DON’T GO UPSTAIRS! / AUTHOR: CLEAVER PATTERSON / PUBLISHER: MCFARLAND / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
A good creepy house is an essential component to any self-respecting horror film. It doesn’t even have to be infested by demons or the lair of a psychopath. Used carefully, it can exude dread on its own merits, simply by panning across its walls, zooming into its windows and suggesting that something unpleasant lurks within the strange angles connecting ceiling to flaw. Don’t Go Upstairs! is an engrossing tour, room-by-room, of the standard house in a horror movie, taking each living (and dying) space and pairing them with the films that have used those spaces to their best deadly advantage. Interested in bathrooms? So were Squirm and Hands of the Ripper. Curious about kitchens? Take a peek at Poltergeist and Scream. And don’t even get us started on attics, conservatories, and outdoor spaces…
The problem with books about films is that they usually cover the same ground and tend to read like a laundry list of plot points and spoilers. Author Cleaver Patterson largely manages to avoid that, mainly because focusing on a room and using it as the nexus to tell the film’s story means we get to look at each individual plot synopsis from a slightly different angle. It’s also refreshing that he doesn’t make the obvious choices – Psycho is mentioned, but Patterson homes in on the cellar rather than the iconic bathroom. The Exorcist is namechecked, but for its hallway rather than the easy choice of Regan’s bedroom. But what especially delighted us were some of Patterson’s very welcome off-the-wall suggestions: La Belle et la Bete, although not a horror film per se, boasts one of cinema fantastique’s most disturbing dining rooms, and it’s great to see The Uninvited, Images, and especially the wonderful The Ballad of Tam Lin finally getting some well-deserved love. Patterson also throws in one or two movies that were completely unknown to this reviewer, and it’s a measure of his writing that I’m keen to track them down and correct that oversight. There’s an enthusiastic foreword from David McGillivray, a critic and screenwriter who’s probably best known for penning the Pete Walker frightfest House of Mortal Sin and Norman J. Warren’s Satan’s Slave, and a closing interview with Road Games director Abner Pastoll about the importance of the house as a film character. It’s an interesting conversation that made us wish more interviews could have been peppered throughout the book. Of course, we can always think of rooms and films we wish had been included and if there’s ever a Don’t Go Upstairs 2! we’d suggest the kitchen/tracheotomy in Full Circle, the creepy hallway leading to an operatic Hell in Lords of Salem, and the dark, decaying apartment in Possession, where Isabelle Adjani’s octopus lover awaits, but isn’t that the other pleasure of reading books like this? Like a good movie, they fill you with fresh ideas and leave you wanting more. Don’t Go Upstairs! is a must-own for diehard horror fans, and it’s illustrated with some very nice black and white movie stills as well.
