You Shamed Me
It was early summer in 2009. Friday night. I was sitting in a movie theater, as I was prone to do and I was excited. No, scratch that… ecstatic. I was there to see something special, something monumental… something timeless.
Sam Raimi, genius horror visionary who provided the world with Evil Dead (1981) and its sequels, was back to horror (after a brief Spider-Man sabbatical). And, judging from what I had seen in the previews, he had returned with a picture that, at the least, appeared Evil Dead adjacent and, at the most, looked like a low-key in canon sequel with a different set of characters. Either way, I was ready.
However, my excitement could not mask my trepidation. Not for fear of the film, its quality or the nature of its scares, rather for the buy-in and understanding of my fellow film goers which packed the sold out theater’s stadium seats. I realized that the film had not yet started and so the protocols regarding theater etiquette were not yet fully in place but, still, this crowd was loud.
The film began and all too quickly my worst fears were becoming realized. As the Lamia pulled the little boy to Hell in the opening, several teenagers shouted out snide comments sparking laughter from a different group nearby. My fear turned to anger, sapping my enjoyment of the film. As the story progressed, the audience’s raucous reactions nearly drove me to stand up and leave, giving up on the moment I had so looked forward to since I first had heard the film announced.
That’s when Sylvia Ganush sat down to speak with Christine Brown. As those in the theater watched the old woman tap her long, grotesque fingernails against Christine’s desk, a hush began to fall over the room. Sure, there were still remarks and the occasional snicker, but on the whole people were beginning to pay attention.
When the scene concluded with a desperate Mrs. Ganush, begging and subsequently attempting to attack Christine, the audience’s energy and enthusiasm was no longer directed at peripheral conversation but at the screen. Later, when Christine reached the parking lot and reencountered Mrs. Ganush, well, the uproarious audience reactions were back in full force… except this time, such reactions were warranted. Hell, I was right there with them.
Sam Raimi crafts films with a unique voice and tone, allowing for serious, existential dread to flow through a myriad of outrageous, bizarrely comic sequences driven by disgust, terror or even seemingly run-of-the-mill expository set pieces (like a scene at a bank regarding a loan officer). Drag Me to Hell (2009) embodies this unique brand of storytelling just as well as any Evil Dead entry, bringing Sam Raimi’s extraordinarily brazen creativity to an entirely new generation of movie-goers.
Written with specificity and flare, the page reflects these notions of hard-edged horror intermingled with deranged almost frivolous violence and revulsion which comes alive in the finished project. Sam Raimi directs as he would the most genuine and severe display of horror, which lends to the moments of levity throughout. The execution feels purposeful and crafted, evolving the do-it-yourself nature present throughout his career and allowing even the most casual viewer to suspend their disbelief and accompany him on the wild ride that the film invites. Bizarre, hilarious and truly frightening, the altercation in the garage sets the tone and attitude that will carry the film forward through the remainder of its runtime, speaking to not only the horror crowd but anyone who might be interested in a something exciting and new.
While the page certainly reflects the events of the scene and the general thrust of the story’s tone and emotional journey, it does so in a different order which alters the affect and impact of what we eventually see. Balancing the bizarre, the hilarious and the truly frightening is something Sam Raimi has always had a talent for and in examining the evolution of the altercation in the garage, we can glean invaluable insight into the machinations of that process.
THE SCENE
Christine leaves work and makes her way through the deserted parking garage to her car. She gets inside. Mrs. Ganush’s handkerchief flies against her car window and startles her. She watches the handkerchief as it floats around the car, finally locking eyes with Mrs. Ganush who is waiting in her backseat. The two engage in a brutal fight inside the vehicle which culminates in an accident, leaving Mrs. Ganush toothless and both women bloodied. Mrs. Ganush pulls Christine from the car, rips off one of her coat buttons and whispers a curse. She then returns the button and disappears.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
The scene begins as scripted as Christine (referred to on the page as Stephanie) enters the parking garage. Instead of Christine waving as the last of her co-workers drive off, she is completely alone in the space, adding to the intensity and uncertainty of her safety.
An unscripted odd noise resounds through the structure, heightening her urgency to get into the car. Once she does so, Raimi provides a few establishing shots of the vehicle, allowing the viewer to take note of the claustrophobic and yet relatable space as well as the box of items beside her (topped with a shiny stapler). The script calls for Christine to notice a strange sight: something moving, skimming along the surface of the lot. In a series of tight shot-reverse-shots, Raimi expertly allows the viewer to come to the same realization that Christine does as the object emerges from beneath the familiar Oldsmobile across from her. As scripted:
It’s Mrs. Ganush’s linen handkerchief.
The line is separated in the script and, without the typical use of capital letters or emboldened text, clues the reader in to the severity and terrifying importance of the object. The film holds on Christine as she watches the handkerchief flutter forward and disappear silently beneath her car. While the script reads It suddenly sweeps up into view, flittering up, over the windshield, the film accompanies the item’s reappearance with a loud stinger and a scream from Christine. Instead of employing the level of subtlety the scene had been immersed in thus far, Raimi opts to have a little fun with his audience, preparing them for both the terror and oddball nature the remainder of the scene will prove to inhabit.
The script calls for almost immediate chaos following the handkerchief’s appearance on the windshield:
Stephanie breathes a sigh of relief just as two wrinkled hands come up around her face! Mrs Ganush sits up in the back seat of her car! SHRIEKING with rage at Stephanie!
The film offers the inverse, proceeding the bombastic jump scare of the handkerchief with a quiet moment of fearful reflection. Christine’s eyes track the handkerchief as it moves around the car, taking her to the back seat where a figure sits unnoticed in the darkness. Although her features are obscured, the woman is clearly Mrs. Ganush. Christine’s reaction is silent, a stark contrast to the aforementioned shriek in the face of the handkerchief. Mrs Ganush addresses her, not SHRIEKING as in the script, but in a near whisper, quiet and condemning:
“You shamed me.”
The line does appear in the script, but at the end of the scene. This change offers the first indication that through the process of adaptation, much of the script was reconfigured. The bulk of ideas are kept but the order has changed. In this circumstance, Sylvia Ganush is a fundamentally different threat. Instead of barging into the scene unhinged, she materializes into a position of attack with care and purpose. She is not simply a crazed monster, but a focused threat.
Once established onscreen, Mrs Ganush does begin to scream, grabbing Christine’s hair and pulling her back, giving herself over to the rage that had brought her there. The shots are close, incredibly personal and offer an impossibly close up perspective of the pain and fear Christine is feeling.
In contrast, the script calls for Mrs. Ganush’s razor sharp fingernails to lash out towards Stephanie’s eyes and for Christine to grab a handful of colored push pins and jam them into Mrs. Ganush’s arm. Again, this is all supposed to come before Mrs. Ganush begins to pull at her hair. Instead, the film jumps to the hair pulling and simultaneously features a wrathful Mrs. Ganush gripping onto Christine’s earring, slowly attempting to rip it out of the cartilage. While the alteration may seem small, it serves to streamline the insanity and present a logical flow to the actions and decisions of the characters.
Under the duress of both her hair being pulled and her earring nearly being torn from her head, Christine begins to desperately root around her car with her free hand. The act feels more intuitive than it might have otherwise given the new sequence of events. Here the sequence picks back up with the script:
Stephanie’s hand finds the stapler, trips the release. It springs open. She swings it back over her shoulder! Ka-Thunk! Ka-Thunk! Ka-Thunk
In the film, Christine only gets off one hit initially, but lands several more as Mrs. Ganush continues to attack her. The sequence creates a feeling of escalation, not only for the violent places the scene and film might go, but in terms of Christine’s progression into the warrior she will need to become to fight back against Mrs. Ganush. This brief moment culminates with:
Ka-Thunk! A lucky shot— the old lady’s white eye is stapled shut.
Even the screenplay employs a sense of humor and whimsy as the scene progresses, referring to the luckiness of the hit and alluding to how ill-prepared Christine is to combat the physical and mystical threat that Mrs. Ganush represents. The bizarre, practically silly nature of stapling the old woman’s eye shut is more likely to conjure up images of Home Alone (1990) rather than Evil Dead, but within the context of the scene serves the mounting insanity incredibly well.
The next portion of the scene plays out as scripted. Mrs. Ganush again grips Christine’s hair and this time Christine’s wandering hand finds the gear shift, hitting the gas with her foot and thrusting the car forward. The momentum of the car and the ever growing severity of the altercation is captured through Sam Raimi’s kinetic editing style. Quick close ups of the car, the gear shift, the pained expression on Christine’s face and the seat belt tell the story as well as the motivations of the characters better than text or dialogue ever could.
Christine fastens her seatbelt just as the car makes impact with another parked vehicle. Mrs. Ganush flies forward: The old woman’s stapled eyelid POPS open…” The detail of the “POP”ing sound made as the staple ejects from Mrs. Ganush’s face is yet another small detail of levity to counteract the heavy implications of what’s really going on. Followed closely by the imagery concocted in this sentence, in a spray of broken teeth, her dentures eject from her mouth, the script and film alike ensure the budding ludicrousness to be aggressively foreshadowed.
Here, the script calls for Christine to kick Mrs. Ganush out of the car, beginning a sequence of events that the film does pursue but not until a minute or two later. Instead of breaking up the action in and out of the car, Raimi moves directly into the sequence that was scripted to come just after Mrs. Ganush gets back in:
The old woman’s head juts into the car. She clamps her toothless maw down upon Stephanie’s chin. Suckling it, gumming. The old woman’s good eye rolls about in ecstasy.
Not only does this scene go hand in hand with the escalating drollery of the attack, but it makes more narrative and blocking sense to occur just after the old woman loses her teeth and is still in close proximity to Christine. The moment is unexpected and visceral, adjuring disgust as well as a disbelieving snicker— a microcosm for the scene as a whole.
Christine pushes Mrs. Ganush away and strands of spittle form a bridge from the old woman’s mouth to Stephanie’s jaw. Both onscreen and in the script, the grotesqueness is amplified and Christine’s capacity to absorb what’s going on whilst maintaining her own sanity is waning. Mrs. Ganush finds and reengages her broken dentures and, in response, Christine grabs the wooden ruler from the cardboard box and shoves it down the old lady’s throat. A funny, sort of wavering sound accompanies Mrs. Ganush’s struggle to retch up the ruler. The moment is executed as it would be in a comedy, the exaggerated silliness of the scenario highlighted by the momentary lack of peripheral sound and blocking of the shot.
At this point, the film jumps back a page to the moment when Christine kicks Mrs. Ganush out of the car: Stephanie’s foot shoves her out. Aside from a brief moment of reversing the car, Christine and Mrs. Ganush proceed to have the interaction depicted on the page. Christine locks the doors as Mrs. Ganush attempts to climb back in and Christine even utters the earlier scripted line:
“I beat you, you old bitch!”
The line feels more earned at this point in the scene than it otherwise would have, given the gumming and ruler incident. Then: The old woman bends down, beneath Stephanie’s view. Stephanie looks about. Where’d she go? Again in close ups and by using quiet, eerie silence to drive the moments of uncertainty which fill the space between the more absurd elements, Raimi carries the viewer to the the point where Mrs. Ganush reappears clutching a large cement block.
Throwing the block against the car window, Mrs. Ganush again gains access to Christine. Once again, the film leaps forward a page in the screenplay and picks back up with what was to occur just after Mrs. Ganush ejects the ruler from her mouth.
Then Stephanie is screaming herself as the old woman has grabbed her legs and is dragging her from the car.
Here the screenplay quiets. Mrs. Ganush is scripted to issue the line: “You shamed me,” something that, as stated above, was transposed to the beginning of the scene. While the merit of the line holds true regardless of when it comes about, placing it at the beginning of the scene offers better insight and context to the actions of the old woman.
Mrs. Ganush becomes almost a spiritual figure then, wind blowing through her hair despite being in an enclosed parking garage. The sound design offers layer after layer of nuanced whooshing and odd, almost bodiless voices calling out in unison. The script calls for an exchange of dialogue to occur between Mrs. Ganush and Christine. The words seem to be meant to convey a clearer sense of exposition.
In the film, much of that dialogue is gone. Mrs. Ganush rises and and her gnarled hand plucks a button of of Christine’s coat. Mrs. Ganush brandishes the button and raises it above Christine’s head, uttering the simple, whispered line:
“Lamia…”
After, Mrs. Ganush exhales against the button. The scene is shot just as closely, as intimately, as the events in the car; each woman is shown in close up, reacting to the emotions of the other. Mrs. Ganush stands over Christine, becoming something of a blurred figure, and Chrsitine huddles on the ground, the shadow of the button clear against her cheek. The fight has left Christine dazed and absent in a way.
The script reads: Stephanie snatches the button back. In the film, Mrs. Ganush places it in her hand feeding the more symbolic nature of the curse and what the gift of such a horror represents. This act also lends more credence to the final line Mrs. Ganush delivers in the scene:
“Soon it will be you, who comes begging to me.”
As Christine was unwilling to provide Mrs. Ganush with the gift she so needed to survive, so too will Mrs. Ganush deliver a gift to Christine that will affect the opposite outcome in her life. Quiet and consuming, the sequence ends on a serious note, reminding the viewer that the psychology of horror is as controlled as it is chaotic.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
In an interview conducted by Rob Carnevale published on indieLondon.co.uk (Found here), Sam Raimi reflected on his intentions when making Drag Me to Hell:
“I just wanted to really connect with the audience and give them kind of an electric experience – build suspense, take away suspense, build the suspense higher, give them a scare and put them on a real electric movie experience. That’s all I was thinking about… the audience.”
Crafting a horror film for the masses is no easy task. Everyone wants something different out of their entertainment, especially when it comes to what scares them. Sam Raimi has always strived to develop art that speaks to a multitude of interests and tonalities, resulting in broad strokes of madcap brilliance peppered into moments of the most visceral, intuitive terror and Drag Me to Hell no exception.
The attack in the parking garage seems simple enough on the page, but required more than the rearranging of words to pull off.
The feature “Production Diaries: Behind-the-Scenes Footage with the Cast & Crew” found on the Scream Factory blu-ray disc (Available for purchase here) explains that a puzzle car that split into six different pieces was constructed so that the crew could shoot all of the various angles and close ups required to achieve the blocking Sam Raimi so desired. The same feature explores the elaborate and evolving prosthetics Greg Nicotero and the KNB Effects team created for actress Lorna Raver to wear as Mrs. Ganush become more and more unhinged. Time, effort and complex equipment were all employed to refine the scene, alter it to fit the flow of events in the stead of one thing… the audience.
In 2009 I sat down to watch Drag Me to Hell in a sold out theater, excited to finally experience one of the masters of the genre’s works first hand. This time, I wasn’t playing catch up— I was there. What I hadn’t anticipated was an experience that would teach me as much about the audience such filmmakers were attempting to cater to as it did about the film itself.
The rowdy crowd I was sandwiched into improved after the sequence in the parking garage. While they were never altogether quiet, they were along for the ride. The insanity onscreen played against the expectation of the average movie goer, allowing the audience to let go of what they might have thought they were watching and just have fun with it. The film is in many ways a serious affair, but that ingenious proclivity Sam Raimi has for raw, unadulterated liveliness and amusement remains at the heart of his craft and shines through every frame of Drag Me to Hell. And rarely is that talent better represented than in the confrontation in the parking garage.
There’s an exchange that occurs between Sam Raimi and Lorna Raver on the set during the filming of the scene in question (depicted in the previously mentioned feature on the Scream Factory disc). Brief and candid, the moment speaks to what makes Sam Raimi so well suited to tell these kinds of stories.
“There’s a Hungarian word for bitch.. I could use it,” Lorna suggests.
Sam Raimi, excited and wearing a gleeful grin, replies enthusiastically, “Sounds great!”
His subsequent laughter and joy at the thought of the funny word and how well it might serve the scene tells you everything you need to know about Mr. Raimi and his success in the unhinged world of horror filmmaking. Regardless of the audience, some things (like Hungarian curse words, for example) truly are timeless.
Drag Me to Hell (2009): Written by Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi. Directed by Sam Raimi
