Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark

In October of 1973, just in time for Halloween, television audiences were treated to a spooky offering from the ABC network that stayed with them long after they watched it.  No doubt children in particular were  frightened by Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and its lurid  insinuation that horrible creatures might indeed be lurking in their homes when the lights went out.  

Alex and Sally Farnham (Jim Hutton & Kim Darby) have just inherited an old house from Sally's grandmother. Although Alex would prefer to live in a high-rise apartment, he consents to the move. But the charming old place is in a state of dusty decline. Indeed, much restoration and refinishing work will need to be done and so the young married couple decide to hire designer Francisco (Pedro Armendariz, Jr.) to help decorate. In addition, they bring on Mr. Harris (William Demarest, recognizable as Uncle Charlie from TV's popular My Three Sons), a carpenter who is familiar with the house...having done work on it in the past. Sally is eager to get into the study, which is locked. After a search, she finds the key to the door hidden in an envelope in her grandmother's desk. She'd like to turn the room into an office but some renovations have to be done...including opening up the fireplace, which has been inexplicably bricked up. The ash door is bolted shut.  

Mr. Harris is dead set against opening the fireplace. He tells Sally that it doesn't work and that her grandmother asked him to close it twenty years earlier. He won't reveal why, but says, "some things are better left as they are." Sally unbolts it anyway. No harm done, right? Wrong. When Sally is out of the study, whispered voices can be heard coming from the depths of the fireplace.  "Sally, Sally. Free, free...she set us free!" the mysterious voices chant in creepy unison.  A party is planned despite the fact that the house isn't finished. And Sally is unhappy because Alex is too preoccupied with his job.  Especially distressing to Sally is the fact that Alex has to leave for a trip to San Francisco the morning right after the party. Later, Sally believes she sees mice and when she tries to go to sleep, an ashtray on a night table is knocked to the floor.  She tells her best friend Joan (Barbara Anderson) about what happened but like Alex, Joan believes it must all be in her imagination. 

Mr. Harris returns to the study to once again lock up the fireplace. This time, Sally doesn't protest. But it's too late, as Sally finds out when something grabs at her dress. "We want you...we want you," she hears. She describes this thing to Alex as being like a "little ferocious animal." The ash door has been unbolted again and Alex phones Mr. Harris...who promptly quits in response to the suggestion that he is playing head games with Mrs. Farnham. It's the night of the party. Guests have arrived, including Joan and her husband George (Joel Lawrence) as well as Alex's boss, Tom Henderson (William Sylvester). Sally is a bundle of 
nerves and is not helped by the fact that a small mutant creature is hiding in the flower arrangement 

It's all too much for Sally, who screams when the creature tries to pull a napkin off her lap and she finally sees its face. Alex doesn't believe her. After all, nobody else saw it. While Sally is taking a shower, the light is turned out in the bathroom. Whispered voices can be heard speaking to each other. 

"Don't hurt her...not yet." 
"I want to." 
"Wait until tomorrow." 
"Let me just scare her." 
"Alright, then scare her!" 

They do just that. When Sally turns the light back on, she finds a razor blade on the floor as the creatures scurry away. Now she's had enough and tells Alex she wants to sell the house.  Mr. Harris returns to retrieve his tools. He has a short conversation with Alex about "superstitions" and when he goes into the study, the creatures attack him with a screwdriver.  The dastardly monsters believe the old man has betrayed their secret. "I didn't tell," he pleads. 

Alex has left for his business trip and Joan invites Sally to spend the evening with her. But not before a terrible incident occurs.  Francisco, just told that his services will no longer be needed, trips on a cord that was meant for Sally and stumbles down the staircase to his death. "It was a mistake, Sally. It's your spirit we want!" says one of the creatures. 

Sally's hands are burned as she tries to grasp the cord. She shows the marks to Joan, who now believes her friend's outlandish story. Alex returns early and Joan explains the situation...as sleeping pills begin to take effect on Sally.  Joan encourages Alex to phone Mr. Harris, who tells Alex to come over right away. Mr. Harris finally reveals the whole story to Alex: Sally's grandfather unbolted the fireplace, which had been locked up since the 1800s.  The disastrous act unleashed the house's evil presence and Grandpa was taken down into an abyss...where he probably remains to this day. 

Meanwhile, the power is cut at the Farnham home and when Joan goes outside to check on the cables, she finds that she cannot re-enter. Alex and Mr. Harris rush back when a phone call from Sally is cut short.  But it's too late. Sally has been bound and pulled down into the fireplace for eternity. By the time Alex, Joan and Mr. Harris get to the study, only Sally's futile scream can be heard... 

A big creepy house, scary whispers, dark lighting, a downbeat ending...and things that go bump in the night. These are ingredients for a good thriller and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark delivers. Special mention should go to makeup man Mike Hancock whose exceptional work brings the creepy dried-prunehead critters to frightening reality.  

(The 2011 remake) opens with a real shocker. In the turn of the century before last, a decrepit old man in the basement of a crumbling Victorian manor takes care of his servant problem the hard way. Then he summons some vengeful spirits with a creaky cylinder recording of Irish tenor John McCormack’s “When You and I Were Young, Maggie.” 

The real shocks in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark are its refusal to use the torture and smash-editing vocabulary of 2011 horror movies. It makes horror implicit and elegant. 
It’s an updating of a 1973 made-for-TV movie created by the man behind the One Step Beyond TV series, featuring Kim Darby of the first True Grit as a wife in peril, and William Demarest as a caretaker. 

It’s shocking, in short, how little actual violence is part of the creation of fright here, considering the R rating. The attacks are glancing blows and cat-like swipes instead of prolonged ordeals the weapons are simple household objects such as scissors and wires. 


The focus of the film is the terrorizing of a little girl named Sally (Bailee Madison); no one believes her as she tells stories of the creatures she’s beginning to hear and see. On Adderall and deeply unhappy, the young Sally comes to live with her architect father Alex (Guy Pearce, with a strange Mark Wahlberg haircut) as well as his mistress Kim (Katie Holmes). Both have their money wrapped up in the restoration of the decrepit Blackwood mansion in Rhode Island. It takes some time before Alex and Kim start to believe there might be something scarier than rats in the walls. 

Ms. Madison is terrific, not just as an object for menace but also as a source of pathos. A moody, round-faced child with bangs, she’s not just some casting expert’s idea of a little lady. When, by phone, she begs her mother to let her come back to California (“It’s cold here”) the effect was just as piercing as any of the stabbing scenes. 

A kind of humor breaks out in the film, with the creatures playing hide and seek under a fancy dinner table, trying to retrieve an incriminating photo. (Sally has been holding them off with a blinding flashbulb equipped Polaroid camera, in homage to the still-powerful finale of Wait Until Dark). And the reference to how these murderous creatures were supposedly tamed into a familiar children’s tale involves a reference to a Da Vinci Code piece of Catholic history. It’s confident nonsense. These little monsters, under the bed and lurking in the houseplants, are hulking yet pocket-sized imps. They’re mostly rodent, but are also clearly way out on the extremes of the primate’s family tree, with dusty fur, glowing eyes and a fear of the light. 

Still, Del Toro is the producer and “presenter” here, and its newcomer Troy Nixey who actually directs. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is set in Rhode Island but filmed in Melbourne, Australia. The movie doesn’t let us think there’s a world away from the sets of this cyclopean horror-mansion. And the intimate scenes are flat. The adult leads don’t play together well; we never getting a sense of them sharing space comfortably. Even before the bad fairies attack, Holmes looks drawn and distracted, the endearing lopsided smile dimmed a bit. 

While these elves are fantasy, the anxiety of Kim and Alex’s situation is all too real. There are enough owners of underwater real estate in the audience that they’ll feel the couple’s pain. What keeps the story going is the couple’s enslavement to the house. They’re weighed down by it; it’s their all or nothing plan to escape their financial troubles, and the desperate boost Alex’s career needs. The element of financial ruin if they walk away from the hell house gives this film just that bit more of believability. 

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is more evidence that producer Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, etc) is rising to the quality of Val Lewton; you could double bill this with ease with Curse of the Cat People (1944). Though he’s been subject to an unusual number of thwarted projects, the malign beauty of Del Toro’s work is all in his ability to insist in the power of theatrical, stately terror.