Death is no way to make a living.
I’ve got to level with you, Cultists. It had been probably 25 years since I last saw Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners. I pulled it up just for the purpose of writing this email for you, and let me tell you, I didn’t remember much. What I do remember is that spectacular poster/Blockbuster box art of the skeletal grin stretching out through the surface. I couldn’t tell you how many times I saw that thing staring at me from the horror shelves without picking it up. I had no idea what I was missing.
(Jackson notoriously hated the film’s poster, claiming that it told potential viewers absolutely nothing about the movie. He’s not wrong, but I can still see the holographic Blockbuster packaging as clear as anything in my mind’s eye.)
As with all things Cult-y, the story of The Frighteners goes so much deeper than posters. During pre-production, Peter Jackson convinced Universal to let him make the entire film in New Zealand. To save on digital effects costs, he pitched his own fledgling WETA Digital (at one-quarter the price of US shops) and used the funds to expand WETA from a single computer to well over thirty. Jackson would make good use of the new hardware not only in The Frighteners’ 600ish CG shots but in his next major feature, a small-budget genre piece you’ve probably never heard of.
Instead of a fellowship of pint-sized dudes rocking and Australians riding horses in slow-motion, Frighteners gives us Michael J Fox as the Saul Goodman of Exorcists, Frank Bannister.
Despite breaking a foot on set, Fox heaped praise on the film and Jackson’s vision, regularly telling interviewers that he would rather work on things that were unique and interesting as opposed to just turning up for a paycheck. He compared his experience watching The Frighteners for the first time to his viewing of another mid-90’s gem, Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, and called them both “odd”, in the most loving and appreciative of ways. He’s right, obviously, and nowhere is the Frighteners more lovingly odd than the performance of Jeffrey Combs as Milton Dammers. A be-swastika-d Fed with a Hitler haircut, Dammers is a perfect foil for Bannister.
Dammers gets all of my favorite lines and most of my favorite moments in The Frighteners, and Combs fires all cylinders. He’s unhinged, demented. Every time Fox hits him with his best delivery, Combs fires back with a grave little twist. When the MPAA slapped an “R” on The Frighteners despite Jackson’s best efforts to keep it below PG-13, Dammers’ death was upgraded with that early Jackson signature gore. It’s not the most famous head-exploding-gif on the internet, but it should be. I wish we got more of him, but when your number’s up, that’s it.
Anyway, unless you live near Bend, Oregon, you can’t just pop down to the local Blockbuster and pick up The Frighteners anymore, but you can do the next best thing here, with us, and celebrate a movie far more interesting than The Lord of the Rings. I said it.
- Frank (not Bannister)
