The Ultimate Horror Movie
Major movie studios and film production companies spend millions of dollars on publicity each year advertising their new releases. They rely heavily on television commercials, full-page magazine spreads, newspaper ads and elaborate websites to promote interest in their films weeks and sometimes months in advance of their release. Surprisingly, there was no such advance publicity when Fourth Dimension Pictures released its newest horror film Purgatory. On the contrary, avant-garde producer Lex Beaumont kept all the details of his production in complete secrecy, saying only, "It's the most frightening movie ever made."
It's ironic, but this lack of advertising in itself promoted the picture. Word spread that the plot was so original and the movie so well made that it had no need for an ad campaign to stimulate ticket sales. Weeks before its release, Purgatory was hailed by the press as "the ultimate horror movie," one destined to become a classic and rank with Psycho and The Exorcist in an inventory of Hollywood's most frightening films.
As an avid moviegoer, I eagerly awaited each installment of George Lucas's Star Wars saga, endured the long lines to see the epic Titanic and was seduced by the innovative advertising campaign of The Blair Witch Project. So, the day Purgatory was released, my husband, Brian, and I were among the curious who lined up outside the AMC Loews Theater to see "the ultimate horror movie."
In the glass cases lining the outer walls of the building were posters announcing the movies that were "now showing" as well as those that were "coming soon." Robin Williams was starring in a hilarious new comedy, Jack Nicholson had turned out a stellar performance sure to earn him yet one more Oscar nomination, brothers Mark and Donny Wahlberg teamed up with George Clooney for a big-budget action film, another superhero was taken from the pages of Marvel Comics and brought to the big screen and Disney Studios released its latest full-length animated feature.
"Did you notice there's not even a movie poster for Purgatory?" Brian observed.
"Don't you think they're carrying this secrecy thing a bit too far?" I asked. "Nobody even knows who's starring in the movie."
"They're probably using a cast of unknown actors, so why bother? Or maybe it's a big surprise, and they're gonna spring Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro on us."
"Pacino and DeNiro? I doubt it. This is Purgatory, not The Godfather Part IV."
A young woman standing behind us in line joined in our conversation.
"Did either of you see any reviews of the movie?" she asked.
"No. I don't believe there were any," I replied. "I guess we'll just have to take Lex Beaumont's word that 'it's the most frightening movie ever made.'"
"It'll have to go a long way to beat Night of the Living Dead," her companion, Craig, added. "That movie scared the hell out of me. What about you, Deb?" he asked the young woman. "What was the scariest movie you ever saw?"
"An old black and white one called Carnival of Souls," Debbie replied.
Brian, a life-long aficionado of horror films, remarked, "I haven't seen that one since I was a kid. Remember that scene in the old amusement park when the dead people were waltzing around with their blackened eyes wide open and staring like zombies. That used to give me such nightmares! But I still think the best of all of them was Hitchcock's Psycho."
"That was great!" Debbie agreed. "Craig and I went to see the remake, but it didn't compare to the original."
"Anthony Perkins was outstanding as Norman Bates. How could anyone have even attempted to take on that role?" Craig asked rhetorically.
"What about you?" Debbie asked me. "What was the scariest movie you've ever seen?"
Brian and I had had many similar conversations over the years, so I didn't have to consider my answer. I already knew it.
"Helter Skelter," I replied.
"Helter Skelter wasn't scary," Debbie said.
"Technically, it wasn't even a movie," Craig added. "It was a TV mini-series."
Although I had never met Debbie and Craig before nor did I ever expect to see them again, I felt compelled to justify my opinion.
"I happen to think reality is much more frightening than fiction. Helter Skelter was based on a true story. Those poor people were brutally butchered by a group of sadistic social outcasts led by a madman. Aren't men like Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy and Adolf Hitler more frightening than Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kreuger and Michael Meyers?"
"No argument there," Brian agreed. "I've always been more horrified by what I see on the news than by anything that appears on the big screen."
Debbie looked at her watch and announced, "They should be opening the doors soon; the movie is supposed to start in ten minutes."
As if he had overheard her, the usher opened the door to the theater lobby and the eager moviegoers poured in. While Brian waited in line at the concession stand, I went ahead and selected two seats about ten rows in from the screen—close enough to read the credits, far enough away to avoid a stiff neck. The theater was packed, and soon every seat was taken.
Pretty good attendance for a movie that no one knows a thing about, I thought.
Brian got to his seat just in time. No sooner did he sit down than the lights went out except for the illuminated signs indicating the exits. Then a white light from the projection room lit up the screen. There were no previews of coming attractions and no messages from the theater asking everyone to turn off their cell phones and refrain from talking during the show, notifying them what to do in case of a fire or inviting them to sample the wide variety of delicious foods at the snack bar in the lobby. There were only a theater full of people and a glowing white movie screen.
Suddenly, a black-and-white circle appeared. After several seconds the circle began to spin like a child's top and then quickly gain speed and grow in size. As I stared at the screen—my eyes held prisoner by that rotating sphere—I became aware of images and words, but they were not emanating from a projected image or from the theater's Dolby sound system. These sights and sounds were not being sent to my brain by way of my eyes and ears; they were coming from within. A part of my brain desperately wanted to know what was happening. Was this a form of telepathy or an attempt at mass hypnosis? Was I being subjected to subliminal messages or was I experiencing a totally new form of communication technology that would make the cell phone and the Internet as obsolete as the Betamax and the eight-track tape player?
Lex Beaumont had promised the public that his movie was the most frightening horror film ever made, yet there were no vampires or werewolves, no zombie-like corpses rising from their graves to consume the flesh of the living, no sociopathic knife-wielding killers in William Shatner masks or mutant clowns from outer space. What could be so frightening about this exciting and extraordinary presentation?
Personally, I was amazed but not scared. I had never experienced such a wonder before. It was as though a light had been turned on in my brain. I could suddenly see, where before I was blind. All the ideas and principles I had learned or merely memorized in school I could now fully comprehend. It was a mental and spiritual enlightenment that bordered on an epiphany.
Then, as I sat in the tenth row of the darkened AMC Loews Theater, I learned the answer to a question that had plagued mankind for centuries. And with that knowledge came the fear that Lex Beaumont had promised. It was a terror so overpowering that it numbed my senses.
* * *
I awakened from my trance-like state to find that the spinning black and white sphere had vanished from the screen, the theater house lights had come back on and the usher was opening the exit doors to the lobby. I was only vaguely aware of the other people around me. Though they were in much the same state as I was, we all somehow managed to walk through the lobby and out to the parking lot.
Several people who waited in line for the next showing of Purgatory eagerly observed our faces to judge our reaction to the film.
"Damn! Look at them." I heard one teenager say. "They look scared to death. Man, I can't wait to see this movie!"
Brian and I walked to our car, not speaking. Neither of us turned to the other to ask, "What did you think of it?" as we always did after seeing a movie. On the drive home, I couldn't even look at him; I just stared vacantly out my window into the darkness.
Finally, long after midnight, lying awake at his side, I turned to him. I had to know if he had received the same messages as I had.
"Brian, what was it you heard in the theater tonight? What did those 'voices' say to you?"
"They told me death wasn't the end, that life goes on." He paused and then added, "They said we had nothing to be afraid of."
"I guess we all heard the same thing," I said. "Except for that last part. They never told me we had nothing to be afraid of."
"Me either," Brian reluctantly admitted. "I didn't actually hear that part. I just reasoned that if there isn't any death, what do we have to fear?"
"Didn't you see the faces of the other people in the audience? They weren't just frightened; they were terrified."
"The idea of life after death isn't that scary."
"The images I got in that theater tonight were not what most of us believe that life after death is like. I was taught to believe in the hereafter and the idea that when we die, we go on to a better place—or a worse place, if you believe in hell. Look at how many millions of people believe in karma. They've been taught that there's a reward for being good in this life: that the next life will be better than the previous one. Yet Purgatory's concept of life after death had nothing to do with good and evil or rewards and punishment.
"According to those voices, we simply end one life and begin another, and when we do, our previous existence is cast aside like a used Kleenex. We lose everything we learned or gained in that life: wisdom, love and relationships with other people. All the pain, heartache and suffering as well as all the joy, hopes and dreams we experience are all for nothing. Our lives have no more meaning than the aluminum soda cans or glass bottles we recycle.
"It's funny how people are always talking about the true meaning of life. Tonight, we learned that it's nothing but a never-ending game of Monopoly. All we get for our troubles is a card that says, 'Go directly to your next life. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.' We don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of winning the game."
"You're just being a pessimist," Brian, the eternal optimist, declared. "There are a lot of good things that happen in a person's lifetime. If nothing else, we've got each other. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"You know it does. But I always believed that after we die, we would find each other again in that mysterious white light at the end of the long tunnel people claim to have seen when they've been brought back from the brink of death. I thought you and I would spend eternity together in that light, but now I know that after we die, you'll go your way and I'll go mine. Maybe we'll meet up again in another life, maybe not."
The two of us lapsed into quiet despair, neither one speaking for several minutes. Then, quite unexpectedly, Brian started to laugh.
"It just occurred to me," he said, his face looking as though he had just received a divine revelation, "we've been worrying about life and death, and we've forgotten the simple fact that it was only a movie. Why are we taking it so seriously?"
"But it wasn't a movie. There was no cast, no script, no scenes—just that damn spinning black and white sphere and those voices and pictures in our heads."
"Don't you get it? It's just what Lex Beaumont promised: the most frightening movie ever made. This whole situation is like Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. People heard it, and they believed it. Some listeners were actually convinced that men from Mars had landed in New Jersey. There were even quite a few people who believed that The Blair Witch Project was a factual documentary and that those three college kids really disappeared in the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland. Why do we automatically assume that just because Beaumont found some new form of communicating his message to his audience that message is to be taken as God's honest truth?"
"I suppose you're right," I conceded. "I didn't really give it that much thought. I was just so frightened."
"Well, if everyone else reacts the way we did after seeing that movie, Beaumont's gonna have a hit on his hands that outsells Titanic and everything Lucas and Spielberg ever did, all combined."
* * *
Brian was right about that at least. People flocked to the theater in droves, eager to have their wits scared out of them. Purgatory became the highest-grossing movie ever made, but oddly enough people were reluctant to talk about it. More surprising was the way the press virtually ignored the film. In fact, I only recall ever reading two articles about the movie: the first claimed that Lex Beaumont had used a method of mind control developed by the communists years earlier during the height of the Cold War, and the second warned young children, pregnant women and people with heart conditions not to see the film.
Lex Beaumont never commented on the success of his movie or on the revolutionary method he used to create it. He just took his millions, bought a small island in the South Pacific and retired from both filmmaking and the company of his fellow man.
I try to go on as best I can, pretending that nothing is different. Since seeing the film, Brian and I have had an unspoken understanding: we will never again discuss Purgatory or the message we received from it. Ostensibly, I have chosen to accept my husband's theory that it was only a movie, a high-tech work of fiction meant to scare the hell out of us, nothing more than a Psycho or Night of the Living Dead of the twenty-first century. Yet in my heart or, to be more accurate, in my soul, I have never recovered from the experience I shared with Brian, Debbie, Craig and a theater full of moviegoers at the AMC Loews Theater.
In retrospect, a part of me died that day, a part that was so essential for true happiness in this uncertain world in which we live: I lost the ability to hope. I am left with just one small comfort to sustain me through the hard times of this life. It is my belief that in the countless lives I will live hereafter, I will not be aware of the awful truth I learned in this one. I can take comfort in the fact that, in this case, ignorance is indeed bliss and that in my future existence, a never-ending nightmare of death and rebirth, I may at some point learn to accept the ultimate horror: the reality of human existence.
There's no doubt in my mind about what the ultimate horror is.
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