#franimation

The floating humanoid shape under the cloth, that now has a face and laughs, disappears when Java tries to catch it. Immediately the entire lodge shakes like if there was an earthquake, as the lights flicker before turning off, plunging our heroes in the dark.

When the lights come back up, the room is now covered in green smile, the same way the library was. An old pocket watch falls from the ceiling, with the initials PB on it. The investigators check and indeed, it is the watch of Philus Blackwater, he even has it on his photograph above the mantlepiece of the chimney, alongside his smoking pipe.

Today’s Martin Mystery episode: the Haunting of the Blackwater! 15th episode of the English series. In the French series it is also the 15th episode of the first season, but named “L’Antre des Esprits Frappeurs” (The Lair of the Poltergeists). Note that in French the title speaks of several spirits, instead of merely one. I’ll bring it back later. 

This episode has the particularity to be one of the “movie-reference episodes”, aka an episode entirely referencing a particular horror movie. This episode is “Shining”. While I personally did not understood the references as a child, given that I hadn’t seen this movie, “The Shining” became (and still is) one of my favorite horror movies of all time. As a result it is now a delight to spot all of the little references scattered here and there. 

The episode opens in British Columbia, in the evening. It is a dark, wintery night, with a lot of snow, and we see the Blackwater Lodge (written as the Black Water Lodge in the opening subtitles if I am not wrong...), a huge building lost in the middle of this dark, snowy fir forest. In French, the Blackwater is rather called a “hotel” than a lodge. 

This is apparently the re-opening ceremony of the Lodge. In the ballroom, in front of many well-dressed guests, a lady cuts a ribbon, and says that the Lodge is officially “re-opened for business”. There are many people here, but they still look like a small group compared to the hugeness of the ballroom. 

[Let me note here the first Shining references. We have an hotel lost in the snowy mountains, in the middle of the winter. Which, as the title says and we’ll see later is haunted by ghosts. We also have a party of finely dressed guests, and children playing with a bouncing ball. Of the three men of the band, one is in fact Stephen King and another I think is supposed to be Scatman Crothers, the actor of Halloran in the movie. I don’t know who the third man may be.]

Two children, as I said, are playing with a bouncing ball. Said ball ends up hitting by mistake a huge glassed photograph on top of the chimney, the creepy photograph of a stern man [purposely designed to look like Stanley Kubrick]. I think the picture is supposed to be in sepia, but in some shots it looks like it is in black and white. The glass of the photograph cracks before exploding, and the portaits falls on the ground.

Immediately a strong gust of freezing wind blows the windows open, letting snow enter. The doors of the ballroom start to slam on themselves violently as a disembodied voice says “GET OUT!”. And the man in the portrait opens his eyes.

The team smells tobacco in the room, and finds on a table an old smoking pope covered in slime, still hot. The manager is surprised that someone had time to smoke in there, given that the library is always locked and she owns the only key. She is even more horrified to discover that the pipe belongs to Philus Blackwater, the previous manager, dead for around a hundred years now (he probably died in the early 1900s). She also mentions that the library used to be Philus’ favorite room of the Lodge.