HORROR IN THE WOODS

I'm going to watch the horror movie "The Blair Witch Project" tonight and I'm going to watch it alone if for no other reason than the chill I get seeing the scene of the young film crew interviewing the bizarre trailer-park spinster who describes her encounter with the Blair Witch. Then comes their brutal ordeal as they lose their way in the woods. I shiver at the slow ratcheting up of the Unknown Horror's cat and mouse game with the hapless film makers that leads to the cruel deaths of ....Can't tell Ya....If you wanna know you gotta go.
      My imagination is driven right into a macabre ditch this time of year and it doesn't come out easily.  I just checked in with another personal favorite "The Island of Lost Souls"(1932) where an evil scientist conducts procedures on wild animals in his laboratory known as the House of Pain. These experiments have the effect of speeding up the evolutionary cycle of these creatures turning them into a race of subservient half human, half beast monsters. There is a brooding Moses like Beast-man played by none other than Bela Lagosi, who had just completed his staring role in "Dracula"(1931). "What is the law?" The beasts chant, "Spill no blood! Are we not men?"  That call and response, "What is the law? Spill no blood!" is invoked again and again by the beasts, until, reasoning for himself, Bela Lagosi's character responds,"Law No More!" Things get dicey after that.
   The above image is one I inadvertently took when I got caught out of the woods a little late last night. Do you see the face? The woods are strewn with leaves this time of year making the trails all but indiscernible and it's easy to get disorientated. Many a deer hunter knows the heart pounding fear of losing his way out of the woods after the evening hunt.  There was in fact, in the Autumn of 1860, a child who went missing as she walked through these woods to deliver a dinner to a sick neighbor. The girl, whose arms were full, could not carry a lantern. When she didn't return home promptly her Mother's worry grew with the darkening woods. After scribbling a note promising her logger husband that she would  not come home until their daughter was found, the frantic woman left with an oil lamp to search. Neither were ever found.
    I, like many before me, have seen the light of the her lantern forlornly wandering the dark woods of late October when the faces appear in the trees.