In short: La Mansión de la Niebla (1972)

aka Maniac Mansion

Warning: I’m gonna spoil the obvious

Thanks to particularly thick fog, various people (among them usual suspects Analía Gadé, Alberto Dalbés and Eduardo Fajardo) end up stranded in a lone house right next to a cemetery. This being the sort of film it is, there’s something not at all right with the place: the owner (Evelyn Stewart) tells a mildly disturbing story about a mysterious illness and a dead ancestor who was supposed to be a vampire, with many an added meaningful glance thrown; the house is full of occult pictures; and it seems there’s a big, possibly dead, chauffeur walking around. Things don’t become less disturbing for the guests the longer the night goes on, for there’s bad age make-up, random body parts and the threat of dead-or-not chauffeur-induced violence.

Francesco Lara Polop’s movie about a mansion in the mist is a bit of a throw back to the Old Dark House films of yore, though the mandatory gorilla has been replaced by that zombie chauffeur, and there are some very tame attempts at sexing proceedings up a little but still mostly keeping everyone’s clothes on. Yes, I was disappointed about that last one too. As in the old entries in the genre, the supernatural here will also turn out to be mere part of a rather dubious plan to drive an heiress mad; as is tradition, it’s a plan made rather problematic by needing to have a group of people travelling independently be stranded by fog, which is not what we in the heiress killing business call a sound idea, even in an area where it’s regularly foggy. So, as it goes with these things, the natural explanations for the seemingly supernatural occurrences are actually less plausible than explaining them by ghosts and witches; in fact, trying to think through who does what when here for what reason might lead to a mild headache.

On the other hand, nothing here is so interesting the non-supernatural explanation will actually turn out to be a disappointment, because disappointment generally needs expectations to disappoint. This doesn’t mean the film is without its attractions – there are some decent moments of classic gothic-style shudders, Polop knows his way around filming a moody bank of artificial fog, and Evelyn Stewart does know who to do sinister meaningful stares rather well, whereas the other actors are playing their quite obvious parts with off-handed professionalism and just a small side of cheese. It’s all very pleasant and old-fashioned, and while this certainly isn’t a lost classic of gothic or would-be gothic, and won’t excite anyone overmuch, La Mansion does have enough to offer for a bit of a diverting time if one adjusts her expectations properly.

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,in short,horror,mystery,francisco lara polop,evelyn stewart,analía gadé,eduardo fajardo

Malocchio (1975)

aka Eroticofollia

aka Evil Eye

Playboy Peter Crane (Jorge Rivero) goes through some heavy times. Dreams where a bunch of butt-naked evil hippies (is that a penis dangling in semi-slow motion?) make googly eyes at him and make funny noises. The dreams disturb Peter's wild(ish) lifestyle, but things become really disturbing when he meets up with a woman named Yvonne (Lone Fleming) who tells him she had a dream in which her dead husband warned her that a man named Peter Crane was going to kill her. Which would be reason enough to either seek psychiatric help or avoid people called Peter Crane in the future, but obviously not for her. Yvonne is quite different - the next night, she meets Peter again, and even follows him to his villa.

But the making out session first turns into a manifestation of poltergeist phenomena, and then sees slick Peter suddenly turn into a glowering strangler. The next morning, Peter remembers nothing of what he's (probably) done. Somebody seems to have taken care of the dead body too. This is the first in a series of murders Peter may or may not commit under some sort of occult influence. There will be more poltergeisting, an old family friend who may have an agenda of his own (Richard Conte), a frightfully attractive female psychiatrist with dubious ethics (Pilar Velázquez), a blackmailing factotum (Eduardo Fajardo), and a lot of oddness (and I don't just mean a couple brushing each other's teeth in the shower though that scene would be odd enough for most). From time to time, the film pops in to the investigation of the murders as made by Inspector Ranieri (Old Wooden-Face Anthony Steffen) whose attempts to make sense of anything that happens in the movie are bound to fail.

Despite beginning like a giallo with slight supernatural elements, Mario Siciliano's Malocchio soon enough turns out to be one of these really weird pieces of continental European horror movies from the 70s that pride themselves in making as little sense as possible. Sure, one could, if one wanted, read a lot of what's going on as metaphor, squint at some of the film's backstory, add up what one imagines (audience hallucinations are always a possible effect in these movies), and arrive at some sort of explanation of everything that's going on here that may even be the explanation the screenwriters thought of (if indeed they were in the thinking business). However, I don't think that effort would be as worthwhile as just taking the film's oddness at face value.

The narrative is as jumpy and illogical as you'd expect in a case like this, with nobody's actions making much sense, motivations that seem made up on the spot, and only the loosest idea of dramatic tension. The film's climax does indeed seem wilfully un-climactic, and the filmmakers decision to do the ouroboros thing in the end gives the impression they just ran out of napkins to write on rather than leaving the audience with the shock of finding the main character trapped in a never-ending nightmare.

Of course, as you'd also expect in a film like this, that insistence on only making the vaguest sense, on leaving every scene dipped in a haze of the unreal is also Malocchio's greatest strength. This is, after all, a movie whose protagonist can't tell dreams from reality and truth from lies - why should it be any different for the audience?

If there's one problem I had with the film, it's that Siciliano's direction is not quite strange enough for the strangeness of the material. His direction is not bad - especially in the evil hippie demon dreams and assorted scenes - but he's often coasting a bit on the wonderful mugging and eye-rolling of his actors and the oddness of the script without adding quite enough oddness all his own.

But in the end Malocchio is confusing and dream-like enough to satisfy me, even if I've experienced films that were even more confusing and dream-like than it is.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,spanish movies,mexican movies,horror,wtf,mario siciliano,jorge rivero,richard conte,eduardo fajardo,anthony steffen,pilar velázquez

Assignment Naschy (Slight Return): La Cruz Del Diablo (1975)

aka Cross of the Devil

Some time in the 19th century. English writer Alfred Dawson (Ramiro Oliveros) suffers from a bit of writer's block. One may make his love of his hashish pipe responsible for that, as his girlfriend Maria (Carmen Sevilla) clearly does. Be it as it may, Dawson's publisher is getting rather cross with him.

So it's quite useful - if certainly disturbing - when a letter from Alfred's sister Justine (Mónica Randall), who lives with her husband Enrique (Eduardo Fajardo) in his native Spain, arrives, in which she tells him about having had a miscarriage and now being quite at odds with her husband who'll "never forgive her". As a devoted brother, Alfred decides to travel to Spain at once; as a devoted girlfriend and being of Spanish heritage herself, Maria decides to come with him.

Once the couple arrives in Spain, they find Justine dead, supposedly murdered by a vagrant who will all too soon hang himself while in jail. Alfred is not convinced of the man's guilt, suspecting Enrique and his incredibly shady secretary Cesar del Rio (Adolfo Marsillach) of having murdered his sister. In fact, if Alfred were aware of a short scene between Justine and Cesar that reveals she had an inexplicable affair with Cesar and suggests "unnatural experiments" committed by the secretary, he'd be even less convinced of the official story.

Justine wasn't killed close to home, but at something called the "Mountain of Souls", supposedly a place cursed by having been the location of the final stand of the ever evil Templars. Alfred feels so drawn to the place he convinces Enrique and Cesar to travel there with him, possibly in the hope of provoking the true killer to reveal himself. But what Alfred learns there when he and his traveling companions arrive is much stranger than he could ever have expected.

Hammer veteran (among other things - he's also responsible for Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, but it's better not to think about that) director John Gilling's final film after some years working exclusively on British TV shows was produced in Spain, shot in Spanish, and was cast with Spanish actors.

I had expected it to be a piece of Gothic horror in the Hammer tradition, just shot on a lower budget and with less lavish looking sets, but La Cruz Del Diablo is standing with both feet in the tradition of the continental cinema of the fantastic, eschewing the comparatively logical dramaturgy of British horror in the Hammer style for a languidly paced narrative that's so ambiguous it never becomes clear how much of what happens in it only takes place in its protagonist's rather drug-addled mind (I know hashish doesn't work that way, exactly, but the film pretends it does) and how much is truly supernatural horror.

I'm pretty sure Paul Naschy, co-writing under his Jacinto Molina name, is in part responsible for the film's not always logical progression and its dream-like mood, for that's the sort of thing Naschy included in most everything he did with more personal involvement too. I also suspect that it was, at least in part, Naschy's idea to make a film based on themes and motives of Spanish post-romanticist/romanticist (whichever website you want to believe - I'm not knowledgeable enough about Spanish literature to have an opinion here; I only know that the little I read of the writer reminded me of the sensibilities of German romanticist E.T.A. Hoffmann, if clearly coming from a different cultural background) Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, putting the film into a place far from any interest in realism.

Surprisingly enough, Gilling, whom I usually see as a competent professional with moments of greatness (he did direct two of my favourite Hammer films with the Cornish duo, after all) acquits himself very well in the unfamiliar surroundings and makes a film as fog-shrouded, confusing and strange as any native Spaniard. Even though Gilling's direction isn't flashy, he manages to imbue the slow proceedings with exactly the kind of macabre and decrepit mood they need to suck a viewer in. There may be little happening for most of the film, but it does that with such a weight I found myself quite excited by La Cruz.

But then I do have a weakness for films more interested in building a strange and dreamlike mood than in telling a clear and linear story, so if anyone not quite as in love of mood for mood's sake will be as excited as I was while watching La Cruz Del Diablo is probably doubtful.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,horror,gothic,reviews,john gilling,carmen sevilla,ramiro oliveros,eduardo fajardo