10/19/17 – day nineteen of thirty-one days of horror!
Thanks to the now late Tobe Hooper’s seminal classic The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, horror is rife with stories about young people running
afoul of creepy, murderous families in remote locations, and one of the most
underseen and underappreciated of this subgenre has to be John Hough’s 1988
American Gothic. Set on a small island of the coast of the Pacific Northwest,
the story concerns a group of young people whose sea plane is forced to land,
leaving them stranded as the unwitting guests of a bizarro nuclear family led
by the Munsters’ Yvonne De Carlo and world-class scenery chewer Rod Steiger. Things
are plenty awkward at first, but quickly devolve into deeply unsettling when
the couples’ “children” surface – full grown, middle-aged adults who act and
dress like grade school kids. This is a horror movie, so I don’t feel that it’s
spoiler territory to say that things do not go particularly well for our
youthful city slickers. Hough does a great job of bringing out the disturbed
psychology of his characters, aided by a game cast that also includes character
actors Michael J Pollard, Janet Wright and William “Porkins” Hootkins, allowing
their gleefully performances to really sell the creep factor. A great
skin-crawling deep cut for those who love hillbilly horror but are looking for
something a little off the beaten path – this Halloween, treat yourself to some
down home horror with American Gothic!
