(JUAN.of.a.KIND)

Night #31: The Final Night

One of the most notorious so-called ‘video nasties’ of the early eighties, ‘The Evil Dead’ really has earned it’s place in the horror movie hall of fame. Probably the first significant horror movie of the eighties, it set a new definition in gore, shocks and filmmaking that, in many ways, has yet to be rivalled, even though director Sam Raimi has gone on to bigger, though not necessarily better, things with the Spiderman series.

Unlike previous movies that have displayed such qualities, like Tobe Hooper’s ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘The Evil Dead’ has a hearty injection of black humour running throughout, making the over-the-top gore on offer easier to stomach. The special effects are pretty nasty and very unsophisticated, as you would expect for such a low budget feature, but they never seem out of place, fitting the context of the movie perfectly…Bruce Campbell has become a massive cult favourite since starring in this movie and its sequels, mainly due to him adding some over-the-top quirkiness to the [Ash] character, but in this first movie his performance is fairly low-key, even though you do start to will him on towards the end of the movie – to end his torment and your own.

The main star of this movie, though, is the unseen force that lives in the woods. Raimi and his crew built several different camera rigs to enable different views and angles throughout the movie. Usually simple devices made out of timber with a camera mounted on the front, it is this kind of maverick approach to filmmaking that comes across…and makes a simple movie a much more satisfying movie…There are subtle nods to previous horror staples – the tool shed, with its rustic handtools and hanging relics, is evocative of the house in ‘…Chainsaw Massacre’, the shots of the moon and setting sun echo Romero’s ‘Night of the Livng Dead’, whilst there is a torn-in-half poster of Wes Craven’s ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ hanging in the basement – as if to acknowledge what has gone before, and set a new level of terror for a new decade.

Overall, this movie still stands as one of the defining horror movies of modern times. Just as ‘…Chainsaw’ and ‘…Living Dead’ were perfect ‘drive-in’ movies for their era – movies that were meant to be shown on the big screen – ‘The Evil Dead’ was perfect for the then-new medium of video, inspiring a myriad of impersonators well into the 21st century…it is with this truly innovative original that Raimi laid down a template for eighties horror that, nearly thirty years on, still delivers the goods.

(Horror Society)

This is the lucky 13th year in a row that I have viewed The Evil Dead on Halloween night (edit: FYI, I broke out my well-aged Anchor Bay limited edition VHS copy from 1996 for some good ol’ analog griminess). And what a perfect way to cap off my first ever Sh-October horror-thon of 31 straight nights of horror movies. I gotta say that this was a lot of fun, especially when I got into the groove and nightly routine of things (not that the task ever became a mundane chore or anything). To the keen horror geeks amongst you, you may have noticed numerous patterns in the way that I had sequenced the entire order of films (usually in bunches of 2 or 3). For example, films #30 and #31 were both directed by Sam Raimi (and there are many more associative patterns scattered throughout the lineup). Anyways, I hope to have enough unique horror movie choices leftover to do it again next year. And I hope that you enjoyed following along as well as partook in your own horror movie marathon to celebrate the spooky occasion.

So then…a Scerry Xmas to all and to all a good night.

Night #30

With her face frequently in closeup, [Alison] Lohman’s Christine Brown appears beyond paranoia, embodying dread for a universe that’s pitted against her. Her face, which would be cuddly-cute in just about any other film, seems to mask a depression that is rotting her from the inside. However this performance came to be, Sam Raimi sure gets what he needs in his much anticipated return to the horror-comedy, the genre that incubated this now versatile craftsman. Christine’s turmoil notwithstanding, every inch of Raimi’s film teems with devious fun, appropriate since this is the filmmaker’s break from more “serious” – and I’d argue, more forgettable – projects.

“The Evil Dead” was a starter job – a convenient premise in an audience-ready genre. After all, Raimi swears he was hardly a horror film buff, and had stumbled upon the idea for “Dead” when pondering the trees of Birnam approaching Dunsinane in “Macbeth,” a work more to his taste. Like “Night of the Living Dead” premise, which came about as the most economical one George Romero and crew could think up, Raimi conceived a wandering curse, borne from an ancient text but quite the inhabitant in any young host out for a good time in the woods. Thus, the tale could be free in form and flexible for narrative development. It made for an open experimental grounds for the filmmakers.

The pattern of shock-and-shock-again is set early, and surely risks becoming routine. Though Raimi keeps things clever and even throws out one shock before a fair warning, perhaps what the “Saw”-whetted audiences need these days. His bravest move comes in his outright tribute to his own “Evil Dead.” Would you guys think you’d see the possessed hanging in midair and, even moreso Raimi, throating a witch’s cackle? Would you think something so early-80s would work today? The proof is right here in Raimi’s latest.

In “Drag Me” as well, a sure hand revives horror by looking back to tradition. In this genre, perhaps we should consider where we have been before newbies blindly, sadistically thrust themselves forward into muck and darkness.

(Film Threat)

Night #29

If there’s one thing I really want out of life, it’s a vampire movie that takes wild departures from the genre and plays its own game. I found that movie in Tomas Alfredson’s jarring, somnambulistic Let The Right One In, one of the most remarkably original horror movies that I’ve ever seen…It sets out to tell the kind of horror story so heavily steeped in alienation yet without a note of Bauhaus that usually sets the pace for these kinds of movies.

Truth be told, Let The Right One In isn’t exactly a horror movie. Yes, it’s about a vampire, it’s steeped in European atmosphere most likely to be found in a Roger Moore Bond flick and there’s a good deal of gore and violence, but all of this is overshadowed by the romance and coming of age angle. The violence almost stands in as a metaphor for adolescence as a whole.

Director, Alfredson, in a distinctly European fashion tells Oskar’s life story without using a single word. Through subtlety and nuance it becomes clear who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. Eli, on the other hand, is a much more complicated character. Seemingly unaware of the scope of her own power, her only instinct is to survive, and while most child-vampires in fiction are, in fact, adults trapped in the body of children, Eli is a twelve year old trapped in an immeasurably old body that doesn’t show a single sign of its age.

Let The Right One In…[is] unlike any vampire movie you’ve ever seen. It’s remarkably true to the vampire mythology but plays a game unlike anything else. Playing out almost like a fairy tale, it manages to weave violence, revenge and loneliness into a love story that is, at times, as sweet as your memory of your own first kiss. It sells such an offbeat, horrifying tale through unbelievably intense performances from its preteen cast and quietly disturbing direction. This movie is not to be missed under any circumstances.

(Cinema Suicide)

Night #28

Nosferatu is probably considered to be director F.W. Murnau’s standout film. Shot between August and October 1921, the movie would become the target of a lawsuit filed by Bram Stoker’s widow, which claimed that the film essentially stole the ideas from her husband’s novel “Dracula”. As a result of that lawsuit, all known negatives and prints of Nosferatu were destroyed. Years later, prints of the film would surface in other countries and then eventually make their way around the world. Nosferatu became the definitive vampire film, spawning a number of imitations and a remake in 1979. To the purists, nothing compares to the original silent masterpiece from 1922.

Nosferatu should have never been. The lawsuit filed by Bram Stoker’s widow aimed to completely wipe the film out of existence. Thankfully, that didn’t happen and the film became a vital part of the German Expressionist movement…This is a timeless film that has easily outdone all of the copycats to proceed it. This is a movie that doesn’t need the Halloween season to be compelling. In fact, the darkness of the plot itself is enough to resonate with the viewer even in the light of day.

(The Midnight Palace)

Night #27

It is not surprising — quite the reverse, in fact — that, in The Shining, Kubrick should present us with the antithesis of the film which preceded it, Barry Lyndon. Such a succession only confirms his habit over the last twenty years of alternating between deliberately slow-paced, meditative, even melancholic works and others with a taut, staccato rhythm, generated by a dynamism which can occasionally be frenetic (Dr. Strangelove following Lolita, A Clockwork Orange following 2001) — like the systolic and diastolic movements of the human heart. It is also likely that Kubrick hoped to achieve one of those enormous popular successes which had always eluded him and which have become almost a prerequisite since the Movie Brats took Hollywood by storm. (In its first few weeks on the North American market alone, The Shining earned forty-seven million dollars, the highest gross of any of Kubrick’s films!) It has reinstated the director in a position of strength which had been slightly impaired by the commercial failure of Barry Lyndon, just as A Clockwork Orange and its more immediate fascination followed 2001, whose success was slow and gradual.

The narrative development of The Shining is particularly radical. The gradual compression of “objective” space and time (from the mountains to the hotel, from the hotel to the labyrinth; from months to day, from days to hours) is allied to a corresponding expansion of “inner” time and space….. The gradual erosion of the frontier between the ego and the world, the real and imaginary, characteristic of schizophrenia, is visible in The Shining — at first stimulated by the special “gift” possessed by both Danny and Halloran then, by a process of contamination, affecting Jack and eventually Wendy, who also enter into contact with the ghosts. This personality splitting is accompanied, as often in Kubrick’s work, by double images: Danny and his double Tony, the apparitions of the twins, the Overlook’s lounges with their symmetrical decoration, the labyrinth with its perverse symmetry, which is revealed as a miniaturized double of the hotel and is doubled in its turn in the form of a model and a map. The camera itself — with its forward, lateral and reverse tracking shots no longer sweeping the space in baroque spirals as was the case in Paths of Glory and Lolita but following a rigorously geometric circuit — adds further to the sense of implacable logic and an almost mathematical progression.

In the extensive adaptation which Stephen King’s novel underwent at the hands of Kubrick and Diane Johnson, their concern being for ever greater precision in order to pare the work down to its essentials and allow the power of its themes and situations to emerge more clearly, the most remarkable idea was undoubtedly the final one of the labyrinth. It enriched the plot with a new mythic dimension and fully responded to the needs of a director for whom — as he has often insisted — the truth of anything in the cinema is to be found in the sensation of that thing rather than in its conceptualization.

In many respects, The Shining  is one of his most intimate works. Isolated, hemmed in, beset by a siege mentality, an intellectual (a former teacher) sees himself as an artist but cannot manage to create. The anguish of the white page culminates in one disturbing sentence typed out ad infinitum: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. By choosing an artist for the first time as the protagonist of one of his stories (a theme prefigured in Lolita  by the character of Humbert) and making him a failure, Kubrick exorcises his own demons and demonstrates — by default, as it were — the exalting supremacy of artistic creation. If Jack has given reality to his nightmares (he admits to Wendy that, in his dreams, he killed both her and Danny), it is undoubtedly because he has proved incapable of sublimating his instincts by writing his novel. Artistic creation has, after all, a genuine cathartic value. Just as myths do, Kubrick appears to be telling us, which is why he has always wished to identify his films with the collective subconscious. Modern civilization and science have divested our conception of the world of all its mythologies, and are exclusively bound by the principle of reality and the death instinct. It therefore befits the film-maker to create for the largest possible numbers — with no distinction of class or society — archetypal, mythopoeic works in which the spectator will find a balm for his torments and desires.

Excerpts taken from the sadly still out-of-print book Kubrick: The Definitive Edition by Michel Ciment (I consider myself rather lucky to have bought a new copy back when it was still in print early on in this decade). The article Kubrick & The Fantastic reprinted in full at The Kubrick Site.

Night #26

Polanski, one of cinema’s greatest directors, was very early in his career with Repulsion, but his command on the medium is clear. It was the first flick in his unofficial “Apartment Trilogy”, followed by “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Tenant”, each a variation in a theme, exploring supernatural or psychological threats to apartment dwellers. With Repulsion he created a deliberately-paced, realistic study of a person slipping into full-fledged madness. Punctuated by a handful of well-placed, effective scares, some of which have been copied countless times, the film generates a terrific and creepy atmosphere that engrosses the viewer in Carol’s sick world. Though she has a minimum of dialogue, Deneuve is terrific as Carol, ably conveying her alternating helplessness and her misguided need for protective and violent outbursts. Though not a traditional slasher in the sense of an unstoppable killer hunting for victims, Repulsion finds believable ways to do just the opposite, bringing victims to its killer, who also just happens to be one of the most sympathetic in the genre. Unlike many slasher flicks, Repulsion’s ending is tragic, chilling, and thoughtful rather than jolt-inducing.

(Retro Slashers)

Night #25

Horror films that tap into our hard-wired instinctive fears probe a deeper place than movies with more sophisticated threats. A villain is only an actor, but a shark is more than a shark.

“The Blair Witch Project,” an extraordinarily effective horror film, knows this and uses it. It has no fancy special effects or digital monsters…The movie is like a celebration of rock-bottom production values—of how it doesn’t take bells and whistles to scare us…By shooting in a chill season, by dampening the color palette, the movie makes the woods look unfriendly and desolate; nature is seen as a hiding place for dread secrets.

At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, “The Blair Witch Project” is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can’t see. The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark.

(RogerEbert.SunTimes.com)

Got back home about 2.5 hours ago. And I’m sober tonight for the first time since Wednesday (what a great weekend!). But now I need to conserve my drinking energy for the surely-to-be spirits-filled Halloweekend. And that makes 25 films in the can!

Night #24

The Last Broadcast is a similar no-budget horror film that predated Blair Witch by one year. Irate buzz on the web often argues that it is the far superior picture. There are plenty of video-based horror films made by young computer-savvy men in their ‘twenties. Despite the fact that it never found a mass audience, this one does have an edge.

The Last Broadcast and Blair Witch indeed have striking similarities. Both rely heavily on the concept of ‘found video,’ the supposed examination of which uncovers a baffling, terrifying mystery. Instead of searching for a witch in Maryland, this picture’s intrepid crew goes deep into the woods of New Jersey looking for a demonic phantom. The movie we watch purports to be a true document of the subsequent cover-up that pushes beyond official efforts to pinpoint the real killer.

(DVD Talk)

In an unrelated but still kinda related note, I posted last night’s Cannibal Holocaust poster art/review excerpt entry completely hammered on Johnnie Walker Black Label…Edit: I now recall that it was Red Label, the cheapest and rawest of the JW fam (sorry, memory lapse) but that sh!t’s still better than any Canadian Whiskey I’ve ever had. And if you’re curious, I’m pretty sure I hit double digits in shots as there were no shot glasses on hand and we were all just pouring it (from the largest scotch bottle I’ve ever seen) over ice all night. End Edit. And this post is going up as I am nicely buzzed on beer and whiskey. Having a great time in Dirty Jersey with my hard-drinking extended family, no doubt. Straight up and down, this has definitely been one of the more memorable Octobers in recent memory (for numerous reasons). Will be back in Ottawa Sunday night (wish us a safe 6-7 hour drive back). Oh, and check out The Last Broadcast if you can secure yourself a copy (something I did way back in the 1-9-9…9).

Night #23

In the court of controversy “Cannibal Holocaust” reigns supreme.  Virtually no other film has so universally divided its audience…This film requires your reaction if nothing else. Love it, hate it, respect it, or revile it, there is absolutely no room for half-assed, so-so, indecision…Cannibal Holocaust’s defining sentiment is that the documentary crew had no justification for staging the torture and murder of the indigenous people for the benefit of their film. Yet with that very concept taken to heart, Deodato specifically ordered the on-camera slaughter of live animals, expressly for filmmaking gravitas…It certainly stands as the pinnacle of the cannibal film subgenre.

(Severed Cinema)

Night #22

Written and directed by Tobe Hooper on a shoestring budget, [The Texas Chain Saw Massacre] debuted in 1974 and quickly garnered a buzz for its depraved and graphic themes. Many audiences walked out, many theaters refused to play it, and long before the world decided it was a “classic,” most of the reviews said otherwise. The tiny budget mixed with the kind of direction and atmosphere that had to be at least in part unintentional gave TCM a “documentary” feel, only heightening the emotion.

(X-Entertainment) —-> Amusingly thorough 5,000+ word review of TCM; check it out if you are so inclined.

Note: I’ve now got 3 straight weeks of nightly horror film-viewing in the can. I’ll be in New Jersey for the next 3 days (for a wedding), but best believe I’ll be packing my next 3 selections with me, watching them whenever I find some free time (will try to keep up with the progress posts as well). No doubt I’ve come too far to let anything end this epic streak now.

Night #21

Note: I’m posting this entire review because everything about the film in this concise writeup is worth mentioning.

One horror film of the 80’s that is often missed in discussions of the era is Bill Lustig’s gem Maniac. Many critics pass it (like a lot of horror) over as being just a nasty movie about nasty people or a generic slasher film (an odd comparison as it bears little resemblance to the gleeful hunts of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers) but for many reasons it is so much more. The film follows mannequin fanatic serial killer Frank Zito as he works his trade in New York. Director Lustig (who later founded Blue Underground entertainment, an excellent distributor of horror and exploitation) shows a grimy decaying vision of the big apple quite fitting to its subject matter, and only briefly contrasted by a shiny aerial shot of the city at night (apparently re-used footage from Dario Argento’s Inferno). Within this seedy setting Lustig executes the murders with finesse slowly building the tension before the strike, rather than just jumping out (one particularly on edge scene was recently given tribute in Alexander Aja’s well honed Haute Tension). [MagicJuan Note: The reviewer is referring to the incredible subway washroom sequence. which Aja indeed replicated to great effect (with one major difference). I saw Haute Tension before Maniac, and it’s always fun when you inadvertently encounter the original sampling source.]

However the focus in Maniac is not on the characters, but on the maniac himself, which allows for the second great factor of this film, Joe Spinell [MagicJuan Note: Mad respect. R.I.P.]. Spinell was a heavyset New Yorker usually relegated to playing thugs in low budget films, as well as varying size supporting roles in well known classics (The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Rocky). Spinell had wanted to create a self written heartfelt project like his friend and co-star Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky and thus wrote Maniac. From there Spinell and Lustig worked together to develop the character of Frank Zito. This dedication and close relationship with his creation make [Spinell’s] performance all the more believable. As a result we get not only a dark and chilling look into a serial killer’s mind and life, but also an oddly empathetic one. Though actually liking Frank would be a stretch for most viewers, by the end of the film it’s hard not to feel sorry for him.

Unfortunately Maniac meanders slightly towards the end with a slightly ill planned subplot which threatens to weaken proceedings. However this minor and not that bad annoyance is pretty much totally overruled by the final great element of Maniac, Tom Savini gore [MagicJuan Note: !!!!!]. This is Savini at his best, rivaling his legendary work on George A. Romero’s Dawn/Day of the Dead and Joseph Zito’s The Prowler. One particularly memorable and somewhat infamous scene in a carpark takes an effect that Savini uses in his other films and executes it absolutely perfectly making it by far the best effect of it’s kind.[MagicJuan Note: Shotgun!]

So if you’re looking for tense golden age horror, a glance deep into a demented mind or some really effective gore you really should track down Maniac and give it a shot.

(Best Horror Movies)

Night #20

With the recent release, on video and DVD, of “The Beyond” by Anchor Bay (although true credit for this magnificent addition to any self-respecting horror fan’s collection should go to Bob Murawski and Sage Stallone of GRINDHOUSE Releasing [who re-released “The Beyond” on DVD in October 2008]), I think a whole new generation will be introduced to what Fulci playfully calls “A plotless film, (with) no logic to it, just a succession of images”.

David Warbeck’s experience with Fulci began with the Poe-inspired “The Black Cat” in 1980. Also a Fulci veteran, Catriona MacColl had starred as Mary Woodhouse in “The City of the Living Dead” and later as Lucy Boyle in “House by the Cemetery”. Although the script lacks any in-depth characterization, both Warbeck and MacColl were able to breathe life into John and Liza, making them believable and real.

Fulci’s ability to utilize gore in driving the story and creating atmosphere is almost unparalleled in today’s movie-making. Is this true of all Fulci’s filmmaking??? No, there were many films later in his career where he felt it necessary to exploit gore mainly because the scripts he was shooting were lacking substance, but in the time span from “Don’t Torture a Duckling” to “New York Ripper,” he was truly the “King of Horror” and gore was partly the foundation for his success.

Finally, the score for “The Beyond” is magnificent. Just as imagery and gore are important to any Fulci film, the score is the final piece that melds them together and helps heighten the effectiveness of the storytelling. Fabio Frizzi’s (“The City of the Living Dead”, “Zombie”, and “Manhattan Baby”) score does a wonderful job in creating tension, building suspense, and enhancing the overall atmosphere of the film. It is the final component in Lucio’s symphony of fear.

(House of Horrors)

Night #19

The year 1974 was an interesting period in the history of horror and cult films. It saw the release of many now-iconic titles that ranged from the archetypal The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas, to a series of unconventional films that included Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat, the French softcore sex romp Emmanuelle, John Waters’ Female Trouble and many more strange and offbeat cinematic experiences.

Sugar Hill is an uncomplicated and entertaining example of drive-in fare from the early seventies. The film seems to take a page from the classic EC Comics of the 1950s (Tales from the Crypt, etc.) in its comic book presentation of characters, dialogue and revenge-driven plot, a common storyline in horror comics.

This combining of film genres was obviously apparent in Sugar Hill (1974), a supernatural thriller with “blaxploitation” elements…it’s noteworthy that Sugar Hill was ahead of the curve in making zombies the real heroes of the piece.

Sugar Hill fit in quite nicely with the other odd-beat films released in 1974. It offered something different and unexpected than the usual voodoo-zombie thriller stereotype. However, once George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead hit screens in 1978, the entire identity and modus operandi of zombies were changed forever. Perhaps one day, horror filmmakers will revisit the idea of the zombie-gangster mash-up approach seen in Sugar Hill.

(TCM Db)

Night #18

The term Giallo initially referred to yellow paperbacks in post-fascist Italy which re-printed such mystery writers as Agatha Christie, Cornell Woolrich, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Applied to cinema, the genre is comprised of equal parts early German Crimi (pulp thrillers often based on Edgar Lee Wallace novels), the literary mystery, and the European influenced willingness to explore sex and violence more provocatively than ever before…Amidst the creative-kill set pieces are thematic undercurrents of self identity, the illusion of appearances, and the inability of the human mind to decipher its perceptions.

In Blood and Black Lace, perhaps the most influential and certainly one of the most beautiful giallos, features death, deception, and flawed perception. ‘Sei donne per l’assassino’ (in Italian meaning “Six Women for the Murderer”), this first ‘body count’ film displays a savage intensity not found in [Mario Bava’s] earlier effort, The Evil Eye.

Establishing a thematic and stylistic blueprint for the Italian thriller and mystery that would be extended and innovated further by such talents as Argento and Fulci, the plot is as complex as you would expect.

There is no saving grace in this film, no faith or redemption. There is simply excess, greed, pain, and torture. People are murdered for profit, extortion, and business; there is rarely ever anything personal in it. Yet when the killer strikes it is with vigor, bordering on the sexual frenzy of a lover taking possession of one’s lover.

Many Giallos from Argento to Fulci operate in an emotionally cold wasteland where the identities and motivations of the killers [are] closely guarded secret until the final, shocking revelation…Bava, even in this early effort, manages to establish this crucial sense of separation between the objective and subjective, killer and victim and audience, without sacrificing intimacy of character or emotional involvement.

In Bava’s movies we see the world through his eyes and heart and soul, not our own, and his world was charged with a poetic symphony of decay, death, violence, and sexuality lovingly depicted with excessive style and incredible wit. This is Giallo as it should be: moist, wet, and dripping with not only blood and style but intelligence. Get it, savor it, and feel that Italian thriller goodness!

(SexGoreMutants)