KWAIDAN (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964, Japan)

 

An addendum of apparitions, a tetralogy of terror separating the physical world from the spiritual realm where frozen promises and dark desires create a nebulous boundary of self-destruction. Masaki Kobayashi’s ghost stories evoke an eerie sense of expressionist reality, utilizing unsettling colors and surreal imagery that sets the stage for four disparate morality plays.

The Black Hair: A tale of love divorced from social standing, when a samurai leaves his poor wife to pursue a better life only to become servant to a pampered Princess. He discovers that wealth is more than the sum of gold. Haunted by dreams of her simple beauty and purity, he returns to their dilapidated home to reconcile and discovers a dark reality clinging like spider webs…and strands of long black hair. 

The Woman of the Snow: Two men trapped in a raging snowstorm meet a frigid queen whose breath brings cold silence of eternity. Spared because of his innocent charm, one man must promise never to speak of his mystical savior. But some men eventually share all secrets with their wives, and doom descends like a blizzard upon sleeping children. 

Hoichi, the Earless: A blind musician plays his song of an ancient battle for a ghostly court, slowly fading into an incorporeal existence. He is spared by the Holy Text painted upon his body, concealing Hoichi from the desperate spirits…but two parts remain unprotected. 

In a Cup of Tea: An incomplete story of a samurai who drinks the spirit of another warrior and suffers the consequences of madness, like an artist finally subsumed by his work.  

Kobayashi stages each story like a play, focusing upon static sets painted with vibrancy or concealed in deranged shadows, faces painted with the thick Noh makeup. He creates an atmosphere of etherealness, where logic falls prey to myth and legend, a spooky transition like faces peering through the thin veil of the afterlife or the depths of a watery tomb. Kobayashi tells the epic battle of Dan-no-ura with a creative flourish, his camera panning over traditional paintings spliced with savage violence; a tale told with respect and dignity, but nonetheless tragic in its finality. He elevates the horror genre into the realm of high Art. 

Final Grade: (A)

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (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+)

ROSEMARY'S BABY (Roman Polanski, 1968, USA)

 

Rosemary births a malignant tumor: dominated by a Coven who have stolen her body for their own diabolical purpose and planted an inhuman seed. An absonant child’s lullaby underscores the opening shot across the rooftops of New York City until it settles upon Rosemary and Guy, as they decide to rent an apartment in the archaic Bramford. This omniscient perspective seems to peer down at the world like an absentee creator pondering its tiny subjects.

Director Roman Polanski is careful to feed us the ungodliness in slow bites and not gorge us with cliché: most of the film plays like a failing marriage, as Guy concentrates more on his career than his pregnant wife. In this cold emotional territory Rosemary becomes lost, isolated from friends and family by an egocentric husband and creepily adoring neighbors. Soon, she can’t differentiate dream from reality, questioning her own judgment, relying on the “kindness” of intrusive strangers. The drug-induced visual sequences are eerily surreal as Rosemary’s perceptions trip the light fantastic, dancing upon madness and hellishness as she is violently penetrated. This is a film of modern paranoia, reflecting our lovely perfect lives into a dark mirror, where the mundane is not quite what it seems, and fearing the monsters that lurk in the abyss of our primal dreams…or next door.

Polanski has made an unbelievable premise plausible and therein lays the true horror. A perverse ironic humor dominates the film. Rosemary’s very name harkens the divine mother except here, she expels virulent afterbirth. Or the exaggerated mannerism of her elderly neighbors, clownish enough to not be taken seriously and nosy enough to be dangerous. Witness the daemon’s conception during the Pope’s visit to New York and its expulsion on the 6th month of the year 1966 Anno Domini.

As Rosemary tries to escape her fate, the whole world seems involved in the conspiracy to take her baby, to seek its destruction, a cabal of Witches. Rosemary finally discovers the dreadful truth when the tiny beast, shrouded in a black bassinet, reveals its inhuman eyes. But a mother’s gentle touch rocks the crying daemon to sleep, while the Coven gleefully celebrates our world’s new successor.

Final Grade: (A)

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999, USA)

 

Three filmmakers in search of malignant history behind a local myth discover that the supernatural still walks the woods: and whatever walks there, walks alone. The visceral power behind the film lies in its faux documentary structure, shot on handheld cameras from a point-of-view perspective without music, minimal editing, or other conventional cinematic cues to remove the audience from the horror: it’s a slow descent into hellish nightmare without over-the-top graphics, relying on the pure adrenaline rush of hysteria.

The film’s advertising was crucial in fooling many viewers into believing this was an actual documentary, creating a detailed legend of the Blair Witch and its environment saturating the internet and airwaves, with seemingly genuine police reports and interviews to substantiate the claims. Wonderful! Even now, with the film an obvious gimmick, it still holds up very well and is still highly entertaining.

The film follows three film students on a mission to document the legend of the Blair Witch, as the camera captures them behind the scenes as opposed to acting before the camera. Heather, Joshua, and Michael eschew Hollywood stereotype and become easy (if sometimes annoying) characters in whom the audience can easily sympathize. As they become lost and aggressively erratic, their plight seems ridiculous because it is deadly, their demeanor changes and they begin to blame each other, possessed by true human emotion so lacking in most horror films. Strange symbols woven together with sticks and string hanging in the trees, eerie howling and children’s voices at night, and the ever-increasing tension that they’re walking in circles is impossibly creepy. When Joshua disappears, the suspense becomes chaotic and bloody teeth depict the seriousness of their predicament: this is no fucking joke. By showing little blood (the teeth wrapped in cloth), no rubbery monsters or misshapen makeup, or revealing the Witch itself are strokes of genius (and budget) that don’t sell the story short.

The ending is ripe with paranoia and thick with fear, as a dilapidated house looms from the darkness like some Cyclopean monolith (I can imagine the frightful oozing Cthulhu lurking in the basement), and a shock ending that keeps its secrets…and takes it to the grave.

Final Grade: (B+)

DUEL (Steven Spielberg, 1971, USA)

 

One Mann’s Valiant struggle against a mechanical murderer: a parable concerning diminishing manhood in this modern world of repressed anxiety and changing cultural mores. Dennis Weaver wonderfully portrays David Mann: a businessman whose identity is at stake, a man who feels tiny and insignificant in his tiny red Plymouth Valiant, his under-powered engine barely able to climb steep hills and get him safely to his destination.

Mann’s spiritual crossroads collides with a bullying truck driver, whose grimy and angry steel weapon dwarfs his own, a demon on wheels that pursues him through the hills and valleys pushing Mann to his very limits, until the final duel on the fiery ledge of the abyss where only one will survive. Director Steven Spielberg films in tight close-up, which reveals the sweaty anxiety of our hero while never showing the driver of the truck: he’s just a faceless monster in cowboy boots. This allows a suspenseful interlude at a diner where Mann must confront this unidentified killer and we are allowed access to his inner thoughts as he reasons his way towards hysteria. Spielberg gives us subtle clues and quick edits to lead us astray and build suspense, so when the truth is revealed, we reel in shock.

Soon the diesel stench of fear permeates the air and we become claustrophobic, enclosed in the coffin-like interior of Mann’s car, while the temperature gauge and speedometer both slowly crawl towards their deadly nadir. The sparse music adds an element of suspense and dread as wicked strings and grinding metal punctuate the drama. Richard Matheson’s slender script is devoid of excess, allowing Spielberg to rely on frisson of visual momentum.

David Mann finally regains his manhood, and his wild victory dance soon turns towards a languid glowing sunset, physically and emotionally spent from the ordeal. DUEL is one of Spielberg’s best films since it doesn't rely on the typical “happy ending” melodrama where the family reunites, and everything is OK. Here, on this dismal precipice, David Mann’s future remains uncertain.

Final Grade: (A)

GOJIRA (Ishiro Honda, 1954, Japan)

 

Caveat: This is the original uncut Japanese version. To fully appreciate this film, you must understand it on its own terms; you must put to rest the campy films spawned by this classic. GODZILLA is a parable of the atomic age, a monster awakened by science tainted with moral lassitude; a destructive and dire warning that mankind stalks the nightmare’s abyss. 

The giant Jurassic creature stirs from its millennial slumber because the United States is testing atomic bombs in the Pacific Ocean: this beast the rises from the murky depths and ravages Odo Island before advancing upon mainland Japan…and laying Tokyo to ruin. It is also a metaphor concerning science run amok: Dr. Serizawa fears that his volatile creation the Oxygen Destroyer, though it will kill Godzilla, will be used as a weapon to escalate the arms race and obliterate mankind, he laments “Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all. As a scientist-no, as a human being-I cannot allow that to happen”. 

Dr. Yamane (superbly portrayed by Takashi Shimura!) believes that this creature should be captured alive and studied, even at the risk of total catastrophe: knowledge is more important that human life. While the debate rages, so does Godzilla as millions die in the ensuing firestorm of Tokyo, eerily reminiscent of the Allied firebombing of Japan only a few years earlier. When one woman on a train compares this war with her survival at Nagasaki, the chilling catharsis is finally revealed. 

The film is deftly directed by Ishiro Honda and focuses upon the characters and their moral dilemmas…not a rubber-suited monster amid crushed dioramas. When Godzilla is filmed in medium and long shot, the towering silhouette is reminiscent of a rising mushroom cloud as the cities fiery tendrils rake the darkening sky. The creature’s nightmarish roar is like Munch’s scream, a discordant reverberation as nature fights back to reclaim the world. But science does not fail us: Dr. Serizawa burns his research and utilizes his desperate weapon to kill the Beast and makes the ultimate sacrifice for Japan…and the whole damned human race. He takes his secrets to his watery grave. But if these nuclear tests continue, Dr. Yamane asks, will another Godzilla awaken? Or something worse? 

Final Grade: (A+)

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (Georges Franju, 1960, France)

 

A father's omnipotence is challenged by a defiant daughter, her vacuous visage an effigy of his failure, two identities defined and transfigured by a murderous obsession: hers hidden behind a masquerade of plastic beauty, his eclipsed by a surgical mask. Director Georges Franju confounds genre expectations as this classic horror bromide wonderfully mutates into an Expressionist melodrama, ripe with patriarchal abuse and feminine fatale.

The opening scene is wickedly mysterious as a car races through the thick night, trees like skeletal hands silhouetted against the sky, and a shadowy figure slumped in the back seat. Maurice Jarre’s skewed carnival music overlaps the onrushing images painting a frightening emotional texture upon the narrative. A handsome woman grips the steering wheel with determination, glancing quickly towards her “sleeping” passenger. From a low angle, we see her stop the car and pull the figure from the backseat...and throw it in the river. This opening begins a gruesome and exciting experiment in tension and domestic turbulence, where a mad doctor commits murder, his Hippocratic Oath now hypocritical.

Dr. Genessier is responsible for the disfigurement of his lovely daughter Christiane whom he keeps like a bird in a cage; a slight thing of beauty, to be cared for and under his control. With the help of his assistant Louise, she kidnaps blue eyed women, and he cuts off their faces to transplant upon his daughter’s scarred visage. The doctor is both compassionate and unsympathetic, helping sick children one moment and applying his precision skills to the supple flesh of helpless victims the next. He is more concerned with proving his procedure a success than desiring its superficial outcome: to save his daughter’s life. Christiane is revolted when she discovers that innocents are being harmed and rebels against her father but is kept prisoner by her injury.

Franju films the first operation with surgical precision, showing the scalpel slice into the skin and the fleshy mask lifted off the victim, a stolen identity to be born again. The cinematography has a New Wave appeal as the camera travels around the house, a cinema verity excursion that depicts a life-like location and not a soundstage. The baying of hounds often breaks the tense silences, and Dr. Genessier is often visually linked with the dogs while his fragile daughter is equated with birds; even her thin curvaceous neck and delicate eyes evoke an avian nature. Christiane finally succeeds in a poetic gesture that frees her from imprisonment while her father becomes food of the dogs.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE SEVENTH VICTIM (Mark Robson, 1943)

 

A virgin Mary leaves Highcliffe and descends into the shadow world Greenwich Village, searching for her missing sister Jaqueline who has seemingly disappeared into the dark ether. Director Mark Robson and DP Nicholas Musuraca combine to create a cloying horror film of paranoia and claustrophobic darkness clinging like a funeral shroud to our ingenue. Skewed compositions and key-lighting fuse with the wonderful pacing and acting to make this one of the best in Producer Val Lewton’s filmography. 

The basic plot seems simple enough: Mary is kicked out of Highcliffe because her sister Jaqueline, who owns a successful cosmetic business in NYC, has failed to pay the tuition for months. Instead of staying on as staff for room and board, our naïve yet resourceful protagonist goes out on her own to find her big sister. But the search becomes convoluted as Jaqueline has sold her business to a colleague and remains at the periphery, as coworkers and witnesses refuse to cooperate in revealing her whereabouts. Turns out, she has joined a pacifistic Satanic Cult who have named themselves the Palladists and has betrayed them by exposing their existence to a renowned psychiatrist. Though the cult doesn’t believe in outright murder (at least as the first option), they try to convince Jaqueline to kill herself, even renting her a room with only a chair and a hangman’s noose. Mary discovers Jaqueline’s husband, a poet, an Italian Restaurant, and the beguiling Truth of nihilistic dread that Jaqueline breathes in like oxygen and exhales only as the stench of the sepulcher. Neither romantic adoration nor familial love can save Jaqueline from torment. 

There are some great set pieces. The Satanic Cult having a Victorian tea party that could be from Welles’ THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS…yet discussing their code about killing those who betray them. This is where the meaning behind the film’s title is revealed: six others have been assassinated before Jaqueline thus making her the next in line. There is also one lady who is missing an arm, yet it’s never discussed or explained in context which makes it extra creepy. And we also witness a homosexual subtext in one of the younger women who defends Jaqueline and votes against her death sentence. She becomes more boisterous in the later scene where her desire for the raven-haired beauty Jaqueline is thinly veiled. There is also a great shower sequence that must have inspired Hitchcock, as we are shown a POV from Mary as she is in her apartment showering, and the bathroom door clicks, and an ominous shadow materializes through the shower curtain. The camera remains just behind Mary inside of the cramped shower, and the silhouette looks like a demon with horns, yet it speaks softly in a woman’s voice warning Mary to go back to Highcliffe. Fucking great!! Another scene depicts Mary’s cohorts confronting the Satanic Cult and berating them, calling them a joke, and softly, one man stands up and approaches, Musuraca’ s low-key lighting making him seem sinister. He speaks, “What proof can you give me to prove that good is greater than evil?” and the answer given is anemic and uninspired. This statement remains unrefuted in the film. We also get another menacing chase through haloed streetlamps reminiscent of THE CAT PEOPLE, where Jaqueline runs not from a supernatural entity but a switchblade wielding hitman! 

The film and story are contemporaneous so imagine this film during the height of World War II, where victory for the Allies is uncertain. Tens of thousands of innocent deaths haunt the newsreels on a weekly basis, and it must have seemed as if evil were the greater power. But both are a matter of perspective, right? The Axis didn’t consider themselves evil and felt justified in their actions. In this context, one can consider Jaqueline’s decision to subjugate herself to her death impulse, to end her suffering, while another woman dying slowly of Tuberculosis chooses to have a last fling before succumbing to the shadow of death. And it’s here in the nexus between philosophies that the cosmetic becomes cosmic. 

Final Grade: (B+)

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (Tod Browning, 1935)

 

The bright light of reason and critical thinking skills diminish the darkness that threatens to consume this demon haunted world. Tod Browning perfects the vampire tropes he created four years earlier with his film DRACULA and utilizes another legendary DP in James Wong Howe who creates such a thick, ghostly atmosphere of dread and surreal disharmony with looming shadows, low-key lighting, creeping tendril of fog and allowing darkness, like a smothering living presence, which often fills the compositions with negative space. Though approximately 20 minutes is now lost (the violent backstory which explains the “vampires”), this quickens the pacing and propels the story to its nonsensical climax, and combined with the photography this creates the Form, the structure or skeleton of the film, that elevates this to classic status. Lionel Barrymore’s overwrought performance is just icing on the cake! 

The plot makes little sense but maybe the fun is just experiencing the film, living it scene by scene as it unravels. Browning thrills in revealing the trick behind the magic, but here it seems false and disappointing. So, let me get this straight: A wealthy guy named Sir Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is murdered shortly before his daughter’s marriage to her milquetoast fiancée Fedor (Henry Wadsworth). His best friend and Guardian of his daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allen), the Baron Otto von Zinden (Jean Hersholt), discovers Borotyn’s corpse slumped over his desk. The local Doctor declares the cause of death as vampires, due to the fact of two puncture wounds to the neck and the body being drained of blood. Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) is summoned to investigate and criticizes the local superstition and demands a reality check from the bumpkin doctor. 

Cut To: a year later and Irena and her fiancée have abandoned her father’s castle and live nearby at the Baron’s Estate. Soon, there are walking corpses, hovering bats, and things going bump in the night. Professor Zelan (Lionel Barrymore), A Vampire Expert, is summoned to protect Irena from being continually savaged by the undead predators and he, together with Inspector Neumann track these creatures to their castle lair for a final conflict between good and evil. But it’s all phony. The “vampires” are vaudeville actors hired by Neumann and Zelan, with Irena included in the deception. This elaborate scheme is to get the killer to confess his motive and specific details of the crime (for example, how he drained the blood) by traumatizing him when Borotyn (another actor who, by chance, looks exactly like the dead guy!) seems to materialize as a voracious vampire. A little mesmerism helps too. Which makes little sense in retrospect. Such as, Fedor isn’t part of the plot, yet he’s attacked and “bitten” by the undead and suffers ill effects. I suppose if he believes enough, he could bring about a hysterical reaction. But we get multiple scenes of a giant hovering bat turning into human form: how did these vaudeville actors fake this? This wasn’t staged at the castle; this happens many times at Zinden’s Estate. And why do the actors and Irena continue with the charade when no one else is around? To deceive the audience, of course. The abandoned castle is also slathered with cobwebs in one scene, we get a close-up of the organ woven with spiderwebs, but in short time all the detritus disappears. Also, the crime itself once reenacted isn’t believable: the perpetrator drains an entire corpse with a small drinking glass? And leaves not a drop behind as evidence? Huh? 

Bela Lugosi depicts Count Mora, the local legendary (yet imaginary) vampire and sports an obvious bullet-hole in his temple. The explanation seems to have been excised from the release print due to the nefarious Hays Code enforcement. He only has one line of dialogue which closes the film and spends his screen time glaring in close-up and looking menacing. Luna (Carroll Borland) is the other undead-in-arms (or fangs) and wanders in the fog as the alluring Meta modernist Goth Girl.  

Final Grade: (B-)

TOURIST TRAP (David Schmoeller, 1979)

 

Five young travelers surrender their freedom and identity to a masked god-like vigilante but not without a fight. Director David Schmoeller and DP Nicholas von Sternberg (yes, son of that von Sternberg!) create a classic horror film thick with atmosphere that wastes little time putting our five protagonists in harm's way, with little need for character building or explanation. Utilizing genre tropes, we already “know” this group of innocents that will soon be victimized by some maniac: the tension is in their torture and will to live, their fight for survival against a seemingly omnipotent abuser. Yet this leads me to an interesting analysis if the film. 

Though the film expects us to believe that sheer chance brought the victims to the abandoned roadside property after their car breaks down, I believe another explanation can be gleaned from the tale. Maybe it wasn’t fate or coincidence? Where these five summoned back by their creator by some supernatural or elemental power? In Salem’s Lot, the Marsten House is a beacon for evil, its very bedrock summoning the wicked and depraved to haunt its corridors. Here, the attacker has obvious supernatural abilities utilizing telekinesis to move and create objects and give them life. Where these five just mannequin creations who escaped out into the world without realizing what they actually were? Like the classic Twilight Zone episode, THE AFTER HOURS, where a mannequin assumes the identity of a human being for a short time but must return to the department store in order that its cohorts have their chance at life too, however briefly. But she forgets and becomes haunted by terror and angst, her plastic friends now oppressors stealing her life away. Is Slausen turning flesh and blood into plastic, stealing their lives away, or his he cruelly revealing to them their true identity? 

The film is ripe with tension and terror, as DP von Sternberg allows darkness to dominate compositions, devouring the victims one-by-one like a sentient and malignant enemy. The score by Pino Donaggio keeps things slightly askew, to expect the unexpected, and ratchets the fear factor up a few notches. Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors) is a truly inhuman antagonist (though he may be the only human in the story), because he takes pleasure from the sufferings of his creations. His grinning and weathered visage combined with a gentle voice are offset by his barbarity. He is a clockwork god of flesh and blood, chopped down by his own creation: a woman not formed from his rib, but from his workshop. The five escape back into the world, ageless plastic people in a plastic world. 

Final Grade: (B) 

WEST OF ZANZIBAR (Tod Browning, 1928)

 

Phroso the magician takes 18 years to reveal his infinite jest only to get burned by the final punchline! Another Tod Browning insanely ambitious plot may stretch credibility but not awe-inducing enjoyment, as Lon Chaney as the cuckolded magician leers and crawls towards certain doom, his only goal comeuppance for the man who “stole” his wife, even at the cost of an innocent life. Yet Chaney is also able to imbue Phroso (or Dead-Legs, as he is also called) with the seemingly human flaw of compassion beneath the veneer of cruelty. Since Chaney’s face isn’t hidden beneath a mask or makeup, he contorts his visage into deep emotions, from abject debasement to teary regret: it’s a remarkable performance! His only “schtick” the physicality of crawling about the floor, slithering like the Grinch, like the cold-blooded reptile he has made himself become. Browning’s sideshow trick is disclosing the magician’s secret of the disappearing cabinet, the one act that Phroso and his wife performed prior to the affair and one that he utilizes to quell the restless cannibals of the African continent. The portrayal of the indigenous Africans is typically racist of early cinema, represented as chanting natives, easily fooled by the white men who substitute kerosene for bourbon and whose slight-of-hand seems god-like. In one scene, Crane is summoned to Dead-Leg’s villa and when the path become swampy, the black men pick him up, so his shoes don’t get muddy. White entitlement in darkest Africa. 

The plot is insane: Phroso (Lon Chaney) and his wife/assistant Anna perform a disappearing act vaudeville routine. When Anna falls in love with Crane (Lionel Barrymore) and he tells Phroso they’re leaving together for Africa, a confrontation ensues where Phroso is pushed over a balcony and breaks his back, causing him to be paralyzed from the waist down. A year later, Phroso learns of Anna’s return and finds her dead in a church with her infant daughter now orphaned. It’s never explained how or why she dies: was it suicide? Disease? Murder? So Phroso takes the baby, and the story jumps eighteen years later, he’s now known as Dead-Legs in a squalid jungle villa and Maize (Mary Nolan), the adopted baby now an adult, is forced to prostitute herself in a grungy Zanzi-bar, so to speak. Ha! Thinking that Maize is Crane’s daughter, his almost two decades of revenge is a dish about to be served cold. Or so he thinks! 

Though the camera rarely moves, and Browning chooses to film in static compositions, the movement within the frame, from the physical violence and dancing to the facial contortions of Chaney, creates drama and suspense. When Chaney crawls across the floor towards the camera like a slithering beast, in focus the entire shot, it’s quite unsettling. Browning’s use of close-up is also wonderful as Mary Nolan’s transformation from blonde-haired ingenue to dirty whorish drunk is quite startling too. She and Chaney express much with their eyes and slight turn of the mouth, without having to exaggerate or stage-act. The peripheral characters aren’t fleshed-out enough and remain caricatures (as do the native people) yet the whiskey-infused Doc fits the algorithm for love interest and savior. The narrative twist probably doesn’t surprise many but Chaney sells it, his body language alone expressing his absolute defeat...at his own hands. That he saves Maize and Doc as his final act of contrition may save his soul, but his body still burns in hell!

Final Grade: (B+) 

[REC] (Jaume Balaguero & Paco Plaza, 2007, Spain)

 

Fear spreads like a deadly virus as a reporter and her cameraman become possessed by an ungodly terror: while the world sleeps, a government Quarantine leaves them little hope of survival. Ángela and Pablo are filming their assignment at a Barcelona fire station, going about the boring routine of interviews and introductions, hoping that something exciting will happen. It does. They race through the darkened streets, passengers with a group of veteran firemen who must rescue a person trapped in an apartment. The tension builds as what seems to be a simple emergency call soon degenerates into an orgy of violence and bloodshed, and the apartment becomes a steel cage, unattainable freedom seen through the ethereal curtain of plastic while commanding threats are shouted by military police. 

The film’s cinéma vérité style brings a frustrating realism to the events utilizing overlapping dialogue improvising chaos: the characters behave like people trapped, not actors spouting rigid dialogue. An obese bloody woman ravages the first victim as Hell breaks loose upon the world, and we see the new reality where nothing is believable unless it is seen through a camera’s digital iris, where the optic nerve connects to the hard drive. The narrative accelerates creating intense friction between characters and events but then slows down, letting us catch our breath before the tumultuous shadows cloud our perceptions once again. The cloying darkness becomes a living thing, embracing the victims in the primal fright as the human mind becomes reactionary, uncivilized, the repressed survival instinct taking control and instructing them to run, run…but where? 

Ángela and Pablo are the last survivors and reach the forgotten penthouse where they discover a mystery that reaches into the Vatican and the chasm of Catholic ideology itself. In the tremors of night vision, a demented creature stalks the gloom and their fate is sealed, the camera ever watchful as they disappear into that evil night. 

Final Grade: (B+)

RETURN TO OZ (Walter Murch, 1985, USA)

 

Dorothy’s emerald eyes mirror her aching soul, longing for the marvelous Land of Oz only to find herself condemned to the tortured screams and electric fear of a madhouse. RETURN TO OZ is not a sequel to the musical but an inspired homage to Baum’s classic series, combining elements of Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz to create a dark fable as Dorothy struggles to save the magical kingdom from Mombi and the Nome King.

Wickedly inventive, Director Walter Murch takes Dorothy on a tumultuous journey across the Deadly Desert and to the crumbling Emerald City, where she faces the strange Wheelers and is saved by Tik-Tok: Murch imbues nearly every scene with some interesting Oz detail and design from the original W.W. Denslow illustrations. The surreal and often stunning visuals and the bizarre characters could have lurched from the subconscious of Terry Gilliam! Dorothy Gale survives the tempest and discovers her old house, rotting and decrepit like the broken brick road, and is saddened to discover that her friends have been turned to stone…or kidnapped by the wicked King. As the narrative progresses darkly, she and her companion Billina the talking Hen adventure with Jack Pumpkinhead (Jack Skellington, anyone?), Tik-Tok, and Gump: Dorothy must use her wits and ingenuity and, with a little help from her friends, restore the rightful ruler of the Emerald City and ends up saving Princess Ozma.

The gentle innocence of Fairuza Balk as Dorothy works wonderfully, and Nicol Williamson as the Nome King (he is also Merlin from EXCALIBUR) is fiendishly enjoyable. Walter Murch is an Academy Award winning Editor, and it shows: the film’s pacing and cutting creates just the right amount of suspense while catapulting the plot towards its celebrative conclusion. The final parade is a who’s who of Oz lore and it’s heartbreaking to acknowledge that more sequels were never produced, that these characters shall always remain background ornaments for this decorative finale.

As Dorothy washes back upon the shores of consciousness, we see Mombi’s despicable doppelganger being carted away in a horse drawn prison, her leering toothy grin like splinters of bone. Dorothy is restored to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, but Princess Ozma has granted her willful passage to the wonderful realm…as long as Dorothy keeps her head.

Final Grade: (B+)

DONNIE DARKO (Richard Kelly, 2001, USA)

 

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
 The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
 Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
 The frumious Bandersnatch!"

-Lewis Carroll-Through the Looking Glass

Donnie falls through the looking glass darkly towards the end of the world, his perceptions distorted by psychotic fugues: does Frank the black hare lead him towards salvation…or self-destruction? Director Richard Kelly has crafted a remarkably transcendental narrative that questions the very philosophy of human existence and our place in time and shrouded the enigma in an innocuous high-school melodrama.

Donnie Darko’s mentor is Frank, a six-foot tall bunny rabbit that, like Jimmy Stewart in HARVEY, can only be seen by the protagonist. Unlike Stewart’s Pooka, this creature’s motives are not so well defined, and Donnie finds himself lost in a lonely world of disconnected relationships and angst, his Jabberwock guide with glass-black eyes, jaws that bite and claws that catch! A film that demands repeated viewings and remains lovingly vague, allowing each viewer to reflect and stand in uffish thought. Frank’s eerie beckoning call saves Donnie’s life and time begins to unwind; he is given the date of the apocalypse when the sky will open up and swallow reality. As the film unravels, Donnie’s behavior becomes more erratic…but he begins to discover himself, buried beneath the numbing medication and hypnotherapy, where the cure kills the self while saving the whole, leaving an empty shell of a boy. Donnie is living and breathing, making human connections and falling in love, his actions inspired by the phantom hare to make change, to sow a form of creative destruction.

Donnie’s fate is like the flight of a sparrow through the cellar doors of hell, ending with a snicker-snack that leads him galumphing back towards his chosen path, and he chortles with joy because he understands he will not die alone: he carries with him forever the good deeds and companions, the lives he has touched, and in a crescendo of foreknowledge realizes his sacrifice has saved his true love.

Final Grade: (A)

MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY (Freddie Francis, UK, 1969)

 

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly live a life of disintegrating values and dehumanizing games and become victims themselves of a sexual revolution. Freddie Francis’ bizarre brood of British banality is a delectable hybrid of Luis Bunuel domestic surrealism as written by Tennessee Williams.

The film begins with the unnamed protagonists (known only by their titular sobriquets) playing in a zoo and teasing the animals…and humans. These two teenagers act and speak like children, uttering annoying baby-talk with a riptide of sexual urgency. An unnerving implication of incest is revealed with finger-sucking aplomb while they search for a playmate. After discovering a drunken bum on a park bench, they bring him back home to Mumsy and Nanny to complete the Patriarchal pastiche, a nuclear family unit whose fuse is set to purposely implode. But Girly and her brother blackmail another man whose mannerisms are all to manly, seducing all three women and finally playing them one against the other, as sex becomes the greatest weapon.

Freddie Francis creates a claustrophobic fear in the shuttered mansion, where chilling details like boarded-up doors and locked rooms foreshadow events. Sex is juxtaposed with violence, as the shrill baby-talk barely conceals the murderous events. The fault of the story is that there is little sympathetic context, no character that becomes the focal point of audience attention. The events are orchestrated for effect; for physical detachment (like the head, for instance) and not emotional attachment. We just don’t care about anyone but applaud their comeuppance.

A black comedy of unique proportions, GIRLY upsets Christian values and redefines the family structure, as sex becomes the currency for survival, the man’s tool leveraging power and transforming the matriarchal structure where the daughter now usurps the throne.

Final Grade: (C)

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (Ti West, 2009, USA)

 

Samantha’s common sense is eclipsed by her desperation as she accepts a babysitting job that seems too good to be true. Writer/Director Ti West’s celebration of classic horror films splices together sub-genre tropes by splicing Satanism, haunted house, and slasher conventions into a cohesive and mordantly suspenseful narrative. He utilizes heavy film grain to paint the cinematography with a retroactive appeal, and the soundtrack’s eerie piano taps nervously upon the tingling spine. Echoes of Wendy Carlos’ synthesizer impregnate the trauma with devilish subtly.

The setup: Samantha is a poor college girl who accepts a babysitting job from a creepy older man, his skeletal presence a dominant black shadow that diminishes her sensibilities like the total eclipse that darkens the witching hour. Left alone in Hill House (or its equivalent), she is possessed by curiosity until assaulted by demonic forces looking to harbor the moon’s mystical powers.

Style: West sketches the narrative with charcoal characterizations, never revealing too much about Samantha’s past: it is enough that she is an innocuous student with a disparate roommate. This threshes the chaff and allows the mystery to grow. West uses classic tracking shots and languid camera movements as Samantha haunts the manor, ratcheting the spring-wound tension. The bulk of the film is in this cursory investigation, but we know that the gruesome payoff is coming. The first murder is not unexpected though we struggle to fit it into the chain of events. The suspense builds without release, and here West makes a structural error: he allows the audience to see behind a locked door, foreshadowing the heroine’s fate. When the delivery guy is introduced, his boots reveal the intricate plan. A plan that doesn’t make much sense but serves as only a process to get her alone in a scary house. The final sacrifice and bloody escape owe as much to DePalma’s CARRIE as early 70’s Hammer Films.

Conclusion: West’s attempt to recapture the halcyon days of the horror genre is enjoyable and refreshing, relying upon suspense instead of gore and misery to tell his tale. The final shot is ripe with a demonic fruit, as Satan’s heir awaits birth into the world…once again.

Final Grade: (B-)

DELIVERANCE (John Boorman, 1972, USA)

 

Mankind’s primal instincts lurk just below the dark mirrored surface of the mind, the animal only temporarily suppressed by Reason and the trappings of civilization. Four men confront Nature and must face the tumultuous rapids and violent confrontation with their bastard brothers; their modern tools only a crutch because they must rely on their Will to Live (and each other) to survive. As modernity clashes with anachronism, like Neanderthal witnessing the extinction of Cro-Magnon, DELIVERANCE is an allegory concerning the contempt that these disparate primates feel for one another and the violent outcome when intelligence is consumed by aggression, when Law and Order breaks down and the only rule is survival. Director John Boorman deftly adapts James Dickey’s novel about three city men and their guide who wish to spend a weekend canoeing on the Cahulawassee River before it is dammed, men who wish to connect with Nature peacefully on their terms, but end up battling the wild deep water, violent natives, and their own insecurities.

Vilmos Zsigmond's lush cinematography projects the illusion of a journey into the wild where civilization is but a dream and anarchy reigns. Boorman creates iconic imagery such as the dueling banjos between Floyd and the craven-eyed boy, and the squealing sexual assault as Bobby wallows in the mud, dominated and unmanned. The anxious feeling of prey being stalked with raptor-like precision is ambiguous; we only experience it from the protagonist’s perspective, and Floyd’s death is never fully explained though it’s interesting that he is the lone dissenter in the democratic vote to bury the dead rapist. Another allusion to this battle between the present and past could be seen in the tools themselves: the wooden canoe breaks apart while the man-made aluminum canoe holds together and takes them safely home. It's also depicted in the weapon that saves their lives: the modern firearm has been replaced by the Stone Age bow and arrow. 

This precarious balance is maintained on the rocky slope, as the bluish sunset casts it ominous shadow over Ed, and he murders the man who is stalking them. In a nerve-wracking moment, Ed’s hands shake and he cannot bring himself to kill, flashback to another scene when he lost the nerve to kill a doe, lacking the essential component to play Lewis' game. But does he kill an innocent man? This is a film concerning decisions and their life-long consequences. The survivors never find the answer and are left to face their nightmares, fearing that the past will resurface like a bloated hand breaking the tepid surface of a lake, making one final accusation.

Final Grade: (A)

LOVELY MOLLY (Eduardo Sanchez, 2012, USA)

 

Director Eduardo Sanchez has lovingly crafted an oblique horror film by utilizing genre conventions only to subvert them with subtle trickery. Sanchez does this by telling the story from almost entirely one perspective (Molly’s) and rejects any overt supernatural representation, although he expects the audience to make the supernatural a de facto proposition. But here in Molly’s world everything is not as it seems.

The subtext can be extracted through the character interactions and brief exposition: Molly and her sister were child victims of incest and domestic violence. At one point, Molly tells the Sheriff that she has no memories of police calls to the house when she was a child. Her suppressed trauma has led to drug addiction and dissociative behavior. This is a horror story but not a supernatural one: it is a true horror story of childhood rape and its destructive effects into adulthood.

Molly moves back into the house where the entire trauma which included the death (murder, actually) of her father. This is not uncommon for victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse to heal by confronting their past both physically and emotionally. Molly has a supportive husband (another genre cliché subverted) who is aware of her addiction but not so much the reasons: he seems to understand her struggle with the needle but fails to recognize that this is just the tip of the trauma. This is a fault in many who care about those with substance abuse addictions because the drug is only a temporary “cure”; one needs to get under the skin and find out the cause. Molly is soon subsumed by her past and becomes host to a destructive personality much like child victims becoming their perpetrator: that is, children who are sexually abused often abuse others. Molly focuses her aggression upon those who represent a dominant Patriarchy: husband and pastor. She stalks the neighbor woman in secret who has a young daughter that is an avatar of her own self as a young girl, so she kidnaps and buries her, as she wants to bury the past. This is also read as revenge against her husband who has sought solace in her arms (and more intimate regions). Heavy stuff for a modest indie “horror” flick indeed.

The “supernatural” horror is almost entirely subjective from Molly’s perspective. The first opening of the door and the alarm going off could have been an accident without ghostly cause. From there, the voices and sounds are her imagination or projection: very real to her (to support her nightmare logic) but invisible and unheard by everyone else. If this isn't real, then she would have to face her own mental breakdown or loss of sanity. Patients with mental health injuries conjure their own fantasies to explain their world rather than accepting the fact that they are ill. The childhood bedroom is where she hears herself (or sister) crying from past events; either after a sexual assault or after her father’s murder (by her sister). It’s important to understand that the artifact of childhood abuse can lead to disassociate behaviors, of developing alternate realities and perspectives in order to survive these awful events. No haunting required. 

The significant objective occurrence is the video from the mall where she is pushed against the wall. The video is interesting because we watch the video from the audience perspective, but we are first brought into extreme close-up with Molly. We never see if what is being shown is what is being seen by the manager. Molly sees herself being raped from behind (and it looks very much like an invisible force pushes her against the wall) but we are given conflicting dialogue from her boss. He is seeing something much differently, possibly Molly abusing herself. The scene is very powerful as she reacts with violent sarcasm, unable to believe he doesn't see what really happened. The Director confounds typical spectatorship tropes when the scene is reflected upon and deconstructed.

Her drug use is also a symptom of her abuse, a way of self-medication. The metaphor is clear: the needle is hidden inside of her childhood teddy bear. The supernatural appearances get stronger after she begins shooting heroine once again…as does her violence against men. In one edge-of-our-seat scene, Molly screams that her father is on the way up the stairs and her husband Tim tries to calm her down. Molly instead runs in the bathroom with her camcorder. This scene played out in a similar fashion earlier when Tim was away, and the “Entity” forced its way into the bathroom to take her. Here, as she hides, and we see from her POV (from camcorder) Tim actually replaces the creature in her vision: he’s only a disjointed blur that forms into a human shape before becoming her husband. It’s very clear: in her mind, Tim is the creature too. Pastor Bobby also becomes a target of her infections once he shows interest in her sexually. Molly brings this about by seducing him or, more precisely, of awakening that which was dormant. She kills both men the same way: first by biting and then stabbing the screwdriver through the back of the skull. And the screwdriver represents more than just her sister’s murder weapon.

The horse motif is also interesting and very creepy. I see it as the fact that her father treated the horses on the farm with more humanity than he treated the family. The animals were an object of love and affection for him for which the girls were jealous. In other words, they (the girls) were less than animals: hence, the disemboweling of the deer. This is a lashing-out of pure rage and also of fulfilling the animalistic role assigned by her father. If the horses where his true love, she could see him as monster half horse/half man. The photo album where the horse heads are glued over her father’s visage conforms to this belief. 

This is a refreshingly complex film that transcends the horror genre where the conventions often lead to a bloody climax that is empty of subtext. We are left to imagine that Molly and her sister were raped often as children, their mother was unable to stop the abuse, and her sister actually murdered him. Molly was sent to a mental hospital where she spent the remainder of her childhood. The biting most likely mimics the fact that the abuse was or included oral sex upon her father, and the screwdriver a phallic symbol. The fact that this can be read as having no supernatural element, that this in reality could (and often does) happen is the grimmest horror of all. 

Final Grade: (B+)

GET OUT (Jordan Peele, 2017, USA)

 

Chris Washington is a photographer who captures the world in black and white; little does he know he will soon become victimized by the same dichotomy. First time Director Jordan Peele develops a masterful narrative that works both as a suspenseful horror/science fiction film and as allegory concerning contemporary racism and entitlement.

The story premise is rather quite simple: Chris and Rose are going to spend the weekend with her family, but she has not yet divulged the fact to aforementioned family that they are an interracial couple. Though Chris, a black man, shows some slight hesitation Rose assures him that her white parents are not judgmental or prejudiced. It’s within this situation that Director/Writer Jordan Peele begins to dissect the habeas corpus of seemingly superficial prejudice that may disguise the true cancerous intentions and beliefs. Peele successfully accomplishes this by slowly constructing the relationships between Chris and Rose’s family through disquieting though not overtly intentional prejudice. Her family seems like affluent Liberals who have good intentions but come off a bit heavy-handed in their desire to show that they’re not bigoted. It’s a nice critique from Chris’ perspective because his reactions are rather mundane and unsurprising as if he’s been through this type of social interaction before. Yet it should be embarrassing from a Liberal perspective as it holds a mirror up to the culture of Entitlement. But it soon becomes obvious that their motives are specifically odious and far from inclusive.

The first two acts brilliantly build the tension through disarming and uncomfortable dialogue and possibly misunderstood observation. Chris begins to believe that something sinister is happening, but his fears are put to bed by Rose, who seems to say all of the right things to allay his concerns. Though there are a few contrivances, credibility in Chris’s actions seem rational. Peele has written a solid script that on one hand defies scientific plausibility yet creates realistic characters that act uniformly intelligently within its fictional boundaries. Then it’s in the final act that blood is shed by all involved.

So, what is the film about? Firstly, this is a nerve-wracking thriller that is a joy to watch. All of the actors are excellent, but Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington truly steals the film as the empathetic protagonist. He has to balance sensitivity and bitterness and not portray himself as prejudiced himself by jumping to conclusions or losing patience with the family too quickly. Alison Williams as Rose also has the task of being the perfect girlfriend but not "too perfect" thus calling attention to her true intentions. And Lil Rel Howery is excellent as the best friend that we all wish we had! Secondly, the film is about relationships and social convention. What is truly unsettling is that Peele writes a very natural and loving relationship between two people and agonizingly subverts it. That is part of the real horror. Can we ever trust the one we love? Roses' nuclear and extended family are also ripe with smug condescension and kindly superiority, treating Chris like an outsider but expecting him to not be bright enough to realize it. Lastly, the film is about slavery. It’s about subsummation of an entire race and culture hidden neatly behind a Liberal façade. The Armitage family doesn’t just own their victims’ physicality; they literally own their minds too.

GET OUT balances uncomfortable humor and violent thrills and gives us an ending that is neither benign nor resigned. We are left pondering Chris’ fate and hope that the conspiracy isn’t able to rearrange the crime scene before a Just verdict is allowed. Fortunately, Chris finds the strength to resist and fight back and doesn’t need a well-intentioned white intervention to save him: he has transitioned from victim to survivor.

Final Grade: (A)

THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (Bernard McEveety, 1971, USA)

 

A small town is reduced to an abattoir where stinking corpses are preserved with dry ice, and black magic eclipses the rising Son. Veteran TV director Bernard McEveety helms this supernatural tale of paranoia and dread set amid Our Town, creating a viable tension that superimposes Satanism with the corrupting counterculture and its deleterious effects upon the children of a lost generation. This poisoned seed is planted in Anytown, USA and blossoms into a village of the damned.

The bedeviling plot is a conventional exercise in satanic tropes, where a secret coven of witches and warlocks conspire towards immortality. Silver chalices, Pagan symbols, black cloaks and red robes set amid some secret antechamber in an abandoned house make for a visually repetitive setting. What makes the film interesting is Strother Martin’s diabolically gleeful performance as the leader of this brazen coven, and the use of benign children’s toys as murder weapons.

The opening sequence is a close-up of a toy tank screaming its war cry with childlike fervor, clicking and clacking tiny gears and plastic treads (a really cool toy, too!). But we hear screams off screen and the crunching of steel and bone, as a real tank crushes a car with the people trapped helplessly inside. This cuts back and forth, from the toy to the large tank as giant tracks grind metal and tear flesh. Finally, a child comes and picks up the toy leaving behind a bloody massacre and mysterious tank tracks like an exclamation point at the end of a life sentence. And it’s into this maelstrom that the protagonists are eventually driven by supernatural forces, emanating not from above but from the hellish depths of the abyss.

Small town America is plagued by the murder of its adult townsfolk and the disappearance of the children. LQ Jones, the versatile stuntman and character actor whose name nobody knows but face everyone remembers, plays the county sheriff trying to solve this gruesome mystery. The film eschews a score to heighten tension and instead allows the silences between actions to carry dead weight, or the soft patter of raindrops whispering in the chill night air to create discomfort and unease. And it works. A surreal dream sequence isn’t the most frightening aspect of the story, but the bizarre orange monkey, a doll whose yellow face and ears are a ghastly death mask cradled in the arms of a child. Like a baby cuckoo, firmly nested in the care of its victim whom it shall soon consume.

The Brotherhood performs its secret ceremony and meets their fate at the end of fiery swords, only to be reborn into the world to carry out Satan’s majestic request.

Final Grade: (C+)

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Tomas Alfredson, 2008, Sweden)

 

Oskar’s troubled life is like Rubik’s cube, its many permutations seemingly unsolvable until he befriends Eli who bleeds tender mercy…and violent hunger. Director Tomas Alfredson crafts a gentle coming of age story tinged with archaic bloodletting, as Oskar and Eli slowly form a mutual bond of trust and love, both outcasts who haunt the periphery of reality’s penumbra.

Their relationship builds slowly while we experience a few gruesome murders: young men captured and bled like cattle; the thick rush of life force collected into a plastic container. A rip current of angst and mischievous horror lurk just below the surface tension, as we discover our dark eyed heroine stalking a darkened underpass, feeding upon unwary strangers and spreading her infection. Eli is in the care of a mysterious father figure: though never explained, there seems to be some incestuous affair as he murders to quench her cursed hunger. Oskar is being bullied at school, and it’s Eli whose reserved passion gives him strength to finally take a stand, to fight back and no longer become victimized.

But this tangled web of horror begins to unravel as the neighbors discover Eli’s freakish secret, and together Oskar and Eli must escape to a new life…or undeath. This is a beautifully shot film that relies on characterization and pacing without need to resort to CGI or flash-cut editing: the few images of horror are quite shocking, and the true fear is in the soft animal sound of Eli’s growling thirst and her struggle to master this supernatural instinct.

The mystery deepens in the depths of a swimming pool: suspended in his watery grave and lungs slowly filling with certain death, a ripple of salvation lifts him back into life. Oskar has finally found his niche and carries his love in a heart shaped box to an unknown destination…towards a better (a certainly bloodier) future.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979, USA)

 

George Lutz is tormented by an unruly spirit that haunts the corridors of his new home and the convolutions of his mind. Director Stuart Rosenberg adapts the infamous novel (supposedly based on a true story) concerning the Lutz family’s paranormal experiences in their new home and their flight 28 days later. But the real horror is not the metaphysical but the metaphor: the illusion of tranquility and the Church’s impotence in recognizing the deadly sin of domestic violence.

This classic film relies on suspense and ambiguity as it builds towards a supernatural tempest, beginning and ending on a dark and stormy night. The first scenes depict the brutal murders of the previous owners, the son possessed by the demon of mental illness, his shotgun echoing nature’s fury. A year later, a nervous Realtor shows the house to the newly married George and Kathy Lutz. Rosenberg crosscuts the present with the violent past, showing an empty room one moment and a bloody tangle of hair the next, as if the past seeps through time like congealed blood, its stain never completely gone.

The film almost transcends the constraints of genre tropes but falls victim to its own devices: the dénouement becomes a sticky morass of supernatural gibberish, offering clichéd pronouncements of ancient Indian burial grounds and gates of Hell. But the film works in the first two acts, laying the groundwork for a seething patriarchal conflict as George inherits Kathy’s ready-made family and the baggage that comes along with it. The mystical events are minimized and can be explained by the prosaic: Father Delaney is divorced from his family and suffers a physiological breakdown, hearing voices and hysterical blindness the outward manifestation of his guilt; the swarm of flies even in winter is not necessarily the result of the Lord of Flies; toilets overflowing with dirty water is not uncommon with antiquated plumbing; phones often have bad connections; and children do have imaginary friends. It’s when people begin talking in tongues about the gates of Hell and George discovers the red room with its pit of gore that the yarn unravels.

The film can be read as the slow descent from the honeymoon of domestic bliss into violence as George becomes more and more aggressive. He controls Kathy and the children by abusing them emotionally, then apologizing and asking for forgiveness: a common tactic with abusers that is like reeling-in and letting-out the line, so the hook sinks in deeper. It’s not long before his anger becomes a weapon, his dark eyes betraying the lurking demon within. Kathy reaches out for help to the Church but remains unable to make a good connection, as the Father is blind to her needs. And the police only remain bystanders, never intervening in the familial tumult: they are only there to clean up the mess afterwards.

Lalo Schifrin’s score is the real star of this movie, evoking Bernard Herrmann’s raging Psycho strings, which adds to the thickly charged atmosphere. Silence also allows the buzzing of insects or the creaking bones of an old house to dominate a scene for great effect. Lalo Schifrin was nominated for an Academy Award for his work, and this remains one of the great horror film soundtracks. 

Final Grade: (B)

NIGHT OF THE COMET (Thom Eberhardt, 1984, USA)

 

Here at the end of the world, girls just want to have fun and kick some ass! Just because the human race has been reduced to red dust doesn’t mean fashion has to suffer. Director Thom Eberhardt’s apocalyptical valley girl motif is an admixture of Boris Sagal’s THE OMEGA MAN combined with George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD and gives birth to a pleasing mutation of spliced genres.

The earth passes through a comet’s tail, its elliptical orbit resulting in a nexus once every 65 million years or so: in other words, the last time was the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction Event. This fact joyfully passes above the heads of most except a small band of scientists, comprising a think-tank concentrated deep in the California desert. As the human race parties like it’s 1999, the irradiated particles reduce every living creature to a fine red powder. (The dinosaurs were not disintegrated because we have a fossil record, but this conundrum is never explored). The story revolves around two sisters who survived the event, their violently fashionable adventures, and the rise of a new world order, all with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Eberhardt focuses upon Regina and her cheerleader sister Samantha, but instead of relying on shallow caricature for a few cheap laughs allows them to develop a human complexion beneath their Max Factor foundation. The typical genre exercise is to project women as victims, objects that serve a facile proposition, mannequins that rarely ascend towards empowerment. Here, Regina and Sam may bicker and argue about clothes and boyfriends, but they share a deep familial bond and become acutely aware of the world’s end…and suffer the emotional burden. And they can take care of themselves.

 The girls learn two distinct lessons from the apocalypse: first, never bring shoes to a gun fight and second, never cross against the light. 

Final Grade: (B+)

THE CAR (Elliot Silverstein, 1977, USA)

 

"Oh great brothers of the night who rideth upon the hot winds of hell, who dwelleth in the Devil's lair; move and appear." –Anton Levay from The Satanic Bible

The film begins with a quote from Anton Levay which sets the tone for the demonic debacle to come. Then Leonard Rosenman’s score sends chills up the spine as he interpolates the Gregorian chant Dies Irae into a brooding electronic nightmare as a cloud of dust rises and crawls like a venomous snake in the distance. (Note: Stanley Kubrick must have watched this film as the score is evocative of his use of music in THE SHINING a few years later). As the head of the cloud races closer towards the camera we see a black car spewing dust from its rear wheels on this dirt road. It’s immediately obvious in the juxtaposition of music and image that this car is Evil, born from the desert mountains and now speeding towards its prey. Silverstein’s excellent use of cross-cutting builds suspense as the car closes in upon two teenagers biking down a mountain highway. As the young man and woman bike through an ominous tunnel the car closes in upon its victims and sheds first blood. It’s a wonderfully designed opening as Silverstein utilizes long shots to tight close-ups as the camera speeds along with the chase between metal and flesh. We also get some nice POV shots shot through a red filter from inside the car, but we never see the driver…or if there even is a driver!

The entire film is competently directed and structured by Silverstein. Though the car’s origin or purpose is never explained we can assume it’s demonic from the opening quote from Anton Levay. The film zooms along because very little time is wasted on explanation; Silverstein gives us a few slower moments of character building that relate tangentially to the plot. James Brolin’s private interactions with his girlfriend are brilliant in their inanity as they relate like real people and not avatars of real people.  

The film suffers in its depiction of women. Though made in the late 70s the small-town patriarchal attitudes haven’t evolved since World War II…. or even the Civil War. Its only progressive woman, the girlfriend of the protagonist, is given a small measure of independence especially when she confronts the hellish car with expletives. Though these sticks and stones infuriate the venomous vehicle she stands safely on hallowed ground: however, she is soon mangled by steel and (Fire)stones! The film can be read as oppressive towards women’s rights; after all, look what happens to the one woman who is tougher than the men. The other female characters are the girlfriend of another sheriff whose loving presence helped him quite drinking (but these murders bring his addiction on full swing…or swig) and another as a victim of domestic violence who returns to the abuse. Importantly, the abusive husband is given a heroic characterization. The women are depicted as good people but submissive and the finale brings this into sharper focus.

The Evil Car (Evihicle ?) is forced off a cliff as the grand finale, the men banding together to celebrate their patriarchal victory. But it’s a pyric victory as the women are destroyed or relegated to background noise. As the Demonic spirit is released from the burning wreckage and rises angrily towards the sky (reminiscent of the Grasshopper entity in Hammer’s QUATERMASS & THE PIT!) we feel that Evil has been held at bay and “Good” won the day. But this would be a superficial and false realization. The subtle reality is that Evil has won merely by awakening the masochistic temperament of the abusive men who must band together…at the expense of the women. It seems the intent of the Demon was not to murder indiscriminately but to reinforce outdated social dogma. The destruction of the Demon is only spurious as the battle was already lost.

Final Grade: (B) 

SHAUN OF THE DEAD (Edgar Wright, 2004, UK)

 

Shaun is already a member of the walking dead, victim of intellectual cannibalism whose hopeless sum is the lowest common denominator: a young man whose potential is salted like peanuts and drowned in Guinness. He is stuck in the jaundice of adolescence, nearing middle age and still a failure; he sleepwalks through his dreary workday, the world around him like a thick haze of smoke clouding his aspirations. When his girlfriend Liz breaks up with him, his epiphany begins: “Get Liz back, visit Mum, straighten out life” …at least it’s a start.

Director Edgar Wright has penned a fantastic script that is both parody and allegory: homage to Romero’s classic triptych and toying with zombie genre convention while also showing us our dull life of mind-numbing routine where the difference between the living and the walking dead is a very fine and decomposing line. Wright never explains the cause of Zed-Day though flippant newscasts almost reveal the secret, (though we know it wasn’t a rage virus) while utilizing musical cues from DAWN OF THE DEAD. The film is ripe with details that please us cinephiles while introducing soulful and humorous characters that are very much like people we know…or hope to know. Simon Pegg as Shaun adds a wonderful depth of emotional realism, his face a template for every slacker, while his best friend Ed is the slob and the guy we all grew up with. But Shaun must realize that he himself is to blame for his dilemma while a zombie plague ravages the world. But his best-laid plans lead his friends and family towards certain damnation; this time, his impotence is a death sentence. Trapped in the Winchester, a ubiquitous destination for all losers, they fight amongst themselves and must fend off the flesh-eating creatures. In one touching scene, Shaun makes amends with his mother before making a fatal decision, and it’s these powerfully traumatic moments that support the narrative foundation, to make us care and connect with the characters, and hope for their salvation. With a subtle encomium towards Michael Cimino, Shaun and Liz must face their last moments together, a bandanna wrapped tightly around his head while contemplating suicide, evoking the spirit of Nick in a sweaty Saigon warehouse. Even the Deus Ex Machina in the form of a red button is funny, as they rise towards a possible future together…alive.

Final Grade: (A)