Tag: Canada

Horror Cinema: Anything for Jackson

I have a long-lasting love for Canadian actress Sheila McCarthy. As an Ontario teen of the 1990s, I rewatched the 1987 feminist movie I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing countless times after-hours on the Women’s Channel. Out of all the characters I worshipped as a teenager, from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando to Angela Chase on My So-Called Life, the Girl Friday in I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing was the most me: a quirky, misunderstood, sincere, romantic weirdo. I sat through 40 minutes of tampon and diet cola commercials for those 90 minutes every time I happened to see it. And, usually, the week after, I would dye my hair red.

More recently, Sheila McCarthy was in Women Talking, and she was her usual perfect self, but in a small role. When I saw her in a trailer for Anything for Jackson, I was excited to see her in a starring role.

I was not disappointed. Her character was weird only in so far as the tragedy in her life made her weird, and Sheila McCarthy did a great and sensitive job of portraying that complexity and nuance. The movie itself was spooky, and I really liked how it leaned into truly demonic visuals. In fact, at one point, I was scared of the imagination that could come up with them!

A strong cast of characters, jump scares and things I can’t unsee: Anything for Jackson stood up as a good horror movie. For me, where it deflated was in its ending. I understand that the fate of the protagonists was a commentary on being a servant of a deceitful savior, but I was hoping that, although they got stupidly caught up in ancient forces, they would either find a way to control those forces and become master Satanists or the forces would grant them power for being good servants. For the fact that they were the impetus for the release of the forces and that they were the heart of the narrative and movie, their fate felt very flat.

And the actual ending felt like the last thirty pages of the book were missing. I would have loved some kind of epilogue, even a crying demonic baby as the credits rolled or a creepy lullaby like in Rosemary’s Baby. For all the drama of the movie, I really wanted a more satisfying last 10 minutes.

However, despite the ending, the rest was worth it, especially Sheila McCarthy. My favorite scene was her bringing a crow back to life. I wish the story had leaned more into her discovering her power and harnessing it to become a boss b*tch. Anything for Jackson!

Dyck, Justin G. Anything for Jackson, Shudder, 2020.

Horror Cinema Trivia: The Changeling (1980)

The house seen in the movie in real life does not and never actually did exist. The film-makers could not find a suitable mansion to use for the film so, at a cost of around $200,000, the production had a Victorian gothic mansion façade attached to the front of a much more modern dwelling in a Vancouver street. This construction was used for the filming of all the exteriors of the movie’s Carmichael Mansion. The interiors of the haunted house were an elaborate group of interconnecting sets built inside a film studio in Vancouver.

Image from Mike’s Movie Cave: The Changeling (1980) – Review

Haunted Canada: The Screaming Tunnel, Niagara Falls, Canada

The Screaming Tunnel is a small limestone tunnel, running underneath what once was the Grand Trunk Railway lines (now the Canadian National Railways), located in the northwest corner of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.

A local legend recounts that the tunnel is haunted by the ghost of a young girl, who after escaping a nearby burning farm building with her clothing ablaze, died within its walls. Several variants of the legend exist locally, one version has the girl set on fire by her enraged father after he loses custody of his children after a nasty divorce. Another tells of a young girl being raped inside the tunnel and her body burned to prevent any evidence from being found. All versions of these legends ends with the girl screams filling up the tunnel as she was burning to death.

Learn more about the Screaming Tunnel and how one version of the legend has become a rite of passage for local youths on Creepy Canada:

The information above about the Screaming Tunnel is from Wikipedia: Screaming Tunnel.

Haunted Canada: Banff Springs Hotel

Built in 1888, the Banff Springs Hotel—also known as the “Castle of the Rockies”—is a grand building in the middle of the forest in Banff, Alberta. Some famous guests have included Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth II and Helen Keller.sicklongshot4 The hotel is one of Canada’s famous haunted locations. It is most well-known for a ghost story about a phantom bride. The Hammerson Peters blog, which shares tales from Western Canada, describes the phantom bride’s story:

“According to the legend, a young couple was married in Banff sometime in the early 1930’s. It was arranged for their wedding banquet to be held in the Banff Springs Hotel, where the couple was renting the bridal suite. Before the beginning of the banquet, the newlywed bride ascended a marble staircase up to the Cascade Ballroom to join her husband, who was waiting at the top. As she did so, her wedding gown brushed against one of the candles that lined the curved staircase and caught fire. In the panic that ensued, the bride tripped over her wedding dress, fell down the flight of marble stairs, broke her neck and died.

“It is said that her ghost has haunted the hotel ever since. Over the years, various hotel patrons and staff have reported seeing a phantasmal bride dancing alone in the Cascade Ballroom, or ascending the marble staircase on which the tragic incident is rumored to have taken place. Others have heard strange noises emanating from the bridal suite when the room was not in use.”

staircase4

Famous Witch: Canada’s Witch of Plum Hollow

For The Devil’s Muse’s first post about a famous witch, I decided to search for a famous Canadian witch. I found Mother Barnes, a 19th-century psychic from Southern Ontario. Reading her story, she appears to have been a resourceful, clairvoyant, strong woman. She is famous for having conducted psychic readings for one of Canada’s former Prime Ministers Sir John A. MacDonald, including one that predicted Ottawa as the nation’s capital—which is special to me because Ottawa is my hometown.

Visit Mother Barnes – The Witch of Plum Hollow to read the full biography of Canada’s famous witch.

ElizabethBarnes-Witch of Plum HollowImage from http://www.pinecone.on.ca/MAGAZINE/stories/ElizabethBarnes.html.