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+)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (Oren Peli, 2007, USA)

 

Micah struggles for possession of his girlfriend, his ego exacerbated by the camera’s lens, while Katie is slowly consumed by the presence of two fiends: one flesh & blood and the other inhuman. Director Oren Peli uses the standard horror conventions to create a tableau of domestic terrorism, as a young woman is emotionally battered by her boyfriend and stalked by a demonic presence. Filmed in the first person without credits or soundtrack, introduced with a brief acknowledgement of the survivor’s family, Peli seeks to transform a fictional narrative into reality by not severing the audience’s suspension of disbelief. 

The film is entertaining though it fails to sustain its burden by breaking its own unwritten vow: what could have been a chilling ending is reduced to trite shock tactics and needless explanation. The sheer terror is hidden in the minor occurrences, knockings and footsteps at night, an eerie shadow or soft whisper, or the flicking of lights. We are experiencing the film in real time and are sure that these things cannot be naturally explained, so we expect the bogeyman around every corner. Even a back story concerning Katie’s childhood births the frisson necessary to keep our attention, our imagination racing like a wild pulse, but it’s when Peli must objectively show us the evidence that the illusion becomes a thin ghostly vapor. I think there is a legitimate subtext in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY regarding domestic violence, the all-to-real demon of power and control. Micah sees Katie as an object to own and place in his house; he isn’t as concerned with her welfare as he is in guarding his possession. He is threatened by another force for control of Katie who is torn between the two, a woman whose choice has been exorcized and like any battered woman can’t run away because the abuser will only follow. Micah mugs for the camera, his Cheshire cat persona dominating while Katie is relegated to a subjective pronoun. He lies and breaks his promises then blames her (this is called gaslighting) when violence is their domestic equation’s sum total. 

Their relationship disintegrates within the three weeks of activity, but it seems to be on that long road to nowhere, reflected in the scene with the psychic when Micah says “We’re engaged to be engaged”: obviously a reference to his unwillingness to commit. Katie begs him to contact the Demonologist or turn off the camera but only HE knows what’s best for her…and it leads to murder. A modicum of horror homage adds spice to this delectable stew with references to both POLTERGEIST and PSYCHO (with MONTY PYTHON’S HOLY GRAIL thrown in for good measure). The fear is in the things not seen or understood, and Peli begins to show us the monster lurking under the bed…but we’ve all seen that creature feature before. 

Final Grade: (C)

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (Mel Brooks, 1974, USA)

 

Mel Brooks creates a post-modern pitch-perfect parody of the gothic horror genre as young Dr. Frankenstein (pronounced Frönkensteen!) is called home to Transylvania to settle his mad grandfather’s estate. Brooks and his DP Gerald Hirschfield film in traditional black and white to produce an eerie unsettling and dislocated era: it begins in a modern college classroom then travels to the fog enshrouded moors of the late 19th century; a castle perched ominously above an archaic village. 

Brooks' use of the original set pieces from FRANKENSTEIN adds a humorous surrealism to the narrative. He also plays with conventions such as hidden passageways, secret diaries, and the ubiquitous anger of mother nature whose electric temper commands the monster to life. Rioting torch-bearing townsfolk, music to calm the savage beast, Igor the hunchbacked assistant and the beautiful Inga are superficial allusions to an antiquated genre. Comedy is horror run amok, and to combine the two genres successfully is a masterstroke of genius: here, the beautiful cinematography captures the haunting atmosphere while the deadpan acting imbues the characters with believability, coalescing into a rather well written and mysterious narrative. 

Puns and witticisms aside, the basic premise is well thought out and explored: Frederick regrets his family’s brutal past and wishes to accomplish his work through legitimate research. He fears to regress into the madness of his forefathers. Typical of Mel Brooks, the film often breaks the fourth wall and involves the audience in the charade with subtle winks and nods, inciting laughter at the absurdity of genre stereotypes. Young Dr. Frankenstein completes his uncle’s Promethean work but must sacrifice part of his intellect to save his creation. But what does he get in return? I suppose Inga is in for a BIG surprise! 

Final Grade: (A)