Editorials
A Pastoral Hell: Robert Mulligan’s ‘The Other’ (1972)
“Do you know about the well? That dark and secret place where the accident happened – one of the accidents, I should say.”
It’s the summer of 1935 on the Connecticut farm of the Perry clan. The cattails are in full bloom, the apple cellar is full, and the fish are biting. This pastoral setting makes the perfect playground for twin brothers Niles and Holland. It also sets a deceiving stage for some piercing psychological horror. Opened quietly in theaters in May 1972, Robert Mulligan’s The Other is a stealthy film. Like its source novel by Thomas Tyron (who wrote the screenplay), it toys with expectations before pulling back the curtain to reveal the true horror at the heart of the narrative. And after four decades of similar films, The Other holds up damn well today.
What exactly is that “true” horror at the narrative’s heart? That’s a tough one ultimately left up to the audience. All we know for certain is that something sinister is lurking around the Perry family farm. Their bucolic paradise is shattered by a series of macabre accidents – pitchfork impalement, a crippling tumble down the stairs, an old woman literally scared to death. And it all started with the death of their patriarch – who was killed when the door to the cellar slammed on him, sending him face first down the wooden steps.
Since her husband’s tragic death, Alexandra Perry (Diana Muldaur) has been a shadow of her former self. She rarely leavers her bedroom and when her sons come pining for her love, she’s distant. Her detachment doesn’t seem to bother 13-year-old Niles and Holland – real-life twins Chris and Martin Udvarnoky in their only film roles. The boys have a summer of mischievous boyhood exploits ahead of them. Grab your slingshot.
Niles, younger than Holland by six minutes, is caring and eager to please his family. Holland is devilishly sociopathic, alarmingly world-weary for his age. When their snitch cousin Piggy catches them playing in the cellar (off-limits since daddy’s death), Niles freaks with worry over the consequences. Holland doesn’t sweat it. He knows Piggy doesn’t have the stones to tell on them. And if he does, he’ll just kill one of his pet rats. Holland’s full of “pranks” like that. But as the summer heats up, his pranks get increasingly perverse and Niles can only cower and watch the horror show unfold.
The story of an evil, manipulative twin is nothing new. 1946’s The Dark Mirror is a primo older example, De Palma’s Sisters is a favorite of mine, and last year’s Goodnight Mommy is a recent instance (that I can’t help think lifted a lot from The Other). The film has plenty of psychological horror tropes in it, but it’s the way Mulligan weaves together this patchwork and then unravels it that makes The Other so goddamn potent.
Mulligan is best known for To Kill a Mockingbird and like that classic, The Other is a naturalistic film loaded with period details – the rusty weather vane, the Chevy Coupe, the tire-swing. The film creates a spell with this beautiful, rustic imagery, making the horrors to come that much more impactful. How can evil exist in God’s country?
While many contemporary horror films save their big “twist” for the final reel, The Other’s revelation comes an hour into its 100 minute running time. There are plenty of subtle hints leading up to the reveal – how people talk to the twins, the way Mulligan pans the camera. A modern audience can spot the curveball coming a mile away, but a film like The Other doesn’t bank on the twist, like say The Sixth Sense does. It doesn’t matter if you figure out the twist five minutes in or 50 minutes in. It doesn’t soften the terrific blows that come during the final minutes of the film. The inconceivable final “accidents” that befall the Perry family come relentlessly in these closing moments, and even by today’s unflinching standards they’re wicked disturbing.
It all leads up to the last shot of the film, which leaves plenty up for interpretation. Was the Perry family besieged by a supernatural phantom? A bout of insanity caused by severe loss? Much of horror is concerned with our fear of loss and its inescapable victory. The Other explores that fear in spades and looks at how the old and young deal with it.
By the end of the film, the pastoral beauty has lost its innocence. Any bit of rustic splendor shot by Mulligan feels tainted. It doesn’t feel like charming nostalgia anymore. It just feels like the farm and the family that’s lived there for centuries is damned, damned, damned.
Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
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