70s-ish Horror Stay At Home Double Feature

Different times.

This thing has sat unwritten for a while - it seems stupid to write about cult movies when such large and devastating issues are unfolding outside the House of Sparrows. But the House is safe on lockdown, well-resourced and comfortable, if cluttered. And one of life's deepest challenges is that it doesn't stop - we don't cease to be ourselves or lose our interests just because we're under quarantine.

Upping the internet bandwidth and speed on this end has been an absolute godsend, making for better newsgathering and vastly improved viewing options. Loath as I've been to dive into the whole streaming sphere the distraction has been more than welcome, and it's been good to finally catch up with things that had eluded me previously. (Indeed, in honor of Walpurgis Night, I think tonight is the night I finally take in Sarah Phelps' adaptation of Christie's The Pale Horse.) And it's been a pleasant surprise to find that the internet doesn't necessarily inhibit spontaneity (serendipity, even), that streaming movies occasionally co-mingle with the artful clarity of in-cinema double features. Two movies taken in on different platforms within 24 hours of one another had a lot to say to me, and each other.

Jack Starett's Race With The Devil has an absolute dream quartet of actors (Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, and Lara Parker) as two married couples who take off in an RV for an off-season vacation, and run afoul of a cult of Satanists who spend the last hour of the movie stalking and chasing them across half of Texas. It's wildly implausible and incredibly fun, with our heroes responding with the hysteria and anger you'd expect people to feel under such dire straits. And it's an engaging combination of horror movie and car chase caper, with mounting paranoia and truly inspired stuntwork throughout. It's gritty enough to engage on the grindhouse level, and one might be surprised to recall it slipped out into the world with a PG rating.

Horror filmmaker and musician Rob Zombie would have been around ten when Race With The Devil was released, and it's very easy to imagine the mid-1970s monster kid Zombie must have been seeing it multiple times. I hadn't intended to follow Race with a thematically similar motion picture, but Zombie's indie horror opus 31 would sit very comfortably beneath Race on a double bill, taking in as it does the story of a group of clowns who pile in a van and head off on a road trip only to run afoul of an oddly-aristocratic cabal who force them into a violent game with death as the stakes. (Sealing its kinship with the prior movie, the movie takes place on Halloween, 1976.)

31 clinched my suspicions that there are two Rob Zombies - a consistent-but-unimaginative writer and more-than-competent director - vying for supremacy of his brain, never mind his films. The story is a rote re-hash of The Most Dangerous Game that teases but doesn't pursue an obvious line of class-consciousness. But it's beautifully executed on a largely crowd-funded budget, unfolding in a palpably grimy setting shot through with moody atmosphere and striking use of color. There's always something to look at, and the textures of skin, wood, fog give it a tangibility that makes for effective horror (cinematographer David Daniels takes over for longtime Zombie shooter Brandon Trost and proves just as adept in making Zombie's outre world look and feel real.)

Most of the characters of 31 speak in the same colorful yet witless white trash patois that Zombie has been putting in the mouths of 85% of his characters since House of 1000 Corpses, and most of the villains stalking them through the movie's lethal factory maze match the cheerful vulgarity of the protagonists with a similarly Southern-fried sadism. The cast uniformly commit to and sell their dialogue - as limited as Zombie's scripts often are I can't recall an actor who did anything less than demanded of them. Many horror filmmakers have either a strong visual sense or a sure hand with actors, but Zombie has both, and I suspect that many actors who continue to work for Zombie genuinely enjoy doing so. (The most striking figure is cut by Richard Brake as nominal-lead heavy Doomhead, who brings such terrifying and charismatic intensity to his monologues that I wished they'd been written by almost anybody else.)

This double-feature of not great movies took the edge off a couple of quarantine days, and offered a welcome reminder that cinema remains a living, breathing thing. An actor's medium that presents you new work by old favorites and introduces new favorites in even less-than-auspicious settings (I'd pay real money to see Richard Brake's MacBeth). A venue for ever-new, visceral thrills. A companion and friend even, especially, in times like these. As my new favorite channel says so charmingly, stay home/stay alive, friend.

HELL FEST

It's not a novel premise, necessarily: a killer is stalking young people in a horror maze attraction in an amusement park during Halloween.

I don't remember seeing a slasher movie that felt so airy and carefree. It's a modest affair, but that's part of what makes it so special. It avoids quite a few slasher cliches - in particular, its young attractive cast aren't jammed into archetypes (The Jock, The Nerd, The Soulful Loner, etc.) but are instead given the freedom to simply be young people. And they're given space to breathe, quip, hang out, bullshit, and kvetch. They're a fun bunch to hang out with, to a point that it's genuinely alarming when they start getting killed off. Set inside amusement park haunted house thrill rides, the movie gives us the cinematic equivalent - cinematographer Jose David Montero catches a vibrant array of carnival colors, and the thing visually pops in ways few horror indies try to.

In a peculiar era where horror movies are making overt and strident gestures toward respectability it's easy to overlook a movie like Hell Fest. Though it doesn't punch up its more novel or political aspects those aspects are there. It manages to address toxic masculinity (via its antagonists stalking strategies) without gruesomely sexualizing its violence. In the end, it's as much a horror house ride as any of its settings, and though it doesn't overtly reinvent any wheels, it remains an engaging and worthwhile Halloween treat, right down to the truly unsettling coda.

The SHOCKtober Revision

I wanna post a mess of things for this, the Halloween season. I always begin with big intentions and then life gets in the way. I'm hoping it will not be so this time around and, emboldened by already having twice as many posts on the House this year as last (though that's a low bar to clear), I'm hoping to have twice as many posts for October as thru the whole year so far.

So a bit of a cheat, here, though I sincerely hope you'll find it useful. Long time hero-of-me Stacie Ponder is also feeling similarly prolific over on her revitalized Final Girl, and she's resurrected SHOCKtober!, in which she solicits her readers to submit their favorite horror films and then counts down from least to most popular. I submitted a list last time but didn't consult it when submitting anew. You may see the below as an evolution of my tastes, though honestly I believe there are more tried-and-true selections this time out than last. For both lists, however, I restricted myself to one film per filmmaker and no more. And both are submitted in the event you're looking for something appropriate to watch over the next month - if you get a chance to give any of the following eyes, your proprietor says go! Can you stand the excitement?

At ease, Leslie.

THE LIST (including links to my reviews, if they exist):

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Fuest, 1971)
The Beyond (Fulci, 1979)
Black Sabbath (Bava, 1963)
The Brides of Dracula (Fisher, 1960)
Byzantium (Jordan, 2012)
Cat's Eye (Teague, 1985)
Creepshow (Romero, 1992)
Crimson Peak (del Toro, 2015)
Dust Devil: The Final Cut (Stanley, 1992)
Eve's Bayou (Lemmons, 1997)

Exorcist III (Blatty, 1990)
Ginger Snaps (Fawcett, 2000)
Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (Shimizu, 2003)
Kuroneko (Shindo, 1968)
Lair of the White Worm (Russell, 1988)
The Moth Diaries (Harron, 2011)
Phenomena (Argento, 1985)
Prince of Darkness (Carpenter, 1987)
Son of Frankenstein (Lee, 1939)
Wolfen (Wadleigh, 1981)

THE MUMMY (2017)

This one hurt.

It hurt because it was clearly the product of people who knew what the hell they were doing. Everything that happens in THE MUMMY happens for a reason, and the story is solid. You have a good script (by Christopher McQuarrie and David Koepp, among others) that is logical when it needs to be (triangulating the hero's fate along the axes of a love triangle, between two poles) with flourishes winningly insane enough that you just go with them (Doctor Jekyll is a) alive in 2017, b) chasing monsters, and c) played by Russell Crowe). So many people showed up ready to play in this thing, including Sofia Boutella in the gender-swapped title role.

BUT GOD DAMMIT. The game cast doesn't feel like it had a chance to let loose, to explore the emotional life and conflicts that are right there in the material. Director Alex Kurtzman brings in the action and the spectacle, but does nothing to cultivate the emotional lives of the characters. The problem may simply be with his leading man, who has been better managed in the past: Tom Cruise here is required to be roguish, clever, conflicted, and ultimately full-hearted, and though he speaks the lines that indicate all of this, he doesn't seem to believe any of them. For a man ultimately torn between the otherworldly realms inhabited by Boutella and the more earthy and human love of archaeologist Annabelle Wallis, Cruise has no real chemistry with either. (Even Jake Johnson, cast in a funny wiseass role he could play in his sleep, seems, oddly, to be sleepwalking through the movie.) And the moments that should transcend and take the characters beyond themselves simply (though clearly) register as beats, without ever taking us beyond ourselves.

In the end one isn't bored by it, but that's hardly enough to kick off a franchise, is it? At first blush I mused that all of the movie's problems would be solved had Cruise and Crowe simply switched roles: as overvalued as THE NICE GUYS was, it did remind us that Crowe still possessed reservoirs of charm, action chops, and a sense of humor that would have lent themselves to THE MUMMY's roguish lead; and given the rumors that handily explain why Cruise's chemistry with his female co-stars is so flat, one salivates thinking of the subtexts he'd bring to Jekyll and Hyde. And one is depressed further to think that without Cruise in the lead, this movie doesn't get made. That a great movie that would have kicked off a franchise with grace, smarts, and style is right there in plain sight yet beyond its makers' grasp is a huge disappointment. To your proprietor, an engaged cinephile looking for anything in 21st century Universal Horror to believe in, such a missed opportunity is frustrating and painful.

Exit the Halloween Hangover...Enter...um, THE HALLOWEEN HANGOVER!

One keeps changing one's goalposts, doesn't one? Revising a blown deadline, extending a due date to buy oneself more time? I do so unashamedly, for a number of reasons. When I last posted, I was miffed by how Halloween sneaked by with so little fanfare, and swore to extend the celebration of horror into November, taking the 21st as the true end of Halloween.

The 21st was the night the Castro Theatre unleashed a lovely 2fer of British horror: Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (from a print brought over from the British Film Institute) and Harry Kumel's Daughters of Darkness, a highly regarded cult film I'd been eager to check out for years. I attended that lovely double feature (accompanied by good friend & editor Michael Guillen - go read The Evening Class, will ya?), and yet still can't just put the damn Halloween season to bed.

Especially not since the Castro's unleashing an even-more-glorious horror 2-fer this month, pairing Argento's Suspiria (which I've seen there before and elsewhere on 35mm, but dammit) with Mario Bava's final film Beyond the Door II (aka Shock), and under-the-wire-but-surely-welcome participation in this, Mario Bava's centenary.

So I'm not pronouncing horror season done until that date (and its accompanying movies) are behind us. As for the movies mentioned above...

--Don't Look Now was basically an unknown quantity; I'd seen it on video back in college but hadn't revisited it since. Even knowing the terrifying ending is coming (and it's still a hell of a jolt, and a heartbreaker, besides), the details of the story remain engrossing. Though Roeg feels like he's keeping himself distant from his story, in which Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie mourn their dead child (retreating to Venice, where something strange among the canals seems to stalk them as insistently as their memories), it's as if Sutherland and Christie are able to spread out inside that distance and really explore the depths of sadness, intimacy, alienation, and desolation. For all its penetrating realism there's more than enough touches of the uncanny to propel the thing into the realm of horror. And I wonder now as I did when I first saw it if its visual linking of one scene to the next was lifted directly by comics scribe Alan Moore.

--Daughters of Darkness stretches a low budget and limited resources really, really far, or spends a huge budget to convey that impression. John Karlen (who shot this between Dark Shadows projects - Kumel's casting must have been deliberate) and Danielle Ouimet are newlyweds who find themselves stuck at a desolate Belgian hotel, with only a bizarre countess (Marienbad's Delphine Seyrig, semi-slumming it here under Resnais' encouragement) and her Brooksian secretary (Andrea Rau). It's decadent and dreamy, never quite solid enough to cohere into something truly great but never running out of strange details with which to beguile us. And it gets a lot of mileage out of Seyrig, her costumes, and those interiors, as well.

More soon(ish) on other movies seen in the post-post-Halloween season, including a video or two.

The Wall of October...

I'm calling this the October Wall. Wanting, as usual, to observe the Halloween seasons by watching as many horror movies as I can (and guilty, as usual, that I'm not more present here, on my own damn blog, my beloved House of Sparrows), I've pulled all of the discs with unseen or newish horror movies with the intention of watching and writing about them. Included are some discs that have sat on my shelf unwatched since purchase, some are gifts that I haven't yet viewed (ISN'T THAT JUST THE WORST), and some are sets containing movies with which I simply want to better acquaint myself. Plus there's that little envelope on the right containing a nice little surprise, borrowed from a friend which I don't doubt will be a verrrrry interesting view...

Anyway, you've got some giallo, a Curtis Harrington two-fer, a plethora of as-yet-unseen Hammer horror, an offering or two from Japan.

This won't quite be the crazy-ambitious 31 Days of Halloween some bloggers are shooting for. I'm hoping for ten at least capsule-length reviews of the movies under consideration, which'll be a nice little horror feast in the run-up to The Big Day. Hope you'll join me!

BYZANTIUM

On the basis of the evidence here, Moira Buffini is my kind of playwright. Like many of my favorite British artists, she rejects the kitchen sink realism so prevalent in that country's cinema and theatre in favor of a more fanciful maximalism. At the same time, she uses genre and fantasist tropes to address and explore contemporary social concerns as diligently as any naturalist. It is no surprise then that Byzantium (adapted by Buffini from her play A Vampire Story) should address gender politics, family relations, the frailty of the body, and our relationship to our history within its story of a mother-daughter pair of vampires on the run from undead elders. What is pleasantly surprising is how entertaining and moving Byzantium turns out to be.

Buffini's script is gorgeously realized by director Neil Jordan, an old hand at adapting vampire literature by female authors. In the opening moments of the movie Jordan effortlessly balances two plotlines, as daughter Eleanor Webb (Saoirse Ronan) gently comforts an old age pensioner she's about to kill, while across town mother Clara (Gemma Arterton) is chased on foot from a neon-lit strip club through a shopping mall skylight to a dingy apartment by a mysterious but dogged pursuer. This kind of parallelism seems to run through the entire movie, and Jordan proves incredibly perceptive of many dualities running through Buffini's story: mother/daughter, past/present, living/undead, female/male, sex/violence. (Many of these seem to land during a stunning early moment in which Eleanor finds herself on a beach, face-to-face with her 19th-century self). The thing flows gorgeously, and the tale of the Webbs' vampiric origins unfolds deftly as their present-day difficulties escalate.

As commonplace as vampires seem to have become, it's no mean feat playing one well. Arterton, perhaps unsurprisingly, plays the now familiar blood-letting, leather-clad, ass-kicking female vampire with sleazy grace, but she's just as strong conveying the weariness of centuries in hiding, and the endless reservoir of love of an undead parent for her child. Ronan is just as strong in a quieter but equally deep role of an undead but ethical blood drinker, her pangs of conscience as strong as her thirst for blood, her need to tell her story sitting hand-in-hand with a longing to simply, finally connect. Buffini's depth & generosity extend to her male characters as well - Sam Riley and Jonny Lee Miller are strong as men who figure prominently in the Webbs' long lives; Daniel Mays and Caleb Henry Jones bring keenly felt (and very different) vulnerabilities to their roles as mortal men in the women's orbit.

Sean Bobbitt (cinematographer for some of last year's finest movies, including The Place Beyond The Pines and 12 Years A Slave) seems to capture an otherworldly luminosity unleashed by the Webbs in the dreary, everyday world they inhabit. I complained a while back that digital photography and presentation undermined the gothic atmosphere so desperately sought by the makers of The Woman in Black; perhaps I'm finally getting used to seeing such tales being told in this medium. Perhaps Bobbitt is simply a great cinematographer. The visual strengths of the movie are matched by its music, as Javier Navarette's score boosts the story with knowing, gentle intensity.

The whole thing feels like one of the best movies I've seen in recent memory. Byzantium finds new life and energy in the vampire story, and, finally, makes a compelling and persuasive case for the vitality of the 21st century horror movie. Long live the Webbs.

THE LORDS OF SALEM

Oh, how I wish I'd seen this thing theatrically. I've long been, not a fan, but certainly an interested observer of Rob Zombie's movie work. I was quite pleased by House of 1000 Corpses, which felt like the id of the grindhouse era unleashed on unsuspecting screens. The follow-up, The Devil's Rejects, left me rather cold, feeling that its relentless sadism was largely unleavened by wit (I said then that I found much to admire in the movie, and nothing to like). His Halloween remake and its sequel were rife with good ideas, strong moods, and more than a few truly harrowing shots, and yet they didn't really cohere.

But what the hell do I know? Zombie has his devotees, some of them close friends whose opinions I respect. And Zombie's movies grew steadily more ambitious, and between that and his clear devotion to genre films, I figured it would be only a matter of time before he made a movie I connected with. After finally seeing The Lords of Salem I felt like he was a lot closer to delivering that film.

And yet the movie's stuck with me since last night (among other things, it seems to have parked the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" in my head for the foreseeable future). Zombie's tale of Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie, of course), a nighttime DJ plunged into a nightmare by a mysterious recording, is rife with atmosphere and slow-burn horror. It feels like the most patient movie Zombie has made, though in retrospect there are plenty of visceral jolts throughout the piece And even though it feels like a more polished and refined Rob Zombie movie, there's still a superabundance of weirdness in pretty much every scene, delivered so gently and directly that at times one struggles to process what one is seeing.

Zombie is as much a child of genre movies and media as Tarantino, but Zombie's figured out how to use those inspirations beyond just slavishly quoting them. The Lords of Salem is a cocktail of influences from 70s Hammer horror (the witchcraft movies especially), Stanley Kubrick (from whom Zombie's assimilated much about manipulating cinematic space - check out the hallways of Heidi's apartment building and how Zombie maps her psyche with it), and Ken Russell (a clear and direct influence on the often mannered grotesquerie throughout, and especially the explosive and downright festive parade of blasphemy that climaxes the thing). And yet in addition to the visual quotes of those who came before (and his generous casting of those actors they worked with), Zombie's assimilated some of their boldness. Zombie's figured out that there's more to pushing the envelope than more tits, more blood, louder music, more violence; he's also figured out that there's more to Kubrick than just creepy atmosphere and one-point perspective. As the malevolence around and within Heidi grows in power it seems to take over the movie, which abandons narrative and, indeed, reality. Suddenly we're not watching a horror movie. Just as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey became an otherworldly object not unlike the monoliths that drive its story, so does The Lords of Salem become something dark, mysterious, and finally magical.

The movie is by no means perfect; I can think of a half dozen actors I would rather have played Heidi (Zombie's ready to collaborate with a lead actor who'll challenge him). But it's a huge step forward. You could call it a more mature film than he's made, and not just because the soundtrack includes Mozart's Requiem alongside the Velvet Underground. I'm sad that some of his fans have rejected it (perhaps they feel it would have been more radical to simply resurrect the Firefly clan for yet another bout of psychobilly mayhem), but others more invested in his work than I are also calling The Lords of Salem their favorite Rob Zombie movie. I said earlier that it was a step closer to a Rob Zombie movie that I could connect with, but obviously that I even wrote this makes it clear that this is, in fact, that movie. I'd always been curious to see the next Rob Zombie movie; now I can't wait for it.

THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES

Sometimes you need to clear the cobwebs and just talk about a movie you enjoy. And some movies just roll over your critical faculties until all you can do is enumerate the ways in which the movie is awesome. THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES is such a movie. And it is awesome for so, so many reasons.



A co-production of Hammer Films and the Shaw Brothers, LEGEND is every bit as delightful as you'd hope from that promising combo. Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), on a lecture tour of China, finds his words and warnings falling on deaf ears. But the student Hsi Ching (David Chiang) is all ears, and enlists the good doctor on a mission to liberate his village from the death grip of a cult of insidious vampires. And we just kick back and watch the two halves on this co-production find some awesome common ground, as Hammer atmospherics and earthiness serve as a springboard for honorable kung fu warriors taking on a slew of HK-style hopping vampires and the hideously-made-up vampire disciples that control them.

The American edit, THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, feels more like the desperate cash-in on the kung fu craze that the movie fundamentally was (and I suspect it was cut to fit on the bottoms of double bills). What's charming about LEGEND is that it feels less like a cash-in and more like a conversation, with two directors well versed in their respective traditions (Roy Ward Baker and a shamefully uncredited Chang Cheh) giving and taking, with a script that puts these traditions on equal, mutually respectful footing.

And holy crap, look at Cushing.



Cushing must have been about 60 when the cameras started rolling on this, and one can only speculate on what he thought of the insane movie he'd been drop-kicked into. But damned if he doesn't give it his all. You get your usual authoritarian and involving delivery of vampire history, and his dialogue with Chiang is absolutely winning, elevating the thing into a charming, East/West buddy movie. And though Cushing doesn't fly on any wires or execute any flying kicks, he's not too old to get his hands a little dirty in the fight sequences (see above). A look into the archives (including Cushing's costume sketches for the film) suggests that he was no less engaged in working on this film than any of his others. And it's easy to imagine him looking around the set, watching these fighters executing their choreography, shrugging and saying "I'll do what I can." And then going to work.



And that's as fine an image to hold of the man on this, the week of his centenary. Wishing the late Peter Cushing a very happy 100th birthday, and submitting this piece in honor of the Peter Cushing Centennial Blogathon happening all week.

CAT'S EYE

So grateful for the chance to get reacquainted with this, a hidden gem among Stephen King adaptations. King himself adapts two of his NIGHT SHIFT stories ("Quitters, Inc." & "The Ledge"), and pens a new closing segment ("The General"). So distinct is each segment from the other two that director Lewis Teague is directing three different movies. And he's directing a cat in all of them.



A blogger of my acquaintance makes a credible case that rather than an anthology, it's all one story with a plucky and determined (not to mention insanely well-trained and directed) cat as its protagonist. I would add that the film even follows its feline hero through Hell (Quitters Inc. - a terrifying no-escape situation) into Purgatory (The Ledge - trial by heights) before ending in Heaven (The General - home at last).

Kudoes to Teague, King, and the four credited animal trainers in this film; I'm hard pressed to recall another animal character (a cat, no less) that makes such a strong impression. But each of the segments has its strengths: James Woods provides a grounded and believable performance in the Twilight Zone-like Quitters, Inc.; Kenneth McMillan's mania dances beautifully with Robert Hays' fear-then-determination in The Ledge; and there's genuine suspense in The General's cat-on-troll fight.

Stephen King movies came and went throughout the 80s, but something about CAT'S EYE held it a little higher than the others. It became something of a staple on cable, which is where I initially saw it - indeed, I caught it tonight on Encore's Movieplex station, which seems to be bearing the standard of pan-&-scan, weirdly random cable programming that made Cinemax such a favorite destination during my teenage years. If pressed, I'd name "The Ledge" as my favorite segment, for the intensity of the McMillan/Hays conflict, the way the cat plays his shifting loyalties, and the sound effect that caps it. Rare for anthologies like this, a browse of reviews on line finds each of the three segments with its champions. This lack of consensus speaks to something special in it, an offbeat charm that the decades haven't diminished, whether you enjoy it as a trio of Stephen King stories, an undersung gem in the offbeat but entertaining filmography of Lewis Teague, or the tale of a resourceful, well-traveled, and ultimately lovable cat.

THE MOTH DIARIES

Rebecca, a student at an exclusive boarding school, finds her life thrown into tumult by the arrival of Ernessa, a mysterious girl who insinuates herself in Rebecca's life. As her friends begin suffering a number of bizarre fates, Rebecca suspects that Ernessa's striking face conceals an evil straight out of the Gothic fiction she's studying. No one believes her. It sucks being sixteen.

They used to make movies like this all the time! Strong & smart performances all around, with effective use made of Lily Cole's fashion model poise and slightly otherworldly physiognomy as the secretive Ernessa. Sarah Bolger is as effective as Rebecca, a young woman traversing more dangerous territory as she comes of age. Happily she (and the viewer) have quite a number of signposts for her journey, courtesy some too-spot-on lectures on Gothic fiction and vampires courtesy professor Scott Speedman. But writer/director Mary Harron builds on and transcends these sleeve-worn influences, and shows a gift for atmosphere and suspense as strong as her grasp on the tribulations of young womanhood. It's spooky without being shocking, erotic without being explotative, and a genre film from people who know that horror is ABOUT something.

At the very least it's an effective 85-minute Gothic. In a better world, under the eyes of a Val Lewton, Mary Harron would make one of these every year.

(Programming note: this film is playing [in glorious 35mm] at the San Fransicso Film Society cinema, sharing a bill, like a good programmer, with Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale. I imagine these films, both blood-soaked coming-of-age tales, have much to say to each other, and recommend taking them both in together. Bring a teenager - these films speak directly and compassionately to the life of the teenager, no matter what they're rated.)

MANIAC

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

Friend: So is CABIN IN THE WOODS good?
You: It's great!
Friend: So what happens in it?
You: I'm not going to spoil it, wouldn't dream of it. You should see it.
Friend: Just tell me what happens, I'm never going to see it.
You: Dude, if you're interested to know what happens, you really should just see it.
Friend: Seriously, I don't think I'm ever going to see it, you can go ahead and tell me.
You: Really, you should see it.
Friend: I'm not going to, all right? Just tell me what happens!

(pause)

You: (reluctantly) Well, it's about...(gives a four or five sentence summary, including some of the crazy shit that goes down in the second half)
Friend: Oh. Wow. (slight pause) I kinda wish you hadn't told me about it.
You: PUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCHPUNCH....

Goodbuddy Jon Sung posits that THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is a movie that should not be spoiled, no matter how much time has elapsed, and your proprietor must wholeheartedly agree. The archetypal tale of teens at the mercy of a nameless horror in a murky forest (which is, itself, under control of a much larger entity) is a multi-varied, clever, often hilarious, and occasionally terrifying piece of meta-horror. Co-written by Joss Whedon (a creator whose work has inspired both love and frustration from me), CABIN happily sidesteps Whedon's lapses into cutesiness, delivering what he calls a "love hate letter" to contemporary film horror. As such, it is very much the act of criticism that Ebert suggests. Yet it never disappears inside itself, nor does it, even as it renders us complicit in its plot, deny us the visceral pleasures of filmgoing (as a bonus, it gives great roles and lines to a number of actors, including Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford). Though the prospect of a sequel is highly unlikely, I'm keen to see where film horror goes from here.

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES

Two spaceships touch down on a distant planet, their crews investigating strange signals and freakish meteorites. It becomes rapidly clear that all is not well on this planet as the travelers find themselves in the thrall of strange forces, and as they battle desperately to escape they find their numbers dwindling, and their mysterious enemy slowly forming around them.

Mario Bava's sci-fi chiller is commonly regarded as a forerunner to Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Though the later film does share Bava's Gothic spirit (and some plot details with PLANET, right down to the huge alien corpses in a derelict spaceship), I tend to believe Scott and company when they say they never saw Bava's film. The vastness of space is as foreboding as an abandoned, fog-shrouded house, and it's a natural setting for horror (just ask Lovecraft).

It's not quite as dizzying or thrilling as some of Bava's other films - perhaps the on-set language barriers (which, with actors speaking their lines in four different languages, must have been considerable) kept everyone somewhat off the same page. But the occasionally leaden pace allows our mind and eyes to wander, and there are MANY places for them to go.


Though an international co-production, the film was realized on an insanely flimsy budget, which only brought out Bava's more insane and outlandish creative instincts. Even if one of his main sets resembles a metallic (if impressively minimalist) take on a STAR TREK set...


...the whole affair, considering the lack of available material resources, is designed, lit, and paced splendidly. Which just goes to show that imagination and a horror director's eye for lighting and atmosphere go a long way in realizing an ambitious scenario. Though an attractive international cast in pervy spacesuits doesn't hurt, either.

HELL NIGHT

Any College, U.S.A. - Greek Row is rocked by a wild, wild night of costumed partying. A contingent from Alpha Sigma Rho splits form the festivities and brings four pledges to a house shrouded in horror. And what a house it is:


Previously owned by the Garth family, the mansion has been empty ever since Mr. Garth killed his entire family (including some seriously deformed children) before hanging himself. The four pledges must spend the night herein to prove their worthiness. The gate is locked behind them, and a long night begins.

The 1981 film combines two sub-genres of horror, melding the then-fashionable slasher horror with the somewhat outmoded spooky house horror. Watching the film I was struck by the effectiveness of the location shooting - between the lovely, well-dressed sets and the costumes affected by the partygoers, the film plays like a strangely time-tripping, almost Gothic effort.





It's a modest film, to be sure, but it comes by its passionate cult honestly, balancing some genuine shocks with some quietly realized characters and plot details. Some details are left for us to figure out (the details of what really went down at Garth Manor twelve years ago are hinted at but never pieced together - a remake would surely kill its pacing by over-explaining these matters). The weirdly conservative morality of the slasher model is nicely upended when the bullies are killed first.
Stock characters exhibit reservoirs of decency, including a sex-crazed goofball (Vincent Van Patten, natch) who comes thru in the end, sneaking into a police evidence room to retrieve weaponry to bring to the rescue. Even the inevitable sex is put off by characters who wanna get to know each other first.


I watched this (and I'm glad I did) on assignment from the Final Girl Film Club, run by the recently relocated Stacie Ponder. A discussion surfaces there now and again debating whether 1977 or 1981 is the better year for horror. Hell Night is a compelling argument for 1981: a deft balance of two horror formulae, making effective use of a few locations, and telling a simple story with a smart eye to detail and a surprisingly deep capacity for atmosphere.

Halloweens

Some extremely random notes on the franchise:



-The first film is simply a masterpiece. John Carpenter had copped to the influence of Howard Hawks with Assault on Precinct 13, and it's interesting to think what Hawks would have made of this assignment. The thing is buoyed by its mythic antagonist, youthful sister-killer turned embodiment of ultimate evil Michael Myers, and as realistic and well-realized as the town of Haddonfield, Illinois feels, it is but a setting for a highly formalistic exercise in suspense. The movie is a well-calibrated tool with the purpose of keeping its audience on edge. More than thirty years on it remains absolutely fresh and involving, and impossible to skip by on television without being absorbed into it anew.

Credit to the two lead performances: Jamie Lee Curtis is a completely relatable heroine, filled with recognizable neuroses. Her reactions to the mounting terror around her are nothing but believable. Laurie's arc grows richer with each viewing: among other things, knowing what she goes through in the final reel gives significant weight to her assurance to her young charge that "I'm not going to let anything happen to you." Believe it.

Donald Pleasance is at the other end of the innocence spectrum, the sole voice of reason and experience that goes under-heeded until it's too late. Though Michael's an imposing and menacing presence throughout, it's the terrified intensity that Pleasance brings to Loomis that makes the threat real. And dig the little arc of Loomis' stakeout of the Myers place - scaring off the kids from behind the shrub, then seconds later getting a scare of his own from the sheriff's hand. Perfectly executed comic miniature.

Add to all of this the film's substantial musical accomplishment (with Carpenter himself providing the most recognizable and insistent horror movie theme this side of Jaws), plus the invaluable contribution of director of photography Dean Cundey (whose work on this immediately catapulted him into prominence) and you've got a pretty terrific little horror film. Given the quality of the film, plus the insane box office it reaped back (after such a minimal investment) during the first years of the franchise era of American filmmaking, it was inevitable that its forumlae would be copied. And that sequels would follow.

-Halloween 2? Not so good. Mired in an unnecessary deepening of the bond between Laurie and Michael, the film is too much a by-rote slasher. One can't help but be a bit disappointed that the movie abandons both the abstraction and the realism of its predecessor to follow the template of its imitators. There's a sense of fatigue, here - even Pleasance, whose pronouncements gave the first film real weight, is just firing them off over his shoulder, like he's trying to get to the pub at the end of the shoot. Perhaps in response to the growing popularity of the Friday the 13th films, a bunch of gore effects were added outside Carpenter's involvement - the film plays a bit better without them. As to the film's invocation of Samhain (and Pleasance's surprising mispronunciation of same), it pretty much captures the movie's overambition (in explaining too much) and half-assedness.

-Halloween 3: Season of The Witch was a GREAT fucking idea, trying to spin the title into a Michael Myers-less franchise of Halloween-related tales, guided by many members of the original creative team (particularly Dean Cundey, and Carpenter himself present as producer and composer). The story of a sinister plot to unleash a pack of Celtic demons upon the world through a toy company's mask promotion is, um, more than a little muddled, but Cundey's gorgeous photography and some spirited performances more than make up for any problems at the plot level. Special mention to Daniel O'Herlihy, who's on the record saying he didn't think much of the material but that he had fun making it anyway. It shows.



-Halloweens 4-6 were quickly ejected by many fans from continuity, but hold up as a watchable (if over-complicated) trilogy of low-rent horror films that nonetheless have their own pleasures.

For one thing, the credits sequence for Halloween 4 is one of my favorite cinematic depictions of autumn:







They're more entertaining than 2, on the whole, and are mainstays on cable television these days. I must admit that when one of them rolls onto television on my nights in, I wind up watching through. The triptych involving Michael's pursuit of a niece (while being pursued, in turn, by Sam Loomis) while a weird cult starts to manifest around him is undemanding but engrossing. Donald Pleasance takes it very seriously, which helps to no end. He clearly felt a bizarre kinship with the series, stating at one point that as long as Michael kept coming back, Sam Loomis would necessarily be there. Halloween 6 was among his final films, and is, sweetly, dedicated to his memory.

-Speaking of which, there's also a strange cult surrounding the producer's cut of Halloween 6. I can't speak to the differences between the versions (though this post has been months in the writing, it was only ever intended to be a quick run-through), though I will say that, despite even this cut being a bit muddled (thanks to the film's insanely troubled creative history) there are a few noteworthy pleasures in 6 that make it more than worthwhile, including an engaging supporting turn as Tommy Doyle by Paul Rudd. Rudd brings a little humor and soul to the kind of resourceful, smart male we really rarely see in slasher films, and the film culminates in a THRILLING fight scene between Tommy and Michael. Directed by Joe Chappelle, before his tenure directing THE WIRE.

--The oddly titled Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, like many horror fans, completely ignored the continuity of Halloweens 4-6 and returned the focus to Laurie Strode, seen struggling as a single parent while working as a teacher at a scenic prep school. Save for the omnipresent theme music, John Carpenter's touch is absent from this film, which has a weird Scream-like pacing and look (the casting of various attractive TV-ready young things doesn't help - Laurie and her high school friends in the first film looked, acted, and FELT like late-70s teenagers). But the movie has some of Scream's verve and wit, as well, with Adam Arkin scoring considerable points as Laurie's lovelorn colleague (the TV edit cuts a hilarious piece of dialogue he has with his students, where he cheerfully matches their wrongness with playful sleaze of his own). The film juices the duality between Laurie and her supernaturally evil brother (a confrontation through a porthole clinches it), and Jamie Lee Curtis plays the final reel like it's fucking Medea or something, stalking her brother through the empty halls of her school, and indeed, her very consciousness.



--The rest of the franchise is sadly pretty crap - Halloween 2 director Rick Rosenthal was brought back to helm the profoundly ill-conceived Halloween: Resurrection, which begins with a well-paced but detestable prologue that dispatches Laurie Strode (and, by natural extension, Jamie Lee Curtis) from the series entirely. As if following the example of fans who have therefore decided to banish the film from memory, the rest of the film strives to be absolutely forgettable, with Michael stalking a group of kids filming their tour of his house as part of an internet reality show you know what just fuck this

--Rob Zombie's reboot of the series doesn't interest me a whole lot. His two films continue to call up the things that I admire about aspects of his style (his knack for capturing a very particular and very lively white trash patois and dialogue) while reminding me of all that I dislike about his style (like putting that particular and lively patois in the mouths of damn near all of his characters). And all that shit with the white horse in his second film was just fucking stupid.



And given that I've been handling this piecemeal for more than a year, I think it's time to just publish the fucker. Thanks for reading.

Post 100: The One I Might Have Saved.

If anyone's keeping track, yes, this is the hundredth post here on The House of Sparrows. That the House is open at all can be blamed, if you wish, on the inspiration of two leading lights in the horror blogosphere: Stacie Ponder (proprietor of Final Girl) and Arbogast (of Arbogast on Film).

Indeed, the latter has an ongoing blogathon called The One You Might Have Saved, inviting any and all to describe a horror film victim whose plight stirred unusual empathy. I've been meaning to post my own entry in this (this blog was started in large part out of a desire to do so), and believe that this is an ideal occasion for it.

Though the movie that contains this person does not, at the outset, seem auspicious...


...it was smarter than I'd hoped, offering an engaging whodunnit mystery alongside its old school slasher thrills. There's an interesting subtext throughout the film as we're made to wonder what our future will be like as these uniformly horrible young women, our best and brightest, take the reins of government and business in the ensuing years. The film's cynicism in depicting the sisters' ongoing betrayal of the social values the sorority was ostensibly established to uphold is deliberate, and often bracing. (I also noted that Claire, an Asian-American character played by Jamie Chung, had a number of character details that fleshed her out more believably than non-white characters in many, many other genre films.)

In any event, it begins with a rather lovely, though one doubts seamless, single take crawling through Theta House, taking in all manner of debauchery during a party. The camera ducks into a quiet, dark kitchen, the music is muted, and we see her for the first time.


This is Mrs. Crenshaw, the house mother of Theta Pi, played by Carrie Fisher. She's beautifully captured here, holding it down in the (moral?) center of Theta Pi, quietly mixing a drink even as her charges are indulging far lustier vices throughout the house. It's a good hook for older viewers of this teen-oriented (if R-rated) slasher, and those of us who came of age when this actress was in her prime share, perhaps, her isolation from (but presence within) the youth-heavy antics surrounding her.

Which include the murder that drives the film, and the secret forged by the film's numerous heroines (all Theta Pi sisters, all seniors). We catch up with Mrs. Crenshaw at the end of senior year, sternly but lovingly giving her end-of-year address to the sisters...


..along with some bracelets to the graduates, bearing one link for each of the 22 graduates. Clearly unaware that it's the spirit of generosity, and not the gift that counts, the girls junk the bracelets as soon as Mrs. C splits:


But Mrs. Crenshaw's feeling more wistful, and generous, and is captured (alone, again) taking a final look at the house as she's known it.


And she's off. A huge and insane party, with DJs, bubble machines, and lots of sex begins at Theta House.

And before night falls, the killer strikes. And again. And again.





Back at the house the sisters realize that their past is coming back for them. And the aforementioned Claire suffers the film's most visually weird death.




Amid all the carnage two of the girls have time for a catfight over a boyfriend, but the return of Mrs. Crenshaw is clearly a signal to Cut The Shit:


"Wow, who knew Mrs. Crenshaw was such a bad-ass?" Some belated and unheard respect from the girls, as Mrs. C goes downstairs to save the fucking day.

She enters the kitchen, finds the killer, and starts blazing away:



For the first time in the film, the killer retreats.



And Fisher gives us the best lines in the film:


No, she is not. Why?


Damn right.

The killer throws his pimped-up tire iron at her and misses, wedging it in the wall behind her. She's about to kill him and give the movie an awesome fucking ending. Until her gun jams:


She's trying to fix the damn thing, and her desperate grunts in the next few seconds tear a gasp from me. Faster than 7capture can grab it, the killer runs over, shoves the table against Mrs. Crenshaw, thus impaling her with the weapon wedged in the wall behind her.



There's a weird, sad silence here:


Is the killer gloating? Quietly paying respect to the awesome, otherwise unrespected woman who simply deserved better than she's getting here? Taking a moment to acknowledge the genuine sacrifice of the sole decent person on his/her long slate of victims, past and future?

God love her, she rallies for one last, desperate shot against the departing killer, but we feel how empty her threats are now, and mourn how widely her last shot misses its mark.


And finally Mrs. Crenshaw dies as we found her: in the kitchen. Alone.


I'm not completely sure why she resonates with me. Though it's a three-scene role, Fisher plays it more than solidly. Mrs. Crenshaw's the most clearly (if not the only) sympathetic character in the whole film (an intentional ploy of the film's design), and, as suggested earlier, perhaps she was the only character in this film that I, in my ever-increasing dotage, could really latch onto. Maybe it's her resemblance to my mom.

All I know is that as I grabbed images for this piece I could easily speed through the film, but found myself gripped anew by her scenes. Too involved to really break down Fisher's performance, or Stewart Hendler's direction of her scenes. Instead I was simply struck by her gentle but tough humanity. And, particularly, saddened by her death.

So here's to you, Mrs. Crenshaw.

You, dear, are The One I Might Have Saved.