Original subtitles

I see things.

And I sense things that hadn't happened yet.

The most difficult thing

about being psychic is speaking it.

We all have this second sense, but we don't act on it.

When you talk about psychic horror movies,

a lot of them are gonna come from Stephen King.

- No! - What about room 237?

When people talk about exploding heads in cinema,

they usually go straight

to David Cronenberg's "Scanners."

When you see "Scanners," it's like,

"Oh, yeah, well, it's good."

But if you've seen "The Fury,"

it's not John Cassavetes being blown up

from head to toe in slow motion good.

It's showtime.

I've always been drawn

to the idea of psychic phenomenon.

I always wished that I could be psychic.

We study the phenomena of extra sensory perception.

We're enticed by the idea that we could be

so much more powerful

if only we could read other people's minds.

She's alive.

But in fact, not being able to shut out

other people's thoughts sounds pretty terrifying.

My granny told me that I... I had a gift.

Male Who wasn't dreamed

of having psychic powers?

Tell me what I'm thinking.

The ability to read someone's thoughts...

You're wondering why I'm wearing such a funny hat.

How'd you like some ice cream, Doc?

See into the future...

Talk to the dead...

They haven't found us yet.

Light things on fire...

Or move objects with your mind.

Horror stories bring these fantasies to life.

And show how quickly

a blessing can turn into a curse.

Since his first novel, "Carrie,"

Stephen King and psychics have gone hand in hand.

King's third novel,

"The Shining," was the story of an alcoholic writer...

Here's Johnny!

His wife, and their young son, Danny,

who's a powerful psychic.

Danny's not here, Mrs. Torrance.

In "The Shining," Danny has no idea

how to control the shining or what it does.

He's just sort of, you know, a victim of it,

and he uses this sort of Tony avatar

as a conduit for it.

Tony, tell me.

This is one of King's most personal stories,

drawn from his fear that his drinking

would destroy his family.

You've got a big surprise coming to you.

Stanley Kubrick's

film adaptation is justifiably famous,

but King was not pleased

the director changed his redemptive ending

into a nihilistic sigh of despair.

It's a gorgeous film to look at.

Absolutely gorgeous. The soundtrack is gorgeous.

I can enjoy it on the same level

that you could enjoy a beautifully restored Cadillac

without a motor in it.

In 2013, King surprised the world

with a sequel to "The Shining"...

His novel, "Doctor Sleep."

Writer/director Mike Flanagan

took on the daunting task

of turning "Doctor Sleep" into a feature film.

He did sort of a neat trick

of making the movie "Doctor Sleep"...

A sequel to both the Kubrick picture

and my dad's novel,

which is not easy to do since the Kubrick film

and the Stephen King novel...

Are really fundamentally different stories.

When I was a kid,

I didn't understand the shining.

I called it Tony.

"Doctor Sleep" is about Dan Torrance,

the little boy from "The Shining," now grown up

wrestling with his own alcoholism,

his own propensity for violence...

Kind of wandering through the world by himself,

doing everything he can to suppress the shining,

to suppress that incredible ability

that was so strong with him as a child

that it attracted the attention of the Overlook Hotel

and destroyed his family.

If you had that power, it would up

your life because it would just be a constant barrage of noise

that you could not stop.

I need help.

After hitting bottom, Dan,

played by Ewan McGregor,

gets sober and rebuilds his life.

King is very upfront in saying that "The Shining"

was a book about alcoholism.

Here's to five miserable months on the wagon.

And it was alcoholism that he experienced

and was experiencing at the time

he wrote the book itself.

And "Doctor Sleep" is about recovery.

I told you. I'm not a doctor.

Oh, I think you are. Doctor Sleep.

The title, "Doctor Sleep,"

is really kind of beautiful actually in its meaning.

Dan works as an orderly in a hospice

and realizes that, while he doesn't use

his shining abilities anymore,

he can use them to help bring comfort to people

who are dying in the last moments of their life.

Doc, I am so scared it's gonna hurt or be dark

or be nothing at all. And I don't want...

Nothing to be scared of. Just going to sleep.

You know, they say we all need help coming into the world

and help going out of the world,

and there's something really beautiful

that someone that tortured takes his gifts

and use it to help people ease into whatever happens next.

Hi.

Dan meets Abra,

a child with even stronger

psychic abilities than his own.

As in many King stories,

Abra's gift is a metaphor for being smart, sensitive,

and empathetic in a world filled with amoral predators.

Well, hi there.

The threat to Abra are actually a group

of just, I mean, classic Stephen King antagonists

called the True Knot.

We are the True Knot. We are the chosen ones.

They are these quasi-immortal beings...

Who literally feed

on the life force of these special children,

children with the shining.

Dan realizes that using his powers

and facing his past may be the only thing

that can stop the death cult.

Doesn't matter if he hates himself,

doesn't matter if he wants the shining or not,

like, he has to step up. He doesn't have a choice,

He has to suck it up

and be there for this little girl.

In a King-approved change from the book...

Dan lures the leader of the True Knot

back to the Overlook Hotel...

Hoping its ghosts will devour her.

This is where Dan confronts his past

and the filmmakers confront

the looming ghost of Stanley Kubrick.

The Overlook had aged,

and throughout that journey

into the Overlook in "Doctor Sleep,"

it comes back to life...

So as he's walking through,

we go from darkness to this warm light

as the filaments start to glow again,

and we're almost back to a Kubrick version of it

at that point where the color

of the space is given back to us

for just a brief moment

before Dan does what Jack does

in the original "Shining" novel,

which is to sacrifice himself

for the child.

In the end, the film pays homage

to Kubrick's unforgettable imagery,

but restores King's original intent for the story.

Really, if you take "The Shining"

and "Doctor Sleep" together,

the cycle of addiction and recovery and alcoholism,

that's the story that's being told.

And that's where "Doctor Sleep"

doesn't feel like a sequel to me.

It feels like the conclusion of one long conversation.

You might think being psychic in a small town

wouldn't be very dramatic.

Unless you have the gift.

Male One of the most beautifully crafted

psychic films ever made isn't widely known today.

It's time for a reappraisal.

"The Gift" has an amazing pedigree.

Directed by Sam Raimi from a script

by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson,

starring an A-list cast led by one of the greatest actors

of her generation, Cate Blanchett.

I remember the first time we met,

you told me you loved "Evil Dead."

Yes.

And that you grew up on horror movies.

So you are... You are a horror fan.

Was that what made you want

to work with Raimi on "The Gift?"

When I knew Sam was on board, I just thought,

oh, my God, to work with... I can't...

Well, yes, of course.

You know, the story revolves around a woman

who's lost her husband,

who's in a profound state of grief,

and she's earning a living as a psychic.

Your daddy, he took things away from you

when you were a little boy.

"The Gift" is set in a small Georgia town

filled with secrets.

Few worse than the one haunting the character

played by Giovanni Ribisi who is repressing his memories

of childhood sexual abuse.

Why don't you tell me why I hate him?

You're the damn psychic.

Buddy, you know, is definitely disturbed,

and throughout the film is struggling with,

I guess, his own past

that he doesn't want to look at,

that perhaps maybe she sees.

You think about these things in your childhood home,

and you face up to them.

She has this gift,

and I think that there's irony in that title

because I think it's more of a burden than anything.

Think it's fun seeing decomposing bodies

in my tree daily, sir? You think that's fun?

And she's having these visions

that are usually of a horrific nature.

And the things that she's able to see,

you know, are really the skeletons

that all these characters keep in their closet.

So she starts getting these premonitions of a murder

that actually does occur,

and she doesn't really quite know who

because the visions aren't quite clear.

She can't see who the killer is,

but she knows enough to get her into trouble.

So the movie really becomes a psychic detective film.

You saw all this in a dream?

It wasn't just a dream.

I don't investigate somebody's dream.

I think she's dead, Sheriff.

You know, there is a rape and murder that takes place

at the heart of this movie, but it's teased out

in such a suspenseful and careful

and intelligent way that it's incredibly powerful,

and it's through these visions

that tantalize Cate Blanchett's character as well.

She doesn't see everything at once,

but she carries the burden of seeing things

that she should never have seen.

Get out!

Boy, I asked you a question.

But the most frightening thing in the film

may be the violent trucker played by Keanu Reeves.

Messing with the devil is going to get you burned.

It's a brutal portrait

of domestic violence.

Keanu is terrifying.

Like, you actually feel your guts kind of seize up

every time he comes up on camera.

You're just like, "Oh, God, not him again," you know?

- Annie! - Annie, it's him.

- No, calm down. - No!

- I'll call the law. - No, Annie, no!

That one shot where Keanu grabs Hilary Swank

and drags her away.

I'll handle you later on, you bitch.

Get your ass in the truck.

I mean, we had no money making that film,

and they were about to pull the plug on the day.

Keanu was on the outside.

He had to storm through a room full of people,

and I was in the out room doing a reading,

and he had one take.

- No, no! - Damn it!

Let her go!

Come here!

That was his ability that everybody is on the...

Everyone's on board.

Everyone understands the shot

that he's trying to get, so we luckily got it in one,

otherwise it wouldn't be in the film.

At its heart,

"The Gift" is an unflinching study

of the psychic scars trauma and abuse

leave on a community.

Those scars may not be visible,

but they're always there.

But I think that's what I really love

about "horror,"

is that there's no sentimentality,

and so if you'd looked at that story, you know,

there's another way we could've turned it,

and it could've been quite sentimental,

but there's something about Sam's perspective on stuff

and putting the notion of genre within that story

that allows you to kind of Trojan horse

this really quite painful family drama

without it ever veering off into sort of mawkish territory,

which I think is great.

Psychics are, by nature, sensitive.

No!

But some... are explosive.

Now, I'd like you to think of something specific,

something personal perhaps.

All right. I guess I have something.

Do I have to close my eyes? It doesn't matter.

Male It's one of the most iconic scenes

in horror history.

The mind-blowing telepathic assassination

that opens David Cronenberg's "Scanners."

I remember watching "Scanners"

at my friend's house, and we were eating pizza,

and my friend threw up,

and he didn't, like, run to the bathroom.

It was the guy's head blew up, and he just went "blech."

I know you're not what you say you are.

Freak of nature,

born with a certain form of ESP.

"Scanners" is about a war

between rival telepaths...

The super-powered children

of women given an experimental drug

during pregnancy.

His children turned out to be difficult.

You're a scanner.

That can be a source of great power.

To some scanners,

telepathic powers are a gift.

To others, they're a curse.

The film's strangely detached protagonist

is one of the cursed.

He's asked to track down the leader

of a scanner rebellion.

In many ways, Cameron, he's your enemy.

He discovers it's his long-lost brother,

a powerful telepath

with a tenuous grasp on sanity.

This is a picture full of chilly,

unfeeling, remote psychics,

and among all of them, there is a serial killer

and sociopath played by Michael Ironside

who is the most identifiably human of all of them

because at least he feels things

like resentment, rage, victory.

You're not listening to me.

You're not cooperating, Cam.

And so it's strange

that the most horrible character in the movie

should be the one that maybe we identify with the most.

We're gonna to do it the scanner way.

I'm gonna suck your brain dry.

The sibling rivalry culminates

in a psychic duel to the death.

No matter who wins,

it's clear the scanners have left humanity behind.

The idea that someone with those gifts

would no longer really be human at all

is the underlying message of "Scanners,"

and in some ways is also kind of an on-running,

ongoing theme with Cronenberg himself,

who seems to be interested

in what might be next for humanity.

"Scanners" was one

of several films of the '70s and early '80s

about government agencies exploiting psychics

for sinister purposes.

You know, in the '70s everybody was being exploited

for sinister purposes. I mean, it was the Nixon era.

Everybody was a little paranoid

about the government.

Who are they? FBI?

Really, the Department of Scientific Intelligence,

DSI.

All these movies that basically said

that you can't trust the government,

it's up to something, and it's spying on you,

and they're taking these young kids

who have these abilities

and making sure that they use them for ill.

Brian De Palma's 1978 adaptation

of the John Farris novel "The Fury"

launched the paranoid psychic trend.

Faster.

Faster! Faster!

Turn! Again!

Turn!

Faster!

Faster!

Andrew Stevens plays a young man

snatched by a government agency

that turns gifted teenagers into living weapons.

Why, he's developing

the power of an atomic reactor.

Or an atomic bomb.

The agency also has its eye on a young woman

played by Amy Irving,

who has psychic powers she barely understands.

Cheryl!

Come on! Tell me!

No, oh, my God! Oh, my God!

- Oh, my God! - Cheryl!

Cheryl! Oh, my God!

For the first time in his career,

De Palma was working with a large budget.

He used it to create new ways

of showing psychic phenomena on screen.

"The Fury" is full of bits of De Palma

trying to figure out, "How would I do this?

"How would I show a hallucination?

"How would I pop back and forth

"between consciousnesses

that are aware of each other in different location?"

So you get the bit when he's scratching

on the side of the sofa,

and she's scratching on the wall.

It's just a great moment.

You know, he had the scene with Amy Irving

on the staircase when she has a vision.

Oh.

And, you know, famously De Palma has Amy Irving

in front of a green screen and she's revolving one way,

and the action is being projected behind her.

Brilliantly simple idea.

Stop!

Just relax, Robin, relax. It's going to be okay.

There are things that are in "The Fury"

that have been ripped off

in every film about psychic powers,

including superhero movies, ever since.

It's like the Rick Baker effect

of the throbbing veins in the head.

That's first seen in "The Fury" and like ripped off

in, like, films to this day.

In a movie filled with great set pieces,

"The Fury" saves the best for last.

Amy Irving's character turns the full force

of her powers on the villain, played by

legendary actor/director John Cassavetes.

The ending of "The Fury"

is the single greatest ending of any, you know,

Hollywood film of the 1970s.

You go to the hell.

Especially for someone who doesn't particularly care

for Cassavetes movies as I really don't,

watching him blow up like that is... oh, it's so delicious.

If you've seen "The Fury,"

when you see "Scanners,"

it's like, "Oh, yeah, well, it's good.

"Not John Cassavetes being blown up

from head to toe in slow motion good."

Two years later,

David Cronenberg made another movie

about psychic powers...

A masterpiece that trades exploding heads

for broken hearts.

I've had another episode.

What's happening to me?

It's your power of second sight.

The ice is gonna break!

Male Based on one of Stephen King's finest novels,

David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of "The Dead Zone"

tells the story of Johnny Smith...

You're gonna like it.

It's about a school teacher

who gets chased by a headless demon.

A man whose happy life

is ruined by a serious car accident.

After spending five years in a coma,

Johnny wakes up with psychic powers...

But not much else.

He's lost five years of his life.

He's lost the woman he loved. He's lost his career.

And, nevertheless,

he picks up the shattered fragments

of his life and begins to fit them

back together, and he goes on.

I think it's impossible not to be a little moved by that.

It was the first time, I believe,

that Cronenberg had access to the best possible cast.

And Christopher Walken, his most moving and emotional

and heartbreaking performance I've ever seen.

David had described Chris Walken's face

as the subject of the movie,

the arc of his character carries the whole movie,

and really this is a man

who's filled with regret and despair,

so a lot of his actions tell the story,

but a lot of this was really carrying the story

from beginning to end.

You're given this kind of gift

of being able to see the future,

which should be something that's great...

And yet it keeps leading him into situations

whereby he's shown some incredibly dark things.

And sometimes he can save people,

and sometimes he can't.

With "The Dead Zone,"

Cronenberg swapped the cold objectivity

of "Scanners"

for a much more intimate approach to psychic phenomena.

Cronenberg solved the problem

of how do you show the actor

seeing the future or reading someone's mind?

How do you visualize that?

And he did that by flinging Christopher Walken

right into his own visions.

Amy!

And so when a house

is burning a few minutes in the future,

Johnny Smith is right there in the bed in the nursery

watching the fish tank boil and explode.

He's a very tortured protagonist,

and he still chooses to do right in the movie

despite the fact that life

has just been dealing him very poor cards.

When I woke up, my girl was gone,

my job was gone, my legs are just about useless.

I think of it as a very emotional movie

because the very mechanism that drives it forward

is tragic human experience.

The ultimate test of Johnny's character

comes when he meets up-and-coming politician,

Greg Stillson, played by Martin Sheen.

You got to stay in better shape

in this country.

What the hell has happened to this country?

Stillson's straight-talking populism

conceals his true nature,

he's a bullying egomaniac

who will stop at nothing to gain power.

I have had a vision that I am going to be president

of the United States someday,

and I have accepted that responsibility,

and nobody, I mean nobody,

is gonna stop me.

When Johnny shakes hands with Stillson,

he has a premonition of him starting World War III.

Stillson, Stillson, Stillson!

Stillson, Stillson!

The missiles are flying. Hallelujah.

If you knew somebody

was going to be a mass murderer,

is gonna commit genocide on a major level,

but haven't done it yet, would you take him out?

That's basically what the end of the movie is,

is that Christopher Walken decides that he has

to assassinate Greg Stillson to save the world.

Johnny!

At the tense finale,

we find ourselves rooting for an assassin.

- Give me him! - Don't!

Johnny is doomed,

but he does save the world.

Evil finds a way of devouring itself.

You see that in the movie.

You see that in the book as well.

Most really evil people

have a self-destruct button built in.

It's over.

And sooner or later, they put their fist down on it

without realizing what they've done.

That movie is so heartbreaking,

and every time I watch it,

I'm more enamored

with Cronenberg as a filmmaker and what he has done.

Not every story about a psychic is a tragedy.

For some, it opens up a world of demented fun.

It's showtime.

Male In 1985, a young director

named Tim Burton

made his first feature-length film,

"Pee-wee's Big Adventure."

It looked like this.

It was an unlikely hit.

Burton's next project

was a horror comedy about two ghosts

and the psychic girl

who becomes their surrogate daughter.

It was called...

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

Oh, no!

"Pee-wee's Big Adventure" is one of my favorite films,

and so then, when "Beetlejuice" came out,

everyone knew this was something special.

It was gonna be like the guy

who made "Pee-wee's Big Adventure"

had made some kind of horror movie.

Right from the opening shot with the Danny Elfman music,

you are 100% in a Tim Burton film.

"Beetlejuice" begins

with a demise of a sweet,

but not terribly bright young couple...

Played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin.

What I loved about it

from just even reading the script

was they were very matter-of-fact

about it, you know?

It's rather, "You know, we're simple folks

and we seem to be dead."

I've been reading that book, and there's a word

for people in our situation. Ghosts.

You know, everything is kind of taken for granted,

you know, there's nothing too shocking

about any of it to us.

I don't think we have very much

to worry about anymore.

I find that very amusing.

Life isn't that different

till their home is sold to Charles and Delia Deetz

who turn it into a post-modern hell.

I loved that dynamic, in the Beetlejuice family,

that it's the ghosts that were the friendly ones.

They're the ones being terrorized by the humans.

Oh!

You can see us without the sheets?

Of course I can see you.

Well, how is it that you see us and nobody else can?

The ghosts' sole ally

is young Lydia Deetz, who has the psychic gift

of being able to see and communicate with the dead.

I wanted to be Winona Ryder as Lydia.

Live people ignore the strange and usual.

I, myself, am strange and unusual.

She was just the coolest.

She had the coolest lines.

I plan to have a stroke

from the amount of MSG that's in this food.

And her costumes and how she wasn't

that happy-go-lucky kid.

She could see more.

She was "spiritually woke,"

and she was unapologetically herself.

God! You guys really are dead.

This is amazing.

Lydia's sensitivity lets her see

what her parents cannot.

Careful, that's my sculpture.

A world beyond themselves.

If you don't let me gut out this house and make it my own,

I will go insane, and I will take you with me!

Lydia tries to act as the medium

between the living and the dead,

but it's no use.

But they were trying to scare you away,

and you didn't get scared.

Please, they're dead.

It's a little late to be neurotic.

In desperation, the ghosts

summon a bio-exorcist, the demon Beetlejuice,

played in a performance for the ages

by Michael Keaton.

Yeah!

Michael Keaton was amazing as Beetlejuice.

You know, we got to get closer.

Move in with you for a while. Get to be real pals.

You know what I'm saying?

And...

- Ugh. - Save that guy for later.

So funny.

I really loved, loved him,

and he... so much was ad-libbed and just made up on the fly.

I'm feeling a little anxious, if you know what I mean.

Beetlejuice is an incarnation of corruption.

He cannot be trusted.

Humans and ghosts must come together

to save Lydia from his clutches.

It's a metaphor for the rescue

of a neglected child from loneliness and despair.

You're probably supposed to interpret the movie

through Lydia's perspective,

and she is very much an outsider

who comes to belong

through very unusual means

by having ghost parents

who are better parents to her than her real parents.

How'd you do on that science test?

It was gross.

They wanted me to dissect a frog.

Traditionally, movie psychics

are cursed by their gifts.

Beetlejuice is the rare film about a psychic

that has a happy ending...

For Lydia and for the people in her life,

living and dead.

Sometimes, if somebody recognizes me,

they'll say, "I like your movie."

And I'm like, "Okay."

And so I finally started asking people,

"What movie?"

Oh!

95% of the time they mean "Beetlejuice."

They think that's the only movie I've made,

and they like my movie.

Which I'm perfectly happy with. I love that.

I can communicate with the other side.

The ability to see the dead

is a miraculous gift.

It was cold-blooded murder.

Unless you're the tortured hero

of "The Frighteners."

male When you think of filmmaker Peter Jackson,

this is probably what comes to mind.

But horror fans know he started out

making some of the most outrageous

splatter films ever to hit the screen.

The bridge between

the two Peter Jacksons is "The Frighteners."

I can see spirits.

A film that takes

some very surprising turns.

"The Frighteners" is such a classic comedy horror

where it starts off so goofy...

And then gets genuinely frightening.

This one really has a build,

I think, that no other comedy horror has ever had.

Michael J. Fox stars

as Frank Bannister,

who gains the power to communicate with ghosts

after he's in a car accident that kills his wife.

Feeling responsible for her death,

he's literally a haunted man,

so lost in self-loathing, that he prostitutes his gift

using the ghosts to scam the living.

We're so used to, you know, seeing all these psychics

use their powers in certain ways...

To find evil or to find more answers,

but in this case, Michael J. Fox,

he's a con artist.

Well, folks, I can do a clearance,

but it's not gonna be cheap.

Sure, he's a psychic. He can see ghosts.

But this is him using his power to make that extra buck.

This could be the worst case I have ever... seen.

Where are you going?

Things get worse

when a demonic spirit appears

and begins killing people Frank comes into contact with.

Frank's psychic gift

lets him see who's next to die.

But he's powerless to save them.

The murders attract the attention

of a very peculiar FBI agent,

played by horror legend Jeffrey Combs.

You're a very dangerous man, Mr. Bannister.

I sort of approached him like what happens

when your patriotism takes you to a point

where you will do anything for your country,

to the point where you don't even know

how damaged you are anymore.

My body is roadmap of pain.

Jeffrey Combs made "Frighteners."

Look at his haircut and the way he speaks

and his eyes for everything.

Well, the haircut was my idea, I'm afraid.

I was thinking about what is the prime example

of that kind of nationalism? Oh, wait a minute.

And I found a book of young Hitler.

I took it back to Peter, and I said,

"Peter, what do you think my hair would look like that?"

And I thought he would say, "No, are you crazy?"

But he looked at it

and just took a beat, and he went,

"Yeah, yes, that'll be good."

In the film's dark finale,

Frank discovers his wife was one of many victims

of a pair of thrill killers

played by Dee Wallace and Jake Busey.

- You killed her. - You're next, pal.

I think it's the first movie that has a homicidal couple

where one is a ghost and one is not.

I can't think of one before that.

But it's a cool idea

that it's also this really dark romance of sorts,

that they get off on this fact,

that they keep killing more and more people,

that they get more and more in love

with each other the more bodies they pile up.

It's a really nutty idea.

With the mystery solved,

Frank is finally able to move on with his life.

Be happy.

"The Frighteners" turns out to be a study

of trauma, depression, and forgiveness.

It corkscrews into something

that you're not even prepared for,

and that's the genius of it.

It's a movie that you can't quite categorize

'cause it's many things.

After setting you up thinking this is just gonna be

some pleasant, safe little ride...

It takes you down a rabbit hole of true horror.

Isn't that what a movie is supposed to do

is take you on an unexpected journey?

We don't fully understand

how our brains work...

The derangement of the synapses.

Nor can we prove

or disprove psychic powers are real.

But as long as we can think and dream...

We'll have psychics on our minds.