Original Post Date: 01.10.18
For the last couple of days I have been trying to figure out how to write this post because, to me, talking about Thir13en Ghosts (2001) feels like a tall order. I like the movie a great deal (I mean, did you read my last post? I know, right?) and somehow my insecurities are messing with me, making me try to believe that no matter how hard I try my words would not make the film justice. So tonight, my weirdo friend, I say ‘Fuck my insecurities’ and let me just write what I think, what I feel, what I love about Thir13en Ghosts.
But first, let us admire this beautiful video put together by youtube user tonightsreality:
The movie reminds of a haunted house, an ultra-sophisticated haunted house, that is. It also reminds of a museum, of an undeniable authority of beauty. A house that’s not a house.
Arthur Kriticos is the main character, the widower, the heartbroken father of two, the struggling Math teacher, the surviving nephew, the heir. He is loving, kind, polite, and certainly the one I would like to have in my team should I ever become trapped in a huge basement full of ghosts. He is the voice of reason. (also, quick parenthesis, should someone ever told me that fifteen years after I saw the movie I would be married to a guy whose step-father was related to the actor who plays Arthur, I would have laughed at his face and call him a nut-job, yet, here I am)
Dennis Rafkin is such a fun character and I am not going to lie, one of the main reasons why I fell hard for the movie. Yeah, the actor was cute and stuff but his mannerisms, attitude, sense of humor, comedic timing, as well as his struggles with authority, with substances, with himself, that’s what made me obsess over him. I mean, just look at him:
Now, let’s talk about the ghosts, shall we? Out of the twelve ghosts, my two favorites were The Angry Princess and The Jackal. And now that I think about it, they both are opposites. One is female, beautiful, naked, timid, poise and sophisticated, a danger to herself. The other is male, vile looking, wearing a straitjacket and a cage over his head, acting all over the place, like a wild animal, a danger to everyone. (oh, so poetic)
Besides these two ghosts being so appealing in the movie, as in, when you actually get to see them on screen, their backstories [found on the dvd special features] were equally amazing. Here they are:
The Angry Princess: She is Dana Newman, who did not believe in her own natural beauty. Abusive boyfriends fueled her low self-esteem, which led to much unneeded plastic surgery for imagined defects. Eventually she got a job working for a plastic surgeon, getting paid in treatments rather than cash. Alone at the clinic one night, she tried to perform surgery on herself, but wound up blinding herself in one eye and permanently mutilating herself beyond saving. She committed suicide in the bathtub by slashing her body repeatedly with a butcher knife. When she was found, people noted that she was as beautiful in death as she had been in life. Her ghost is naked, still carrying the knife she killed herself with and showing all the wounds, and the inside walls of her cube are splattered with her blood. In her bathroom scene, the phrase “I’m sorry” is visible on the floor in blood; subtitles also reveal that the blurred, hissing speech that announces her arrival is her whispering “I’m sorry.” This was written on her suicide note.
The Jackal: He is the ghost of Ryan Kuhn, who was born in 1887 to a prostitute. Ryan had an insatiable lust for women, rape, and murdering prostitutes. Wanting to be cured, he committed himself to Borehamwood Asylum, but after attacking a nurse, he was put in a straitjacket and thrown in a padded room. After years of this imprisonment he went completely insane, scratching at the walls so violently that his fingernails were torn completely off. The doctors kept him permanently bound in his straitjacket, tying it tighter when he acted out, causing his limbs to contort horribly. Still fighting to free himself, Ryan gnawed through the jacket until the doctors finally locked his head in a metal cage and sealed him away in the dark basement cell. There, he grew to hate any kind of human contact, screaming madly and cowering whenever approached. When a fire broke out in the asylum, everyone but Ryan escaped. He chose to stay behind and face the fire. As a ghost, his arms are free from his jacket, and the bars of his cage are ripped outwards, showing that he may have escaped his bindings again sometime before the fire started and that his cage may have heated up enough to where he could have ripped it open before the fire consumed him.
From the top of my head, here are some of the other things I really enjoyed from the movie: the entire music score and selected songs (Massive Attack!), the opening scene at the junkyard, the truck full of blood, the greedy lawyer splitting in two, the spells written on the floor and walls, the exterior window/walls moving, the cubes and their decorations based on their ghost, the book collection, the toy collection, the dark basement, the main bedroom and its bathroom, the tub full of blood, I’M SORRY written in blood, when all twelve ghosts are together around the circle and Arthur starts counting them, Math being the element that ultimately saves Arthur, all the ghosts walking free into the woods.
Aaaahh, that felt good. I finally got it out of my system. I finally put into writing why I love Thir13en Ghosts.
Here, let’s toast for Loving & Accomplishing things — hear, hear!
Until next time,
-Marath