Josh Bell
Thanks to an imposing stature contrasting with his eerie soft-spokenness, the late Tom Noonan was a go-to character actor for creepy villains, in movies like Manhunter, RoboCop 2, and Last Action Hero. He projects quiet malevolence, making an indelible impression on viewers who might not know his name. Even when voicing the mundane dialogue of all the supporting characters in Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa, Noonan conveys a sense of the uncanny — which is why Kaufman cast him in the first place.
Those qualities make Noonan a perfect actor for horror movies, and horror auteur Ti West cast Noonan in small but crucial roles in two of his early films, 2005’s The Roost and 2009’s The House of the Devil. Watching those movies now, it’s easy to imagine Noonan having a Vincent Price-like late-career resurgence, making use of his unique, disquieting onscreen presence to bring some extra flair to low-budget horror movies. Like Kaufman, West knows exactly how to showcase Noonan’s talents for maximum unsettling effect.
In West’s debut feature The Roost, Noonan is the first actor to appear onscreen, after a pitch-perfect introduction recreating the style of old black-and-white horror TV broadcasts, complete with test pattern and static glitches. The camera slowly pans across an endearingly fake-looking graveyard (one tombstone inscription simply reads “You”), as an imposing chateau looms high on a hill in the background. That’s where we meet Noonan’s unnamed Frightmare Theatre host, dressed in a tuxedo and slathered in ghoulishly pale face makeup.
He’s here to introduce West’s tale of terror, but he doesn’t seem particularly excited about it. Instead of channeling the goofy enthusiasm of classic horror hosts like Elvira or Svengoolie, Noonan makes his character into an almost belligerent guide, even as he deploys the requisite puns. “Ah, you’re early,” he says awkwardly as the camera finds him in the mansion’s catacombs. He sets up the story, which is “hot on the entrails” of four friends as they travel to a wedding, although he expresses annoyance at the prospect of such a joyous occasion.
The vintage pastiche then gives way to a modern, mumblecore-influenced minimalist horror film, with the aforementioned four friends getting stranded in the middle of nowhere after their car swerves into a ditch. They take refuge at an isolated ranch, where the barn turns out to be full of killer bats. West delivers a few nasty kills and suspenseful set pieces, working out some of the motifs that would return in his later, more assured films. The remote, rural location is a precursor to the setting for 2022’s X, and the halting interpersonal interactions anticipate the more entertaining character dynamics of 2011’s The Innkeepers.
Noonan’s host doesn’t just step aside to let this story play out. Late in the movie, he interrupts the proceedings to complain about a tender moment between siblings Allison (Vanessa Horneff) and Elliot (Wil Horneff) as they resign themselves to a grisly fate. “Boo hoo,” he scoffs, noting that last week’s movie was more terrifying. West uses Noonan to mock his own low-key horror style, then shifts responsibility to the host for amping up the gore, as the footage rewinds and Allison and Elliot instead decide to fight back against the bats, with even more gruesome results.
“I was quite pleased to see their demise,” the host says during his final wrap-up, and Noonan adds a gleeful twinkle to his delivery, suggesting that there’s more than cinephilia at work in his enjoyment. Even the viewer doesn’t get out of the movie alive, as the host suddenly realizes that his “master” has returned home early, and the cameraman rushes to escape before being devoured. West gives Noonan the literal last laugh in a post-credits snippet, and it’s a shame that the host didn’t return to introduce future West productions.
Frightmare Theatre itself returns, though, in the background of The House of the Devil. West never shows the host as babysitter Samantha Hughes (Jocelin Donahue) distractedly flips on the TV, so it’s unclear if there are two Tom Noonans in this universe. Frightmare Theatre gets teased at the end of the local news, and later it looks like this week’s movie is public-domain favorite Night of the Living Dead. Samantha doesn’t have time to watch Frightmare Theatre anyway, because she’s about to become a Satanic sacrifice for Noonan’s devil-worshipping Mr. Ulman.
Noonan has a more substantial role in The House of the Devil, bringing a sort of pathos to his weary pagan priest, who lures Samantha to yet another isolated house under false pretenses. West has honed his talents for pastiche since the ramshackle TV-show tribute of The Roost, and the entirety of The House of the Devil is an impeccably crafted homage to 1980s horror. It’s also a brilliant slow-burn horror movie, the kind that the Frightmare Theatre host might complain is too sedate, but generates exquisite tension as Samantha unknowingly awaits her grim destiny.
Noonan is heard before he’s seen, on the phone with broke college student Samantha as they work out the details of the babysitting gig he’s offering. “I promise to make this as painless for you as possible,” he says, in a way that indicates maximum pain to follow. The audience understands this because they’re watching a horror movie called The House of the Devil, but also because Noonan’s delivery exudes understated evil.
When Noonan finally appears onscreen, West depicts him with his head out of the frame, emphasizing the way he towers over Samantha and her slightly obnoxious friend Megan (Greta Gerwig). Like the host in The Roost, Mr. Ulman is ungainly and awkward, clumsily repeating information about the phone number for pizza delivery posted on the refrigerator, then blurting out “I’ve said too much as it is,” which is the opposite of reassuring. He reveals that Samantha has not been hired to watch a child, but to stay in the house while Mr. Ulman’s elderly mother rests upstairs, even though she’ll probably never emerge.
It’s all a ruse on the part of Mr. Ulman and his wife (Mary Woronov) to acquire the proper subject for their Satanic ritual, which unfolds after a lengthy build-up as Samantha starts to realize that something is seriously wrong with the family she’s agreed to work for. Gerwig is hilarious as the overly dramatic Megan, who pesters Samantha not to take the job, and turns out to be totally correct about the dangers. Her exuberance contrasts with Noonan’s deadpan delivery, even after the ritual goes wrong and Mr. Ulman has to beg Samantha to complete the process. In a way, Noonan’s character gets the last laugh here, too, albeit in a much darker manner.
Noonan’s final onscreen credit came in 2018, so he never got the chance to become a West repertory player, in the way that Price did for filmmakers like Roger Corman. In just these two appearances, though, he offers a boost to West’s small-scale horror, with the same memorable menace he brought to larger, more mainstream releases.
