Half-Remembered

A long time ago, a day or so after I delivered Secundo, I was in the hospital. I don't know what TV channel I had on (I suspect PBS), but I woke up from my semi-anesthetized state to see a movie on. The most awful voice was speaking, and odd, dreamlike images of hell were on the screen. It was almost like a puppet show, the special f/x, but still disturbing. It was clearly a pretty old movie--black and white, grainy, the shouting sound of a preacher's voice--and the preacher's voice was that of a black man.

It remained at the back of my mind as an odd nightmarish thing I'd seen: there was a funeral, too, and in my disconnected illogical drugged state the funeral seemed like a bad omen right after the birth of my son. I always wondered if I'd half dreamed it, a bad reaction to the Dor-Mor. In talking to my brother last night, it occurred to me I could find out what I'd seen once and for all.

Ah, the magic of Google. Apparently it was a race film, common from the silent era until about 1950, often shown to black audiences in the South, called Go Down, Death! based on a poem by James Weldon Johnson (and directed by Spencer Williams from Amos'n'Andy). I was able to find the entire movie online and watched it last night. And there, at the end, was my nightmare scene, not so different from what I remembered: in some ways campy, in some ways still disturbing. There was, for example, the face of a devil actually consuming some dangling sinners, like an owl with mice. And there was the awful voice, too, just as I'd recalled.

Anyway, an interesting excursion into some film history I hadn't known--I have a feeling it will haunt me for awhile.