It’s not that I didn’t grow up watching horror; it’s that I didn’t grow up watching horror in theaters. I’m sure Mom wouldn’t have had it, and besides, we could only afford movies spread apart by wide intervals. You’d think that now I’m an earning adult (or so I’m told) that I’d have more control but watching is a kind of addiction and money’s still not abundant. Every once in a while, however, I’ll splurge and pay for a film. Mostly when they’re not available via any streaming service. Like many Christians who’ve never read the whole Bible, I know the canon only piecemeal. So I came to watch Hour of the Wolf, the Ingmar Bergman classic. Now (at least then) streaming nowhere. Intellectuals have always flocked to Bergman films since they’re full of symbols and not easy to understand. (If you want to “get” Robert Eggers, though, you’ve got to do your homework.)
Hour of the Wolf is generally considered psychological horror. It’s black and white—how scary can it be? Pretty, depending. The story of an artist’s wife (Alma) who lives with him in a small shack on an island in Sweden, it’s a tale of unraveling. Nightmares become difficult to distinguish from waking realities. The wife reads the artist’s diary, foreshadowing Wendy in The Shining, to discover that he seems to be going insane. The island’s not abandoned, as they thought. Soon Alma begins seeing other people too. And attending their awkward dinner parties. They speak freely of her husband’s previous affair. There also seems to be an instance of a real person on the island that the artist keeps secret.
If this doesn’t give you enough to piece it together, well, it’s a Bergman film. In college we watched The Seventh Seal. And at least part of Wild Strawberries. But in 1968 I wasn’t an intellectual and we were poor. If I’d even heard of Ingmar Bergman it was via reference in some TV sitcom. I knew to expect strangeness. These days the box elder bugs are mostly gone from the house. The weirdness started when, having never seen the film before, I began to pour a glass of water at the very second the artist picks up and begins to pour a glass of wine. Strange coincidence, I thought. Several minutes later I saw something edging around my glasses. A box elder bug crawled right over my right glasses lens. Like a scene in a Bergman movie. I knew I’d have to ponder this for some time.
