Turn your head (or avert your eyes) and CoFH

Last night, Shandon and I narrowed down our list of 30 or so candidates for this year's Cavalcade of Filmic Horrors (CoFH), the annual program of horror flicks we screen, mainly for ourselves, in anticipation of, and culminating with, Halloween. (The tradition of the last several years has been to watch Halloween, John Carpenter's seminal slasher, on the film's namesake day, but we've decided to impose some distance between the film and ourselves. All the better to enjoy it once we decide to return to this immensely entertaining and truly frightening film we've already committed to memory in its entirety, as though it were one of our little cult's sacred texts.) We take all this programming very seriously, even if we're pretty casual about the scheduling of any given title. August seems as good a time as any to start the series, what with the month's lengthening shadows and whiff of late-summer decay.

Nine titles (ones I think Shandon -- watch this space -- will address in greater detail) made the cut, and I became fixated on any potential significance held by that particular number. I thought to myself, Well, a black cat could have nine lives, while wondering whether a complete set of 10 wouldn't make more sense, as in this season's "top ten." Top ten what, I wasn't quite sure, as the enterprise of finding good horror movies becomes increasingly difficult with each new "festival." Then eleven, a Shandon fave, sounded like a good, odd number. But once you're there, why not simply bypass twelve altogether, holding out for an unlucky baker's dozen (a la Friday the 13th), given that this is a horror series?

Anyway, I finally decided to let go of this numerology obsession, but I did come up with a tenth title. It is the one I kept vaguely referring to as "that movie, you know, where the completely automated house rapes its female occupant." Yes, house. Based on my uncertainty and Shandon's facial expression, I prayed I wasn't making this shit up. I am happy to report that there is such a movie, something called Demon Seed (1977), starring Julie Christie no less, and featuring an uncredited Robert Vaughn (naturally) as the creepy voice of the house. Most people familiar with the movie's basic premise were exposed to it in a segment from Treehouse of Horror, The Simpsons' yearly Halloween-season anthology. In this segment, entitled "House of Whacks," Marge's "Ultrahouse," resembling HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and silkily voiced by Pierce Brosnan, becomes infatuated with her and plots to kill Homer. (The Ultrahouse's scheme, in an especially delicious touch, involves luring Homer to the kitchen in the middle of the night by frying bacon.)

I have some bizarre need to see the original source material, and, er, saints be praised, Demon Seed is available on DVD.