In short: Criminally Insane (1975)

Ah, Ethel (Priscilla Alden)! Put into an asylum because of her violent outbursts, regularly treated with electro shocks and still not healed. And her doctor is giving her back into the care of her grandmother (Jane Lambert) anyway. He'll probably regret it, if only for a very short moment.

He's a great doctor, he is, and so he recommends to Gramma that she should decrease heavily overweight Ethel's calorie intake, which is obviously the right thing to do with someone with the delusion that others want to starve her.

One prevented meal comes to the other and a kitchen knife finds Granny's back. Finally Ethel can eat whenever she wants and how much she wants. Or so she thinks.

In truth, Ethel will have a lot of troublesome people to deal with before she can eat peacefully. There are delivery boys, psychiatrists, sisters who work as prostitutes and evil boyfriends to take care of. Ethel will also have to learn that keeping the dead bodies of one's victims locked away in one's home is a stinky business.

Criminally Insane was made in Oakland by the prolific low-low-budget filmmaker Nick Millard (also known as Nick Phillips). As the others of his films I've seen, it's technically crude (but obviously trying very hard to make the best of its budget), raw and rather fascinating.

What sounds like a mean series of jokes about overweight people is given a sense of humanity and reality by Priscilla Alden's spot-on performance. Alden is as good as any semi-professional actress I've ever seen, mostly working through presence and a line delivery that might have been much too affectless for a different role, but fits perfectly here.

The film mostly plays out as an 70s psycho movie reduced to its bare essentials, brought back to an ugly semi-reality of provincial life with casual racism and violence, but also given some gloriously funny moments that work as added reality checks. The scene in which Ethel finally wants to do something about her corpse problem by burying her victims in the garden, only to be first annoyed by a nosy neighbour peeking over the fence and then completely prevented from realizing her plan by the simple fact that the soil is bad for digging alone is worth the price of admission. Ethel is the perfect antidote to the sexy, suave serial killer of today.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,nick millard,horror,comedy,priscilla alden,in short

A Girl Fighter (1972)

The Kim family dominates a province in ancient China through the force of their supreme martial arts and lots and lots of money.

The worst of the family is Kim junior, Kim ten-jiao. When he gets it into his head to rape the female head of household of the Lio family and her husband, the rest of the family of course still tries to protect her. Alas, he kills them all, including the woman.

The local magistrate, especially after he has been pressured by higher-ups in the bureaucratic hierarchy, would very much like to arrest the younger Kim for this deed, but the people in the area are so afraid he just can't find anyone willing and able to do the arresting. Until Sima Mu-rong (Polly Kuan) appears, that is. The young woman is just burning to help bring Kim to justice. The magistrate is afraid of her girl cooties at first, but a short demonstration of her martial arts convinces him that she is the right woman for the job. It should always be this easy.

Later, we will re-learn the lesson that people in wuxias are blind in any case and have difficulty to parse someone looking like Polly Kuan (with make-up and all) as a woman as soon as she dons male clothing, so Polly could just have spared herself the trouble and pretended to be a boy from the beginning. Ah, the glories of cross-dressing!

The arrest itself isn't too difficult. Sima outclasses Kim quite easily, but the real trouble begins afterwards. Sima and a handful of guards have to transport Kim the long way to court. Kim senior is not going to stop at anything, even the theft of the magistrate's official seal, to get his son back.

Help for our heroine comes in the form of the slaughtered Lio family's nephew (Tien Peng). At first, he plans to kill the prisoner himself, but quickly adjusts his goals when he realizes the efforts the elder Kim makes to put a stop to Sima.

A Girl Fighter is another Taiwanese wuxia made by people from the surroundings of King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn and A Touch of Zen. Director Yeung Sai-Hing was the production manager of those films, and the first half of A Girl Fighter makes at times quite clear why he didn't work as a director too often. The film starts out rather lackluster, hitting all the right genre beats without making much use of them. Especially the fight sequences are a minor disappointment, seemingly filmed to look as fake as humanly possible with some dreadful wire work that lets the fighters resemble nothing so much as bumble bees, making this part of the film a swell example of the deadly bumble bee fu style so feared in ancient China.

Surprisingly, the second half of the film very suddenly picks up the slack by transforming itself into a variation of a Howard Hawks western with a neat siege sequence and a rather exciting trek through trapped enemy territory. The fights start to look a lot more convincing too and the whole tone of the film shifts into a much tenser and darker direction, until it all culminates in the sort of grand finale Cheng Cheh usually traded in - although seemingly edited with a butter knife.

Even before the action of the film gets watchable, the exciting phenomenon known as Polly (Shan) Kuan, as well as the less exciting, yet dependable phenomenon that is Tien Peng, should be enough to keep one watching. What I find so wonderful about her is the determination she brought to everything she did. No matter if it was a "normal" wuxia like this one, a nice and friendly kung fu comedy or the sheer insanity of many of her later works, Polly brought the same amount of energy to every movie she acted in. She was game for just about anything, and automatically elevated each of her movies into the "entertaining" category through sheer presence, even in those cases when she was the only good thing about her films.

 

Technorati-Tags: taiwanese movies,polly kuan,tien peng,wuxia,reviews

In short: The Dark Side of the Moon (1990)

The Dark Side of the Moon is a difficult movie to write about. Its plot and sense are elusive, yet it is still strangely compelling.

So, there's this spaceship trundling in the direction of the moon to do something of no import. More or less suddenly, the ship breaks down and it will be only a question of time until the life-support systems will stop working.

Fortunately - and somewhat surprisingly since this type of spacecraft isn't in use anymore - a space shuttle flies by. The crew of our original ship hopes to be able to salvage what they need from the strange vessel to get their own craft running. Turns out the (rather big on the inside) space shuttle is flying without any fuel. It is also deserted but for a dead guy with an inexplicable chest wound hanging from a ceiling.

Obviously, our heroes plunder only a part of what they need from the shuttle and drag the corpse onto their own ship.

A little later, the corpse rises, all yellow-eyed and satanic and presses the head of the only woman around into his sucking chest wound, leading to a possessed woman and later on the inevitable seduction sequence.

There follows a little research on the ship computer (consisting of a typical screen keyboard combination and an android woman whose only function on board is to sit in a chair, stare and talk monotonously - the best use of room in a spacecraft possible, I'm sure) that leads to the fantastic discovery that the shuttle was lost while crashing in the Bermuda Triangle and somehow teleported back into space. Also, the Bermuda Triangle somehow represents the number "666". Okay.

Then there's more demonic possession stuff, the least credible medical officer in SF history, said seduction scene with !surprise victim, a paranoia angle that doesn't make any sense, more going back between the shuttle and the ship to get some kind of device they probably should have bothered to get a little earlier, a missile platform and a big explosion. The End.

Honestly, I couldn't make heads or tails out of this one. Although an American film, Dark Side is a shoddy, weird piece of crap made out of cardboard sets, affectless acting, mumbling, and an inscrutable script that places it clearly in the Italian WTF style.

It feels a little like a precursor of the widely underestimated Event Horizon, just bad, cheap and nonsensical and with little bits of Alien rip-offs grafted onto the story for no particular reason other than both films being SF horror films and the screenwriters unable to understand that scenes need to have a function in a film. No, really, they do.

But I must admit the film has something. Is it the hero's mullet? The fact that not one of the viewer's questions is answered?

Or is it just that my taste has degraded so far that I have a hard time not enjoying the deeply stupid and inept?

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,in short,horror,sf

The Collingswood Story (2002)

Rebecca Miles (Stephanie Dees) has moved from Virginia to Collingswood in New Jersey to get away from some unsavory family business, leaving her boyfriend John (Johnny Burton) behind. John isn't too sure he isn't part of the reason Rebecca has left, but since he is still very much in love with her and she doesn't seem to want to break up with him, they are trying for a long distance relationship.

To make the distance hurt a little less, John gives Rebecca a webcam for her birthday (which is around Halloween). At first she plays around with it a little, calling a bunch of web cam freaks John has recommended to her, until she lands on the site of the webcam psychic Vera Madeline (Vera Madeline). Their reading is a little strange, what with the psychic guessing Rebecca's name although the young woman uses a pseudonym, but not strange enough for Rebecca to get too worked up about. When John calls the psychic, she talks quite a different game. She says she is compelled to warn Rebecca from something, and would even be willing to hold a seance without a fee. Then she tells John a story about Collingswood, something about a cult that has been secretly working and killing in Collingswood for centuries, using Halloween shakers as a symbol in their rituals.

When John tells Rebecca the story, she is creeped out but skeptical and not at all willing to talk to Vera again. John is unsure about the whole thing, so he does a little internet research. What he finds does nothing to relax him. The house where Rebecca now lives was the place of a murder suicide just a few years ago. A judge first drowned his children and then killed himself, right in what is now the guest bath room.

Nightmares don't do much to alleviate the pair's anxieties, but Rebecca is far too stubborn to let herself lose control over her life because of an internet psychic and a few rumors. She also does not seem too sure about John's motives in the strange little affair, as much as he isn't too sure about hers.

Both aren't able to leave things well enough alone though, and the viewer can't help but think that their insistence to get to the bottom of the weird secret they have stumbled upon will lead to something dreadful.

This seems to become something like the week of the bastard children of Blair Witch Project. The Collingswood Story's writer/director/editor Michael Costanza is getting creative with the elements of the POV style's mother by telling its story not through digital shaky cam but through (mostly static, and therefore cheap) a handful of webcam set-ups and a few video emails that are used to keep things moving a little - especially towards the end. It is quite a clever conceit, but one that could have failed miserably with a weak script or bad acting.

Fortunately the script if anything but weak. Costanza hits the campfire tale/urban myth feel that is ideal for the sub-genre beautifully, gives his characters a believable psychology that is actually entwined with the horror he subjects them to and shows an excellent sense of when it is useful to let the viewers themselves fill in the blanks and when not.

The acting is equally convincing. Both (the insanely cute) Dees and Burton are making the kind of natural impression that's essential to make the mock realism of POV horror work, while Vera Madeline does a little more scenery chewing than the sub-genre would usually recommend, but really makes that work for her role.

This being a horror film and all, it is of course not unimportant to mention that the film really creeped me out, enough so that I have right now turned on the lights in my living room and am throwing nervous glances backwards from time to time. Now, I am much more impressionable when it comes to ghost stories and urban myth than gore fests or torture porn, so other viewers' mileage will probably vary a bit, but if a film can make me dread the way to the toilet, it does something right.

The Collingswood Story is (relatively) contemporary independant, low budget horror filmmaking exactly like I like it, turning its budgetary deficits into virtues through sheer cleverness and energy. The kind of film that gives me hope for independent horror beyond boring, ambitionless gorefests.

Technorati-Tags: american movies,horror,michael costanza,stephanie dees,reviews

Three Films Make A Post's Daughter

Deadly Outlaw Rekka (2002): Takashi Miike in his Wild Director-Man of Japan role. The film merrily hops between ultra-violence, subdued Yakuza drama and weird humor, adds a wonderful scenery-chewing performance by Riki Takeuchi and a near magical bazooka. Somehow Miike gets a rather brilliantly fun film out of it that does not feel even remotely as random as it sounds. Extra bonus points for the ecstasy-inducing use of the Flower Travellin' Band's "Satori" as the rhythmic backbone of many scenes.

 

Ekusute (2007): Sion Sono directs a strange mix of Japanese horror parody, the grotesque and a story about child abuse with this tale of cursed hair extensions which fuck up the problematic life of a young Japanese woman (Chiaki Kuriyama) and her battered niece even more. Thanks to the director's incredible hand for tonal shifts, inventive grotesqueness and some rather great acting by Kuriyama, Miku Sato as the abused child and the inevitable Ren Osugi at his most exalted as the misogynist hair fetishist from hell, the film avoids every pitfall its ideas could set it up for.

 

Demonoid - Messenger of Evil (1981): One would think that a Mexican-American co-production of a film about the Devil's hand doing classical crawling hand mischief and possessing people while pining for Samantha Eggar couldn't be anything but great (fun at least). One would be oh so very wrong. Apart from a handful of moments of hand-wrestling hilarity this is just dreadfully boring. It drags, it is charmlessly incompetent, has a stocky mid-70s TV movie soundtrack - what a waste!

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,mexican movies,japanese movies,horror,yakuza,comedy,sion sono,chiaki kuriyama,ren osugi,riki takeuchi,in short,takashi miike

King Kong Escapes (1967)

A small but evil Asian nation has hired the mad scientist Doctor Who (Eisei Amamoto) - finally driven mad through the syphilis all that making out with centuries younger women has brought upon him, I suppose - to recover a gigantic deposit of Element X. The problem is that the radioactive isotope is buried under quite a bit of ice and stone. Obviously, what the Doctor needs is to build himself a Mechanikong, a giant robot copy of everyone's favorite giant ape King Kong who is known for his proficiency in tunnel digging. At first, Mechanikong's digging is mighty impressive to Who and Madame Piranha (Mie Hama) the cute international spy the country of evil has dispatched to supervise the rather unstable scientist's work, but the robot isn't able to withstand the radiation Element X gives off.

Madame Piranha is mightily annoyed, but gives Who another chance for his plan B to come into action.

Coincidentally, a UN research submarine (with a neat flying hovercraft dinghy) commanded by Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason), an old acquaintance of Who's as well as a giant ape expert who has never seen a giant ape, has landed on the island where the original King Kong lives. The pervy ape takes a shine to the ship's doctor Susan (Linda Miller, her only other acting credit bizarrely being the Evangelical anti-Communist propaganda nightmare If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do), one supposes on account of her being the traditional blonde, and fights a dinosaur and a sea serpent for her, only to find her slink away to the UN with his heart in tow.

Thanks to the following press conference Doctor Who now knows where and when to find the original digger he needs for his nefarious digging plans.

The big ape is easy to catch, but the Doctor's plan to control Kong through electronically induced hypnosis backfires when Element X's radiation (and I'm sure this comes as a total surprise to everyone) wreaks havoc on the hypno gadget. Kong is easily caught again, but how to control him? Who's solution is as logical as it is obvious: kidnap the blonde woman!

What follows is a nice digression into light 60s spy movie shenanigans (including ineffective seduction attempts and torture like Dick Cheney loves it) with a climactic ape versus robot battle on the Tokyo Tower.

King Kong Escapes is one of the few films Toho got out of their licensing of King Kong from RKO for $200,000. Why they didn't use the giant lug much more extensively is quite beyond me. It is a mystery, as is the reason why this film is mostly based on an American children's cartoon show I have never seen - but this way I can at least blame the American co-producers for most of the flaws of the film.

And flaws there are aplenty. The film's problems start with some of the more dreadful monster suits in Eiji Tsuburaya's career. Our monstrous hero Kong just looks like a ratty carpet with an expressive but goofy face, while Mechanikong has a certain whiff of aluminum foil about it.

The film's pacing is also troubling with too many stretches following Rhodes, Miller and an underused Akira Takarada, which is to say long stretches full of insanely boring people, interlaced with at times underwhelming monster fights but also sudden spikes of goofy coolness.

Having said that, I also have to say that I at times enjoyed myself immensely while watching the film. Basically, every scene with Kong or the mangaesque villains of the piece is fine, even fun. It's all very childish (yes, even when it comes to the torture and seduction), but also quite loveable when you approach it with a little childlike openness of mind and just smile at the goofiness.

It's all well and good to lament that everyone involved (well, except for Miller and Reason) was able to do so much more, but it's also the easy way out for the grown-up confronted with the sort of film he would have just loved as a child.

 

Technorati-Tags: japanese movies,reviews,kaiju,giant monsters,ishiro honda,mie hama,eisei amamoto

Daily Twitter Terror

• 02:24 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 02:30 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 02:03 People were .. tinyurl.com/nuhlqy
• 12:26 New blog post: Music Monday: Topical Edition: Technorati-Tags: music,music monday,minutemen tinyurl.com/ldbv55

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Music Monday: Topical Edition

Technorati-Tags: music,music monday,minutemen

Daily Twitter Terror

• 02:30 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 02:03 People were probably hoping for final proof that MJ was.. tinyurl.com/m9gze7
• 10:28 New blog post: In short: Session 9 (2001): Gordon Fleming (Peter Mullan), the owner of a small com.. tinyurl.com/mdn93g
• 17:34 Dear spammer, "A Christmas present for you"? Really?
• 21:46 RT @mattfraction "All they can do is fire you or shoot you-- and that happens to everybody." Budd Boetticher

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

In short: Session 9 (2001)

Gordon Fleming (Peter Mullan), the owner of a small company specialized in asbestos removal, has seen better times. On the surface, his life his fine - his marriage is happy, he has just become a father for the first time, he is good at his job. But a closer look reveals that he is barely holding it together. He and his his wife and are stressed out from their new baby and Gordon's company is close to folding.

The last chance to prevent the latter lies with a removal job in the decrepit Danvers State Hospital. Gordon is only able secure the contract by accepting an insane time frame for the work and doing what his foreman Phil (David Caruso) estimates to take three weeks in one.

As if this wouldn't be enough to ensure tension between the men, there's also bad blood between Phil and Hank (Josh Lucas). Both men hate each other's guts since Hank hooked up with Phil's now ex-girlfriend. The other workers - Mike, the intellectual of the group (co-author Stephen Gevedon) and Gordon's teenage mulleted nephew Jeff (Brendan Sexton III) - try to keep out of it, but it doesn't exactly make for a friendly working environment.

Then there is the Danvers Asylum itself, a place that seems to have a mind of its own and whose atmosphere seems to influence the men's mood towards the worst. On the first day, the building leads Mike to the recordings of the therapy sessions of Mary, a young girl suffering from multiple personality disorder. Somehow, Mary's sessions hold the key to the things the men are experiencing.

Session 9 is the film Brad Anderson (a man with a strange career trajectory if I ever have seen one) made before his Academy Award winning The Machinist and is the stronger of the two films for me. There are obvious parallels in the way both films are constructed, with the movie version of an untrustworthy narrator and a resulting narrative twist that works, but Session 9 does it just a little bit better than the later movie by keeping its narrative a little more diffuse and trusting its viewers to do much of the decoding work herself.

But what makes Session 9 so great is something more. It is the way really every part of the film comes together just right. An excellent acting ensemble, an intelligent script, the absolutely disturbing location of Danvers State Hospital, direction and (also done by Anderson) editing as well as brilliant sound design slowly build a lingering atmosphere of dread until everything culminates in a short and silent burst of violence.

Session 9 is in fact one of my favorite horror films of the last ten years, built with just the right measures of psychology, creepiness and sadness, eschewing the usual technique of sending its viewers home with simple explanations or a joke, preferring to keep you off-balance even after the final scene is over.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,in short,horror,brad anderson

Daily Twitter Terror

• 02:03 People were probably hoping for final proof that MJ was a Grey wearing a body suit.
• 02:22 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:24 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:24 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/qkrnk2
• 10:26 New blog post: Los Sin Nombre (1999): aka The Nameless Claudia's (Emma Vilarasau) little daughter .. tinyurl.com/rcz29z
• 18:28 Listening to a Rick Danko & Levon Helm live bootleg from 1983. Wow. Will possibly tear up.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Los Sin Nombre (1999)

aka The Nameless

Claudia's (Emma Vilarasau) little daughter Angela has been kidnapped by a person or persons unknown. The girl must have been gone for quite some time already when the film starts, so the responsible police inspector Massera (Karra Elejalde) does not seem to hold out much hope for her survival. The parents' worst fears are confirmed when the police find the mutilated corpse of a child at about Angela's age. It's difficult to identify her precisely, though, because her killers have made some efforts to destroy anything that would make her easily identifiable by crushing the child's teeth and dissolving her body in acid. Still, what is left of the girl has the same shortened leg as Angela did, and there is a bracelet that belongs to her found close by, so Massera is reasonably sure that it is in fact the poor child he was looking for in the first place.

Five years later, Claudia still hasn't recovered from the loss. Her husband has left her long since and she is mostly keeping a sane face by popping copious amounts of pills. Around the fifth anniversary of her daughter's when her depression is at its worst, Claudia gets a strange phone call - a girl pretending to be Angela tells her that she is in fact still alive, held all this time by the people who kidnapped her. Angela wants Claudia to come and get her. She is at an old beach sanatorium her mother should remember well.

Claudia does in fact remember the sanatorium as a place close to a beach she and her husband took Angela to quite often. This, and her desperate wish for her daughter to be alive, is enough to make her believe the voice on the phone.

When Claudia arrives at the deserted sanatorium, she finds nothing except for a few mattresses, and books and brochures about pain. This is enough for her to go to Massera for help.

The inspector has just quit his job at the police after a prolonged leave of absence caused by (I suppose) the depressive meltdown he had when his wife and newborn child died in childbed. Massera is in his own way just as broken as Claudia is and agrees to look into the old case again out of a mixture of guilt and identification with the woman's grief.

He starts his investigation doing what he should have done five years ago and looks for other children besides Angela with a slight deformity of the leg who could have been the dead child the police found. He quickly finds a fitting candidate, and from there, it is not a long way until he uncovers the tracks of the Nameless, a hidden cult set on "synthesizing pure evil" through pain and suffering.

Jaume Balaguero is a hit and miss director for me, with a body of work that reaches from terribly flawed films like Darkness to minor masterpieces like [Rec], yet even his bad films are at least interesting and don't fail through incompetence or cowardice but because their director is willing to experiment a little. And by nature, experiments do sometimes turn out wrong.

Los Sin Nombre is definitely one of his good films. Or it is one of his good films for me, I should say. It is hardly easy to stay objective when talking about a film for which one is something like the ideal viewer. It's really quite surprising how many of my personal fictional obsessions are in the film.

Let's see, the film is based on a book by one of my favorite horror authors, Liverpool's Ramsey Campbell. It's about an occult conspiracy reaching back into World War II, busy with a goal that does make a certain amount of sense in light of real occult theories (and foreshadows elements of Martyrs), yet also have a wonderful pulp energy. It is rather slow and ponderous and has as many scenes of people doing research as a Call of Cthulhu scenario. It is a bleak and pessimistic film, with damaged middle-aged protagonists dragging themselves forward towards some inevitable and terrible truth. So it is pretty much the kind of horror film (or occult conspiracy thriller) I myself would want to make. Under these circumstances, Balaguero would have to have done something really stupid to not end up with a film I find completely brilliant.

It helps of course that the film is excellently directed, with a sparseness and a - surprising when you look at the parts of the story that concern torture and dead children - reluctance to get all that explicit some people will probably find boring or off-putting, but Los Sin Nombre really needs its deliberate rhythm to be effective. You probably could tell a story like this as a fast action adventure, but you would lose most of the film's emotional resonance if you did and at best end up at the sentimental tosh level of Spielberg.

Balaguero's use of colour is also quite interesting. The picture is filmed in the cold greys and browns too many films like to use, and I'd usually be the first to protest about them as being monochrome, bleak and rather boring, but in this case browns and greys are exactly the colours the story needs to mirror the internal life of its protagonists; the bleakness is what defines the film.

Said protagonists are the kind of persons you usually won't find in horror films. They are middle-aged, unglamorous and beaten by life and so excellently played by their actors that any doubt I could have had about the construction of the plot just dissolved.

So, for once, I don't have anything negative to say about a film. I just hope it doesn't take too long until another director uses his telepathic powers to make exactly the film I would like to see.

 

Technorati-Tags: spanish movies,horror,jaume balaguero,ramsey campbell,emma vilarasau,karra elejalde,reviews

Daily Twitter Terror

• 04:24 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:24 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 02:17 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/l3lsef
• 11:36 Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is obviously not to be missed tinyurl.com/mtw22f
• 12:25 New blog post: In short: Lurkers (1988): Cathy (Dana Nardelli) has a fucked-up childhood in a brow.. tinyurl.com/nnznkr
• 12:27 Yeah, if you never say a single good word about anything, your review style looks a wee bit negative. #noshitsherlock

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

In short: Lurkers (1988)

Cathy (Dana Nardelli) has a fucked-up childhood in a brownstone somewhere in New York. When she is not enduring nightly visits by a bunch of ugly ghost or is abused by her mother with an iron, she's followed by a weird child (Lauren Ruane) who uses mind control hoodoo to bring people to kill her. Sometimes, an equally weird woman (Eva Baumann) gets into a staring contest with the ghost child and saves Cathy from the dangers of skipping rope strangulation. The poor girl's problems end with her mother murdering her father and then trying to kill her. Somehow, the nasty woman ends up with the knife in her chest herself.

Fifteen years later things seem to have turned around for the now grown-up Cathy (Christine Moore). She works as an enthusiastic if not successful cellist and is eloped to the photographer Don (Gary Warner). It all looks perfect, so why have the bad dreams about her childhood started again? And what exactly are the strange things Don is doing behind Cathy's back about? Is he "just" sleeping around as is his duty as a sleazebag photographer or is something more sinister going on?

These questions will actually be answered when Don drags Cathy to a party his business partner Monica (Marina Taylor) is giving in a building that turns out to be the same brownstone our heroine grew up in.

You can read a lot about how bad the horror films with which exploitation and sex film specialist Roberta Findlay ended her directing career are supposed to be, but Lurkers at least isn't half bad. The film does have some of the hallmarks of on the cheap filmmaking - especially a sloppy script in need of tightening up, a terrible synthie soundtrack and rather broad acting, but the film's crudeness of affect actually works to its advantage.

I found some scenes like Cathy's strange short odyssey through an artificial nightmare New York of Westside Story remnants and sledgehammer killers effectively disturbing in a way the memory of old childhood fears are disturbing. You know it's all bullshit, yet you still have a small, discomforting feeling somewhere in your stomach. While much of it consists of ideas cobbled together from more accomplished movies (Sergio Martino's All The Colours Of The Dark for example), Lurkers uses these ideas with workable blunt force by giving them a frisson of urban paranoia. The film's themes aren't all that well thought through, but they are potent nonetheless, and they possibly feel a little more dangerous because they aren't calculated too well.

What also bears mention is that Roberta Findlay was a hell of a photographer and editor, obviously hampered by low budgets and bad production conditions, yet still doing the best with the things she had, arriving at a nearly documentary feel, a naturalistic look on New York that can suddenly dissolve into a backyard version of surrealism.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,in short,horror,roberta findlay

Daily Twitter Terror

• 04:24 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 02:17 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 05:22 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/mpqsq7
• 12:33 New blog post: The Wicksboro Incident (2003): Two documentary filmers (Dan Brinkle, Kyle Nudo) are.. tinyurl.com/kkxamu
• 18:09 RT @timpratt I'm launching Bone Shop: A donation supported serialized novella. First chapter goes up June 29th! bit.ly/LKhyY
• 18:15 At a guess, next year in Germany bit.ly/kZ2Iv
• 21:11 Shiny Lovecraft-inspired artwork I missed the first time around www.duchomor.com/blanka/HPL/index.htm

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

The Wicksboro Incident (2003)

Two documentary filmers (Dan Brinkle, Kyle Nudo) are making a documentary about the rather preposterous sounding theories of Lloyd (Bobby Harwell). The old man claims that he was working on a secret government project hidden away in the small Texan town of Wicksboro. As he only realized later, the device they were building would have allowed the easy identification of the alien visitors/invaders who have secretly been visiting Earth for decades. At first, the aliens seem to have been peaceful enough, willing to share knowledge with the US government for a mere promise of secrecy, but after a while the relationship with the strangers deteriorated and a secret war broke out, with large parts of government and business infiltrated and controlled by the aliens, and both sides of the war willing to do anything to keep their secrets hidden from the public.

One day, while Lloyd was working in his project's underground laboratory, some sort of attack took place, leaving the whole of Wicksboro empty, its population (and Lloyd's colleagues) gone as if they had never been there at all.

The scientist went into hiding, collecting evidence of the sudden disappearance or death of anyone related to Wicksboro in any way, until he was the only one left to tell the tale.

After decades, he finally dares to talk about the things he knows, and goes on a road trip with the documentarists. The two don't really believe the strange old coot with the drinking problem and the electrical gadget with which he claims to be able to tell alien from human, and they aren't getting any less skeptic when they realize that Wicksboro doesn't exist on any public record, or when they drive to the place where the town should be according to Lloyd's tales but only find desert there.

Still, the old man convinces them to search for his underground lab (with the help of a divining rod, no less). And yes, it does in fact exist. It just wasn't the best idea to look for the lab in the first place. Now, the shadowy conspiracy has reason enough to hunt the unprepared men through Texas.

The Wicksboro Incident is another one of the belated children of Blair Witch Project, and while it isn't as effective as its conceptual model, it is still a nice movie with a handful of tense scenes among the mere competent ones. Mixing the found footage sub-genre with alien conspiracy myths seems so obvious that I'm rather surprised that it took so long until someone used the idea.

I had some problems with the night time scenes of the movie being too dark even for something filmed without artificial lights on digital(?) video (no infrared here), but the squinting at blurred images is part of the peculiar charms of films like this. For me, these technical flaws which aren't really flaws in the rulebook director Richard Lowry follows here have always heightened my love for films like Wicksboro Incident, making the events in them more unreal and somewhat eerie by their supposed hyper-realism; which is an effect you can only achieve in cinema, I believe.

I was positively surprised by the acting. It's usually (the mighty BW excepted) the weakest point in affairs like this, but Bobby Harwell is so perfect in his role that it is very easy to ignore the less spirited yet decent performances his colleagues give.

Now would of course be the time for the usual "oh, but why don't they stop filming" tirade. Alas, I know why the characters don't stop filming. A few people might be surprised to hear that, but: there wouldn't be much of a film if they did!

I honestly think if you are able to suspend your disbelief regarding the existence of vampires, zombies, ghosts and aliens, you shouldn't have too much trouble to extend the same courtesy in the direction of people with videocameras who record what they see, but oh well.

Here's the thing about The Wicksboro Incident. It's an archetypal, very low-budget POV horror film that's a fine way to spend seventy minutes of your life on - if you are able to accept the Law of POV horror ("Thou shalt film!") and have a certain affinity for alien conspiracy theories. I am happily guilty of both charges.

Technorati-Tags: american movies,horror,sf,richard lowry,reviews

Daily Twitter Terror

• 02:17 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 05:22 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:30 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/n8e7b7
• 10:21 New blog post: Son of Three Films Make A Post: Ong bak 2 (2008): Despite a troubled production his.. tinyurl.com/lnogrn
• 11:10 Reviewing conventions I hate: employment of the royal -oops editorial - "we". Just as bad is the reviewer talking about himself in 2nd
• 11:12 person singular as "the reviewer". It's supposed to suggest objectivity, but sounds like someone with a personality disorder.
• 11:36 The new Tweetree ads couldn't be placed more intrusive, could they?
• 18:12 The Jeans Mainstream #coolbandsmadeuncool
• 18:23 The Ducks #uncoolbandsmadecool
• 20:06 Tales of Tales ("The Path") are now doing Oscar Wilde's Salome as a game. I am excited. tinyurl.com/ml98qg
• 20:29 They're called Tale of Tales, btw #braindeadagain

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Son of Three Films Make A Post

Ong bak 2 (2008): Despite a troubled production history and a certain stubborn resistance of the film against involving its viewers emotionally, Tony Jaa's & Panna Rittikrai's nominal sequel to the film that brought Thai martial arts cinema into the view of a Western mainstream audience delivers an infectious flow of truly awesome action sequences. People fearful of abrupt, open endings which ask the viewer to pray for a film's protagonist should probably beware, though. But if you like your martial arts films as physical experiences, this is not to be missed.

 

Rider of Revenge (1971): Quite a few people - among them house favorite Polly (Shan) Kuan as morally upright swordswoman and always dependable Tien Peng - are after the rather fearful murderer Ting after he has been broken out of jail. Some of them want his hidden loot to pay for their hundreds of henchmen, some of them to finance disaster relief (no, really), while Polly of course only seeks justice and Tien Peng is on a ma-related mission Bollywood would approve of. While all of this probably won't rock your world, fine acting and solid fighting still make for an entertaining Taiwanese wuxia.

 

Zinda Laash (1967): A Pakistani version of Horror of Dracula, with some striking black and white photography that reminds me of expressionist silent movies. Interestingly, the film is set in contemporary Pakistan, quite unlike most of its Western brethren's fixation on the Victorian era. It even culminates in a car chase. Only the needle-dropped soundtrack lets the film down sometimes: a jazz version of "La Cucaracha" does not for an ominous mood make. The musical numbers are fine, though.

 

Technorati-Tags: taiwanese movies,thai movies,pakistani movies,horror,martial arts,wuxia,polly kuan,tien peng,tony jaa,panna rittikrai,in short

Daily Twitter Terror

• 05:22 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:30 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 03:16 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/l8zkad
• 10:41 Jess Franco explained bit.ly/LVFBr
• 12:09 Jack White & Jimmy Page: "Yes, we are boring old farts" bit.ly/QkFLj
• 13:24 New blog post: Bloody Parrot (1981): Well, let's explain this "bloody parrot" business f.. tinyurl.com/mjbh8d
• 22:28 RT @zoecello: "cash made by @amandapalmer in one month on Twitter = $19,000; cash made by @amandapalmer from 30,000 record sales = $0"

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Bloody Parrot (1981)

Well, let's explain this "bloody parrot" business first, shall we? You see, when the demon king has his birthday (presumably on Friday the 13th), his chief minion demons gift him their blood. The blood takes on the form of a (bloody) parrot and grants everyone it meets three wishes.

Back here on earth, the Prince of Dian somehow loses the treasure he was supposed to send as tribute to the emperor, and his servants have to start a hasty search. While traipsing through the woods at night, one patrol is suddenly bathed in blinding red light. It's that bloody parrot!

After laser parrot has randomly killed a few people, the bad-tempered bird grants the leader of the Prince's men, Guo Fan (Kwan Fung) his three wishes. Guo Fan obviously wishes the treasure back, but hasn't read The Monkey's Paw and does therefore look quite surprised when he not only gets the treasure back, but also finds that his son has been killed. The next logical step is to wish his son back, of course. His wife, gifted with a greater amount of intelligence than her husband, can't hinder him from making this ill-advised second wish, and has to kill hubby before their son can climb out of his urn when he refuses to use his third wish to undo the potential zombie apocalypse. Logically, she then commits suicide. At the same moment as Guo Fan dies, the treasure suddenly disappears again. In the following weeks, hordes of martial artists descend upon the area, all in search of the parrot and/or the treasure, yet also very eager to just kill each other for no good reason.

Also on the lookout for the bloody bird is Tie Hen the Merciless (Lau Wing), who seems to be some sort of cop. Being a cop (and merciless) doesn't safe him from parrot attacks, though, and very soon he is also quite dead, dying in the arms of the swordsman Ye Ting Feng (Jason Pai Piao) who might or might not be an old acquaintance and promises him to take his dead body back to the border. Which Ye Ting Feng probably plans on doing right after he has dragged Tie Hen (in his coffin, don't fret) through half of China in search of parrot and treasure. The film has finally settled on a protagonist! So, granted certain death exemptions by the divine right of the protag, the swordsman starts his investigation following a nonsensical clue into the Parrot Brothel - fortunately not a place where men pay to sleep with parrots. From there, his new prostitute love Xue Nu (Jenny Leung) and he start a series of bizarre adventures, full of people who want to kill Ye Ting Feng and abduct Xue Nu, bizarre poisons, demonic possession, cannibalism, worm boy, a "doll face killer needle lady" (her embroidery needle is deadly), vampires, naked fu, underground mirror labyrinths, the works, until it all finally ends in a perfectly natural explanation for all the nonsense that has been going on. Of course, this "explanation" makes even less sense than most of what happened before, but oh well.

Hua Shan might not have directed many films for the Shaw Brothers, or any film that made much sense, but I find it difficult to call the man who directed this thing here as well as the immortal Super Inframan anything else but a demented genius of hysterical enthusiasm.

Bloody Parrot is part of the effort of the late period Shaw Brothers studio to win back its audience from the younger, sexier Cantonese speaking studios by making wild genre mixtures of dubious sanity. In this case, it's a wuxia in Chor Yuen's style, just much less carefully filmed, but with more gore, worms, vomit, breasts and other exploitative elements,mostly playing out like a horror film with lots of fighting.

The script by good old (N)i Kuang (if you don't know, that's the man who wrote about eighty percent of the Shaw Brothers' output) does not make a lick of sense, but Hua Shan's direction is so giddy, and the pace in which one damn thing after another happens (and then another, and another - it truly doesn't ever stop) so relentless that it's impossible not to just jump with it from a naked kung fu fight with a demon-possessed Xue Nu to the next half a dozen bizarros who want to kill Ye Ting Feng while he's gone out to buy some paint (don't ask) to an improbable (but bava-coloured) underground cave. Resistance to a film that even uses a mirror labyrinth as a reason to undress its female lead is futile in any case.

The rest of the film is mostly an amphetamine driven version of Shaw standards, with acting performances as solid as possible in a film where the viewer mostly never learns who these damn guys are, or what motives they have, and fighting that could probably have been choreographed a little more creatively, but hardly more enthusiastic. The well-known sets used in this completely stage-bound affair have seen better days, though.

And while other films in the Shaw catalogue like Buddha's Palm might be even more bonkers, a film that has dialogue lines like "The skin from the seven of you is just enough to make me a skirt" should be weird enough to make anyone happy.

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,reviews,wuxia,horror,hua shan,shaw brothers,weird fu

Daily Twitter Terror

• 04:30 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 03:16 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 03:12 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/n3jp5f
• 12:27 New blog post: Music Monday: Look Edition: � Technorati-Tags: music monday,music,dusty spring.. tinyurl.com/mlo37d
• 12:34 RT @sispurrier "The stupidest damn law I have ever seen" - welcome to Miami, folks. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8110356.stm
• 18:43 What's worse than install limits? Secret install limits! Amazon beats Atari and Apple at their own game. tinyurl.com/lq6vhl
• 18:46 And Siemens and Nokia don't care about human rights, what a surprise. tinyurl.com/dz7raq
• 19:44 "This tea is the product of both a great tea instructor and a great teapot."

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Music Monday: Look Edition

 

Technorati-Tags: music monday,music,dusty springfield

Daily Twitter Terror

• 03:16 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 03:12 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 02:13 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/mx2m93
• 11:13 New blog post: A Short Declaration of Inability: My plan was to put up some review-shaped text con.. tinyurl.com/ktjrrw

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

A Short Declaration of Inability

My plan was to put up some review-shaped text containing a deep analysis of the theological content of Alucarda (directed by Juan Lopez Moctezuma 1978 AD), but said content makes no frigging sense at all. The film is ideologically so self-contradictory that it negates any attempt at interpretation like the anti-matter of sense.

Now that I think of it, the whole movie perfectly embodies the Platonic Ideal of making no sense at all - I dare say it makes even less sense than Black Magic Rites, if you can believe that is possible. Anyway, if you want a deeper exploration of this very special piece of nunsploitation cinema from Mexico (or Outer Space) let me just point you to 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting, whose owner also can't make heads nor tails of it.

It is indeed a great experience for every lover of things unfathomable, of screaming women, and of giant crosses made from a dead nun.

 

Technorati-Tags: horror,mexican movies,links,in short,juan lopez moctezuma,nunsploitation

Daily Twitter Terror

• 03:12 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 02:13 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 05:09 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/mpqk5o
• 10:30 Favorite writer alarm! RT @malpertuis Caitlin Kiernan is here! @greygirlbeast (Props go to @deepeight for introducing me to her work)
• 11:16 New blog post: Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976): On a rainy night, a lowly pastry cook (Yutaka Haya.. tinyurl.com/ndrvry
• 19:46 Internet drama, how I abhor you!
• 19:54 Why do people care about Steve Jobs' liver?

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976)

On a rainy night, a lowly pastry cook (Yutaka Hayashi) lets himself get talked into driving a waitress imbued with a certain sukeban charm (Tamaki Katsura) who works at the same cafe as he does  home. On the road, they pick up a strange woman dressed in something that looks like a hospital gown. Sitting on the backseat, she soon starts to cut herself with a knife and razorblades. Our nameless protagonists throw her out, accidentally killing her in the process.

Sukeban Gal convinces Cook - not that it does take much convincing, mind you - that it would be best to hide the body on a deserted junkyard instead of going to the police. Afterwards, they feel inspired to an enthusiastic bit of sex.

While he tries to avoid her the next day, she thinks that their shared experience is the perfect basis for a relationship. It's just too bad that he has performance problems if he has not been freshly aroused by a murder. What to do? Oh, yes, let's kill another woman. And then another, and another.

She thinks they are a perfect couple, and starts to act out her view of a perfect relationship, just with added murders, with him. What the poor girl doesn't comprehend is that her beloved (and it is love on her side, not much doubt about it) killer doesn't really need her anymore, now that she has provided his trigger. The act of killing has fast become much more important than the sex afterwards for him, it is in fact sex for him, and soon he starts to go out and kill on his own, getting more reckless with each murder.

Yasuharu Hasebe was one of the handful of Nikkatsu Studio's directors who stayed on after the Nikkatsu action phase had run its course and the studio invented the Roman Porn(o) film. His contributions to the latter genre like Assault! are all not very interested in being erotic, instead portraying emotionless psychopaths without much explanation of their backgrounds or histories.

This does not mean that Hasebe is completely disinterested in his protagonists' psychology - he just prefers to show us the last phase of a sexual psychopath's development, the motive behind his actions not exposited, but acted out, explained by the way he stabs his victims with a knife he likes to keep close to his crotch.

Hasebe shows the murders and the sex in such a clinical way that you'll probably have to be a sexual psychopath yourself to find much excitement or enjoyment here. Often, the film feels like a documentary gone horribly wrong, filmed by someone whose lack of compassion is equal to that of his protagonist.

It's all decidedly unpleasant to watch - as well it should be - yet Assault! is also something of a very black, very deadpan comedy, taking cynical shots at concepts like "the normal relationship" or a "healthy sex-life" in a way I found at once rather endearing and discomfiting.

What differentiates this from comparable American movies of the same era and unfriendly disposition is (apart from the lack of backstory that trusts the film's viewer to understand without being told) a budget and a technical professionalism most American indies could only dream of. This does of course lead to a certain lack of rawness in Hasebe's film, but the Japanese uses the contrast between the things he shows and the way they look to ironic effect. There's really not much that compares to a lovingly framed shot of a man stabbing a woman in the (carefully kept hidden by objects in the foreground) abdomen while 70s porno "da-ba-da-ba-da" music plays. Sure, a modern film would show us the whole act in loving close-ups, but that's not something I feel much of a need to see.

As accomplished and clever as it is, I still find it hard to actually recommend Assault!. It does what it sets out to do (leave the viewer squirming) excellently, but you have to be in a very special mood to appreciate it.

 

Technorati-Tags: japanese movies,roman porn,horror,reviews,yasuharu hasebe

Daily Twitter Terror

• 02:13 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 05:09 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:17 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/mdokgb
• 10:09 New blog post: In short: Nightbeast (1982): When a drunk (or so I suppose) alien's UFO hits a mete.. tinyurl.com/m9k53f
• 19:47 Everyone killed off by Nyarlathotep. Oops.
• 00:00 I shall not watch The Collingswood Story at night again. I still am a scaredy-cat at heart.

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

In short: Nightbeast (1982)

When a drunk (or so I suppose) alien's UFO hits a meteorite, it crashes down in the woods of Maryland, as we know an area all too often plagued by alien invaders. The beastie doesn't want to stay in the shadow of the heroes of The Alien Factor and starts to kill the rural population left and right with its raygun, often vaporizing its victims in a shower of glitter. Well, what would you expect from a creature dressed in a silvery outfit that late period Elvis would have called tasteless?

But even after the intrepid defenders of Maryland under awesome white guy afro owner Sheriff Cinder (Tom Griffith) and bra-hating lady deputy (not my phrase) Lisa (Karin Kardian) manage to disarm the rude visitor, it still insists on killing, if now somewhat more gorily.

Besides a rampaging alien, the poor Sheriff also has to cope with Bertie-the-alcoholic-mayor's (yes, I'm pretty sure that's his name, and he's played by Richard Dyszel) unwillingness to ask for outside help or cancel the party for the state governor he is holding during the alien attack and the lone evil biker (Don Leifert) of the area. It's enough to make one want to have a romantic sub-plot with one's (still bra-less) deputy.

Not much new in Don Dohler's Baltimore here, although our dear old-fashioned director was aiming for a little more of that timely (alas, as of 1970) exploitation feeling. This means the addition of a certain amount of rubbery gore Herschell Gordon Lewis would probably have derided as too crudely done and even (gasp!) the appearance of naked lady deputy breasts in one of the funnier sex scenes ever shot in Maryland (including some mean mustache rubbed all over female face moves), as well as what probably went for depravity in Dohler's circles (alcohol! leather jackets!).

The rest of the film is very much like everything else Dohler has done - the acting is atrocious but funny (I dare you to find many other films in which not a single line of dialogue sounds natural), the fashion makes one want to gouge one's eyes out, and Dohler's direction is stiff but oddly charming in its stubborn insistence on copying each and every fault of the classic monster movies as filtered through a strictly provincial lens. The hairless space ape looks quite great though, or rather its head does - the rest of it is mostly hidden beneath the space disco outfit that fits Sheriff Cinder's haircut perfectly.

I don't want to sound too negative about Nightbeast. There's a certain - probably wrong-headed - enthusiasm about it, as if the people behind the cameras were shouting "Look Ma, we're making a movie!", and I for one find it difficult too argue with that.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,sf,horror,in short,don dohler

Daily Twitter Terror

• 05:09 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:17 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 04:17 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/mvewep
• 10:49 China Mieville says good things about Tolkien, explains fantasy and is right tinyurl.com/n6vmma
• 13:16 New blog post: The Spider Labyrinth (1988): Professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is the American.. tinyurl.com/ldp762

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

The Spider Labyrinth (1988)

Professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is the American coordinator of a large international archaeological project with the goal of combining the international research efforts regarding an occult group of gods that were seemingly worshipped in otherwise culturally unrelated parts of the world.

All participiants of the project have already reported their findings to Whitmore, only Professor Ross in Budapest hasn't been heard from for some time. Whitmore's bosses send him to Budapest, all the while insinuating that their project might be much more important and dangerous than the Professor himself believes. This being an Italian movie, Whitmore more or less shrugs and packs his bags instead of asking what the hell they are talking about.

In Budapest he is greeted by Ross' assistant Genevieve (Paola Rinaldi), leaving the viewer puzzled about how incommunicado Ross really is, a question Whitmore seems too distracted by staring at the poor woman's legs to ask. At least Ross is at home, even if his wife (Margareta von Krauss, I believe) explains to Whitmore that her husband isn't in a state to do much work.

Ross acts quite paranoid. He seems convinced that someone (or something) is after him and doesn't even trust his wife. In an unobserved moment, the older man slips Whitmore a notebook and two fotos of a strange tablet, only to just disappear into thin air after someone throws a brown orb through a window. Whitmore decides to return later in the evening.

Genevieve already awaits him outside, eager to show him his hotel, and even more eager to tell him that its directly opposite of the house she lives in. Why, he could even be able to see through her window! The hotel is a weird place. It's run by Mrs. Kuhn (Stephane Audran), a middle-aged woman just a little too interested in Whitmore. Everyone else there can't stop staring at the scientist, too, although our hero seems quite oblivious to it.

After a little notebook studying and a look at Genevieve flashing her breasts through her window at him, the Professor decides to return to Ross' places, only to be apprehended by a mysterious man (William Berger). As is the duty of mysterious men prowling dark streets, he warns Whitmore of some undefined, yet terrible danger that awaits him, and urges the American to get away quickly. Whitmore doesn't listen, of course, and finds Ross' abode surrounded by police.

Ross has been murdered and is now hanging from the ceiling of his room bound with something that looks very much like cobweb. It's all made even more mysterious by the fact that the woman Whitmore believed to be Ross' wife is nowhere to be found. Worse, Genevieve doesn't know of anyone living with the old man. The inspector in charge doesn't really suspect Whitmore, but still takes his passport away and "asks" him to stay in the country a little longer.

This is just the beginning of the strangeness the scientist has stumbled into. Soon everyone who is trying to help him or warn him is murdered by an Italian horror film witch (heavy metal edition) with arachnid tendencies and Whitmore finds himself in the possession of a tablet containing the names of the Gods of a hidden cult of people who have become something not completely human. This cult is still very active today and its members will do anything in their not inconsiderable power to prevent these names from being known.

For Whitmore himself, they have worse plans.

1988 wasn't a great year for the type of occult horror The Spider Labyrinth deals in. In fact, the end of the 80s wasn't a good period for Italian horror at all, so finding a solid film like this, made by an unknown like Gianfranco Giagni, is a minor sensation for the fan of Italian genre films.

And an Italian genre film it is, probably very much inspired by Argento's supernatural films, and full of the things that drive the detractors of this part of the horror genre just nuts. For example, there's the typically cool, slightly artificial acting, the even more artificial sounding dub and the film's disinterest in being part of the kingdom of linear logic. The latter I do see as a strength in a film that is very much about someone leaving the rational world and discovering that the universe is mad, dark and chaotic. The film is even subtly Lovecraftian, with its insinuation of dark gods who are worshipped by hidden cults all over the world, and Mrs. Kuhn's explanation to Whitmore that there is no light to worship, but only darkness (and spiders and their webs).

The film also has some genuinely original ideas, especially in the way the cult members are changed.

If a viewer is willing to go with it, Giagni's film is really quite something, starting out slowly and innocently, but building up to one of Silvio Stivaletti's most freakish monster designs when Whitmore finally meets one of the gods. On the way, Giagni makes extremely good use of the cobweb and labyrinth metaphors, driving Whitmore in circles towards a center he probably would prefer not to find.

More problematic than the film's pace or its inclination towards the nonsensical are some problems you should probably blame on the director's inexperience. Giagni has obviously decided to use some of the stylistic elements typical for Argento or Mario Bava, but his use of colour and his lighting technique look rather heavy-handed compared to the work of his models or even of someone like Michele Soavi. The heavy metal witch also looks a little too silly to be shown this often and is rather bad for the dark mood the film strives for.

Of course, not being as good as the best films of Dario Argento or Mario Bava is more a luxury than a true problem for a film to have, and The Spider Labyrinth still is a very fine piece of cinema, as good a film as Italian directors were able to produce at the time.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,horror,reviews