of which resulted in our first solo Ghostface), it still manages to be a perfect culmination of Sidney Prescott’s story.
I won’t repeat myself too much (go read my previous article on the subject), but 3 is often maligned for as good a film as it turned out to be. And for all of its clunkier reveals, and its ghost mom antics, it understands how to utilize its setting and send its characters off into the sunset right.
Scream 4’s Meta Commentary Wakes Scream from a Deep Sleep
As Wes Craven’s final film, Scream 4 has a very special place in the franchise. It was and still is largely adored for bringing back the franchise from a deep 11-year sleep. With one of the craziest openings in any horror film, let alone a Scream film, it sets the tone for a bombastic return and pays off in spades with the journey it takes us on.
Its primary Ghostface Jill Roberts is a fan favorite, and for some people, she is the best to ever wear the mask. Its script is the source of many memorable moments, not the least of which is Kirby’s iconic rapid-fire response to the horror remakes question. And most importantly, it makes a bold and surprisingly effective return for our main trio of Sidney, Dewey, and Gale, whose return didn’t feel trite or hammy when they ended up coming back to Woodsboro for more.
Craven’s work on 4 truly understands the power its predecessors had exerted on the horror genre, both irreverent in its metacommentary and celebratory of the Scream series as a whole. The film is less of a love letter to the genre and more of a kicking down of the door to remind people what Scream is about. 4’s story re-established that Scream isn’t going away, no matter how long it takes for another film, and no matter how many franchises try to take its place.
Scream 5 & 6 Is Radio Silence’s Brutal and Bloody Attitude Era
Put simply, Scream 5 and 6’s strong suit was not its characters. It was not its clever writing. The Radio Silence duology in the Scream series excelled in one thing: beating the hell out of its characters.
Wrestling fans (of which there is an unsurprising amount of crossover with horror fans) will know why I call it the Attitude Era. Just like WWE’s most infamous stretch of history, Radio Silence brought something especially aggressive to their entries. And it’s because these films were just brutal. Handing the reins to the series, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet gifted a special kineticism to the classic Scream chase sequences, insane finales, and especially its ruthless killers.
All five of the Ghostfaces present in 5 and 6 are the definition of nasty. They’re unrelenting, and in my humble opinion, the freakiest since the original duo of Stu Macher and Billy Loomis. Getting to hear all the air get sucked out of the room as Dewey is gutted like a fish in 5 was still an incredible moment to experience in theatres, and it’s something I don’t think would have happened if the films were any less mean and any less explosively violent.
So, What Does Scream 2 Do Best Exactly?
So now, after looking at all these entries and all of their greatest qualities, what does Scream 2 have that none of the others do? What must I concede to Scream 2?
Really great character development.
Film is a medium of spectacle most of the time, and this is reflected in how we critique and compliment them. It affects how we look back on them, sometimes treating them more harshly than they deserve because they don’t have that visual flash. But for every ounce of spectacle Scream 2 lacks, I have to admit, it does an incredible job of developing Sidney Prescott as a character.
On a rare rewatch, it’s clear Neve Campbell is carrying the entirety of Scream 2 on her back just because of how compelling she makes Sidney. Watching her slowly fight against a tide of paranoia, fear, and distrust of the people around her once more, watching her be plunged back into the nightmare, is undeniably effective.
It’s also where Dewey and Gale are really cemented as a couple, and where the seeds of them always returning to each other are planted. Going from a mutual simmering disrespect to an affectionate couple to inseparable but awkward and in love is just classic; two people who complete each other in how different they are, but are inevitably pulled back and forth by those differences, their bond is one of the major highlights throughout the series.
Maybe All the Scream Films Are Just Good?
These three characters are the heart of the series, long after they’ve been written out. I talk a big game about how Scream 3 is the perfect ending for the franchise, but I like to gloss over the fact that Scream 2 does a lot of the legwork when it comes to developing the characters of Dewey, Gale, and especially Sidney.
Without 2, 3 just isn’t that effective when it comes to giving Sidney her long deserved peace. Without 2, the way we see Sidney’s return in 4 & 5 doesn’t hit as hard. All of the Scream movies owe something to Scream 2 in the same way they owe something to the original Scream. I think I’ve come to a new point of view when it comes to the Scream franchise: maybe there is no bad entry. Maybe none of them have to be the worst. Each one interlinks with the others in their own unique way.
And even though I doubt I will ever really love Scream 2, it has an undeniable strength in its character writing that permeates throughout the whole franchise. And that at the very least keeps it from being the worst Scream film.
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