BENNY'S VIDEO (Michael Haneke, 1992, Austria)

 

Benny sees the world darkly through the clouded lens of adolescence and technology: equally one-part removed and one-part cruel participant in his narcissistic narrative. His bedroom is a cave, black curtains shroud the windows, but a camera shoots live footage of the street outside: somehow, peering at the video monitor is more real to Benny than just looking through the shades. It’s as if the camera has distanced him, on every humane level, from becoming a human being, his empathy lost amid the white noise and static. 

Benny films a pig being slaughtered, a rather mundane event on any pig farm, and becomes entranced with the image. He watches the footage repeatedly, sometimes in slow motion, looking for the moment of death when the metal bolt destroys the animal’s consciousness: when it ceases to live and becomes inert. He’s looking at death but not feeling death. Director Michael Haneke is not concerned with the footage itself: thousands of animals are killed this way for food every day. What he is concerned with is Benny’s obsessive reaction to the video. 

When Benny meets a teenage girl at a video store, he brings her back to his parent’s apartment (they’re away for the weekend) and through small talk eventually shows her the video. Her apathy is apparent too; her response concerns the weather. Benny then shows her the killing instrument and shoots her three times, her screams and violent thrashing echoing the pig's quivering death. He cleans up the mess and pours himself a glass of milk: Haneke shows us a terrific shot of him casually cleaning up the spilled milk in the exact same manner he wiped up the thick congealing blood. Benny then goes about the remainder of the weekend partying, hanging out as if nothing important happened. When his parents are shown the video, they are devastated for Benny, realizing his future will be forever tarnished. Soon, they each become an accomplice after-the-fact because Benny’s bright future is more important than the fate of some runaway (Read: lower-class) girl. Benny and his mother take a short vacation so the father can dispose of the evidence. 

In this early Haneke film, the auteur is imploding the very ideal of the nuclear family unit where patriarchal power corrupts absolutely. Humanity is viewed at a distance through a cold lens, where actions are never explained or understood through typical narrative tropes. The film fails to judge Benny, it does not portray this young man as a monster which denies the audience a clear emotional response towards him. The act itself can be judged on its own terms: a violently senseless murder of an innocent girl. The conflict between hating the act and not the perpetrator creates an emotional maelstrom, a vortex of reactions from the viewer. The first reaction may be dissociation, for the audience to turn away and turn off, to feel angry at being subjected to this mean-spirited vision. But Haneke is presenting not just a film to an audience but a case to the jury, requiring our full attention to detail and authority because we (the viewer) ultimately pass judgement without ever understanding Benny's motive. 

Benny shows no affect, no emotion, and only seems to have an identity when he looks through his video recorder. This affluent family has finally come together as a unit, working towards a common goal…but Benny even subverts this scheme. Can Benny be rehabilitated? That question denotes some beneficent foundation, a base of human morality, whether learned socially or through his family, which has become corrupt. But that’s not really the important issue: Has Benny ever been "habilitated" in the first place? 

Final Grade: (B+)

RACE WITH THE DEVIL (Jack Starrett, 1975, USA)

 

Best friends embark upon an easy ride that turns out to be their funeral procession. Jack Starret’s classic B-film gem sports one of the best tag lines ever: If you're going to race with the devil, you've got to be as fast as Hell! Peter Fonda and Warren Oates take their wives (and dog) on the best damn vacation ever, a cross-country journey from Texas to Colorado in their new $36,000, 32ft Villa Grande RV: that’s over $200,000 in today’s money! Somewhere in Texas, they pull of the road for the night and set camp in an isolated clearing. After racing their motorcycles and drinking beer, they settle down to relax and witness a satanic orgy…that ends in a bloody sacrifice. And the chase begins. The remaining 50+ minutes is a mixture of suspense and outright terror as the Deliverance-like cultists seem to be everywhere: from the local sheriff to the tourists at a campground! 

From the dark, watercolor splash of the opening credits to the final ring of fire, the ubiquitous sense of unease is truly unnerving: every smile, glance, or greeting seems to have ominous undertones. The score by Leonard Rosenman is brilliant, light and airy one moment before descending into subtle, paranoid creaking minor keys. His music perfectly underscores the action without becoming overbearing. Rosenman would score Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON the same year and win the Academy Award, then win again the following year for Hal Ashby’s wonderful BOUND FOR GLORY! How’s that for a resume! DP Robert Jessup’s photography captures the action in violent and brutal intensity with close-up camerawork in the narrow confines of the RV. His action sequences are predatory, like obligate ram ventilators that must always move forward for sustenance. The twisted metal, careening cars, explosions and road-rage mayhem looks dangerous, and though we can see rollbars in a few of the stunt cars, this verisimilitude of smashing real vehicles on real highways ramps-up the tension. A film like this makes obvious the restrictions of modern-day CGI! Though this is a chase movie, the screenplay really focuses on the sense of dread and abandonment, as our protagonists become strangers in a strange land. When the action sequences happen, you have a personal connection and can feel the fear dripping from their pores. My only serious complaint is that Loretta Swit and Lara Parker are mostly relegated to the roles of stereotypical screaming women, though the film allows them some active participation. Otherwise, a great 70’s B-movie that outruns many contemporary action flicks!

Final Grade: (A) 

VAMPYR (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932, Germany)

 

Carl Theodor Dreyer guides us through a nightmare world of shadows and vile darkness, of a malformed reality that coexists with our own. This frightening landscape is revealed to Allan Gray, a lonely traveler who stumbles upon a town haunted by a vampire and spends the night at a local Inn. This strange and palpable atmosphere settles upon him like a thick obscuring fog, the weight of fear heavy upon his chest. The Innkeeper makes an unexpected nighttime visit and gives him a package: it is not to be opened until his (the Innkeeper’s) death. Gray, his visage as ashen as his name, is overcome with curiosity and begins a nighttime sojourn in search of answers to this surreal riddle. He experiences dim and dangerous shadows as they cavort and conspire without their host bodies. He spies the old Innkeeper, shot dead by these sadistic shades, and discovers his two beautiful daughters…one of whom falls victim to the despicable darkness: the legendary Vampire. 

Dreyer is able to capture the sublime psychosis of fear on celluloid. He communicates visually through chiaroscuro lighting effects, grand shadowy illusions, and disturbing images. A man with a scythe, not uncommon in a rural setting, materializes as a Charon-like silhouette, ferrying the damned souls to Hades. A one-legged man becomes a monstrosity whose shadow is loosed upon the town like the Plague. A doctor’s office, a place of healing balms and the antiseptic aroma of hope, becomes a gruesome charnel house reeking of poison. It is obvious that Dreyer filmed in real locations because his tight framing often reveals ceilings, battered walls, and well-walked floors: this lends a solid reality to the film. He navigates the labyrinthine corridors of the Inn and Manor House with slow forward and backward tracking shots that remain in perfect focus. A scare or shock, so trendy in modern horror films, is a quick fast-food jolt, a simple excess of vapid calories that is soon consumed and forgotten. VAMPYR will chill your marrow and leave an uneasy feeling of deep malaise…but it won’t shock you. At least, not in the way you expect. 

Fina Grade: (A+)

DON'T LOOK NOW (Nicolas Roeg, 1973, UK)

 

Nicolas Roeg warns the audience: don’t look now…but we can’t turn away. He layers the film in an eerie otherworldly quality with precise editing patterns that shock the viewer’s expectations punctuated by a psychologically aberrant score. Haunting precognitive visions and desperate flashbacks create a sum total of fear and isolation, a malignant undertow whose dark currents slither through the waterways of Venice. Roeg films the characters in dark alleyways, the ancient city’s labyrinthine passageways and canals indicative of their own emotional journey. Here, Roeg and his DP Anthony Richmond deromanticize Venice and capture the city in its crumbling and rat-infested alleys, where time slowly dissolves its beauty in acid rain. 

John’s (Donald Sutherland) work in Venice is to painstakingly restore the mosaic of an ancient Church, to restore a once beautiful image to its former glory. This heartbreaking metaphor is apparent as he and Laura (Julie Christie) try to repair their broken marriage after the dreadful loss of their young daughter Christine. John and Laura are drowning in an unspoken malaise and the tension between them soon becomes ominous: Laura meets two sisters who claim to see their daughter’s spirit. John suspects the two elderly ladies are con artists. He scolds his wife, shouting that Christine is Dead! Dead! Dead…as if trying to convince himself, to deny his own denial of the awful truth. Even their lovemaking is routine, a desperate copulation that brings them physically closer, that satisfies their instinctual human desires yet still seems distant: Roeg jump cuts to post-coital mundane activities while they fuck, as if their minds are already wandering and unable to merge during this once deeply emotional union. 

The Pino Dinaggio score creates a gentle atmosphere of profound love between John and Laura, an empathetic link as these two people try to work out their marriage. Other times, it echoes through the crumbling city like tiny footsteps, a ghostly reminder that death stalks Venice. Throughout the film, John sees a child in a bright red coat walk the darkened streets: the same type of slicker that Christine was wearing when she drowned. He is troubled by this vision, unsure whether it’s a frightened child or maybe…just maybe the old women were right, the spirit of his little girl is trying to communicate. John’s question is violently answered; his guilt expunged in a bright red torrent. 

Final Grade: (A)

THE INVASION (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2007, USA)

 

Do not trust anyone. Do not show emotion. Do not fall asleep. I will add: Do not watch this garbage. An alien virus descends upon earth via the space shuttle disaster and the human race transforms into insipid hominids…boring, monotone, and of lower intelligence than Sahelanthropus tchadensis. A modern version of Jack Finney’s Cold War parable THE BODY SNATCHERS, this retelling is an awful mess and quickly degenerates into a sloppy Hollywood action flick. Instead of the creeping suspense and carefully defined relationships of the original, we get Nicole Kidman in tight shirts speaking obtuse dialogue and looking perplexed. 

The germ of the story is interesting, but the film suffers from an unoriginal screenplay and uninspired directing. We are left to believe that in a matter of a few moments' exposition, a lab technician identifies the alien bacterium and its destructive effects... then discovers a cure. I suppose he could cure cancer in the next 20 seconds and the common cold a minute later. The movie definitely suffers from heavy editing, but the story flaws go way beyond that problem…it’s just a badly executed film! We are never close to any character because they are cardboard, fake caricatures just going through the motions. Information is just handed out to the characters in Deus Ex Machine plot devices that immediately make the viewer groan. This is a terrible movie and should be skipped. 

Final Grade: (F)

CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (Robert Wise, 1944, USA)

 

Amy subsumes the familial trauma, unspoken but inherent in her childlike sensibilities attuned to the deathly hallow, those arcane emotional relics of her parent’s past. The Goya painting is a shrine to Irena, a blasphemous vestige of a corrupt and violated soul; a sincere metaphor for her love cursed by demonic possession as Irena became victim of her own lineage. 

Oliver and Alice are now married, yet they choose to hang the painting in their house, though they supposedly burned all other evidence of their past affliction. Amy is lost in fantasy; she is cursed for being different from other children because she is too imaginative, and her parents struggle towards conformity and acceptance. The patriarchal order is upset as Amy witnesses her mother’s abusive argument with daddy: this is every child’s worst nightmare. She soon escapes and befriends a delusional old woman with a despotic daughter; the old lady gives her a wishing ring. After seeing an old photograph of Oliver’s first wife, her magic ring grants her an invisible friend…. Irena. 

This is not a horror film but a psychological study of childhood; the loss of innocence, how conformity is thief of our individuality, like a cat stealing the breath of imagination. But the film can also be read as a supernatural nexus between Amy and Irena’s salvation: cursed by a demon and summoned by the little girl’s purity, Irena may finally commit the one act that can save her own soul. As Amy wanders into the frozen night, the penumbra of nightmare chasing like stampeding hooves, she stumbles towards the neighbor's house wherein dwells the demented daughter. As death walks the ghastly corridors of this archaic mansion, Amy’s trust is put into the hands of a murderer…but it’s Irena’s virtue that redeems the trinity. 

Final Grade: (B)

THEM (David Moreau & Xavier Palud, 2006, France)

 

This French thriller is based on the true story of the murder of an Austrian couple by some juvenile delinquents, and while the basic element of the story may be true everything else is pure cinematic horror! The directors set the story in France where Clementine is a schoolteacher and her husband Lucas a writer. The story is foreshadowed by the murder of a mother and daughter after their van is forced off the road not far from our protagonist’s home. The film only runs 70 minutes and wastes little time with exposition or background; we meet Clem as she leaves school and drives home to be with Lucas. A few minutes banter over dinner establishes their relationship and helps the viewer create the empathetic bond: they seem like very nice people. Their house is isolated in a dense wood and accessible only by a gated road. But when the sun sets their fear rises. A strange sound startles Clem awake and the next fifty-minutes is sheer terror as these mysterious faceless intruders taunt and terrorize them. 

Though directors Moreau and Palud use many standard horror conventions they never allow the story to seem too far-fetched. Clem and Lucas react in a realistic manner and my disbelief was never challenged. As Clem races through the woods with dark figures chasing her, we feel the adrenaline terror. The antagonists are kept in shadows most of the film and when they are finally revealed it is disconcerting: they’re only children. THEM is a scary journey that has moments of sheer anxiety, but it doesn’t offer any insight into the social issue it presents: the fact that the murderers were children who wanted to “play” seems tacked-on and of little value to the narrative. I believe the film would have been more effective if the killer’s identities were never revealed and we were left to consider the bleak meaninglessness of Clem and Lucas’s death. 

Final Grade: (B-)

ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY (William Dieterle, 1941, USA)

 

Jabez Stone has an itch that needs Scratched, and in a profane moment of weakness consigns himself to seven years good fortune…and an eternity of bad luck. A modern interpretation of Goethe’s Faust, Director William Dieterle has elevated a derivative and clichéd premise into a beautifully crafted film shot in glorious black and white by DP Joseph H. August, whose inspired cinematography is genius, utilizing great low-angle shots and chiaroscuro lighting to great effect. 

For example, when Jabez signs the contract, his face is hidden in deep shadow while Scratch’s visage lightens and becomes gleefully angelic. Contemplate the mansion scene, where demonic faces leer through patterned curtains, and their danse macabre is filmed in soft nightmarish focus. Or the gloating shadow that hovers over Daniel Webster, whispering trickery and cruel thoughts, promising him pure power and his heart’s desire. The Bernard Herrmann score pumps the narrative full of suspense and humor, and then echoes the soft heresy of the damned. Robert Wise’s editing is paced beautifully; the jury scene creates an edge-of-your-seat drama with medium shot to four quick edits where we end peering into the eyes of the doomed Judge, his final decision about to be revealed. 

Walter Huston as Scratch is a sight to behold, his Cheshire grin beguiling and seductive, but lurking beneath is a man of wealth and taste…whose could lay your soul to waste. Jabez’s innocence is slowly eroded from within by his lust for money, his good intentions leading him towards a spiritual conflagration. And only one man can save Jabez: the great orator Daniel Webster. He must deliver a closing argument so convincing that a jury of the damned must be sympathetic, evil men whose cruelty is legendary, corrupt souls devoid of the last vestiges of humanity. The final speech is over-saturated with patriotic fervor, and he taps into their regrets, asking them to free Jabez from the hellish contract. Finally, Scratch believes he has the last word...but the joke is on him. 

Final Grade: (B+)