WHY DO I PARTICULARLY HATE MOVIES THAT ARE SUPPOSEDLY 'BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS' OR 'BASED ON A TRUE STORY'? BECAUSE THEY'RE TOTAL BULLSH**




The Haunting In Connecticut (2009)
The Haunting In Connecticut 2: Ghosts Of Georgia (2013)

First I almost gave a review on the wrong movie - An American Haunting - since all these damned movies have basically the same title. The review on THAT horrid thing (starring an out-of-place Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland) is coming up 'cause I watched it so... that's another 93 minutes of my time wasted, I might as well warn others.

'Cause this horrid theme is not over ladies and gentlemen... coming soon to take your money for absolutely no reason is The Haunting In New York. Yippee. The makers of these dumb things, Gold Circle Films, states that even though there are three of these (oh please make them stop) that each movie is a movie by itself and not a sequel to any of the others. <sputters> Then why... <points to second title> Don't you know it's not a Something Crappy 2 unless it's related to Something Crappy 1? <facepalm>

The Haunting In Connecticut: So here we go... The first one starts by showing what is called memorial photography, popular when families did not have access or funds to have a lot of family pictures, and the high mortality rate cutting down loved ones early in life. In the funeral parlor, it was a practice to dress up the deceased, sometimes in their best outfits, and 'pose' them with their families. That usually was the only family photo they had. 

It might seem weird and spooky to us, having instant digital access to every second of our lives, but to them it was an act of love. A collection of some of the photos from that period can be found in the book Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America, by Stanley Burns. If you want a copy, be prepared to shell out some big money - new copies can go for almost $500, or you may find one used for almost $400.

So this family's story goes as follows (and was admitted to be almost total bullsh** by an extended member of the family): Sara (Virginia Madsen) has a family and a son with cancer (played by Kyle Gallner, the unlucky teen in the no-body-shown Jennifer's Body) . The hospital she has to take him to is too far away so they take a cheap rental house nearer to it. As she and the sick son Matthew move in, he immediately has those 'corner of the eye' things where he sees shadows. 

She finds a bunch of pictures and thinks they're weird - that's when she discovers the place used to be a funeral parlor and the pictures left behind were of families using memorial photography. Duh. If they went to all the trouble why are the pictures still... uh... ya know, I just want this moment to be over don't you?

She tosses them out (I recognized several being copies from Mr. Burns' book). We get more shadows blah blah visions of blood blah blah nightmares blah blah... you've probably already seen at least 70 percent of this movie if you've ever watched ones like the Amityville Horror (which was also crap) or take your pick of any haunting movie. They're pretty much all the same - it's like they stole my horror worksheet to map them out (patent pending).

We get the sick kid going out of his head (Gee, couldn't be from all the radiation and drugs could it?) and the 'discovery' of a kid named Jonah who held seances in the place and... sigh. We get priests. We get nightmares. We get... bored. Supposedly Matt though is the center of it all, being personally bothered by 'Jonah'. See, all mortuary owners are evil. That's right - eeeeeeevil. So the former owner, Mr. Aickman didn't just bury everybody - nope he used some bodies for eeeeeeevil rituals. Sorry, every time I think of that word I'm channeling Ren from Ren and Stimpy. Eeeeeeevil. You eeeeeeediot. Ahem.

So throw in a priest or reverend or whatever the hell he was telling Matt to 'find out what the spirit wants'. Yeah, I can totally see a religious figure doing that. Oh, and no 'haunting' movie is complete(ly stupid) without the scene where all the furniture is in a big pile in the center of the room 'cause we all know that ghosts are just frustrated interior decorators who want things a certain way.

So how does it end? How do any of these end? After enduring a whole movie of shadows, things moving but not, doors opening, dreams, priests, etc. we get the big confrontation where 'Jonah' who was apparently cremated by the spirits he pissed off, gets back at Aickman and frees his own spirit by having Matt burn the place down. And Matt dies.

Pfffft, you know that's not it. We get the moment when Matt's 'spirit' hears his mother's voice and he chooses his life of constant pain over what they believe to be an eternity of cloud sitting. Interesting how these people's version of heaven is a totally wonderful place that no one wants to go to. Right? Right?

Okay, how much was true and how much was Hollywood? Well, there's a Connecticut, that's real. There was a family that moved there, that was real. The boy was sick. They found old photos of dead people (well yeah, they'd be dead now, duh). The house was a mortuary. The son went through a personality change. Aaaaand of course the infamous Warren couple (Amityville Horror, The Conjuring) gave their two cents which others forcefully gave back to 'em. Other than that, total BS. But then we already knew that, didn't we?

The Haunting In Connecticut 2: Ghosts Of Georgia: Now remember, this is NOT a sequel and of course you know that Georgia is nowhere NEAR Connecticut. I admit I can be really sarcastic. And a bit of a bitch. But there are those reviewers that are much better than me, and I found a paragraph about this film that made me laugh until I peed myself a little. 

After cleaning up, I decided it was just too good not to share (and I hate putting it that way because that's usually what everybody says on Facebook when passing around a poster or inspirational crap you've already seen a hundred times). It's from a site I really like called Bloody Disgusting at http://bloody-disgusting.com (which says a lot about my character I guess) and it is as follows:

Reviewed by Patrick Cooper: I hope you’re sitting down, readers, because I have some bad news. The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia does not take place in Connecticut at all. Nor is it about ghosts named Georgia. It takes place in the state of Georgia, which is often called the “Connecticut of the South,” I think. The good news is that this will inevitably lead to a 50+ film franchise covering all of the states and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico. QVC could even sell a giant, collector’s map of the U.S., like they did when the state quarters came out. 

That way fans could display their entire collection of The Haunting in Connecticut films, like Ghosts of North Dakota, which is often called the “Connecticut of the Dakotas,” I think. Unfortunately, the idea of this many Haunting films is scarier than anything you’ll find in Ghosts of Georgia.

Bwahahahahahaaaaa... oops, wet 'em. Be right back...

Okay, the story is this family moved to a house in Georgia and immediately their three year old daughter got an imaginary friend. We get the story that all the females in the family had 'veils' when they were born - a caul (piece of membrane) over their face. In medieval times the appearance of a caul on a newborn baby was seen as a sign of good luck. It was considered an omen that the child was destined for greatness. In this movie, it means they have 'second sight'. Uh huh. Okay let's make this short and sour: The house and property were very familiar in the days of slavery and the owner of the house was a 'station master' for the underground railroad. 

Trouble was, some made it to keep going on, some disappeared. Did I mention this stationmaster was also a taxidermist? No? Well he was. And he decided that some of the runaways got to go through, others got stuffed. Literally. And set up in an underground shop like mannequins. Sheah right. 

So in a protracted movie full of nonsense, the spirits of the stuffed guys get to do the same to the spirit of the stationmaster (who the people had figured out he was a nasty one and hanged). With everybody free to, I dunno, do more cloud sitting as they believe, the scary stuff stopped and they lived in the house for years afterward.

How much was true? Well, there's a Georgia... do you really want me to continue? I thought not.

https://www.facebook.com/dumbandboringmovies

KEEPING LOVED ONES CLOSE

TRUTH IS SCARIER THAN FICTION

Post-Mortem Photography

I know I've mentioned this subject before but unfortunately my mind is mush and my body is not taking any commands so I'll be down a bit - in the meanwhile, here's a little of the practices of the past:

The invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 made portraiture much more commonplace, as many of those who were unable to afford the commission of a painted portrait could afford to sit for a photography session. This cheaper and quicker method also provided the middle class with a means for memorializing dead loved ones.These photographs served as keepsakes to remember the deceased. This was especially common with infants and young children; Victorian era childhood mortality rates were extremely high, and a post-mortem photograph might have been the only image of the child the family ever had. The later invention of the carte de visite, which allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative, meant that copies of the image could be mailed to relatives.

The practice eventually peaked in popularity around the end of the 19th century and died out as "snapshot" photography became more commonplace, although a few examples of formal memorial portraits were still being produced well into the 20th century.

The earliest post-mortem photographs are usually close-ups of the face or shots of the full body and rarely include the coffin. The subject is usually depicted so as to seem in a deep sleep, or else arranged to appear more lifelike. Children were often shown in repose on a couch or in a crib, sometimes posed with a favorite toy or other plaything. It was not uncommon to photograph very young children with a family member, most frequently the mother. Adults were more commonly posed in chairs. Flowers were also a common prop in post-mortem photography of all types.

The effect of life was sometimes enhanced by either propping the subject's eyes open or painting pupils onto the photographic print, and many early images (especially tintypes and ambrotypes) have a rosy tint added to the cheeks of the corpse. Later examples show less effort at a lifelike appearance, and often show the subject in a coffin. Some very late examples show the deceased in a coffin with a large group of funeral attendees; this type of photograph was especially popular in Europe and less common in the United States.

An excellent book on the subject is Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America by Stanley B. Burns. Getting a copy will cost you however, the price range for used to new is anywhere from over $200 all the way to almost $700 dollars. 

Rather than being a horrible or morbid subject, it is actually a kind of beautiful way for those whose lives were often short to keep the memory of their families alive.

Updated 5/23/14: A reader had asked about the picture on top of this blog entry - in some places the picture was backward - I hadn't seen that but thought that the negative might have been turned - not sure. But I did find out their tragic story:

I had wondered, looking at this photo and the, uh, rough condition of the bodies if they were not all in some sort of accident, one that took the whole family at once. The story is actually much sadder (and more violent):

In Houston, Missouri, Carney Parsons and his wife, Minnie (Strange) Parsons and their three children were murdered in 1906 by Jody Hamilton. Jody Hamilton worked as a share cropper with the Parsons and lived with them. Parsons sold his crop to Hamilton, but the two men got into an argument as Jodie was seeing the family off. The Parsons had a sale of their household goods and were killed for the proceeds of this sale - $150.00.

Hamilton became more and more convinced that he had been cheated, and he started in pursuit of Parsons to try to make things right. The argument escalated when Jodie caught up with the family north of Houston on the Success Road just west of the Big Piney River, and Jodie ended up shooting Parsons with a shotgun blast and finishing him off by beating him with the barrel of the gun. 

Parsons's wife came to her husband's aid as he was struggling for his life, and Jodie also bludgeoned her to death with the gun barrel. He slit the throats of the six-year-old and three-year-old sons before finishing them off with the gun barrel to keep them from identifying him and finally beat in the brains of their one-year-old child to stop it from crying. 

After the family was murdered they were thrown in the Piney River. Someone fishing found their bodies. Hamilton went to church wearing the suit he had taken from Mr. Parsons, also his ring. Announcement was made at Church of the discovery of the slaying. Hamilton left, riding a mule taken from the Parsons family. 

Hamilton was readily captured, convicted of murder, and sentenced to hang in late December of 1906. Although the killings of the five members of the Parsons family was one of the largest and most gruesome mass murders in Missouri history, Jodie elicited sympathy from some observers when he started professing religion from his jail cell.

The convict went to the scaffold on December 21 and was hung without a whimper. The post-mortem photo must have been particularly difficult, to make the family look as good as possible after such a brutal murder AND being in the water.

As to why the photograph is shown two ways - that I'm still working on. Did they take two photographs with the boys on each side, or did the negative somehow become reversed? Both ways, the boys are kind of off to the side of the bed. If anyone has an idea, let me know...

https://www.facebook.com/dumbandboringmovies