Three Films Make A Post: Hard work never killed anyone. Until now.

Boys from County Hell (2020): This Irish horror comedy by Chris Baugh has quite a bit to recommend it: the – really very Irish, going by other Irish comedies I’ve seen – black humour often hits very well indeed, not necessarily being kind to its characters but also not using them as punching bags. I’m also very happy with the surprisingly clever (and creepy) twists it makes to some of the mechanics of vampirism. The cold open is a scene of two elderly people’s blood coming to the vampire instead of the undead coming to suck for a reason.

I – and I know quite a few people disagree with me there – am not always as happy with the way the film’s comedy and its more naturalistic emotional side interact; in fact, the film seems to use its humour to distract from its darker, personal elements, like an awkward guy afraid of his own emotions.

The Wanting Mare (2020): Sometimes, I use these three movies/one braincell posts to mark a film I’m not sure I’ve quite come to terms with as interesting, wonderfully made, or important. Case in point is this multi-generational weird science fiction film by Nicholas Ashe Bateman that tells a story of yearning and hope carried by a dream over three generations, casting it into dream-like yet precise imagery that belies its low budget. I’m not sure I’ve quite been able to penetrate its metaphorical level, so I can only say it’s a fascinating and beautiful film most certainly worth returning to, made by a filmmaker clearly worth watching.

The Bloodstained Butterfly aka Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate (1971): This sort of giallo by the always interesting Duccio Tessari is a very peculiar film. On a plot level, this is more of a police procedural with a sharp, socially critical edge (as nearly always in this kind of film, towards the rich and people in authority positions, and the failures of the older generation bringing the younger to ruin) that focusses on all of those things giallos usually don’t focus on: a systematic police investigation and courtroom shenanigans, with only little time spent on the things you’d expect going in.

However, stylistically, this is absolutely a giallo, using all the visual and acoustic tics and tricks of the genre, but applying them to a narrative space they are not usually applied to, turning the dry and the sober strange through it.