- 03:10 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 03:11 New blog post: Daily Twitter Terror: 03:18 New blog pos.. tinyurl.com/ob6xkv
- 10:29 The first screenshots of the Clash of the Titans make clear: this is gonna be God of War - The Movie with extra scowly faces
- 11:17 New blog post: Blood (1974): In some not more closely defined part of the past (I'd say it's suppo.. tinyurl.com/r2ht4d
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Daily Twitter Terror
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Blood (1974)
In some not more closely defined part of the past (I'd say it's supposed to be the Victorian or Edwardian era, but who truly knows?) a rather interesting family comes to an even less closely defined town in America (or is it England? I could only divine that it's not continental Europe).
The Orlofskis are a deeply peculiar bunch. Head of the family is Lawrence Orlofski (Allan Berendt), a mad scientist by profession. In truth Lawrence is not called Orlofski, but Talbot, like his father, the original wolfman. He is married to Regina (Hope Stansbury), birth name of Dracula. Besides being the most high-strung vampire this side of a Transylvanian debutante ball, Regina is also the victim of a peculiar illness (possibly a side effect of being undead?) that can only be treated through a serum extracted from the poisonous, blood-sucking monster plant that grows in the Orlofskis' cellar. The plant for its part can't suck people dry willy-nilly, it is instead fed the blood of Carlotta (Pichulina Hempi), whom the Orlofski's once took out of a Rumanian orphanage as a convenient way to get tasty, fresh blood for their plant pet on a regular basis. Poor Carlotta has gone mad from the perpetual blood loss and now acts and looks as exalted as everyone else under her thick layers of theatrical make-up.
Orlofski/Talbot can't take care of all the details connected with his troubled household alone, of course. In fact, he's the sort of wolfman who can't even remember when the night of the Full Moon is. So he employs two very loyal servants, Carrie (Patricia Gaul) and Orlando (Michael Fischetti). Orlando has lost both of his legs through the plant's poison and now rolls around the house on a wheeled board. He's not bitter about it, though, and seems to have a relatively satisfying relationship with Carrie. It's just too bad that Carrie is not so secretly in love with Orlofski and has her own plant-induced leg problems.
All this should be complicated enough to somehow filter sixty minutes of plot from, but the charming quintet needs more problems than mere lycanthropy, vampirism, man-eating plants, mad experiments, madness and soap opera love lives can provide.
So how about adding a nosy realtor (Martin Reymert), a corrupt lawyer (John Wallowitch) who for once steals money from the wrong client, a blackmailing old hag (Eve Crosby), Carrie's brother (David Bevans) and the lawyer's virtuous and beautiful assistant (Pamela Adams) to the mix? That will certainly do the trick.
Until now I have avoid Andy Milligan's films like the plague, but Stephen Thrower's book Nightmare USA convinced me to give the man's work another look. I can't say that I regret it. Apart from a very unpleasant mouse decapitation sequence, Blood delivers quite a singular experience full of all the things I like in my no budget films. The same things will unfortunately also send most people running as far away from Milligan's work as possible, but that comes with the territory.
So, Andy Milligan's strangeness, let me count your ways. There's the weird, stagy acting, completely off and most definitely not like acting is supposed to be, yet at the same time so consistent that it must be done this way on purpose. The actors often reach a weird, melodramatic intensity, especially when their efforts combine with the claustrophobic framing of most scenes, the unnatural (in a nearly Lovecraftian sense) camera angles and the nearly perversely wrong lighting of many scenes. The whole affair feels as far removed from reality as possible, but it is as much removed from movie reality as we know it as well, somehow straining for a different kind of cinema, I hereby (and I'm not even drunk) dub "Anti-Cinema", the cinematic equivalent to Darkseid's "Anti-Life Equation" in Jack Kirby's New Gods.
The feeling of deliberate wrongness is further strengthened by Milligan's script, full of lengthy, semi-coherent rants that seem to have been written by a misanthropic Camus fan and which don't even try to fill in for the film's lack of not only important transitions, but its lack of whole parts of the plot. How much of the latter is the fault of the print I saw (which is definitely shorter than the runtime the IMDB gives), how much of Milligan's lack of money and how much of the auteur's very special vision, I really can't say. I'm not even sure that I want to know.
What I do know is this: if you have any love for people like the ranting madman around your corner (or the ranting madman inside yourself), and always wanted to see what would happen if he would somehow be able (allowed?) to make his own, obsessive, manic movies, you could possibly fall in love with this film.
Daily Twitter Terror
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- 10:49 I submit "Dickless Tracy" as today's Most Unfortunate Band Name.
- 11:09 Jehovah's witnesses at the door! Where's the garlic?
- 11:16 New blog post: Return of Three Films Make A Post: Erotic Diary Of An Office Lady (1977): Excellent.. tinyurl.com/psebwe
Friday, June 5, 2009
Return of Three Films Make A Post
Erotic Diary Of An Office Lady (1977): Excellent Nikkatsu Roman Porn by Masaru Konuma. Asami (Asami Ogawa) works as a typical (which in case of women also means lowly) office drone in a Japanese company. A loveless affair with one of her bosses doesn't change that fact that her life is already at a dead end although she's just in her mid-twenties. Ogawa's performance and Konuma's direction make this an effective, sometimes moving piece about the coldness and alienation of office life and the terrors of being treated as a commodity instead of a person.
Jason and the Argonauts (1964): It's always a risk to revisit childhood darlings, because sense of wonder is a fleeting thing. Fortunately, I'm not too old to marvel at the wonders of Ray Harryhausen's effects. True, the acting is stiff, Hercules whack (the Italians did him better) and the script's interpretation of Greek myth dubious (as if I'd care), but at the film's heart lies enough childlike wonder to protect me from growing up for a few more hundred years.
Shadow of the Raven (1988): The little boy Trausti from The Raven Flies has grown up into a man (Reine Brynolfsson). As a freshly ordained priest, Trausti returns to his native Iceland only to get sucked into another round of blood feuds. He and his theoretical enemy Isold (Tinna Gunnlaugsdottir) decide to "ensure peace through love", but the sad fact that everyone else on the island is a homicidal maniac lays their plans and their lives to waste. Less of a Spaghetti Western and even more of a saga than its predecessor, the film is as unrelentingly bleak and beautiful in its bleakness as the landscape it takes place in. Unfortunately it's also a film I haven't got much to say about.
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- 17:15 The bizarre discussion about Valve's Left4Dead 2 provides hours of fun. Fans (=people who hate something so much they won't stop talking
- 17:16 about it) are great.
- 17:21 RT @wise_kwai #TFJ David Carradine found dead in Bangkok tinyurl.com/pm4kv6
- 19:10 Damn, I need something irrelevant to be outraged about. Also, a company whose products I wouldn't buy anyway to boycott.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985)
It is 1920, somewhere in the North Atlantic. Some passengers and crewmembers whose names won't matter much escape from a sinking ship in what seems to be the only lifeboat and soon end up on a deserted island.
Leaving one wounded man alone behind at the beach, the group spreads out through the woods that seem to cover every part of their new home in search for food and water.
While a part of the stranded finds nourishment in the form of a bush full of berries, one of the men stumbles upon water. Unfortunately, the brook he at once jumps into has the first of a few peculiar features which make this a very special island (alas, a very special island without ice bears) - what looks like water is in fact acid. One gore effect and a little screaming and trying to look concerned by the rest of the cast later, the group decides to make camp in the woods for the night (leaving their wounded companion uncared for and unmentioned back at the beach). Alas, their campfire is soon surrounded by flashlights, ahem, glowing eyes. Eyes that belong to the most adorable red-bodied black-haired little killer dolls that ever suddenly jumped on a bunch of shipwreck survivors to take some tasty bites. A mighty (funny) battle rages between the people and the bite-loving dolls, ending in something of an impasse - one of the women is killed and one of the men hamstrung, but the rest only has minor scratches, while some of the dolls are destroyed and the others take flight.
Our heroes decide to stay put for the rest of the night and get back onto the ocean the next morning. They obviously don't expect the incredible cunning of the mutant muppets. When the group arrives at the beach the next morning, they find their unconcious friend gnawed to his skeleton and their boat gone. For some reason, they decide to get back into the woods.
While make a repeat performance of their wood-stumbling show, the little monsters attack them again and again, slowly wearing them down with the sort of guerilla tactics you learn as a member of the Muppetcong.
In theory, Attack of the Beast Creatures has not much to recommend it. It's one of the "the director's friends and family stumble through the woods" type regional horror films (made in Connecticut), full of unspectacularly mumbly acting and not really much of a plot. One also can't help but think it's not thought through at all. Why, for example make the film a period piece when you can't afford even half believable period costumes, when not one of the characters acts like someone from the 1920s and when soon the only thing that reminds the viewer of the period the film is supposed to take place in is the sudden appearance of an old-fashioned phrase in the usually bad but thoroughly modern dialogue?
Technically, it's also more than a little problematic. The sound is at times dreadful with the dialogue drowned out by background noises like the crackling of a campfire. The photography is not as bad as it could be, at least the camera stays in focus. From time to time, there's even a framing idea that borders on the professional and that holy grail of backyard films - camera movement. The acting is bad in a rather unexciting and drab way, although I have to say that there is some lively screaming to be heard during the muppet attacks.
Having said this, I still had a very fun time watching this mess. The special effects might not be so very special, but the monsters look incredibly charming, especially when they are thrown into screaming and "struggling" people's faces, or when they are running after our heroes, complete with long distance runner puppet arm movements and a soundeffect that wouldn't be out of place in a Roadrunner cartoon. It's very much like I'd imagine Jim Henson's less talented but drunk kid brother would go about re-imagining the classic zuni doll design from Trilogy of Terror, just a lot redder and more primitive.
Adding to the monsters' considerable charm is the tone of wide-eyed earnestness the film thrives on. The plot may be non-existant, the monsters riduculous, nobody all that talented and the budget much like my bank account, yet still everyone is giving her or his all, putting the same conviction (if not more) into their work as the Royal Shakespeare Company puts into Hamlet. This spirit puts Attack of the Beast Creatures into the royal company of films like Eegah!, Robot Monster or Plan 9 From Outer Space, and while it never reaches the heights of lovable ridiculousness those films achieve, it really does enough to deserve applause and the sort of laughter that is not based on the viewer's superiority over a film, but on sympathy and a shared love for taking even the most absurd thing much too seriously.
Attack of the Beast Creatures has unfortunately never had an official (or inofficial, it seems) DVD release, but you can find it preserved for download on Tachyon City.
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- 12:02 New blog post: In short: Screams Of A Winter Night (1979): A group of friends travels out into the.. tinyurl.com/o3vmyr
- 15:17 Peter V. Brett's "The Warded Man" iis a right mess. Starts out interesting enough, but characterization, plotting & world building get
- 15:19 more ropey the further the book goes along. Then the death stroke by badly done and absolutely unnecessary rape
- 18:08 Friday the 13th 2009 - actually rather fun. But: no real Final Girl sequence!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
In short: Screams Of A Winter Night (1979)
A group of friends travels out into the winter woods of Louisiana to spend the weekend in a cabin. It's quite an interesting area, with stories about people being ripped apart by a spirit of the winds that is supposed to haunt the area each winter promising quite a bit of excitement.
The friends soon start to tell each other their own spooky tales, first a real old chestnut about a pair whose car breaks down in the woods, then the story of three fraternity pledges having to spend a night in a haunted hotel and running afoul of green light and lastly the tale of a disturbed young woman going slightly homicidal.
While they tell these tales, the tension between the friends begins to rise as much as the racket the wind outside makes. Even before the last story is told, it has become quite clear that the night can not end pleasantly.
Screams of a Winter Night is an atypical piece of 70s horror, consciously produced to get a PG rating and so eschewing most of the brutality and outright nastiness that dominated the genre at the time and trying to replace it with the mood of campfire tales. The three stories the anthology picture tells are of course less than original, yet some surprisingly good location work and solid acting elevate them above the drab into the realm of the slightly spooky.
The most interesting part of Screams is its framing story though. It starts out like a hundred spam in a cabin films, but slowly rises to an excellent and evocative final ten minutes, using the ordinariness of the tales the friends tell each other to make the tension more real. Simple but great sound design helps to further the film's way into creeping the more impressionable among us out and even the up until then rather unremarkable visual side of the affair rises to the occasion in the end.
For a film that is as little concerned with impressing its viewers with its artistry as this one there are quite a few neat little moments and ideas to be found, most of them, as I learned from Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA, born of financial need. I was especially impressed by the howling wind and screaming on the blackened screen that accompany the film's main titles, acquainting us with some of the wind spirit's earlier work while costing the production next to nothing. Another budget-caused advantage was the casting of the same actors in the framing tale and the anthology stories itself (playing different roles, of course). It's an unorthodox but effective way to tie the stories together and helps build the tension for the finale quite a bit.
Why this fine example of old-fashioned spook tales hasn't found its way onto DVD until now is beyond me.
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- 14:28 The Internet's full of moral outrage again. Worse than Angry Internet Men.
- 18:42 Yes, sex and the game industry. It's all true. bit.ly/jnZDr
- 19:27 Oh, wait, as a gamer, I'm supposed to "squee" about E3, right? Squee.
- 19:28 And: isn't it over yet? It's only hypetastic sequels with numbers randomly put into their titles all the time anyway.
- 19:44 "Jekyll & Hyde" played by 50 Cent. That cuts it, I'm going to bed.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Boogens (1981)
In 1912, the Silver City mine was closed down after a collapsing shaft killed more than twenty miners. There have been rumors that people were killed before the collapse, but nothing has ever been proven. Now, at the beginning of the permtastic 80s, all rumors about the mine have been forgotten.
The company which now owns the mine plans to re-open it. A group of four men - among them engineer Mark (Fred McKarren) and his friend the notorious "funny" guy Roger (Jeff Harlan) - is sent out to check on the mine and start clearing up some of its caved-in parts with the scientific wonder of dynamite.
Since all work and no play does not for an 80s horror movie make, Roger invites his girlfriend Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin) up for a visit. Jessica is bringing her demon-like little dog Tiger and her journalist friend Trish (Rebecca Balding) - the former to fill the movie with scenes of "cute" animal mayhem, the latter to add some really weird banter and the mandatory sex scene with Mark.
Sounds like a set-up for that terrible creature known as the "80s comedy with tits". Fortunately, the dynamiting opens up a part of the mine where Mark and the others find a rather strange pile of human bones. It's the bodies of the dead miners, alright, but why are they lying in a pile?
Could it be that the miners weren't killed by the cave-in? And could it also be that the excavation has freed the creatures who truly killed them? And might it be possible that a tunnel connects the mines exactly with the house where Jessica, Trish and the boys are living?
And what - if anything - has the old codger who hangs around the mine and doesn't utter mad warnings until it is much too late with it all?
Looking at the plot of The Boogens, it's a small wonder that it's as entertaining as it is. Looking at the way it is executed it's more akin to the Second Coming.
It's a monster movie without much monster activity at all - for the first hour, we don't see anything of the film's theoretical stars at all, and, apart from one little murder in the dark and a threatened dog, nothing monster movie relevant happens.
Instead the film treats us to lots (and lots, and lots) of cutesy scenes between the core quartet of characters, as well as Jessica's abominably cute little doggie (don't worry, he will be eaten, if much too late) - the death knell for most horror movies. Yet somehow I found myself strangely charmed by the characters and the odor of 80s cheese everything about the film exudes. The Great Old Ones won't smile at me when they hear it, but I'd even call the film's heroes "likeable".
This doesn't change the fact that a monster movie should have a large amount of monster activity in it, of course, but the masses of filler here at least avoid being too boring. They are also doing an excellent job at making the film a time capsule of the early 80s in Colorado where the film was shot, making up for the complete genericness of the plot with quite a bit of specificness.
The film's director James L. Conway would go on to a nice career directing TV show from episodes of MacGyver to Vulcanian Sex Star Trek or however that one was called. His work here already shows all the signs of what was to come for him - everything is technically very competently done, but never inspired, or mad, or consciously interesting. It's mostly up to the actors to bring actual charm and personality into the movie and they do it, as far as the badly paced script allows.
It's just too bad nobody in the production seems to have had any trust in the look of their monsters or enough sense to make them more active. Sure, they look phony and slightly ridiculous, but how many films about pissed-off looking turtle creatures with tentacles are there?
And honestly, they really should have eaten the damn mutt earlier.
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- 16:44 Oh, Bleeding Skull lives. Excellent! www.bleedingskull.com/
- 18:25 Why do it always have to be platformers?
- 18:28 Finally, a lawyerly definition of potato chips! bit.ly/CZU8a
- 18:35 Episodic Monkey Island Games by Telltale. I am relatively excited. bit.ly/oPdbh
Monday, June 1, 2009
Daily Twitter Terror
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- 12:15 New blog post: In short: The Galaxy Invader (1985): A green-skinned, warty alien (Glenn Barnes) cr.. tinyurl.com/mty2xu
- 21:17 I just used the phrase "anti cinema". Oh god.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
In short: The Galaxy Invader (1985)
A green-skinned, warty alien (Glenn Barnes) crash-lands somewhere in the boons of Maryland. As you do when you crash on an alien, potentially hostile planet, the green warty dude putters about in the woods and invades people's garages.
All too soon, our alien friend makes contact with the dominant species in the area: alcoholic breast-hole shirt wearer Joe (Richard Ruxton). Obviously, Joe gets it into his head to catch himself a green man (no connection with Celtic gods, I suppose) and sell it to people in the big city.
So together with a bunch of his boozer friends he goes a-huntin' aliens. Alas/fortunately the alien has certain advantages over the deer the locals usually hunt. It knows how to shoot back. This can only end in a terrible tragedy.
The Galaxy Invader is one of the films of Baltimore's own king of locally produced monster movies, Don Dohler. Dohler was a backyard genius to some, a talentless hack to others.
It's far from being Dohler's best film, and, worse, it's also far from being one of Dohler's entertaining films. Turns out that making his monster something of a tragic figure goes far beyond Dohler's abilities as a director and writer and puts the weakest part of his films - the insipid dialogue and unfortunate talkiness - more in the foreground than I would call sane, making for a rather boring time.
Friends of bad acting will probably have at least a little fun with the amount of screaming and absurd line readings going on here, but that's something you get in Dohler's more exciting pictures, too. I also found the skewed conservatism of Dohler's world view at least slightly endearing. In Dohlermore, 1985 is still 1954 only with the haircuts of 1978 - most certainly not a place I'd want to live in, but coming for a visit from time to time could be fun.
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- 12:11 New blog post: A Lawless Street (1955): Calem Ware (Randolph Scott) is the marshal of Medicine Ben.. tinyurl.com/kqtu38
- 13:08 "Fido" is certainly a well-made film, but isn't it a little late for a satire on 1950s values?
Saturday, May 30, 2009
A Lawless Street (1955)
Calem Ware (Randolph Scott) is the marshal of Medicine Bend, a frontier town just a few steps away from becoming part of actual civilization. As it is now, with the Oregon still a territory instead of a state, and justice still decided by the drawing of a gun, Calem is the only one who truly stands between the town and barbarism.
The aging gunman knows this very well, as he knows that one day one of the outlaws who regularly come to town to better the living legend he has become will kill him. Perhaps it will be someone who is just faster with his gun than the marshal, or it will be Calem's own guilt for all the people he had to kill in the course of his life that will defeat him.
Calem would have to be less tense - and certainly less lonely - if more of the people he is trying to protect would be of help to him, but those who don't hide behind him when trouble arises, are passing the time making bets on his death.
Things come to a climax when Calem learns that some of the good people in town seem to be paying the gunmen who are trying to kill him, for a town without law would be a lot more profitable for them.
At the same time when his estranged wife, the dreadfully untalented showgirl Tally Dickensen (Angela Lansbury) who is still in love with her husband yet can't cope with Calem's dangerous lifestyle or the things that lifestyle does to him, comes to town, the marshal's enemies acquire the services of his old enemy Harley Baskem (Michael Pate). For once, there is someone in town who is just as dangerous as Calem Ware.
When one thinks of great American Western directors, one usually does not think of Joseph H. Lewis. Lewis wasn't a bad director at all, but most of his films are a small yet decisive bit shy of excellence. A Lawless Street is probably as close as Lewis ever came to making a true classic.
Lewis, whose direction style is often a bit pedestrian, here finds a nice and dynamic way to present the film, with some very tensely filmed scenes early on and a lot of intelligently framed shots. Mostly, Lewis is doing his best to emphasize the work of his actors and the strong script.
Seeing how strong most of the actors acquit themselves, this is a excellent decision. Scott gives one of the best performances in a career full of great ones, as always a performance defined at once by humor, a sparseness (not lack, mind you) and nuance of emotion and knowledge of the importance of small gestures that is so typical for him. The bad guys of the film, Michael Pate as Calem's nemesis and Warner Anderson and John Emery as the not so morally upright pillars of community who want the Marshal gone are given a little less to do by the script than Scott, but are doing some impressive acting anyway. The only sore spot in the ensemble is Angela Lansbury, terribly miscast and prone to a shrill melodramatic tone completely at odds with everyone else in the film.
Kenneth Gamet's script is quite successful at talking about the old theme of barbarism versus civilization, while keeping everything character-based and a lot more honest about its characters' inner life than many American western manage to be. Really, how many films of the era or the country do you know in which a marshal and his estranged showgirl wife are discussing divorce? Or in which adultery (by the wife, no less) is something a marriage can survive without anyone committing suicide?
Despite the script's copious strengths, it is the same script that lets the film down in the end. A Lawless Street's conclusion is incredibly hastily handled, quite anticlimactic, of course cursed with a less than believable total Happy End, and very much at odds with the thoughtful consideration it gave its themes until then. It's as if someone had suddenly decided that the careful riffing on (the hateful) High Noon, the nuanced characterization and the comparative subtlety with which the film considered its themes just wasn't good enough anymore and instead opted for his old friend, the sledgehammer.
Which is of course an excellent way to demonstrate the difference between a classic and a near classic. Poor Joseph H. Lewis (unless it was his fault).
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- 12:41 Rights for blind people? Not with heroes of Human Rights like the EU or US! bit.ly/20Dig
- 20:27 If it's Bioware's plan to make me look less forward to Dragon Age with each cock-rocky new trailer, it's quite a success
Friday, May 29, 2009
In short: Ghost Dance (1980)
An archaeological dig in on Native American soil in the Southwestern United States excavates the mummified body of the cult leader and mass murderer Nahalla. Nahalla's spirit possesses the body of Aranjo (Henry Bal), himself a shaman who has seen his religious convictions falling out of style. Nahalla uses his fresh, athletic body to start up a new series of murders around the excavation. He also seems very interested in the leading archeologist, Dr. Kay Foster (Julie Amato). You probably guessed when reading the word "mummy" that she looks exactly like Nahalla's former wife and killing spree partner.
As soon as the murders start, the tribal committee of the Native Tribe (that never gets a name) on whose land the dig and part of the killings take place, start to mutter all the typical "I told you so" warnings, putting aside the fact that they let themselves get talked into allowing the dig by Tom Eagle (Victor Mohica), one of the "moderns" and influential iconoclasts of their tribe and also Kay's boyfriend.
Tom isn't willing to accept a supernatural explanation for the murders at all. One can't help but think that his work for getting the dig permitted was mostly about proving a point regarding his own modernity and skepticism and to keep his own repressed memory of some quite supernatural deeds of the shaman Ocacio (Frank Salsedo) at bay. As it goes with skeptics in movies, Tom will have to get over his (oh so terrible, terrible) unbelief if he wants to help the less skeptical Kay to put Nahalla back where he belongs again.
Ghost Dance is (even if the IMDB wants to tell you otherwise) quite an interesting film. The slasher elements aren't too well integrated into the supernatural Native Americana (and could mostly be cut from the movie without it losing much of interest) and the pacing might be too slow for some, but ignoring these flaws leads to the discovery of quite a few creepy and clever touches. I'm quite enamored with scenes like the sequence in which Nahall turns into a cat to spy on Kay or the simple but nicely constructed finale.
Peter F. Buffa's direction is mostly on a late 70s TV level. It's technically competent enough (if you can ignore the very dark night shots) but often not all that exciting, with some sudden bursts of creative framing or good ideas to jolt the viewer to attention as well as a few beautiful location shots that can make one forget the brown and ugly museum a few scenes too many take place in.
The Native American culture isn't explored deeply, but the film is as respectful as these things get.
It's all nothing to rock anybody's socks off, but if you're interested in horror films of the independent era and aren't afraid of slow and cheaply made but basically competent films with a few moments of excellence, Ghost Dance is well worth seeking out.
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- 11:42 And honestly, "Butterfill"?
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- 14:40 RT @matociquala RT @britgeekgrrl: www.dramabutton.com/ Go there. Yes, really. Worksafe. [ETA: And VERY satisfying]
- 19:56 Something about On the Corner bit.ly/vCPrM
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Qarqacha - El Demonio Del Incesto (2000? 2002?)
also known as Jarjacha - El Demonio Del Incesto
Please blame any errors and mistakes in the following on the lack of information about the film on the 'net and my doubtful Spanish.
A trio of scientists - Yvonne, Sebastien and Nielo - (they're anthropologists or ethnologists, I suppose) traipse through the Andes to study the culture of the people living in the poor mountain villages there. It's not the most pleasant of expeditions, it has to be said. Strange groaning noises in the night make the city people more than a little nervous, and when they have reached the village they're bound to study, nobody wants to open their doors at night to give them shelter. After meeting a rather panicked looking countryman holding a mirror up into their faces, they finally stumble into an unlocked building. Inside is a woman who cries over the body her dead son. Well, at least it's shelter from whatever may stalk the night here.
The next morning, the intrepid explorers meet Don Maximo, who I suppose is something like the mayor of the village (although he looks about twenty years to young for a position like this). He's very shouty and rather unhelpful, but at least he agrees to let the scientists stay in his house for the duration of their research.
His daughter - looking about five years younger than her father - is not too impressed by him anymore, it seems, and has started a rather unhealthy relationship with a relative (known to me as "the guy in the red shirt"), with beautiful highpoints of romance like red shirt guy breaking into her home while she sleeps and staring at her naked legs. Oh, and sex, I suppose.
Some time later, the three scientists see the older woman they met earlier, dragging the coffin of her dead son through the village, every villager pointedly ignoring her and closing their door. The three decide to help her carry the load to the local cemetery and bury her son. After he is put under, a man in a monk's robe appears, makes a few hasty gestures of blessing over the grave and runs away again. Which does not sound too friendly, but is still quite a bit nicer than the horde of screaming, sling-swinging villagers that now appears and wants to lynch the mourning woman for being an evil witch (who had sexual relations with her son?). The scientists give her the opportunity to flee, which the villagers seem to accept relatively peacefully, but when they return to the village, their baggage lies in front of Don Maximo's house. To no one's surprise, the other villagers don't want to take them in either, and they have to take shelter in an abandoned and ruined house, while they again hear the groans of something all around them in the night.
The next morning, the villagers find one of their own dead outside - it is obvious to Don Maximo that the man has been killed by a Qarqacha (or Jarjacha), a type of brain-eating demon that is half man, half alpaca people who have incestual relationships turn into, even after their death. It seems as if Qarqachas are also able to turn themselves into alpacas at night, and so a screaming horde of villagers descends on some rather unimpressed looking alpacas, ties them up and throws them into a barn. The next morning, the animals have transformed into two very naked people (red shirt guy and daughter, I think), who are stoned and beaten to death by the villagers.
This still isn't the end of the whole strange affair, though. A third monster is roaming the surroundings and attacks again the next night, spitting in its victims faces to paralyze them and then nibbling their brains. It also finally attacks one of the three scientists (while he is guarding Yvonne following the call of nature), whose inclusion in the whole affair never seemed all that necessary.
Fortunately, we learn, the Qarqacha is afraid of its own mirror image, giving the villagers a fine possibility to beat it to death.
Who knew that Peru had its own backyard film industry? As far as I could find out, this type of ultra cheap regional horror movie based on myth and urban legend is quite popular in the country and mostly sold on video tapes in the markets of Lima.
Much of Qarqacha speaks the international language of no-budget horror film we all know so well. It's shot on video (I don't think digital video, but I could be wrong), looks in parts as if it has been edited with scissors, is badly acted even when viewed by someone without the necessary language skills, not really directed in the sense you'd usually want to use the word, and based on a meandering script that mostly consists of scenes of people walking.
What makes the film worth watching apart from its obscurity and the opportunity it gives the non-Peruvian viewer to triumphantly scream: "I have seen a shot on video horror film from Peru, and you haven't!" is its strict regionalism. The film follows the old no-budget rule of "shoot what's there" and lucks into the fact that what is there in the Andes does look a lot more interesting and has been a lot less used in the past than the assortment of sub-urban houses and empty factory buildings its US-American and European cousins take place in. At times, the film takes on the feeling of a weird vacation tape, made in the places tourists usually don't visit, because they are poor and rather unpleasant.
What's also helpful for the non-Peruvian viewer here is that the myth the film is based on isn't too well known or documented outside the country, making its rules somewhat new and exciting for a certain type of person (me). And call me easily impressed, but I found a few of the scenes - especially the the monster hunting techniques pf the villagers - rather creepy in their rawness.
So, probably not a good movie, but an interesting one.
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009
I honestly don't know what to make of this
Is it a joke? Have I watched so many weird movies that I am hallucinating?
Just wait until you see the name of the director.
Technorati-Tags: mindbreak
In short: Chandu On The Magic Island (1935)
Not much has changed since The Return of Chandu. The Lemurian cult of Ubasti still wants to abduct Princess Nadji (Maria Alba) to use either her body or her soul (the film isn't so sure about which) to revive their old high priestess, which will somehow also let Lemuria rule the world again, while very white mystic Chandu (Bela Lugosi) protects her - at least he says that he does.
Of course, being Chandu, he starts the film off with going away for unexplained reasons, leaving Nadji in the care of his annoying relatives, obviously leading to a near instant kidnapping. This time around, though, Chandu's rescuing work will be quite a bit more difficult, for the cultists at once have teleported Nadji to Lemuria itself. If they'd only used this trick before.
Our hero has only seven days to reach Lemuria, where he will witness even more abductions, kidnappings and re-abductions, all the while hindered in his heroic work by the "Black Curtain of Ubasti" that shrouds the island and (sometimes, sometimes not) nullifies Chandu's magical power of the Yogi phone. What luck that the bad guys are even more incompetent than he is!
Chandu On The Magic Island is a re-cut film version of the same serial The Return of Chandu was based on, and everything I said about that film still applies. The only thing that's different is that the editing and reassembling seems a little less slapdash here and that the whole kidnapping business reaches even more ridiculous heights, letting Chandu not look all that heroic anymore.
Still, it's good enough fun.
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Black Magic Rites (1973)
also known as The Reincarnation of Isabel
So, there's this castle somewhere. In the castle lives this guy with a mustache (Raul Lovecchio) who is often bathed in green and red light and who reads books that contain sentences like "Vampires need blood that's not contaminated by human semen.".
His cousin (possibly one of the dozen characters stumbling through the film, or not) sells his half of the family castle to another guy with a mustache. Second mustache guy moves in with his fiancee Laureen (Rita Calderoni) and a horde of people including Laureen's mother (I think) and a dozen or so young women (relation to everyone else unknown) who are really really into dropping their clothes, fetishistically fondling shawls, screaming hysterically and sex. Especially sex.
Unfortunately, the castle's cellar has a direct connection to The Underworld, where four guys dressed like the Satanist version of the Three Supermen (but with face paint) are performing sacrificial rituals to revive the the witch Isabella (also Rita Calderoni), who hangs crucified on a wall of The Underworld.
There are also vampires around, or one vampire who is possibly Count Dracula himself (Mickey Hargitay) or rather his reincarnation. Turns out everyone in the castle is the reincarnation of someone connected to the witch's death some centuries ago, therefore stuff happens to them. Some get killed, some are dragged into The Underworld, some get buried alive, all get naked (yes, even the ugly pudgy dude, sorry). Other stuff happens. The end.
I admit defeat here. Usually, I am able to distill a small amount of sense even out of the most bizarre Italian sleaze fests, but this thing beats me. I suspect Black Magic Rites was directed by Alfonso Brescia's even more insane evil twin after stealing the identity of Italian filione director Renato Polselli, but as far as I can tell, it might have been made by Nyarlathotep himself.
Though there is much going on during the course of the movie, nothing of it makes any sense at all, be it on a plot level, on a metaphorical level, or just on the level of plain human sanity. When the film "explains" what is happening (after about 50 minutes of flashbacks, dream sequences, possible dream sequences, sudden scenes of Italian sex farce stuff and, well, other stuff), everything makes even less sense.
Even if one starts from the theory that Polselli had a bunch of actors, a cool looking castle and a camera, but most certainly no script as mankind understands the word yet still proceeded to make a film just for the love of the naked female breast, this does not explain the obvious care put into the bizarre flash cutting, the film's sometimes meandering, sometimes jumping between "reality", "dream" and scenes that make no sense as either "reality" or "dream". Or, you know, anything else about this thing.
Really nothing about this film seems explicable in any sense of the word I know of. If the film's goal was just to show us as many naked women as possible, wouldn't there have been easier ways to do it? If the goal was to make a horror film, wouldn't even the Italian style of doing things quick and on the cheap have called for a bit more sense (or sensibility)? Why write a script (if there was one) in which every utterance makes no frigging sense at all, neither in the context of the things we see, nor in the context of people usually using language to communicate something or shout at each other on the Internet? Why set your actors up to act only through blank zoned-out staring or screaming melodramatic hysterics?
In the end Black Magic Rites comes to us as a true enigma, a "film" seemingly made for no audience one could conceive of, consciously or druggedly using stylistic techniques to put its viewers into a state of pure befuddlement, puzzling and bewildering even for the most hardened lover of puzzling and bewildering things. I probably don't have to say that I loved it in all its glorious, sloppy, nonsensical, breast-loving majesty.
Now, some of you, my (mostly silent) readers, might think that this write-up makes no sense at all. You might even feel a tad confused by it. Please be assured that this is only a fraction of the effect the film itself will have on you.
Technorati-Tags: italian movies,renato polselli,mickey hargitay,reviews,horror,my brain just imploded
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Monday, May 25, 2009
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
Gentleman Killer (1967)
A small US town close to the border with Mexico is plagued by the activities of the Mexican border bandit "Colonel" Ferrerres (Eduardo Fajardo). The only thing that stands between the exceptionally unwashed and evil man and his gang and the riches the town and the federal bank with its federal gold could provide is a troop of cavalry soldiers under the command of Captain Reeves (Vidal Molina) - at least until the redrawing of the borders between Mexico and the US is finished, at which point the town will become Mexican territory and Ferrerres' playground by default anyway.
The bandit leader is not willing to wait this long, though, and sets in motion a plan to get at the gold a bit earlier. First part of this plan is to slaughter the cavalrymen who are supposed to relieve the current protectors of the town. The military in this part of the world functions in a rather strange way, and so the absence of their relief doesn't hinder the soldiers from leaving their posts. All of them but Captain Reeves, whose job it is to represent the US government and to keep order in town until the new blood arrives - whenever that may be.
Under these circumstances, it's not much of a surprise that Ferrerres' men are killing the good captain quite effortlessly and with a certain amount of sadistic glee.
Nobody could have expected that the newest arrival in town, the professional gambler and gunman Gentleman Jo (Anthony Steffen), is the good Captain's brother, nor could anyone have expected that Jo is as good at posing as his own brother, making friends with the whore with the heart of gold (Silvia Solar), laying ambushes, backstabbing, setting bandits against each other and other special talents useful for the hero of a Spaghetti Western, as he turns out to be when properly motivated by a wish for vengeance.
Giorgio Stegani's Gentleman Killer has a lot in common with the actor playing its hero. Anthony Steffen will hardly be anyone's favorite Spaghetti Western hero, but one wouldn't want to say he's doing a bad job at anything that is required of him. He has the swagger, he has the stare, he knows how to let the small muscles around his eyes do much of his acting and he is convincing in his action scenes. It's not his fault that there are people in the business who are even better at it all, yet still he'll never be remembered as fondly as Van Cleef, Eastwood or Nero.
It is really much the same with the whole film. Stegani's direction is certainly not flashy or very remarkable, but he keeps everything tight, grimy and tense. Not much of what is happening during the course of the movie will be a surprise to anyone, but Jaime Jesus Balcazar's script keeps the "when" and the "how" of the plot open enough to keep the film interesting. I was even surprised by the ending which manages to involve a deus ex machina that is for once neither annoying nor stupid and instead pushes the film in a direction that puts its own anti-Mexican ressentiment into question in an unsubtle yet effective way.
Friends of the gentlemen Nicolai and Morricone (this time around with Nicolai listed as composer and Morricone as conductor and musical director) will be glad to hear that the score is of their usual standard; surely not their best work, yet still sounding pretty damn great to my ears.
Gentleman Killer is definitely no Spaghetti Western masterpiece, not the sort of film I'd recommend to people who just want to get a little taste for the genre or who haven't already seen at least some of the films of the Sergios. It is rather the sort of movie that can keep someone like me in love with a genre even after I've experienced most of its high points and some of its hidden diamonds, a film that provides exactly what one would expect in a genre film and that won't be ashamed of it.
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