For the latest 31 Days of Hell review, we take a step back to Jacob's Ladder.
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| "Hello. Is there anybody in there?" |
Some of the greatest works of art of all time are
born out of the creators’ nightmares.
James Cameron’s The Terminator,
for instance, came out of a fever dream about a red-eyed robot rising out of hellacious
flames. David Lynch and David Cronenberg
refer to their work as an output of their dreams and nightmares.
In 1980, Ghost
screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin dreamt of being trapped in a subway, an image
which would become the centerpiece of his spiritual horror drama, Jacob’s Ladder. Shopping his screenplay around Hollywood,
studio executives loved the idea but were terrified of Rubin’s Old Testament
imagery of angels and demons in the modern world. An obsessive of the afterlife, Rubin
redirected his attention to Douglas Trumbull’s ill-fated Brainstorm and Wes Craven’s Deadly
Friend, both of which moderately translated Rubin’s visions to the screen
but still devoid of his honest, naked voice.
It wasn’t until Flashdance and
Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne
took an interest in adapting Rubin’s story to the screen that Jacob’s Ladder finally would have its
day and push horror fans into a deeply disturbing yet spiritually enriching
arena never seen before in modern cinema.
Set in New York City, 1975, the film tells the tale of
Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), a former Vietnam veteran working in the post office
living with co-worker Jezzie (the late Elizabeth Peña). Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder
and increasingly disturbing hallucinations, Jacob is on the verge of a nervous
breakdown. Or is he? Army friends from his former platoon attest
to experiencing the same hallucinations and the men attempt to form a legal
case only to drop it out of fear of bureaucratic retaliation. Soon threats on Jacob’s life are made and he
finds himself sliding further into madness until he isn’t sure what is fantasy
or reality anymore and calls into question whether or not he in fact is alive
or dead. Only his close friend and
chiropractor Louis (Danny Aiello) may hold the key to Jacob’s nightmare he
can’t wake up from.
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| "I am like so buff." |
Surreal, metaphysical and deeply entrenched in
theological warfare, Jacob’s Ladder is
at once a deathly terrifying horror film and punishingly draining human drama
about the process of dying as well as a requiem for veterans whose lives have
been wrecked irrevocably by the Vietnam war.
Deriving its title from Genesis 28:12, the film is a metaphor for the
purgatory between Heaven and Hell.
Rubin’s story also draws heavily from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and
ponders notions of our everyday reality as an afterlife we’re unaware of. A work
of endless theorizing and interpretation, part of the film’s power comes from
Adrian Lyne’s direction of the material.
Instead of purporting Rubin’s prewritten visualizations of Old Testament
angels and demons, Lyne opted for low speed photography of human figures to
make them move at a geometric rate as well as utilizing practical prosthetic
effects and jump cuts to create inexplicable, inhuman manifestations that could
be characterized as bizarre psychosis or something far more spiritually
threatening. Incidentally, David Lean’s
composer Maurice Jarre would provide the score for both Rubin’s Ladder as well as Jerry Zucker’s hugely
successful adaptation of Rubin’s Ghost,
providing a score that is as terrifying and despairing as it is deeply moving.
Initially, it all proved to be too much for viewers,
who left test screenings for Lyne’s adaptation in a catatonic state, and some
slight trims were made to lighten the load, much to Rubin’s chagrin. Rubin also balked at Lyne’s decision to
interpret his angels and demons less literally, as the hallucinations and Jacob
Singer never share the same shot.
Further still, Lyne was pegged by elitists as simply copying the
surrealist leitmotifs of David Lynch. In
the years since, however, Jacob’s Ladder has
grown in stature in the eyes of critics and audiences. Called by Reverand Billy Graham “one of the
most spiritual films of all time” and posing a direct influence on William
Malone’s remake of House on Haunted Hill as
well as the Silent Hill franchise
(notably Bergen Street in Silent Hill 3),
Jacob’s Ladder is regarded as one of
the scariest, most draining and fully realized horror films ever made. Believe it or not, Jacob’s Ladder was actually shown to people on the brink of their
own deaths, who later attested the film actually helped them cope healthily
with their fears of the afterlife. There
aren’t many horror films out there that confront the beauty and terror of
eternity with wide open arms.
Furthermore, name the last horror film you saw that painted a realistic
picture of those whose life altering experiences of the horrors of warfare
cannot die off with time and tide.
-Andrew Kotwicki