Daily Halloween: Night 10

Due to poor Netflix queue management Rabid (1977) arrived in my mailbox yesterday. I didn’t need to watch another early Cronenberg film so soon after Shivers, but who am I to fight the fates? Rabid stars Marilyn Chambers¹ as Rose. After a motorcycle accident Rose undergoes experimental  surgery², during which skin from her thigh is treated to become “morphogenically neutral” and grafted to her abdomen and other damaged areas. After a month-long coma, not only has the graft repaired the damage, but it has mutated into a phallic protuberance that projects from an orifice in her armpit. (This is not hard science fiction.) Rose becomes a sci-fi vampire, seducing men and penetrating them with her armpit stinger to drink their blood. She is cunning and self-aware, but her victims become voracious and highly contagious – they are the rabid. When they fully succumb they’re like the infected from 28 Days Later, only less enthusiastic (the infected set a high bar). Shivers is a claustropobhic film taking place entirely on the grounds of a high-rise enclave; in Rabid we see the malady spread from the clinic and overrun Montreal.

These two films mark the middle of what I think of as Cronenberg’s early, raw period. In 1983 he made Videodrome, a highly conceptual, metatextual sci-fi horror film about violent media and S&M (it still involves new bodily orifices, that remains a motif until 1999’s eXistenZ, at least). It’s also his first film with a cast widely familiar to American audiences – James Woods and Debbie Harry. After that come The Dead Zone and The Fly, with higher budgets for cast (Christoper Walken, Martin Sheen, Geena Davis, and Jeff Goldblum) and effects. From there, Cronenberg makes all kinds of movies: crime films, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, an investigation of Freud and Jung, and others. Somehow, after mentioning J.G. Ballard in my Shivers post, I neglected to mention that the Cronenberg adapted Ballard’s famous cult novel Crash for screen in 1996.

David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon, made his directorial debut with Antiviral last year. As a filmmaker, he’s very much his father’s son. I don’t think Antiviral holds together very well but Brandon shoots it with a lot of style and an uncompromising (if somewhat derivative) vision. Finally, father David published his first novel, Consumed, less than two weeks ago.

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¹Chambers was a sometimes mainstream, sometimes pornographic actress known best for Behind the Green Door, a film that came into my consciousness when Jackie Chan watches it in his teched-out Subaru in The Cannonball Run. As a kid I loved Cannonball Run.
²No good comes of experimental research and treatments in Cronenberg’s world – see Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Shivers, Rabid, Scanners, The Brood, The Fly, Dead Ringers, eXistenZ…

Daily Halloween: Night 8

I declare In the Company of Wolves to be a great movie. It’s a dreamlike dark fairy tale with its own logic (dream logic, I guess). It has werewolves in the strictest sense but it’s not a werewolf film, or even really a horror film. Based on a short story by Angela Carter, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Neil Jordan, it brings the subtext of Little Red Riding Hood (sex and predatory men) to text. But Carter and Jordan turn the story on its ear – they empower Rosaleen, the red-hooded heroine, and aren’t entirely clear about the wolves’ nature.

Most of the film is set in a shadowy forest of mossy, gnarled trees and giant mushrooms; lizards, frogs, snakes, and birds are tucked into almost every scene. The setting and the man-to-wolf transformations work not because they’re believable or realistic (they’re not) but because they fit the uncanny world. It has stories within a dream within a story, and, though the logic of the real world doesn’t apply to any of it, the story coheres.

Sarah Patterson, who was only about 13 when the film was shot, delivers a good performance as Rosaleen and I’m surprised she didn’t go on to do more. The rest of the cast is also very good: Angela Lansbury plays Granny, David Warner plays Rosaleen’s father, and Stephen Rea and Terence Stamp make short appearances.

This was a nice change of pace, and my favorite of the new films I’ve watched this month.

Daily Halloween: Night 7

I put on The Killing of Jacob Marr, a low budget indie horror film, tonight. It was wholly unremarkable so I did some work while it played in the background. No more need be said of it.

But I’ll take a moment to sing the praises of Ken Russell’s weird Lair of theWhite Worm (1988). I saw it in high school, sometime in my twenties, and then again about a month ago. It has new Doctor Peter Capaldi, an early-career Hugh Grant, and, in a fearless performance, a vampy Amanda Donohoe. It's a crazy movie full of hallucinatory psychosexual imagery, and really quite fun.

Daily Halloween: Night 6

I finally got around to watching a Mario Bava movie, Black Sunday, a.k.a., The Mask of Satan (1960). I am a big fan of Italian horror, and Bava is the godfather. I’ve put him off because I’m always a little resistant to watch old films, particularly from before the late 1960’s. I am not proud of that and when I do see one I’m often pleased, but it’s a hang-up nonetheless. But Bava is the predecessor to Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, Michael Soave, Lamberto Bava (Mario’s son) and others I’m forgetting or don’t know, so I had to try.

Black Sunday is shot in black and white. The lighting in some of the scenes is beautiful and there are some startlingly good visual effects. It’s an interesting watch, romantic and gothic in story and milieu and with an uncanny creepiness I rarely find in older films. Barbara Steele is good in dual roles, playing the 15^th century Moldavian witch Asa and her 19^th century descendant Katia. In the end, though, I am a philistine: I admire this film but am unmoved by it. I recommend it for fans of the genre who want to see some of its roots.

But Amazon has a slew of Bava films streaming, so I next opted for the 1966 Kill, Baby, Kill!, a much more modern film than Black Sunday but not so lurid as the title suggests (how could it be, unless it were a rape revenge prison flick?). The story brings the modern and the scientific against the supernatural when a coroner visits a late 19^th century cursed village in the Carpathian Mountains. Bava’s direction is much more dynamic and interesting than in his earlier film, panning and zooming to explore the artfully arranged spaces. It has cobwebs, a foggy cemetery, timely gusts of wind, and a spooky child ghost, all lit in alternating vibrant color and shadow. This film was a happy discovery.

Daily Halloween: Night 5

David Cronenberg is an art house director best known as the prime practitioner of body horror, though he has expanded well beyond that in his 40 years of filmmaking. Shivers (1975) is one of his early films. It takes place in a planned condominium reminiscent of the high-end enclaves in J.G.Ballard’s novels High Rise and Super-Cannes. In the film a sexually transmitted parasite runs rampant, causing uncontrollable libido in its hosts and resultant deviance, chaos, and death. Clearly, the juxtaposition of the setting and the increasingly twisted sexuality is rife with social commentary; you can watch and decide for yourself if it’s effective. The character Nurse Forsythe encapsulates the mood: “Even dying is sexual.” Not unexpectedly, Shivers met with much controversy when it came out, but Roger Ebert was an early (somewhat hesitant) proponent and it has come to be mostly well-regarded.

I appreciate Shivers. The Fly may be my favorite of Cronenberg’s horror films and his most polished. The Brood might be his creepiest. His psychological horror drama Dead Ringers, wherein Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot, is a truly unique film and probably the one I most recommend from his early catalog. And then there are his recent forays: his crime dramas like the great A History of Violence and Eastern Promises and the surreal, literary Cosmopolis. His is an oeuvre worth exploring.

You could spend a lot of time diagramming Cronenberg’s influence, and one branch would lead you from Shivers to the 1986 cult horror comedy Night ofthe Creeps, which also showcases mind-controlling slugs. Both are directly referenced by James Gunn’s 2006 Slither, a fun film with a great cast – one of my favorite post-2000 horror films. I’m glad Gunn is seeing wider success now with Guardians of the Galaxy.

(Here’s a Paris Review interview with J.G. Ballard from 1984.)

Daily Halloween: Night 4

I jumped back to 1971 for last night’s movie. By then the world had seen Romero’s gory Night of the Living Dead and the almost naturalistic evil in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (both 1968). Mario Bava expanded on Psycho’s (1960) edginess by introducing the violent, trashy but stylish giallo in the mid-1960’s, but the genre doesn’t seem to have fully bled over (hah) into America’s popular consciousness until later in the 70’s.  And 1971 was still a few years before the American-bred horror renaissance of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper.

Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) has a look from the New Hollywood and the feel of a gothic tale. When the film begins, Jessica (Zohra Lampert) is recently out of a mental hospital and she, her husband, and a friend are escaping the city and driving to their new home in rural Connecticut, a journey that includes a portentous river-crossing by ferry. From the first scenes Jessica maintains a troubled internal dialogue, has visions of ominous figures, and hears near-constant creepy breathy whispering. The film’s first third feels as much a psychological thriller as a supernatural horror film, and it suggests that all of the weird happenings may be borne from her madness, and it even seems possible that she is being intentionallydriven insane. It toys with this pretense until the end but it shows its hand pretty early.

Director John D. Hancock and cinematographer Robert M. Baldwin make great use of the old house and, especially, the pastoral setting, which seems summery and vibrant one moment and stark and foreboding the next. The film’s other strengths lie in its two female leads. Lampert is jaggedly vulnerable but always comes across as a real person facing her demons (which of, course, are probably not just her demons). Mariclare Costello plays Emily, a mysterious drifter they find squatting in the house who quickly falls into their lives. Costello is an interesting presence, ethereal and magnetic in her way but with a natural roundedness that belies her true role in the story. The film relies heavily on their performances and much of the tension comes from the interplay of their expressions and subtle spoken hints.

Costello as Emily

I admired this film and was glad to see it after reading about it for a while. Subtle by today's standards, but spooky and interesting.

Daily Halloween: Night 3

I am a fan of British filmmaker Ben Wheatley's movies. Down Terrace is a very black black comedy with a kitchen sink aesthetic and Sightseers is, somewhat, in the same vein; Kill List starts with the kitchen sink and keeps the realistic style even as it ramps up the occult trappings on the way to its surreal ending; A Field In England is a psychedelic nonlinear historical (17^th century) drama awash in English folklore and references to alchemy. I watched the latter only a few weeks ago and, as imperfect as it might be (and I’m not sure it is – I need at least one more viewing), I love his fearlessness and creativity of both form and content. He really is one of the most interesting directors working today.

Michael Smiley is in three of Wheatley’s four films and is terrific in all of them. I came across the film Outpost while looking though a list of Smiley's films. It sounded like it might have undead Nazis, so I added it to the queue and watched it last night. Smiley has a secondary part behind Ray Stevenson, who I also like. (And by the way, the more British TV and film I watch the more I notice that they have maybe 20 actors over there, and it’s fortunate that they’re good actors because you see one or two of them in every production.) It is the only film directed so far by Steve Barker and it was only released on DVD in the States. The DVD only thing isn’t always such a bad sign, I find, with lower budget films like this – maybe because distribution and marketing costs are so high? I’m speculating, but I’ve seen much worse films in the theaters.

In Outpost, a businessman named Hunt hires a team of mercenaries, led by Stevenson, to guide him to an old Nazi bunker in an Eastern Europe forest. These Nazis, it turns out, were exploring the dark arts and melding it with twisted steampunk technology. There’s an endless roster of films and comic books where Nazis are associated with the mystical or the occult, including Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, of course, as well as The Keep and Hellboy. I particularly like the charming Norwegian comic horror Nazi zombie film Dead Snow. Outpost has the Nazis experimenting with unified field theory (it references the apocryphal Philadelphia Experiment) and the bad guys, when they show up, are pretty bad. Director Barker uses some interesting animation and the setting is effectively creepy. He makes good use of his budget and the seams don’t show much. The acting’s good except for Richard Brake’s mysterious outback Appalachian cockney accent. Overall, forgettable but a fun and atmospheric 90 minutes.

A maybe better Nazi horror film

So far, I’m 0/2 on new horror films this month. Neither has been terrible but neither is a great discovery, either. I hope things look up.