bellwitch

Devils x Jacob’s Ladder Commentary

Added 2023-05-16 20:59:30 +0000 UTC

Jacob's Ladder is a 1990 film by Adrian Lyne about a VIetnam War veteran slowly losing his sense of reality. Perhaps it's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Perhaps it's something more diabolic and sinister? This clip is made up of two scenes that I flipped from their original running order partially because I felt like the resolve of the chiropractor, a guardian angel archetype, was out of the greater context of the film for this clip. Quoting Meister Ekhardt, he tries to soothe Tim Robbins character as he grapples with the intense physical pain and a nightmarish experience in a hospital after an injury. An interpretation of the film could be that the character is stuck in a purgatory that becomes increasingly hellish. This is a prominent theme in Bell Witch.

The music in the chiropractors office is intended to be soothing to relay the safety of the scene. As it plays out, the doctor's words intensify this. The bass melody carries over into the following scene entering an emergency room. I like this effect because the bass guitar does not change yet the tone is quite different with the obvious discomfort of the visual element. As the gurney is wheeled into an abandoned alley and then into a hellish basement the nightmare blossoms. I used delay on the tapped line to give a bouncing sensation that highlights the disorientation on Tim Robbins face as he watches hell unfold before him. In the final scene, the operating table, I used a Moog Sub 37 synthesizer with a variety of effects to illuminate the inhuman shade of the scene. That doctor is fucking terrifying when he blows into the glove, not to mention when his eyes disappear.