by ·Comments Off on Fall of the House of Usher (1928, Jean Epstein)

Everyone in a Poe adaptation is weak, white and willowy, and it’s expected that at least one of them will die of consumptive illness, as did Poe’s own wife, as we learned in the D.W. Griffith bio-pic. Here it’s Usher’s wife (played by Marguerite “wife of Abel” Gance), but not for a while. First, portrait-painting-obsessed Usher (Jean Debucourt, decades later the jeweler in Madame de…) has his “dear and only friend” over for the season, then mostly tends to his paintings (which move and blink) while his wife dies (shades of Dorian Gray).

I love how this silent film portrays music. Everything starts moving in slow-motion until Usher plays his guitar, then his playing is illustrated with quick cutaways to nature shots. Overall lots of camera movement for 1928, with crazy angles and ghostly superimpositions – a slow and moody film. Excellent looking except for the fake castle (in wide shots) and owl.

This is the third House of Usher movie on the blog after the Watson & Webber and the Ken Russell, but the first to tell the Poe story in a way I can follow. IMDB says assistant director Luis Bunuel quit over liberties taken with the adaptation. In the Poe story Madeline is his twin sister instead of his wife, but otherwise doesn’t seem too dissimilar. Epstein made this the year before his amazing Finis Terrae.

Ed Gonzalez in Slant:

The film’s tour-de-force is a hulking funeral procession of overlapping visual textures and animal-like camera movement, a startling vision of metaphysical passage and metamorphosis. With the castle’s dripping candles in ominous tow, the men proceed through land and water toward the netherworld of Usher’s catacombs, with Madeleine’s veil weighing them down like an arm digging into the ground; all the while, an owl keeps ominous watch and two toads get their groove on. Madeleine will not go gently into this sinister night, nor will Usher let her, insisting that her coffin remain unnailed, which, in effect, precipitates a supernatural spill between worlds.

by ·Comments Off on Kiss of the Damned (2012, Xan Cassavetes)

“He used to think he was John Luke Truffaut”

My second super-stylish vampire love-affair flick this year after Only Lovers Left Alive. Also my second Cassavetes movie this Shocktober (see also: Rosemary’s Baby). Xan, daughter of John & Gena, appeared in Husbands at age 4. Sleek, sexy movie with great rumbly music, surprisingly shot by the DP of Momma’s Man.

This is more the standard vampire love-affair setup than the Jarmusch movie, though they both have a destructive sister character who shows up halfway through the story. Juna (Josephine de la Baume of Listen Up Philip) meets Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia, Stallone’s son in Rocky Balboa) at the video store and tries to warn him that she’s a vampire, but he’s into that, so she turns him and they move in together. She teaches him to hunt deer, but her sister Mimi (Roxane Mesquida, Fat Girl‘s older sister) starts killing every person living nearby (including, presumably, Paolo’s literary agent Michael Rapaport), bringing outside attention that concerns head vamp Xenia (Anna Mouglalis of Merci pour le Chocolat and Garrel’s Jealousy). Nobody directly stops Mimi, but she stays out too late and the housekeeper decides not to drag her inside before the sun comes out.

I love their widescreen house:

by ·Comments Off on Alloy Orchestra double-feature

I never got to see Alloy Orchestra very often in Atlanta, but apparently both Lincoln and Omaha are on their regular tour schedule. They played different movies (with very different scores) in each city, so I made us watch both. Roger Miller seems very approachable at the merch table, but I have all his records and am therefore afraid of him.

Son of the Sheik (1926, George Fitzmaurice)

Sequel to Valentino’s The Sheik from five years earlier, so the flashbacks to his father as a young man are scenes from that film. Son walks in his doppelganger-father’s footsteps by kidnapping and raping the woman he loves, the same way Sheik met his wife. Son’s girl (Vilma Bánky, also in Valentino’s The Eagle) dances for a nomadic group of entertainers/bandits who are trying to extort and/or murder the Son. Much unconvincing swordplay ensues!

Man with the Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)

Timely screening, less than two months after Sight & Sound declared this the best documentary of all time. It certainly has one of my favorite silent-movie scores, all driving percussion to fit the unrelenting pace of the film, and we sat right in front of the band for an awesome sensory experience (also because we arrived too late to get seats further away).

Always surprised that this “day in the life of a city” movie opens with the city waking up but ends abruptly without showing it go back to sleep. Probably a “sun never sets on Russia” sort of thing. I realized while looking up Vertov that he invented cinema-verite (his newsreel series Kino-Pravda translates as film-truth), took his moving camera into the streets to film everyday people, and made a film that contains its own behind-the-scenes elements – all forty years before Chronicle of a Summer did these same things.

Sept. 2015: Saw this AGAIN with the Alloy Orchestra, this time at The Ross, at a more reasonable distance from the live band, and with the beautiful new restored print. One of the greatest things ever.

by ·Comments Off on Demonic Toys (1992, Peter Manoogian)

“Full Moon Entertainment presents”

FM made this between Puppet Masters 3 and 4, and the year after Dollman, now fully invested in Puppets, Dolls and Toys, dreaming of franchise crossovers to come.

“Screenplay by David S. Goyer”

Goyer later wrote The Puppet Masters (no relation!), the Blade movies (arguably his peak) and the latest Batman movies.

“Directed by Peter Manoogian”

Manoogian isn’t a made-up alias for Charles Band, but a guy who worked on The Howling, Trancers and Ghoulies.

Opens with POV shot of a demonic-toy and grandfather-clock-filled dream sequence, and I’m afraid the budget might be spent already. Then undercover cop Jude (Tracy Scoggins of Toy Soldiers, no relation to demonic toys, and Watchers II, which was a remake, not a sequel to Watchers) is explaining her dreams to scruffy boyfriend/partner Matt (Jeff Celentano of American Ninja 2: The Confrontation), and enter the Goyer trademark dialogue: “You got your piece? Then let’s dance.” While Matt is clumsily arresting arms dealers, he’s killed and an enraged Jude (I keep typing “Dude” by mistake) follows them into – where else? – a conveniently unlocked warehouse. As an injured criminal stumbles into a toy company, I’m checking to see how long ago Child’s Play came out, oh, was it four years before this?

Chicken Boy:

Hold up, movie is getting too action-packed this early on, so suddenly we’re asked to care about a rebel chicken delivery guy named Mark, played by Bentley “grandson of Robert” Mitchum, who also starred in hits like Nice Guys Finish Dead and Real Men Don’t Eat Gummi Bears. He is friends with the gross security guard (Pete Schrum, Santa Claus in Trancers) at the conveniently unlocked toy warehouse. After long periods of time without any toys, demonic or otherwise, finally the injured baddie (possibly Barry Lynch of The Call of Cthulhu) is killed, followed soon enough by the security guard, and we’re off. If the guard worked here for years, how come tonight the demonic toys kill him? It’s something to do with Jude the cop, her pregnancy and/or dreams. An actual kid with glowing eyes (Daniel Cerny, who’d go on to star in Children of the Corn 3 before getting involved with a movie called Bitch Slap) explains all this but I was barely listening, just caught the line “we feed off your fear” and reminisced about Ghostbusters 2.

Trick-or-treating flashback:

Intense surviving baddie (longtime stuntman Michael Russo of The Toxic Avenger and Death Wish 4) and Jude have their “you killed my partner/boyfriend” standoff extended, the chicken delivery guy helps out, and in a moment of Cube-like genius, a dirty-haired girl drops in from the air ducts. More top-notch dialogue: “I played the old houdini act on your lady friend back there, chicken boy.” Flashback to 1925 in which some lady gives a stillborn demon baby to trick or treaters. Homeless girl dies, as does the demonic jester toy, but the talking baby gets away. Did I dream it or was there some decent stop-motion for a second?

Isn’t that Bob Stoeckle of Bloodsucking Pharaohs In Pittsburgh?

What of the toys? Baby Oopsydaisy speaks, which was a bad move. The jester, with its long coiled tail with a rattle at the end that I only now realized was supposed to resemble a rattlesnake, and the sharp-toothed teddy bear aren’t bad, and there’s a robot tank that you don’t see too often. As opposed to most Puppet Master murders, demonic toys are slow, painful, and take teamwork. A single Puppet is a killing machine. I think it’s clear who’s going to win when these groups face off.

Jester, jack-in-the-box, whatever:

The movie is foul and stupid, and I hated watching it, and afterwards vowed to not watch any more bad movies on purpose, but writing it up days later is kinda fun, so maybe I’ll just limit to one shitty Full Moon direct-to-video possessed-toy flick per Shocktober.

by ·Comments Off on Silver Bullets (2011, Joe Swanberg)

Not the kind of movie I was looking for. It has realistic lighting instead of movie lighting, which makes all the difference. Also I’m not sure that it was a horror movie. Depends what happened, who any of these people were, and whether the one bloody action montage (preceded by a girl dancing topless in a wolf mask, but with poor lighting) was supposed to be actually happening, or was the movie they’re shooting, or something else.

Sheil:

Swanberg (his own lead actor, just like Polanski, except not at all like that) is casting a werewolf movie, frustrated with moviemaking, says it’s crap if it’s just filmed theater, that we need new forms (I suggest he watch some Guy Maddin). I think he’s casting a girl in his movie who makes his girlfriend uncomfortable. He goes on about how movies (making/watching them) doesn’t make him happy, and right now his movie isn’t making me happy, so I’m off to the IMDB. Interesting thing is this one stars two experienced actresses – Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color) and Kate Lyn Sheil (all the Alex Ross Perry and Ti West and Adam Wingard movies) – plus at least three four film directors – Swanberg, Ti West, Larry Fessenden and Antonio Campos – but I’m not sure who anyone played or what was going on. Maybe I could’ve paid closer attention. Anyway, first movie I’ve seen by Swanberg (not counting a V/H/S episode) and I was hoping I’d love it since he has made a hundred more.

A werewolf with a gun is twice as deadly:

by ·Comments Off on The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971, Robert Fuest)

“What goes up must come down.”
“Brilliant!”

No dialogue for the first ten minutes, stylish use of camera, Vincent Price, and a mechanical band called Dr. Phibes Clockwork Wizards – this is already a favorite movie. Huge step up from the Freddie Francis anthology horrors I’ve watched in Shocktobers past. But British horror just can’t help itself from being campy.

Vulnavia and dog:

Hopefully this was an influence on Se7en, as Phibes (Price, a few years after Witchfinder General and The Oblong Box) takes revenge on the doctors present during the hospital death of his beloved wife via the ten curses of the pharaohs, killing doctors with bats, frogs, rats, locusts, etc. It also may be an influence on the Saw movies, as Chief Surgeon Joseph Cotton has to cut a key from inside his son’s chest before he’s killed by a slow acid drip.

Inspector Trout (Lindsay Anderson regular Peter Jeffrey) figures out the curses thing but doesn’t do much else besides attract unfunny fish-name jokes. Dr. Cotton actually knocks him out to go face Phibes alone. Phibes has an unexplained female assistant named Vulnavia (Virginia North of a James Bond movie and a James Bond knockoff movie). A guy who describes himself as a head-shrinker gets his head crushed by a Halloween III frog mask. Terry-Thomas has a cute role as a doctor who secretly watches snake-charmer films when the housekeeper is away; he bleeds to death but still returned for the sequel.

T-T:

Quality cinematography by Norman Warwick (Tales from the Crypt). Who is Fuest? He went straight from making acclaimed horror films to ABC after-school specials. Gotta check out his Phibes sequel and The Final Programme.

Amazing locust death (LOL at the full-body smiling-woman sketch):

by ·Comments Off on Pygmalion (1938, Anthony Asquith & Leslie Howard)

Dialogue exactly the same as in My Fair Lady, for the most part. Higgins here seems slightly less slimy, the ending slightly less foul than in the musical, but maybe that’s expectations talking. I suppose I enjoyed the musical more for the color cinematography and the songs; this version’s improved Higgins and more convincing/less glamorous Eliza wasn’t enough to tip the scales. Both versions could stand to lose Eliza’s drunk father.

Higgins here is Leslie Howard (49th Parallel), his pointless linguist friend Col. Pickering is stage actor Scott Sunderland and Eliza is Wendy Hiller (star of I Know Where I’m Going! and Major Barbara). G. Bernard Shaw adapted his own play for the movie, chose Wendy Hiller, and wanted Charles Laughton as Higgins. The two movie versions have the same cinematographer! Harry Stradling also shot Guys and Dolls, Johnny Guitar, The Pirate, Thrill of a Romance and a handful of Hitchcocks.

D. Ehrenstein:

Shaw, who saw film as the ideal medium for the piece, claims he never intended a romantic hookup for Higgins and Eliza. He even wrote a prose addendum to the script in which Eliza married and set up a flower shop, her antagonism toward Higgins continuing unabated. But he never wrote this epilogue as dialogue, and productions of Pygmalion, this film included, have always seen fit to end things on an upbeat note with a tantalizing hint of a budding love affair between master and pupil.

by ·Comments Off on The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday (1960, Mario Bava)

I know there’s a rule that Italian horrors need a minimum of three titles, but I don’t see why this is mainly known as Black Sunday when The Mask of Satan is its original title and far more descriptive. I believe this is my first Mario Bava movie unless we’re counting Danger: Diabolik on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Fun camerawork, great lighting and atmosphere, and mixed effects (swell zombie makeup vs. rubber bat on a string). Opening titles are unintentially funny (The Mask of Satan, produced by Jolly Films).

Wide-eyed Barbara Steele (of 8 1/2) is the resurrection of a murdered witch from the 1600’s, killed by nailing a devil mask onto her face. In present day, a stumblebum professor (Andrea Checchi, hotel detective of The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse) pauses between clumsily destroying ancient relics to purposely remove the mask, and then I get confused because the witch is reborn but also has a doppelganger descendant living in the castle next door. The professor gets himself possessed, so his student (John Richardon of Torso and One Million Years B.C.) becomes our hero. He wrestles the devil in a hallway and wins! I’m used to rooting for resurrected ghosts to take revenge on the families of their murderers, but this movie makes it hard, the zombies all rotting and horrid with no vampiric panache. It also takes its Christ vs. Devils thing very seriously, and the townspeople with pitchforks and torches are the good guys.

Anyway, if I ever move into a castle, first thing I’ll do is measure all the walls House of Leaves-style to check for hidden passageways.

by ·Comments Off on Scanners (1981, David Cronenberg)

“I’m one of you.”
“You’re one of me.”

Entrancing movie, full of oddball performances. Mostly bought the blu-ray because the cover art is so outstanding, but this was a pleasure to watch again. Completely holds up, even the scene where Cameron scans a computer (because, it’s explained, computers have nervous systems) through its modem over a payphone, since the movie itself seems to fully believe all the crazy stuff it’s telling us. But how come powerful psychics never notice gun-toting killers sneaking up behind them?

Good Scanners:

Patrick “The Prisoner” McGoohan runs a security company’s scanner program, recruits Cameron (Stephen Lack, later in Dead Ringers) off the streets, but the security company’s head security dude Keller (Lawrence Dane of Darkman 2) is secretly in cahoots with evil scanner Revok (the great Michael Ironside, later of Starship Troopers and Total Recall). Cameron tries to recruit reclusive artist Pierce (Cronenberg regular Robert Silverman, looking like Chris Guest in Waiting for Guffman) then teams up with Kim (Jennifer O’Neill of Fulci’s The Psychic) and her crew, scanner war ensues. Cameron and Revok are evenly matched, since it turns out they’re uber-scanner siblings, sons of McGoohan, so the final scan-off gets pretty extreme.

Bad Scanner:

Cronenberg’s follow-up to The Brood, which I should also rewatch. Warped, piercing keyboard soundtrack by Howard Shore. The scanner-controlling drug is named Ephemerol, which is a bit of genius I’m surprised hasn’t been used elsewhere (discounting Scanners sequels).

K. Newman:

There had been all sorts of rumors — and trashy paperbacks — about Soviet ESP experiments and their application to spying and warfare, which eventually inspired a U.S. program that would have some of its peculiar history told in Jon Ronson’s nonfiction study The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), made into a film in 2009. In Scanners, Cronenberg evokes this shadowy area of paranormal research, as well as contemporary scandals involving botched drug testing, the less-than-ethical behavior of some sectors of the pharmaceutical industry, and the rise of private security and espionage outfits… The finale… can be seen as an optimistic mirror of the pessimistic finish of Dead Ringers, allowing for the mutual survival of the doppelgänger brothers in one melded form rather than ending in their shared death… It’s unusual in the run of films dealing with psychic psychopaths in exploring telepathy as well as telekinesis, and also touches—in its “human modem” sequence—on the fusion of man and machine that becomes central to Videodrome and The Fly.