COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 13-“HABIT”

In honor of the witching season, we’ll profile a new Halloween-centric title every day throughout the month of October.

LARRY FESSENDEN IS A HARD HABIT TO BREAK!

Article by Jeff Sanders

HABIT (R)-1995

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

In FRANKENSTEIN, the real monsters are human. The darkness lives inside us. In the movie HABIT, Sam (played by writer/director/editor Larry Fessenden) is an alcoholic. The film feels semiautobiographical, but this is no vanity project, Fessenden is the anchor that makes HABIT a contemporary horror masterpiece. This is no easy role, and Fessenden makes Sam’s sexual depression and violence towards himself seem completely authentic. Fessenden’s actual missing teeth and scarred wrists seem to tell a much deeper story, making HABIT feel real. The performance in front and behind the camera won him the Independent Spirit Award in 1997. This is real horror; this is a man who has seen real monsters. This could all be real; in fact, vampires can be very real if we think they are.

In DRACULA, a sad and violent monster clings to the curse of his past, and time no longer exists. In Sam’s disoriented world, 90’s New York, where sounds from his past invade his present and time has gaps and days and nights merge, nothing can be felt as “in the now”.  Everything is grimy. In a key scene, Sam struggles through a friend’s party while in a drunken stupor and takes someone else’s coat and leaves, only to realize that he must return and get his coat back. A coat that contains photographs he had brought with him; his memories. Sam seems to be leaving many things about himself behind, like these photographs, but are they only just images?

In HABIT, a dying man asks a monster to save him from himself. Sam lost his girlfriend. She left him. She loves him, but cannot keep up with his lifestyle. He still keeps in contact with her. He goes to a party. This is where we meet Anna. She is a cute girl, a bit androgynous. She is mysterious and pale. She has dark short hair, and red lips. She is immediately  attracted to sad Sam. Soon after, they engage in sexual activity in the middle of an open public park. She bites and tears open his lip, and then leaves him for the night. Anna seems to be the kind of girl that Sam would cling to. She provides immediate satisfaction and self-destruction. Perhaps Anna understands Sam. Perhaps Anna knows that Sam struggles to continue living. Perhaps she can guide him where he is inevitably going.

He and Anna meet up at night and go to the fair. She shows up after Sam gives a eulogy at his recently deceased father’s memorial. His father was a respected archeologist, much different than Sam. Sam meets people from his past and immediately turns to drink. Anna appears from nowhere and provides him with an escape to leave. She has a mysterious old artifact that sparks  amazement amongst a room full of academics. She has this artifact in her pocket. What is it that Anna does, Sam wonders? Sam does not know what Anna does in her day life. She says it would ruin their relationship. They leave and are chased by dogs in a park.

Sam and Anna continue to meet. Their encounters are getting rougher in sexuality and violence. At first, Anna provides Sam with release and doesn’t seem to be hurting him too much. Sam seems to be happy again, or is he complacent? Things get more perverse. Their sexual encounters happen in hospital morgues and the biting hurts more. Sam starts feeling ill.

Sam takes a trip with his friends to upstate New York. Maybe this will make him feel better.  Sam and his friend bathe in the ocean and joke about washing away their problems and starting anew. Sam goes back to the guesthouse and is surrounded by friends from his past. He feels alone. Anna comes up to the house later, at first physically and then again in his dream, where she molests and bites him. Sam can’t tell if it was real. By the end of the trip, Sam’s illness has become extreme. He vomits everything and slums in alcoholic waste.

Sam is falling apart. He begins having nightmares about Anna, who he is now convinced is a monster. Anna is trying to kill him. She is poisoning him with her bite.

He attempts to make contact with his friends, but they know Sam all too well. They offer him alcohol to calm him down. He attempts to contact his former girlfriend, the only one who may still care, but Anna will not have it. Sam cannot get rid of Anna.

In Sam and Anna’s final confrontation, Anna’s sex is forced upon him and her biting becomes even more dangerous. Sam fights back, but he is so ill and confused. He can hardly defend himself from the world.

There is no clear-cut answer to whether or not Anna was a vampire in the end. The film asks the viewer to take their own personal interpretation and decide on what (or who) was real and what was not.

Fessenden has made a truly remarkable piece of art. A horror film that manages to tell the story of DRACULA, turn it on its head, and become something startlingly real, despite the film’s low production budget. Fessenden uses this to the film’s advantage and directs and commands the picture with naturalistic acting and realism that recalls the work of Cassevetes. The New York locations are stark and real. Fessenden lives here, you can tell, but more importantly, he understands this place and how it feels. He uses his own troubled past and pain and puts his soul on the screen, giving one of the greatest horror performances of all time. He has made a film that is sly and powerful. He has made a film about a real monster, in this case, a vampire who has come to take his life away.

HABIT is available as part of Shout Factory’s newly released and remastered Blu Ray box set, “The Larry Fessenden Collection,” along with his other features: NO TELLING, WENDIGO, and THE LAST WINTER. The box set also includes insightful supplements, and short films. All of Fessenden’s work is highly recommended and should be purchased together. Fessenden and his sub textual horror should be part of any cinefile or horror film enthusiast’s collection. Be sure to check out Larry Fessenden’s production company, Glass Eye Pix’s website for even more great films, audio plays, and various materials.

Bonus: Glass Eye Pix Interview from the 2015 Stanley Film Festival:

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN:

October 12th- “The Twilight Zone” – Click Here
October 11th- “Creepshow” – Click Here
October 10th-“Shaun of the Dead“-Click Here
October 9th-“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”– Click Here
October 8th-“The Final Girls”–Click Here
October 7th-“Something Wicked This Way Comes”–Click Here
October 6th- “We Are Still Here”–Click Here
October 5th-“Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn”–Click Here
October 4th- “Phantom of the Paradise“-Click Here
October 3rd-“Poltergeist“-Click Here
October 2nd-“The Babadook“-Click Here
October 1st-“John Carpenter’s The Thing“-Click Here