Seizure. 1974. Directed by Oliver Stone.

(9/21/00)

I didn't like Seizure very much during the first half hour or so. It just didn't grab my interest. In particular, the scene where Jonathan Frid found the dog hanging in the tree didn't work for me. But when the three villains appear and take over the household it all changed and became totally engrossing.

I usually don't like films in which the whole thing turns out to be a dream. I always feel like the whole thing has been a waste of my time. But Seizure is just a little bit different in that when everything is returned to normal Jonathan Frid is found dead. That caught me by surprise and put a different spin on everything we had been watching. This is Edmund Blackstone's confrontation with his inner demons at the point of death. This fact lends a seriousness and an ambiguity to the situation.

His fears are pretty heavy and pretty unusual. We have a fear of sex when a demon (presumably female) kills one of the houseguests during sex. Edmund's wife puts their child above Edmund. The worst of all, I think, is the choice that the characters are forced to make between compassion and survival. I think that most of us wonder what we would do when faced with such a choice and would prefer to never actually find out the answer.

Edmund is faced with that horrible choice: would he save his own life or that of his son? He fails the test--or would he? Here is where ambiguity comes in. Would Edmund actually make that choice, ordoes he just believe that he would? Since it doesn't really happen we can't be sure. And then there is another question that occurred, to me at least: if he had chosen to save his son rather than himself, would he have survived and not died. (I'm interpreting Seizure in terms of Near Dark.)

This choice seems to be the crux (or climax) of the picture, but someone screwed it up. For when the Queen of Evil goes to the attic to look for Jason he isn't there. And we wonder (or I won dered): is this a ruse? Did Edmund deliberately mislead the Queen of Evil in order to save Jason? Maybe it is more ambiguity, but ambiguity isn't really what is needed right there. All it does is distract us.

The scene in which the ghost of Jason's mother confronts the Queen of Evil seems archetypal--the good mother versus the bad mother. And, in fact, the villains in Seizure are all archetypal figures--as Serge explains to Edmund. Now, it generally seems bad form for a filmmaker to have a character explain the symbolism of what is going on. It seems pompous or patronizing. But I don't know. Roger De Koven as the wise old man--another archetypal figure there--certainly put the proceedings into perspective for me and gave me more to think about. So I guess that for me it worked. Oliver Stone isn't exactly famous for his subtlety.

What is sad is that Edmund didn't learn from Serge the proper attitude to take in the face of death. And yet, in a heartbreaking sort of way, that too rings true.