myboigie Reviews

Mr. Freedom (1968)

Mr. Freedom

[9/10 · 1 September 2008]

This isn't a exactly a masterpiece, but a very brave and very funny look at American imperialism by-way of our consumerism, our over-consumption, our super-patriotism, our racism, and our basic stupidity as a nation.

But since postmodernism is thankfully dead as an intellectual fad (the public never cared about it anyway), and because history has reared its ugly head again showing that American power has its vulnerabilities, this film has become very timely, and is definitely prescient in its criticisms of American culture and economy. That doesn't mean it's supposed to be entertaining, but far be it from us Americans to understand the difference.

What's really boring is how whenever someone has the "temerity" to criticize American foreign policy, they're somehow being "pedantic" and "preachy," while the excesses of our corporate owned media get a free pass. It's a hollow argument whose lies are showing, and we've got a lot of criticism coming-our-way these days, even from our "allies" in the EU. We've earned it.

Ken Russell is much better at this kind of comic book approach to satire--he's funnier. If Klein fails--which he sometimes does in Mr. Freedom--it's only because the subject matter isn't funny. America is a real horror, just as it was in the late-1960s, with more fun to come. What makes Mr. Freedom so great is how beautiful it looks, which should come as no surprise considering its source. Klein was a very successful fashion photographer for American Vogue during the 1950s-60s.

Eventually, he grew tired and disgusted with the direction the country was taking at that time and left for France. Who can blame an intelligent man with a clue? If you can do it, then-by-all-means, do it. You couldn't make a movie like Mr. Freedom in America then, or now, and that's the real courage behind it. It was a labor of love and principle, a rarity in cinema.

Most chilling is the slaughter of a poor Black family by Mr. Freedom in the beginning prologue. That he wears a cowboy hat, uses violence to get his way, that he eats excessively, that he's intolerant of the views of others, all speaks volumes of what America is really about, and that's criminality.

Bobby (I) (2006)

Bobby isn't about Bobby

[8/10 · 27 November 2006]

This was an unexpected surprise, a very enjoyable movie! The pundits/talking-necks have been slagging this film as a deification of Bobby Kennedy, but I never noticed any Oliver Stone overreaching here. The story is simple: you have around 20 different-characters in their little subplots during a 24-hour period at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5-6, 1968, the site of Bobby Kennedy's assassination. It seems many reviewers were expecting JFK (1991), which is goofy. Maybe they're just liars? ;0) It's obvious from the beginning of Bobby that all the characters are composites of real-people who were there, and they are mostly-fictitious. There's a good-reason for this, because the film is not about recreating specific-events. It's a cultural and social 'photograph' of the hopes and dreams of the American people in 1968, and today. Yes, the ensemble-approach is a lot like Robert Altman,'s but Emilio Estevez has his own style that has a nice flow and sheen (pun-intended) to it. A young Czech-journalist informs us about the Prague Spring that was occurring in Czechosolvakia, while others illustrate the racial-tensions of the time. Other subplots are about the dynamics of marriage at that time, and the torture women had to endure under the fashions of the time! There are hints of the emergence of feminism, and 1968 was that year. We have guests of the Hotel, Mexican busboys, waitresses, beauticians, but RFK is only seen as he can be, in clips that weave throughout all the lives of the characters. It's pretty effective, but it was surprisingly subtle.

For the jaded, you just won't like this, and that's too-bad. I really feel-sorry for you. On just a technical-level, Estevez did a great job here. The performances by William H. Macy as a manager of the Ambassador, or Lawrence Fishburn as a wizened head-chef are satisfying and drew me in. All the characters drew me in, and I never felt distracted by star-cameos. The performances are too-good for that to happen. Harry Belafonte's (a prominent-critic of the Bush administration) geriatric-rapport with Anthony Hopkins' Ambassador concierge is so warm and genuine, and adds to a tapestry of what is a compelling-swath of Americana. I valued these characters, and I cared about them. Like I said, this is Frank Capra territory, with all the Populist sentiment of the originals (without being derivative). There isn't any moment where I felt the film beat me over-the-head with any particular-message, it just made some very humble and quiet-observations about where America has been, and where it's at today. From the references to hanging-chads and Black Americans being-denied the right-to-vote in the 1968 primaries, or Lindsey Lohan's war-bride pondering why her government hasn't provided adequate reasons for the American-invasion of Vietnam (or Iraq now), this is about 1968 and 2006. The writer/director did his homework, and the film is as densely-packed with bits of that fateful year as it can be.

But there is more. Ashton Kutchner (groan, but he was funny!) provides some comic-relief and some cultural context with his hilarious drug-dealer, a freak who's holed-up in the Ambassador selling-dope. Yes, like Altman, a number of the subplots intersect with each other. You either like the style or you don't, and I'm with the former. Bobby isn't a perfect movie by-any-means, but it is a very entertaining and enlightening set of stories about average-Americans on a very bad-day in our history. What struck me was how much happened in such a short-time--it was as if the public was truly overwhelmed by the assassinations of JFK, and Dr. King, but after Bobby, we sank-into a daze that we only seem to be awakening-from now. The 1960s was peppered with political-assassinations of progressive leaders, and by the late-1960s so much had been invested in them that their deaths were almost a body-blow to American enthusiasm and a social-movement. We lost our inertia and our positivity. With the murder of RFK, there wasn't much hope left for many people. It seemed a watershed, and a shared-sense of destiny evaporated for a time. This was a tactical mistake-in-thinking. We all have to be leaders now.

But forgetting all that, it's just a very competent film from a guy I had written-off! Visually, it just looks beautiful, and there was an excruciating effort to capture the styles and the look of 1968. Even mannerisms and dialect fit very well with what I know of the period. Seeing two geeky Kennedy campaign volunteers drop acid (via the Kutchner character) for the first-time is a more-accurate depiction of the 1960s than most period-pieces of the era--the whole-point is that the 'normals' from the suburbs were turning-on and joining the counterculture and the anti-war movement, folks. That was the reason why there was such a violent-reaction from the beltway, there were massive cultural-changes emerging. Freaks and hippies were rare, even in 1968, just like 'dropouts' of any era. Bobby gets this right. But watch other movies on the 1960s, and it seems they were everywhere! It's untrue, the counterculture was widely-distributed and fragmentary. Emilio Estevez just gets so much right, it's hard to fault him here. Rather than obsess over the counterculture, the movie simply shows us the lives of a variety of ordinary-people. Bobby is a time-capsule of where the culture was at, and what the concerns of people were. It is their and our ideals that are important in the story. Bobby Kennedy was merely invested with those ideals by the American public, and he was responding to us. This is what made him special, and it's what the public wants from the new Democratic majority in Congress today. Will they rise to the occasion? Why RFK was murdered is another story, this isn't a story of para- politics or conspiracies, but of life as it is lived. It really isn't about Bobby Kennedy at all, but about us. 'Fails to cohere'? Ditto for America, so how 'off' could it be?

Let's Go to Prison (2006)

Hilarious!

[8/10 · 26 November 2006]

While Sascha Cohen's 'Borat' may be the most-popular comedy of 2006, there is an even funnier one, and it's this movie! Astonishingly, Universal distributed this little indie, but has given it virtually no publicity whatsoever. That must have been the trade-off, because it's a pretty uncompromising story that could be compared-to Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation. Directed by Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show, SNL-writer during the Phil Hartman era, Ben Stiller Show, Conan O'Brien), it's an interesting-take on our corrections system, and it's loosely-based on a non-fiction book called 'You Are Going to Prison', by a former inmate named Jim Hogshire. Much of his humor is intact in the film, but writers Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon have taken it into the realm of fiction/non-fiction.

The book was literally just a 'how-to' guide to survival in prison, so you know this isn't going to be a flattering-portrayal of it. Most Americans know full-well their prison system is corrupt, and basically dysfunctional, but our culture has a lust for punishment at its core. Don't believe me? Let's go to prison, and find-out! The movie makes the case by stating we have 2 million Americans in-prison now, only being surpassed by China and Russia.

But this blood-lust is most-obvious during our elections, mostly the local-ones, though Reagan and Bush thrived on the 'crime-and-punishment' issue. And man-oh-man, is there some punishment in the first-quarter of this movie, wow, it really was only slightly-funny until...the story has some very unpredictable and hilarious twists to it! Odenkirk did the Midwest proud by placing the tale in Illinois, and they filmed the prison-scenes at the old Joliet Prison. There is a scene with the warden of the facility that is priceless ('Take all of your complaints, write them on a piece of paper--and stick it up-your-asshole.'). In a few-areas, it's almost too-close to reality, but this changes as the story progresses.The movie begins with the story of repeat-felon, John Lyshitski (played to-the-hilt by Dax Shepard who plays rednecks a lot) who is unfairly put on a path to crime by a certain judge at the age of 8. He has what is euphemistically called 'bad-luck', and gets snared into the system like so many others in America.

Judge Biederman just keeps sending him further-and-further into the corrections system, much like what happened to make John Dillinger a gangster, and untold-scores of minor-offenders into murderers. Because we are so harsh in our penalties here, we actually have created a situation where felons are manufactured. Let's Go to Prison makes this point many-times throughout the film, but it does it with a lot of laughs at the expense of the story's other protagonist, Nelson Biederman IV (played by the brilliant and funny Will Arnett from Arrested Development), the son of the judge. Lyshitski gets-released at the beginning of the film, and we get a voice-over of his story. The man wants revenge, but he realizes that judge Biederman died three-days-before his release, so he decides to take-it-out on his son instead. Like I said, the first-quarter of the movie is grim! Lyshitski is constantly giving Biederman the worst advice you could give to someone imprisoned, and the plot takes a radical-turn in a confrontation between the judge's son and an Ayran Nations gang-leader that must be seen to be believed. The worm-turns for Biederman, the pathetic yuppie-fop who loves the 1990s pop-tune 'Shake That Body', and Lyshitski is in for quite a ride as his target becomes the 'big man' in the joint. It just gets funnier, and telling you any more would just ruin the ride for you, but you get a greater understanding of life in prison.

This was something I never expected, because...well, we all think we've seen-it-all with prison movies, but Let's Go to Prison goes further than all of them! From Biederman getting-punched everyday, to his being-sold to a Black inmate called 'Barry' (the always-great Chi McBride) for an ounce-of-pot and a carton-of -smokes, to their ongoing 'courting', it's hilarious. It also has an ending for the ages that I would personally love to see in real-life! If the movie says anything, it's that the criminal justice and corrections system is a joke on all of us, and it actually finds some hilarity in this fact. That's a tall order that it fills, no-problem. But most Americans are too cool to laugh at themselves. That's OK, we'll laugh at you anyway. Flawed, but hilarious. Score.

The Devils (1971)

Warners Should Release This Film Onto-DVD NOW

[10/10 · 6 November 2006]

Ken Russell is a director you either hate or love--I'm with the latter, and enjoy irritating the same targets Russell does. The simple-fact that many of Ken Russell's films are hated makes me love them all-the-more. This is arguably his best film, and his only political one. As a period-piece, this film is stylized, but looks very convincing, and the cinematography and set-designs by Derek Jarman (another genius of film) are stellar. Consider why films like this one aren't made often, and you have part of the answer as to why this film is still so shocking. Many people dislike his films because of what he reveals about all of us, but that's too-bad. People didn't like what Auschwitz said about humanity, but there it is. Apparently, Warner Brothers has finally-decided to release this film as a director's-cut in 2006, or 2007. It is being-reported that all footage removed by the BBFC and American- censors (mainly Warners) in 1971 will be reinstated in an "unrated-cut" approved by the director. It may have been taken from the Aldous Huxley book, and the 1960s play by John Whiting, but it is Ken Russell's film.

Also-included will be the BBC-documentary by Mark Kermode ("Hell on Earth"), about the making-of the film, and the firestorm it created. The "renegade" DVD by Angelfire is acceptable, and will have to tide-us-over until then. It has the aforementioned Kermode documentary, and a widescreen-transfer (1.85:1, the wrong aspect-ratio, the film was Panavision at 2.35:1) of the film, with some of the deleted-scenes (like "the Rape of Christ") reinstated. It is a flawed-version, but adequate, and is relatively-cheap. This was a film that Warners hated after the executives saw the final-cut. The Warner press book-ads even state it was a hard-sell, with posters marketing the film as horror--it is, but a political-one. Some of the posters warned potential-audiences that it was a film "most people won't like"! In a film that bombards the viewer with violence, decay, plague, and death, it isn't surprising that people miss some of the film's thematic-points, it has a lot to say: the threats to individual-rights and liberties (and spiritual-liberty) are often played-out in the same ways in different times-and-places. You can see this in the parallels made-between Oliver Reed's character Father Grandier, and that of the accepted-Christology in 1600s-France (represented by the characters of Father Mignon, Sister Jeanne and Cardinal Richelieu--an unholy-trilogy?).

Is there much-difference in why Grandier is degraded similarly to Christ? Russell (a Catholic)goes-further: is there any-difference between the political-scapegoating of Urbain Grandier and Jesus? The answer should be obvious, and Richelieu's theocratic-yearnings for power can only be seen as a threat to liberty, just as they are now in the Middle East, and the United States. Even from that remote-year of 1971, Russell could be saying that these political and spiritual-struggles are one-and-the-same, and that they are eternal. This is not an exploitation-film, but it is as dark and horrific as any classic horror film. What is most-terrible is that it is true. Keep-in-mind not one image is in this film "by-mistake," as Russell places an image in a film for a specific-meaning and purpose. The film is a warning to be vigilant against the aims of power, and sheds-light on why Christ was crucified.

The images of people being-tortured, vomiting, acting-hysterically--they are not there to merely shock, but as a warning about social-hysterics of all-sorts. Repression can lead-to perversion, states Russell, resoundingly. Set specifically in 17th Century France after the eight "Hugenot Wars", "The Devils" should be read as a cautionary-tale of how people can willingly give-up their liberties in uncertain times, not-unlike our own. The religious-wars still rage, and will continue to. With the world finally being able see what director Ken Russell intended, we might see this film being very-influential in years-to-come. Italian-filmmakers were inspired--they created the "nunsploitation-genre" from-it! Good lapsed-Catholics, all. This is what the "Grand Guignol" was based-on. From the 1600s-to-now, the threats are the same. Only technology has changed. Bother Warner Bros. into releasing this classic at:

The Ruling Class (1972)

Peter O'Toole's Greatest Moment

[9/10 · 18 October 2006]

Could there be a film crazier than Marat/Sade (1966)? Yes, it is the O'Toole/Medak/Barnes collaboration from 1972, 'The Ruling Class.' One could be forgiven in thinking this was a Ken Russell film, but it isn't like he was alone in making blistering-cinema during the late-1960s, early-1970s. We will probably never see an era in movies like this again, it was so free and unfettered by the studio system that it pushed-the-envelope forever (only to have what is acceptable in commercial cinema recede again). Many viewers would say this kind of film is overindulgent, but that is entirely the point. It was originally given an 'X' rating in the UK in the 154-minute cut, but was released with 20-minutes removed in the American PG-version. The 2001 Criterion edition is the first-time the film has been widely-available in this original-cut as it was shown at Cannes. There is no better edition, it is perfect, and a must-own for anyone who loves serious cinema.

The story began as a successful 1968 play by Peter Barnes, and it was considered bizarre for its anti-naturalism, as well as the comments on the English-aristocracy. If I describe much of it, the effect will be ruined, but there are musical-numbers in a movie that is not a musical (similar to Brecht here). Similar to Artuad's 'theater of cruelty', the approach is to alienate the audience in particular-moments--sometimes throughout the entire piece! This was common in the cutting-edge cinema of the time, just watch A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Devils, or even Midnight Cowboy (1970). Barnes rewrote the screenplay with very few changes, but don't think that the O'Toole/Medak version is simply a filmed-play. It is not, it is much more than that. At once, a parable on the folly of belief-systems, it has much to say about the flimsy-glue that is the ruling-class anywhere. Some hierarchy is inevitable in this life, but do we want crazy-imbeciles running the developed-world? And what of psychiatry or academia? Both are beholden to their own class-assumptions, as The Ruling Class amply-illustrates. Oddly, it is all about the end of all belief, a hallmark of the time it was made in.

The story is pretty-strange, yet plausible: the 13th Earl of Gurney (Harry Andrews) has accidentally hung-himself in an act of auto-erotic asphyxiation, a monologue/prologue-scene that lasts over 15-minutes! It's riveting, nonetheless. With the old Earl dead, there is only one heir left for the Lordship of the Gurneys: the Earl's crazy-son, Jack (O'Toole). Jack is completely-insane, and thinks he is Jesus Christ, messiah and savior of the human-race. The would-be Lord is a paranoid-schizophrenic. He is so insane, his speech-patterns betray him immediately. He has constant-tics, and flights-of-fancy that defy-words, and make this the finest-performance by Peter O'Toole in any film (it's his favorite of all of his film-performances). The performance was nominated for numerous awards in 1972. He really is a sweet-character in the first-half of the film, and shows some wonderful humanism that is lacking in the rest of his kin. His only conscience is the butler (James Villiers), a closet-anarchist! His character recedes as Jack becomes...different.

With Jack insane, his uncle Sir Charles (William Mervyn) sets-out to get him declared by a German-psychiatrist he has hand-picked...or has he? It appears that his sister, the Lady Claire Gurney has had an affair with the analyst, and has other-plans for Jack and the whole-situation. But Charles has decided he can control Jack through a call-girl he has groomed as the heir's wife, a Grace Shelly (played by the super-hot Carolyn Seymour). They are eventually-married by the very-reluctant Bishop Lampton (the legendary Alastair Sim!), a distant-relative in the Church of England. In such an environment of intrigue, being a paranoid-schizophrenic would be a natural-reaction, so one is struck by the fact that being one of the 'Ruling Class' means to be eventually driven-mad by the role. The jokes are biting in this one, with some of the best-retorts I have ever heard! To sum-it-up, the factions are battling-for-control of the Estate through Jack, who is 'J.C.' in the first-half of the film. The German-psychiatrist finally decides he can cure the would-be Lord with a radical-approach: he finds another madman (the 'High-voltage Messiah', an insane Scot played unforgettably by Nigel Green) who thinks he is God, and puts them in the same room together. It should be noted that Green died after the end of shooting from a barbituate-overdose.

This approach of 'two-gods in one-room' actually has been attempted in psychiatry before, but it usually doesn't work (the delusions are impenetrable). The problem is, the High-voltage Messiah thinks he's the Old Testament God of Wrath and destruction, and it causes a crisis in Jack's version of Jesus, destroying-it utterly. You could say that both characters embody the Manichean-mythos, and that they hold a heretical-view of religion. The High-Voltage Messiah represents the 'demiurge', the blind idiot-god of gnosticism, while Jack represents gnostics who believe in the Christ-within. Previously, Jack denied his name as part of his illness, and he just wanted to be someone-else.

This is interesting, since early-Christians often were given a new-name upon entering the cult. Unfortunately, this warmer Christ-personality is gone after the treatment, and all that is left is the Old Testament God, and so, Jack takes-on this role. 'I'm Jack, I'm Jack,' says the future-Lord, and the psychiatrist and the family think a cure has occurred. 'I'm Jack, alright...Jack-the-Ripper,' states O'Toole in a moment of hilarity and horror. Instead of the Prince of Peace, he's begun advocating bringing the 'noose back to England', and nobody in the ruling-circles notices him as odd anymore. It's really sums-up the tone of the film.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2006)

Decent as Horror, Poor as a Translation of Lovecraft-to-film

[6/10 · 2 October 2006]

"Every man, and every woman is a star." ---Aleister Crowley

"Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?" --Edgar Allan Poe

Beyond the Wall of Sleep isn't going to be some timeless-classic, but it's a very solid piece of Lovecraftian cinema. A good-portion of the original 1919 short is present here, with some of the usual liberties taken. The bulk of the story is here: Joe Slater, a Catskills inbred is found in his home screaming indescribable-utterances, and begins attacking his neighbors who have come to see what the commotion is all-about. With super-human strength, he attacks one of his neighbors, ..."leaving behind an unrecognizable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before." In short-order, Joe is taken in-chains to an asylum by the State Police. It appears he has a growth on his back that resembles a face, and two-hands...as though someone was trying to escape his body. Things get-stranger from there. At times, the inbred seems to be inhabited by a superior-intelligence, babbling strange-utterances of no-known language.

In the film, Joe (played with skill by the great William Sanderson who is now seen as the Mayor in the Deadwood series) flees and is eventually caught by a sheriff's posse (changed to State police, led by Tom Savini), followed by a party of local inbreds. Things get-darker at this point. This is all fine-and-well, so I don't want to seem like some Lovecraft-fanatic splitting-hairs. Some alterations work, some don't. The face on the back is still there in the film, and while you might believe it is an undeveloped-aspect, Lovecraft didn't do much with it either.

One major-change works well: changing the narrator. In Lovecraft's tale, it is the intern who tells the story after it has happened--with the characteristic lack-of-context of how-much later it's happening, or even the name of the narrator himself. Nobody who knows Lovecraft well would say his writing was always good, but there were things that the filmmakers left-out that I found confusing. Namely, the nature of the being inhabiting Joe Slater. In the original-short, the being is not necessarily evil or malefic, though sometimes destructive and unpredictable. It's as though it struggles to merely exist in Slater's body, seemingly trapped in him. Evil? Maybe, though not on a cosmic-scale, that seems evident in Lovecraft's original short-story.

Quite the contrary, the being is attempting to destroy another being known as "the adversary" out of revenge. It struck me that the adversary is supposed to be like the devil, or some truly malefic-being, while the being inhabiting Joe Slater is of a lower-order in the cosmos. "Good" and "evil" become meaningless in the Lovecraftian cosmology, so I found this too-simple. The original short has the being leave Slater's body, becoming a star that attempts to eclipse and destroy the adversary-star in another realm of the cosmos. The tale ends with the "good" being losing, the event being viewed by astronomers as a nova, then dying.

Ironically, I believe this could have been done more-economically than the Cthuloid-being that was created with CGI. The tales becomes one of a summoning, when the original is really about the escape of an entity that has been trapped in the body of an imbecile. This, then, is probably my main-problem with the film, but the theme of dreams being more-real than our own reality is still present and well-expressed in the editing and imagery. The images of the children are very-interesting, because it reflects H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic-horror so well. The children are subdeities toying-with humanity, much like the Archons of the Gnostic-cosmology.

It should also be noted that early-Christianity held that all people had a star for themselves in the cosmos--it was what we became after death. The ancient Gnostics felt that a select-few people in the world were part of a "starry race", or "knowers" of the divine. They were supposed to hold a "divine-spark" within-themselves, and Gnostics (especially Sethians) believed they were not of this world, but of this race. How Lovecraft embedded similar-concepts in his shorts is a mystery, since most all Gnostic-texts have only come-to-light since 1945--eight-years after his death. I also have to wonder how Crowley had-access to these Gnostic and Hermetic-concepts, it is puzzling as many of the Gnostic-ones simply weren't considered even to exist. It's a shame, but this wonderful mystical-aspect is almost absent in the adaptation, and it bothers me. However, the film is still very good for Lovecraftian cinema. It accurately reflects how brutal turn-of-the-century America was, too.

I especially enjoyed the opening-prologue with the time-date slate, showing us when the recounting of the tale happens (1979). American Mental Institutions were notorious 100-years-ago, so the context of the tale is solid. Maybe some of the production-design could have been better, but this is micro-budget cinema and the film is a great achievement, nonetheless. The subplot with the trepanned-girl (lifted from "Hannibal"?) was good, but I thought could have been pared-back to the very-end, this might have been more-effective in making it unsettling. We should remember that the short is a little over four-pages, so its addition is understandable and sets-the-stage for the intern's and Joe Slater's fusion with an electronic-apparatus.

The gore is stupendous, and I really enjoyed the mixing of black & white photography with color (color denoting that Joe's dream-reality has intruded into our own). The super-fast editing was also very good, and there are some truly unforgettable-images in this film. But remember: this is low-budget cinema, it was probably made for a couple-million dollars, possibly less. But it works, it's respectable horror. Lovecraft is about imagination, unfortunately the makers of this movie forgot that this is the key to his horror.

Dracula's Dog (1977)

Bad-Good, But Basically Bad (makes a good drinking-game)

[5/10 · 2 October 2006]

You have to hand-it (the booby-prize) to the Bands. This was the final-film by the patriarch of this schlock-horror family, and it's hard to describe. Disaster just doesn't work here, and I think Albert Band knew he had a turkey-script, so he made-the-best of it. His 1950s psychological-thriller/horror, "I Bury the Living" is excellent, but this is...wow, pretty bad. So, when your backers (UK and Yugoslavian) don't want to pay the Bram Stoker Estate money for the rights to Dracula, what do you do? Exactly! You do a tie-in, with a story about DRACULA'S DOG. Yes, his dog. Yes, it's as absurd and ridiculous as you might imagine. There is even a scene where the dog is wearing a turtle-neck...and operating a hearse! The story--what little there is--begins with Russian (obviously Yugoslavian) soldiers dynamiting a hill. They accidentally uncover a tomb that holds Dracula's manservant (Reggie Nadler, who looks creepy out-of-makeup), and his doberman, Zoltan. Yeah, it's retarded, I know. Yes, the stupid-soldiers release the half-vampire, and vampire-dog, and the "fun" begins. A lot of the story revolves around some followers of Dracula trying to make one of his living-descendants a vampire (WTF?!). The writing is full-of-holes you could drive a semi-truck through. At this time, even Hammer knew when to give-up on Dracula, having extended it into the mid-1970s. But this film is hilariously-bad, so it is watchable for all the unintentional humor it pummels the viewer with.

I'm 100%-certain that this is the ONLY film in human-history to contain a flashback scene for a vampire-dog character. I nearly fell out of my couch--could this be?! Did I really see what I thought I saw? I had to rewind my DVD-player. Yes, it was real, and there was even more hilarity. To make it short: the dog returns to America (where one goes for "success"--yeah, bullshit) with Nadler and some vampirized-dogs to sink-his-fangs into the descendant of Dracula, making him a vampire. Still, Albert Band's son has directed films that are much-worse with his excrement-mill, Full Moon. The only noteworthy thing here is that Stan Winston did some of his earliest makeup here, but doesn't get to shine much. Oh yeah, and the dog "talks" too, telepathically with the Nadler-character. Sucks, and not like a vampire, but good for some yucks. Not scary, unless you look at it as how stupid people with too-much money can be, they paid for this.

Voices from Beyond (1991)

The Last Decent Film By Lucio Fulci

[7/10 · 2 October 2006]

This is another one that isn't all-that-bad! It's a post-Sachetti scripted story (co-written by Fulci), but it's still a great supernatural-mystery sprinkled-with the horror that Lucio Fulci-fans adore. A brief-synopsis: a young-girl's father has been murdered by-poisoning, and a telepathic-link is formed between the deceased and the child. However, time-is-slipping-away for them, as the communication between the dead-man and his daughter is dependent-on the decay of the corpse--the more he rots (which Fulci shows us in delightful-detail), the weaker-the-link of communication. Will they discover who murdered him? Reminiscent of the opening-prologue of "Sunset Boulevard", Fulci delivered his last good horror-film here, there would be no-others. Having a narrative partly-delivered-by a dead-man was (and is) still uncommon, and an interesting experiment by Fulci which bears-fruit.

I found-myself pondering on the many-many issues of mortality watching this film, and it can certainly be read as a parable of the link the living share with the dead--the dead do speak-to-us, but we have to listen-carefully, and usually with detecting and forensics!Understanding the dead--in-part--is understanding the human-condition. Eventually, we have to let-go of the deceased, and move-on. One has to marvel that such an ailing-man (diabetes plagued Fulci his entire life) was capable of such a film, done with an almost non-existent budget. Fulci had a very tender-relationship with his daughter, so it could be inferred that there is some autobiography at-play here.Fulci knew he was dying slowly of diabetes.

Fulci was a valued-director--he could deliver under austere-conditions, and with over-50 films, his "hit-ratio" is surprisingly-high. He was cheap, and he usually delivered a solid-film with so little. Always remember that a majority of his films were made for under $1 million, and you begin to understand how truly-great he was as a director, a veritable-magician. People who compare other films by a director aren't worth listening-to, because people and times change. Yes, the films are frozen, but why should we be frozen too? Voices From Beyond is well-worth repeated-viewings, and almost totally-forgotten. Sure, it isn't his best film, but it's pretty good. It teaches us that we can let-go of the deceased, since they are always with us anyway. Long-live Lucio Fulci's legacy!

Magic (1978)

Magic and Mental Illness

[9/10 · 2 October 2006]

"Abracadabra, I sit on his knee. Presto, change-o, and now he's me! Hocus Pocus, we take her to bed. Magic is fun...we're dead." --The tagline to "Magic"

Schizophrenia is still a very controversial mental-illness, and many psychiatrists have argued that it doesn't even exist. But what we do know is that the mind can fragment into quasi-independent parts that can behave like personalities, or aspects of personalities. In many-cases, the neuropathology of schizophrenia is unknown, and has only been studied for some 100 years! Right-now, the science tends toward heredity being a primary-cause, but not everyone agrees. Enter the movies: While psychological-horror is nothing-new to cinema, this 1978 film by Sir Richard Attenborough (A Bridge Too Far, Gandhi) is very-very special, and offers some interesting speculations.Originally a best-selling novel by William Goldman (who also wrote the screenplay), this is also the "big-break" of Anthony Hopkins. It was the moment the public really took-note of this 40-year-old actor. Other than "The Bounty" (1984) this has to be his best film-performance, where he even had to learn to articulate a ventriloquist's-dummy and throw-his-voice.

Hopkins plays Corky, an amateur magician who is too shy to charm an audience, and he bombs at his first-performance. In the opening-prologue with his dying mentor Merlin, we find-out Corky had become-enraged and cursed-out the bored-crowd. Cut to two-years-later, and Corky is selling-out the same nightclub with a residency and lines around-the-block. He's a hit! Something happened over those two-years, and Corky's addition of a foul-mouthed ventriloquist's-dummy named "Fats" has made his act wildly-popular--he's funny and profane, spouting dirty-jokes and insults. Fats acts and looks like a distorted-version of Corky, maybe even his shadow-self. But, was it "Fats" who chewed-out the audience two-years-ago? Goldman and Attenborough let us decide, and it's this enigmatic-style that makes "Magic" so interesting and chilling. Jerry Goldsmith's eerie-score doesn't hurt either, it's reminiscent of Bernard Hermann.

Sure, we know that Fats isn't really alive, but an extension of Corky, but there are a few moments where he moves without help! It is as if the disease has externalized-itself, taking-over the protagonist. There is a light-touch of ambivalence as to whether Fats is more-than just a part of Corky's psychosis, but this is soon upended by too-many objective-views of his behaviors without Fats. Fats only moves a few-times without Corky, and sometimes Corky sounds like Fats when he gets angry. One almost gets a disembodied-sense watching this, a little taste of madness. And so, with his fame comes a fear of exposure of his illness. His show-business agent wants him to take a physical for a network television-appearance, and Corky refuses, escaping to his hometown in the Catskills. He seems to know instinctively that he is mentally-ill, and Fats the dummy even reminds him that ..."we're special". A schizophrenic fear of persecution becomes obvious. Fats wants to return to Manhattan to fame-and-fortune, but Corky doesn't. The pressure builds as the two-personalities fight, and Fats becomes jealous of a childhood love named Peggy. Peggy runs the cabin Corky and Fats are hiding-out in.

There is something so creepy about Fats, and it isn't hard-to-believe that he comes from somewhere deep and unknown within the human-mind. He is a force, rather than a personality, and he is rage and vengeance. Corky repeats his fears of failure to the character Peggy (played by super-hot Ann Margaret) in a mind-reading session with playing-cards, and it is here that it seems Corky isn't playing with a full-deck (had to write it). Is it also MPD (multiple-personality disorder)? Is it a primal-darkness within Corky, brought-on by his illness? It seems to be a complex combination of many things, and the descent-into-madness of such a likable-character is very unsettling. Though it's best to remember this is a movie version of mental-illness, it works. Corky is basically a paranoid-schizophrenic, with some writing-touches.

The best-scene is when Corky's agent (played with-class by Burgess Meridith) finds him at his hideaway, and challenges him about his sanity: "Corky, can you make Fats shut up for five-minutes?" Corky can't do it, and the scene is hilarious, heart-breaking and horrific. Eventually, Corky kills a couple people to hide his illness, and it just snowballs. Exposure is inevitable, and I leave the ending for you to watch yourselves. It is a film that is both funny and sadly-poetic, the dying of a beautiful, prismatic-mind that had so much to give. This makes Corky the classic "monster", and this a horror-film. He simply cannot help-himself. Mental-illness in the universe of "Magic" is tragedy, and our connection with Corky is almost that of an accomplice, like with Norman Bates in "Psycho". We want him to keep-hidden. It is a wild-ride that is humanizing and sad, but also very entertaining--even a criticism of entertainment-itself. After-all, once Corky is sick, the crowd loves him. Fats is just an externalization of his illness, and it all seems like a diseased-version of the American Dream.

While the majority of schizophrenics are not violent, this could certainly happen, and that's why I find it so horrifying. People lose their minds, and they lose control to impulses we and they do not understand entirely. Hopkins did the eerie voice of Fats, even throwing-his-voice, and he gave the dummy an old-vaudeville/freak show barker quality. He sounds like a street-hood from 1920s Manhattan, like a completely "other" personality than Corky's. He sounds-like someone who lived once in another body. The twist-ending seems to support this possibility. So, one would imagine from Anthony Hopkins' performance that he was at least nominated for a major-award. But, this was and independent film by Attenborough and Joseph E. Levine, so an Academy-Award was out. It's ironic that so many films that win Academy-Awards any-given-year are often forgotten, but ones like "Magic" are remembered-fondly.

Masters of Horror: Dance of the Dead (2005) Season 1, Episode 3

Gorehounds Resemble the Characters of this Film

[8/10 · 27 September 2006]

While 'Dance of the Dead' isn't my favorite Masters of Horror episode, it's still a pretty good entry. If you're expecting conventional-horror, look-elsewhere, this is about a horror that is internal. Peggy (played wonderfully by Jessica Lowndes) is a young-girl living in the contaminated-ruins of the United States, in Michigan. She and her mother run a diner in what is left of their community, while the streets are populated with the sick, dying, and gangs of youths willing to do anything to survive. Utilities still exist, and there is food, but the social environment is every-man-for-himself, a situation very close to complete anarchy.

Everyone in the film is dying-slowly from a terrorist-attack of a chemical weapon known as 'blitz', especially those who have been exposed-directly. In Richard Matheson's original-story, 'blitz' is exploded in the stratosphere, creating a huge corona-cloud that rains a skin-eating snow on its victims. Most of the victims have the look of lepers. One day, a gang of young 'blood-runners' comes into the diner led by a guy named Jak, and Peggy goes with them to the shunned city of 'Muskeet', where the dance of the dead is the main-event for nihilist-survivors and criminals. According to the MC of the club (Robert Englund, in a show-stealing performance), the military found that certain chemical-warfare agents would reanimate dead-troops to keep them fighting. One of the main-ingredients for this process is blood. Peggy's mother has warned her about the town ('It should be burned to-the-ground.'), with an odd-turn. She's hiding-something, like the fate of her other-daughter who...you'll have to watch the episode.

In this bleak-future that could happen tomorrow, Tobe Hooper shows us where America is psychologically, and where it could end-up. I've actually talked to people in their twenties about this entry, and none of them could tell me why they didn't like it. I can tell you why--it paints-a-picture of youth that isn't flattering, and it makes a few comments on the counterculture (as a dead-end expression) that aren't either. We aren't really very far as a culture from the 'dance of the dead' strip-shows, not-at-all. America has become-addicted to a form of sexualized-violence in our culture, and it's a violence that is senseless and without any motivation behind-it, or meaning. Some would call this conditioning.

37-years-ago, director Sam Peckinpah tried to change this with 'The Wild Bunch', by showing-us violence for what it really was and, for-a-time, it worked. With his machine-gun editing (taken-up by Hooper here, the hour-episode has1,100-cuts), and his graphic-depictions of people dying in slow-motion, Peckinpah tried to make people sick. By the 1980s, this style had been copied ad-infinitum without any depictions of the consequences of violence. Ironically, showing these consequences is more visually-graphic, and usually earn a 'hard-R', 'X', or an NC-17 rating for a movie. So, by the 1980s, Peckinpah had been trumped by Hollywood. Today, it's even-worse.

Hooper (and both Matheson-scribes) shoves this fact in our collective-face, and he does it with a barrage of imagery that is pretty-ugly. You could take-away the setting of a post-apocalypse America, and you could still tell this story in the present about an overprotected 16-year-old girl who loses her innocence. This overprotection is crucial, and Matheson setting the story in the American Midwest is strongly-symbolic. This is the real story of 'Dance of the Dead', and it rankles the wounded-idealist in all of us. But again, he's also telling us that we are jaded, bored and dehumanized, another reason some viewers were angered by the piece.

Sadly, most of the bad-reviews of this film only prove-its-point: we have become desenitized and dehumanized as a culture. Through the use of deep-colors, incredible-composition, and an editing-style that can only be called a barrage, Hooper has a great work here. Also, most of the gore here is pretty grim, and I expect a certain level of it in most horror-films. It's my own humble-opinion that the worst horror-fans are gorehounds, but even-worse is the film-buff who expects Orson Welles to do Citizen Kane over-and-over again (you could argue he did). This is a great addition to Tobe Hooper's canon, even an exceptional one. I think the main-problem people had with this film was the editing--it never lets you rest, and that's good. What a heavy metal Weimar Republic-nightmare he has crafted, it's stunning and real. We're all denizens of the Doom Room.

09/28/2006: Bwahahahahahah!http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/

The Wax Mask (1997)

From Fulci, to Stivaletti, a most-entertaining ride!

[8/10 · 22 August 2006]

This is a sorely-overlooked film that began as a project for the ailing Lucio Fulci (who died at the 11th-hour), and ended-up being the first film for Italian makeup-maestro, Sergio Stivaletti. While it is often daft, it is also so audacious and original in its reimagining of "House of Wax" that it inexplicably overcomes any of its weaknesses. Produced-by Dario Argento (as well as co-scripted in some areas), this alchemical-horror succeeds where the recent Hollywood-remake fails, and all on a $3 million-budget! That's catering for the recent "House of Wax", right? Its only major-downside--a minor one--is that Paris Hilton's murder isn't depicted here, which accounts for half the box-office of that version.

It is difficult not to be won-over by the visual purity of this film, even with the problems of plot (common to Italian cinema, though much of this is explained-by a an emphasis on the "thematic"), and it is very-very entertaining and fantastical. One would assume that the alchemical-themes in the story were Argento's contributions, however, English horror-cineaste Alan Jones has written they are Stivaletti's, which is pretty amazing. For those who are familiar with the makeup-artisan's work in films by Argento, Soavi, and Lamberto Bava, you are in for a treat.

While this film is definitely flawed, it succeeds in being a great romp for action, mystery, and naturally, gore. From a hardcore heart-ripping by mechanical-hands, to melting-cadavers, it is an original-contribution to bodily-defilement by the director and his makeup crew. With obvious expositions on nanotechnology and cybernetics, I was pretty creeped-out. Maybe it was me, but I thought a lot of the film had elements of the French silent serials like "Judex", or even "Les Vampiers". There are--of course--scenes that will make most Anglo-American audiences cringe, and you'll know them when you see them, but you knew you were watching an Italian genre-film, no?

Yet, it is so very classical in its combination of Gaston Leroux and Jules Verne! One-remaining Fulci-subplot remains--it concerns a doppleganger of a main-character, and is oddly resonant with Stivaletti's-contributions. The familiar-theme of the misunderstood-genius, and the brutality of the human-condition creating monsters reminds one of Captain Nemo, or the Phantom of the Opera. But what this films really reminds-me-of is that many great Italian-filmmakers understand there is no line-between "high" and "low" art. This is often lost on us in North America, but it is common in mainland European culture. The alchemical themes are great too. Lucio Fulci, RIP.

Masters of Horror: John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns (2005) Season 1, Episode 8

"Cigarette Burns", the Best John Carpenter Film in a Long-Time

[9/10 · 22 August 2006]

Yes, John looks pretty-old, but I think it's more his health folks, let's show some respect here. You'll look like a funnier-caricature of yourself than he does when you're 60. As you've already-suspected, I am a longtime-fan of John Carpenter's films, so a little background should help. The first film I ever saw of his was "Elvis" (1979), a made-for-TV movie that is pretty-damned-good. I was too-young to see "Halloween", but it did return between 1978-80 in our local-theater. The first theatrical-movie of his I ever saw was "Christine" (1983), an excellent film that gets overlooked, but is definitely a classic. After that, I saw "Starman" (1984), "Big Trouble in Little China" (1986), and "They Live" (1988), and the brilliant "Prince of Darkness" (1989). All were/are excellent-additions to his body-of-work. After-that, it gets sketchy, and I ascribe this to changes in the Hollywood system (for-the-worse, naturally) regarding-horror, and Carpenter simply became tired fighting producers. He didn't want to end-up being Sam Peckinpah.

I don't even like "In the Mouth of Madness" much, and consider it his worst film, especially plot-wise (it was written by Michael Deluca, then a line-producer for New Line, a bad-screenplay). "Village of the Damned" (1995) offered some hope, but I kept asking-myself, "Why THIS story?!""Vampires" (1998) is a great spoof, and should be viewed-as-such. I actually thought "Ghosts of Mars" (2001, what a lost-year) was pretty-good, and a lot like "Assault on Precinct 13", only updated. Anyway, it should be clear that I love his films, but am disappointed by some of them. He is too, apparently, but that's how life works. It isn't perfect, but at least he's taken-chances, which is a lot more than most so-called "horror-directors" can say these-days. In-fact, I'm STILL waiting for Hollywood to make an in-house horror movie, none of the new ones scare me in any way.

But this really scared me, I'm a cineaste (film-buff), so a lot of the film was familiar to me. Udo Kier absolutely steals every-scene he's in, and the whole cast, the makeup, Cody Carpenter's excellent score, and the writing and directing are high-grade horror. "Le Fin Absolue Du Monde" is a fictional-film, as "Videodrome" is a fictional snuff. Snuff is real, incidentally--generally being interrogation-videos shot in Central America by death-squads trained by the CIA. So, imagine if you watched a real snuff-film. You are directly-connected to a crime, and it changes you morally in ways you might not even detect or understand. In this sense, both "Cigarette Burns" and "Videodrome" have a thematic-link in that one can be changed by watching-imagery. The difference is that one is a supernatural-tale/allegory, while the other is implicitly-political.

Norman Reedus plays Kirby Sweetman (another interesting name!) to Kier's Ballinger, both searchers of esoteric-cinema, and rare-or-lost films. Ballinger is much like a shadow-world version of Kirby, who is basically a damaged, but happy-go-lucky film-buff. He is haunted by the death of his junkie-fiancée, a death he blames-on-himself. Through numerous "cigarette burn" flashbacks, we learn he's probably right, though he is a very sympathetic-character. Ballinger is not. The opening-scene with an otherworldly-being he has captured and mutilated is very chilling, and reveals his character early-on in the film.The journey to find "Le Fin Absolue Du Monde" is an interesting-one, and while it is dialog-heavy, it works. The story just builds-and-builds, increasing-in-intensity, until a jaw-dropping moment of "snuff" and the hysterical-ending that is a slice-of-hell. Douglas Arthurs also chews-scenery as the sadistic Dalibor, he's pretty frightening. Hell is regret, guilt.

So, not bad, Mr. Carpenter. Here's to more! The Masters of Horror series has a great-beginning, and subsequent-episodes look incredible from the trailers! Again, the transfer is near-perfect, though not shot in Carpenter's preferred Panavision-scope of 2.35:1, but he did a fine-job. The cinematography is noirish and natural, I liked it a lot. There wasn't a lot I didn't like here, just a couple moments where there could have been better locations, but otherwise, a great short-film. It appears John Carpenter is working on two-more projects: "Psychopath" (a giallo?), and "Pro-life" for Masters of Horror (sounds GOOD). I'll take age and experience over youth and inexperience any-day. BUT, is Alexandre Aja the new John Carpenter? Like Eli Roth (OLD, he's my age!), Aja loves the genre, and you cannot make great-horror without this. You gotta love this series, man, it's the real-deal.

Dead & Buried (1981)

Depraved, Shocking, and Soul-Searing: Genuine-Horror by Dan O' Bannon

[9/10 · 22 August 2006]

"Welcome to Potter's Bluff, a New Way of Life" This is one of those horror-films that defies-categorization, it is just that good (and enigmatic, it keeps its secrets). Not really written by Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusett, the story was created-by Jeff Millar and Alex Stern. O'Bannon and Shusett did a minor-rewrite of the screenplay, with backer-interference that added a few-more scenes of gore. Yes, in the golden age of slashers (1978-81), films like The Fog and Dead & Buried had gore added for commercial-reasons only. Gary Sherman's original-cut was supposed to be more comedic, a black-comedy about American small-towns. Still, I think the film overcomes this interference overall, though it gets pretty serious as it progresses. Reagan referred-to America as "the city on the hill", a place with a special-mission, where traditions never end. Potter's Bluff was Gary Sherman's parody of Reagan-America, and it still resonates with the mindless-insanity of today. It should, he began a lot of the mess we're in. The Gipper always looked half-dead anyway, like all those Soviet Commisars, a relic of a dead-era.

I cannot honestly think of many horror-films that are this grim, this hopeless, and there you have some of the social-commentary about dead-end life in Main Street America. In the early-1980s, those of us who were paying-attention (punks, post-punk culture, freaks, radicals, thinkers, etc.) really thought the world was going to end soon. We were off by two-decades, apparently. Contrary to what you've been-told, Reagan didn't get-elected by a landslide, and the divisions between Americans from the 1960s simply went-underground. Dead & Buried reflects this undercurrent of rage, the death-impulse underneath the everyday, the reality bursting-forth, a force resisting change. A desire for cultural-limbo, a cultural-death. When things don't change, premature-death is certain. You really have to look for this subtext now, but Sherman's skill allowed it to survive the cuts and additions by PSO International, the corporation that bought the other-two backers. Out-went the satire, in-went some shoddy-gore. It was 1981.

But, it's still an incredible-story, and there's some great horror here. Sure, it owes some debt to George Romero (especially in its original-form), but it takes us places we really wished we were never taken. It seems that every time a stranger comes to Potter's Bluff, they're brutally-murdered, only to mysteriously-reappear as a resident of the coastal town. No, this isn't a surrealist-film, and these oddities accumulate and become very unsettling as the film progresses. Events that defy-explanation escalate, as Sheriff Dan Gillis (played by James Farentino) investigates the murders, and the reappearance of the strangers. His humorous-foil is the local coroner, William G. Dobbs (Jack Albert in his final movie-role, best-known as the lovable grandpa in 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), who seems only mildly-concerned about the murders. As the story progresses, Dobbs becomes the center of what and why strange-things are happening in Potter's Bluff. Yes, even the name of the town is a dead-giveaway, pun-intended.

This is probably Stan Winston's best-work, insofar as gore is concerned. One murder-victim's face is totally-reconstructed by the Dobbs-character (really Winston's hands, fast-cut) in what is almost a one-take scene! It looks completely-real, and if you love gore, this is YOUR film. People die in some of the most disgusting, and heartless-methods in Dead & Buried. The money-shot is the scene in-which a victim is stabbed-in-the-eye with a hypodermic-needle, and it goes DEEP. You can have gallons-of-blood, but THIS is really effective! Robert Englund also has a small-part, and the cast is pretty good overall. The film also has a great cinematography, and Sherman is no slouch as a horror-director--he really should be doing a Masters of Horror Episode, since he is one. Dead & Buried is a film heavy with atmosphere, and dread, and is a must-see for true fans of horror. It even has a touch of Lovecraft, and the setting is supposed to be New England (probably O'Bannon's addition). The fact that the movie doesn't entirely explain everything is why it's so weird and unsettling, not just because of the gore.

SPOILER: As the film reaches its end, it becomes clear that the Coroner Dobbs has been practicing some form of necromancy, and derives a power from resurrecting the dead. Sheriff Gillis, unknown-to-himself, was murdered-earlier by his undead-wife (this is revealed in Super- 8mm footage shown by Dobbs, the wife stabs Gillis in the back, nice). Dobbs controls all the dead in Potter's Bluff, and has chosen Gillis as the instrument of his own demise--so he can "live" eternally with his zombies. This, then, is a story of a lust for power! When I first saw this film in 1982 on HBO, it completely freaked-me-out, so I had to inflict it on my brother and some friends. It's so creepy and freaky, they were angry with me for months...

PS: The Blue Underground 2-DVD set is the best! I got it as a promo when it hit, and it is incredible. As-usual, their transfer is excellent, widescreen, and has three-commentaries. The second-disc has some great interviews with Stan Winston and Dan O'Bannon that have to be seen. You must own this film, if-only to anger your family, heheh! A really great horror-film leaves one feeling violated. Score!

Ebola Syndrome (1996)

The Three Stooges Meet Hong Kong Horror

[8/10 · 22 August 2006]

'A gangster Chick (WTF is a "gangster Chick"?!) smuggled into South Africa to avoid being caught. One day, he rapes and murders a black girl who is infected with a terrible Ebola virus. He has no idea that he becomes the carrier of the disease (actually, he does). Later he kills his boss couple (?!) and minces their bodies into the hamburgers. To escape from arrest, he flies back to Hong Kong and continues to spread the Ebola virus.....' --from the back-panel notes of the Ebola Syndrome DVD Damn the People's Republic of China for annexing Hong Kong, because we will never see a film quite as insane, hilarious and absurd as Ebola Syndrome. I have to assume that these movies (and this one in-particular) were made for geeky Asian-guys, or maybe to entertain members of the Tongs. This is for guys, not women, and sure to be turned-off by wives and girlfriends across North America, if not most of the civilized world. Naturally, this is what makes the film so good.

So guys, pop-open a brewskie, kick-off your socks, and enjoy. Ladies--leave the room. Just be prepared for a hernia from laughing harder than you ever have in your entire life, this is the real-deal for you lovers of genre-movies. I am 100% certain that Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez have both watched this. Tarantino probably called it one of his many "all-time favorites," it is that good. It's very juvenile, stupid, absurd, idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic, more xenophobic than the Japanese and rural America combined, and completely indefensible...but also a real laugh-riot because of this.

OK, so not much plot here, just lots of violence, hilarious cursing and maybe some of the most-absurd moments in HK cinema. The only other movie that could be more ridiculous would be 'The Story of Ricky', which is a classic. Kai is a screw-up worker at a Tong-owned restaurant in HK, and the boss's squeeze has been forcing-sex on him (I know, what horrible thing, but what do you do besides chew bubble-gum and kick some ass?). The Chinese mafia boss (called "Tongs") discovers Kai and his woman bonking, and decides to castrate him. Unimaginably, things get worse. Kai offers to do-it-himself as a fake-out ploy, and instead, murders everybody with a kitchen-utensil. Nice. He has to flee to somewhere else, and hey, the title is Ebola Syndrome after all. He goes to South Africa, since there are cities to shoot in, as well as the African plains and jungle (and cheap, South African extras).

Kai is there for 10 years, working-for the people who smuggled him there. The husband-and-wife restaurateurs make him do everything at this lousy job, including chopping the meat for their 'frog-rice' specialty, which sounds profoundly disgusting. You see a LOT of grue and gore in this film, and most of it is animals (vegetarian porn). Even a mouse gets run-over by a car later on in the film. Yeah, this is one the ASPCA probably have on their sh*t-list. Kai stumbles from one hilarious (and unsettling and violent) scenario to-another throughout the film, eventually returning to HK and spreading the virus everywhere he can.

The rest is about the hilarious scenery, the ride. It's possibly the funniest movie I own, and I'm not kidding about this. You have to see this before you die, it's THAT funny, a (real) punk/existentialist spit-in-the-face of the world by the filmmakers, a hilarious protest against an absurd human condition. It's deeply-misanthropic, which I can relate to. ;0) Yes ladies, horrible-things happen to women in this movie, but even worse happens to the male-characters. If there is a line, the makers of Ebola cross it every time, which is admirable.

If William S. Burroughs were alive today, he would likely say he wished he had written this--I wonder if he ever saw it? I sure hope-so. Own it, watch it, cherish it. The DVD is superb-in-quality, and it's cheap. Films like Ebola Syndrome are why there are HK fans. It's vile and bizarre but very entertaining stuff. You could NEVER do this in Hollywood, not even in most American indies. The taboo-breaking is too-much for our culture to withstand, which makes this a counterculture film to-be-sure. It even boasts a pretty good cinematography for such a cheap movie, and that's another thing to like about HK cinema, it has some great frame-composition and cinematography. The colors always seem so deep in a HK movie.

The Creeping Flesh (1973)

The Root of Evil in Man: Himself

[8/10 · 22 August 2006]

Hammer pictures was a great studio for the genre, but there were other UK film-companies like Amicus and Tigon who often bested the horror-giant. This is supposed to be the last Tigon film, and like the other indie-productions outside of Hammer, the director, crew and actors were Hammer-alumni. When creativity was restricted at Hammer, these folks simply went to the other studios to "moonlight". If I was to bet money on it, I'd say this is the most-satisfying Cushing/Lee vehicle of the 1960s-70s. But, by 1973, Gothic horror was ending, and modern horror had arrived. "Hell House" would be a smash-hit, but this kind of horror revolving-around an old manse was over, and was reflected in the poor box-office of this movie.

The Creeping Flesh is a strange film about the origins and nature of evil, and it is therefore a philosophical-horror that resembles Lovecraft's cosmic-horror. It has some parallels with the story of Cain and Abel, too. As in Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein", this is a cautionary-tale: we shouldn't be blind to our own shortcomings when investigating the unknown in science. We should be certain of why we are searching-out a particular knowledge, and we should know who we are and where we stand morally in-relation to others. Also, some things in nature should be left-alone.

Cushing plays Victorian Dr. Immanuel Hildern, a museum-paleontologist who receives an ancient-skeleton from New Guinea that looks almost prehuman. It has an enormous cranium that looks monstrous. A legend surrounds the skeleton, that when a great rain comes it will reanimate and plunge the world into darkness (which is why the remains were sealed in a cave, away from water). Hildern suspects it is a "concentrated evil" from which he may be able to create a vaccination against evil-itself (a strange idea, that... "Evil is a disease".) It appears he has lost his wife to a malevolent-insanity, and fears his daughter will succumb to the same "evil". Meanwhile, someone-else wants to study the skeleton...

As with most Gothic-horrors, this is a story of an aristocratic-family in-decline. His half-brother, James (played icily by the legendary Christopher Lee) runs an insane asylum unethically, and there are hints that he treats his inmates to hideous-experiments and torture. In the beginning, Cushing's character seems less like Lee's, but this illusion soon falls-away. From the start, it's clear that this is a family tainted with evil, and that it is dying. There is some hope early-on that Immanuel Hildern can reverse this, but he is flawed like Lee. So, what does the film say about evil? That it is ambiguous, and untouchable? That we are guided-by-fate? I think the filmmakers leave it to the audience to decide.

So, while it is hinted that the skeleton is somehow "the source of all evil...a concentrated evil", Dr. Hildern and his brother's misguided-attempts at greatness express that the evil was already within-them before the introduction of the skeleton. It offers that evil is intangible, which is odd for a film that is both Gothic and a bit modern. Gothic horror seems like anti-monarchist propaganda today, and a lot of it is--it's specific in WHAT the evil is, so there is a contradiction within the story. Still, it fuses the Gothic and the modern well, and that's a lot harder than it sounds.

So, all-in-all, not a bad film, with some incredible exposition on how evil grows. From the scenes where Cushing accidentally spills-water on the skeleton, to the stop-motion growth of flesh on dead bones, to the robed-creature seeking Hildern and his family, this is entertaining and eerie. Of course, the daughter is torridly hot as in the Hammer films, and there is a strong sexual-tension that's both repellent and attractive. Many of the shock scenes are well-conceived and staged, including the subplot with the murderer running-amok from the asylum. By the end of the film, everyone has been touched by evil, or is dead.

The Creeping Flesh also has a great cinematography, helped by the fact that the director Freddie Francis (Evil of Frankenstein, Tales from the Crypt) was a DP himself. Many of the tableaux are shot in a wonderful low-lit atmosphere, and the makeup is very good for 1973. If the film suffers from anything, it is too-many ideas in 94 minutes! The Sony DVD is an excellent High-Definition transfer, widescreen with no real extras. It's a bit overpriced, but worth it for such a great classic of Gothic horror. A commentary-track would have been a good minimal-addition, Mr. Francis is still-alive, he is 91 as-of this writing (8/2006).

Vital (2004)

Deeper-and-Deeper, Tsukamoto Only Gets-Better

[9/10 · 22 August 2006]

Shinya Tsukamoto has to be one of the greatest living-directors of our time. He is absolutely uncompromising in his visions, and is one of the very few-directors who actually owns his films, rejecting most outside-financing. The results are always spectacular, and undiluted by the money people who constantly ruin the projects they fund. It must be a heavy-burden to shoulder all of the praise and the blame, as Tsukamoto often acts as producer, writer, actor, cinematographer (as with his "Bullet Ballet"), and even film-editor. The man is unstoppable, like many of his film-protagonists, and he is a testament to the power of discipline. Even Takashi Miike admits he's an admirer and will never top Tsukamoto.

This tale was created entirely by Tsukamoto, and certainly has elements of autobiography to it, and he continues his theme of the desensitizing-nature of urban life in all its mind-numbing routines. Again, his characters are attempting to punch-through the drudgery to a more-fulfilling life. Sometimes they succeed. The story concerns a medical student named Hiroshi who has suffered amnesia in a car-accident. His lover was killed in this accident. He returns to live-with his parents, who he doesn't remember--in-fact, he has forgotten his past entirely. One day, he discovers one of his old anatomy-textbooks hidden-away, and decides to return to medical school. He also finds many drawings he did before the accident. Over-time, it becomes clear that he once wanted to be an artist, and felt-pressured by his parents to be a doctor. Returning to medical school, Hiroshi rapidly-excels and reaches the dissection-stage of his education. There is a problem--the cadaver is his lover...

This is lyrical-art, nothing-less. The makeup of the cadavers is astonishing, and was done with plastic-molding and latex. It looks entirely-real. As Hiroshi delves-deeper into the body of his dead-lover, he remembers more-and-more of what happened before the accident. So, if you like grue and gore, you'll like THAT part of this film, just don't expect viscera and fluids everywhere. Vital is more cerebral than that, and this is not a gorefest, there is meaning to this. There is a confrontation-with-mortality here that Americans are incapable of creating in our culture, but it also says that the dead speak to us. We just never listen. If I tell you more, it will only ruin your curiosity and the viewing-experience, which is best experienced virginal. This is a story of discovery, and identity. It is the essence of being-human, and being empathetic and caring. It also celebrates the beauty of the human-body in ways I never imagined, a visual-feast.

The Tartan DVD couldn't be any-better. The image-quality is superb, as is the audio (DTS, and stereo-versions are very-active). While this is a film that lasts a mere 80-minutes, it is a very full-experience, and the added-features on the DVD are great, including an audio-commentary by Miike and Tsukamotot-scholar, Tom Mes, interviews, and more. So, gorehounds, this is a beautiful film with some very deep-meaning about what it is to be human and caring. Correct, gorehounds will be bored, but who cares? This is high-art by a totally independent filmmaker, it doesn't get much-better than this.

Dracula (1931)

Dracula: A Study in Atmosphere and Sound

[8/10 · 22 August 2006]

Tod Browning was a director who could almost do-no-wrong. Warner had the Gangsters, Universal had the monsters, and movies made in the backlots were pretty good from the Great War-on. The onetime carny-barker was one of Hollywood's best directors in a period that is now legend. What is so remarkable about Dracula's staying-power is that this film isn't really scary, but is very forward-looking in its use of atmosphere and silence.

Browning did the majority of his movies during the silent-era (seven with Lon Chaney), and it is known that he was one of the many directors in that transition from silent-to-sound who was afraid of the new technology. Dracula is a 75-year-old film, and it looks and sounds great for being made in 1931. And a surprise: the Spanish-Language version is even more visually-innovative! The other crew that shot this version at-night saw the rushes of Browning's, and decided to outdo- them, and they did in many areas of their version. Most DVD-versions contain this version, and from some excellent-prints.

Like the others, he feared that there would be a deemphasis on image, and this did happen with a lot of early "talkies". The reason they were called talkies is because they weren't good, and all the attention was on how much dialog you could fit-in. Many movies became like filmed-plays, and a lot of hard-won work in creating a visual-language got lost for a time. Dracula doesn't suffer from this fate, however, because of Browning's fear of sound in films. This is why we still find Dracula watchable today, it isn't too-chatty and talky with too-much dialog that plagues many of the early-talkies (many-of-which are now forgotten and even lost).

Utilizing the German-cinematographer, Karl Freund, the film has that touch of Expressionism. Freund worked with both Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, and Dracula is a visual-feast because of this. Karl Freund was DP on many of the greatest German Expressionist films, such as Murnau's "The Last Laugh" (1924), Lang's "Metropolis" (1927), and even "Der Golem" (1920). We have stunning dolly and tracking-shots that were uncommon in early sound-features, and like Lang's "M", Browning's use of sound is sparse but effective. The absence-of-sound and the timing of where sound should be is very clever here, much like in Lang's M. Silence in both-films is often the prelude to something horrible--something Americans understood all-too-well in the heart of the Great Depression. A fear of war was also high, and isolationism and anti-immigrant sentiments were everywhere. Lugosi perfectly-embodies the American-fear of being overrun by immigration, and the actor was the very-thing! The character of Renfield is also interesting, being a fear of human-bondage to forces we do not understand.

1931 was a bad year for Americans, so you have to consider this when you encounter the stories that women fainted and audiences screamed and yelled at screenings of this film. It was the worst year of the Great Depression, and to many, the world seemed to be ending. In a way, they were right, the world was going to change forever in a few-years. Some of it was good (the New Deal), and a lot of it was bad (the rise of Fascism and totalitarianism in Europe and Russia). From the Great Crash in the Fall of 1929, to the bitterest-year of 1931, Republican President Herbert Hoover did almost nothing to alleviate the suffering of Americans hit-hardest by the Depression. For this, he was overwhelmingly voted out-of-office, and his name has been a curse on the lips of the WWII-generation into our time.

So angered were Americans by the Republican Party's decade-of-corruption, that they elected FDR three-times to the office of President, and the Democratic Party generally controlled Congress for over forty-years. No other American political-party can claim such a sustained-loss of legitimacy. Indeed, people were starving-to-death, and Hoover did nothing, these were uncertain-times. Nothing seemed to be what it seemed, and all assumptions about modern life were upturned. Horror and anxiety were everywhere as the Western world economy collapsed. Fear reigned, and Dracula was released into this storm of angst and anger. The timing couldn't have been more-perfect, and this is why the film doesn't resonate with us as much--it is a film of its time, very-much so. H.P. Lovecraft hated it, but when he wrote this to a friend, he was basically a white-supremacist, an anti-Semite, and a snobby, effete, intellectual-snob. He was also conservative at this time, but he had changed at the end of his life for-the-better.

And so, horror is about the experience of generations. If you search-out what the other generations went-through, these films can be appreciated better. But, on a basic-level, Dracula is still a solid atmospheric-horror that was innovative. Its camera-work is innovative, as is its use of sound. And now, we have the good-fortune to have it restored with a new score commissioned by Univesal Pictures by American composer, Phillip Glass. If you truly want to enjoy this film, and to feel it more-deeply, it must be viewed with this score. Universal deserves credit for the new-score, it was a wonderful idea that works so well in-practice.

Amazingly, Glass's score makes Dracula seem very modern and more-relevant to our times. The original had no real working-score (a few motifs), which is probably one of the few strikes against-it. Expertly-performed by the Kronos Quartet, Dracula shines as-never-before for our eyes and our ears. The restoration is incredible. After years of watching inferior 16mm television-prints, it is a revelation, this is a gem. At one time, it was hard to even see a lot of the movie, as it was murky and clouded, unstable. Watching it today, we can marvel at how good high-end film-making really was.

The Company of Wolves (1984)

Little Red Riding Whore

[8/10 · 22 August 2006]

"The sweetest tongue has the sharpest tooth." "If there is a beast in man, it met-its-match in woman." "Don't go into the woods, Little Red Riding Hood." Neil Jordan's (The Crying Game, and Interview With a Vampire)werewolf-fable really excited me upon its release in 1984, and it is a film that has aged well. A sensual-retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood", and a really detailed realization of how bloody and gory so-called "fairy-tales" are in their uncensored-versions. Co-written by Angela Carter and Jordan, the Red Riding Hood story acts as an arc which numerous stories are hung-from, and it is even framed as a modern girl's dream! It has to be said that Terry Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm" covers similar-ground in the wolf-areas, but more on that later. This is a fairy-tale for adults, and a really sexy, satisfying one at-that.

This film got a lot of attention at the time, because it deals with that tender period of puberty, and the end of adolescence. It's a painful-period for most people, male or female, and so Company of Wolves is essentially a story of innocence-lost. The irony is, Jordan doesn't paint this loss as being so bad, and that a surrender-to-passion can be a wonderful letting-go. But we lose-something, entering adulthood, a kind of magical sense-of-reality where everything is new, mysterious and alive. We lose Eden. Entering into an almost "UFA-expressionism", this is a story of feminine sexual-exploration and discovery, a real treat. It's definitely a feminist horror-tale, and has some interesting-takes on female-empowerment through sexual-knowledge.

Angela Lansbury plays the archetypal-Grandmother, a symbol of ancient feminine-wisdom. Her character reminded me of the Oracle of Delphi (the Oracle only tells us what we already-know!), and she is also a cautioner against the mistakes-of-youth.Jordan and Carter go-so-far as to have her demise reveal that she's made of porcelain--an open-admission that she's a symbol! Of course, the authors change things in the Red Riding Hood story, and the ending is pretty original and unexpected. Eventually, all lambs must become rams and sheep. Eventually, all lillies must wilt-and-die. We should enjoy the beauty and virility that we all have, while we have it. It's sad, we see the results of young-girls who aren't cautious in "the company of wolves", as the werewolf is really a symbol of bestial-mankind...serial-killers, and sexual-predators, and abusive-mates. These are the stuff of dreams, and nightmares.

This film was made in-the-wake of Ted Bundy and the public's awareness of the "serial-killer" phenomena. Bundy, truly a "wolf-in-sheep's-clothing", lured "young girls who stray from the path". In many-cases, he murdered and disposed-of his female-victims in the forests of the American Northwest. Conversely, whenever a mutilated-body was discovered in a Medieval town, city or village, it was often attributed to werewolves from the forests. Nobody could believe a human-being could do such-things, and fairy-tales were both cautionary-tales and a cathartic way of dealing with these murders. The same is true today with film, and I give enormous credit to Angela Carter and Neil Jordan for finding the connection between the fairy-tale and genuine-horror.

Sometimes, we are surrounded by lesser-wolves, and there is a part of us that is all-wolf. Another cautionary-aspect of the Little Red Riding Hood fable is the wolf's masquerade as "Grandma"--it warns of wolves in our own families, which was also covered well in Gilliam's "Brothers Grimm" with the father-subplot. The beginnings of "film-noir"? Not-exactly, but the cautionary-part of these ancient-stories is why they are still with us. They tell us things about ourselves and others that we ignore at our own peril. Most people--usually young--ignore them. Fairy-tales are part of our pagan-past, and the film is studded with fertility-images in frogs, and a wonderful dream-sequence with lipstick, nests, and baby-statues in eggshells. Dream-imagery.

If you ever wanted to see Stephen Rea rip his face-off, this film has it. A tale of a vanished-husband (who turns-out to be a returned werewolf who feels spurned) features an early-performance by him that is pretty hard to watch, and cautionary of choosing the wrong-lover. Sure, young-adults will make many of the same-mistakes (we all do and will), but these tales are still valuable in making them aware that some people are dangerous, and that they are wolves or bestial. With such an incredible UK-cast featuring the always-great David Warner (Time Bandits, Straw Dogs, The Omen) Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, V for Vendetta), Graham Crowden (If..., The Ruling Class, Britannia Hospital), and Angela Lansbury, it's a very entertaining watch. Such a moody, graphic, sensual film is a great date-film too! Your lady-friends will give-themselves-up to desire, give-themselves to the wolf...

Hen's Tooth has done a great job with this film on DVD. It's widescreen, with an excellent transfer, and very active sound. This is great, because it's a very subtle film, with a fragile cinematography and sound-design and score. Forget extras, get the aforementioned right, then we'll talk "extras".

The Mind Snatchers (1972)

Mind Control is Real

[7/10 · 22 August 2006]

"Mindsnatchers" is a really scary-film. Why? Because it is a fictional story of a scenario that was and is real. Beginning in the 1950s, with the CIA's successful MKULTRA program of hypno-assassins, we can assume that is has continued into-the-present. Why do it? Our political, economic and military leadership seemed to feel the answer was "why not?" America was unchallenged in power after WWII (the only man standing), an almost supreme force in the immediate aftermath of war. The situation is similar today, but with a few key-differences, mainly that we are a declining-power.

With our present "rendition" of suspected-terrorists in secret, illegal-prisons throughout the world, one has to wonder if any of these individuals are being brainwashed too. One also has to wonder if so-called "terrorism" has any direct-connection to mind-control programs that have backfired. The legendary Muslim heretic, Hassaan I Sabah, utilized drugs and a form of hypnosis in creating the world's first-known assassins ("Hashishins" being the root-word), and some historians note there were accounts that his reach extended as far as Paris. You could say he was the Osama Bin Laden of his time. But we do assassination too, to our shame. We are virtually alone in this practice, internationally.

From 1957-1961, the CIA conducted mind-control experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, with the aid of the Canadian government (surely, noticed by David Cronenberg). We know all of this from the aftermath of Watergate, which caused the creation of the Church Committee (1975-1978). The Church committee investigated illegal-activities of the American intelligence community, which released a flood of formerly classified-documents. MKULTRA is indisputable, it happened, and bits of the story leaked-out before the Church committee (and the NSA, CIA & our press) could bury them. It should be noted that there was also intense-cooperation with the Pentagon, and this is where the story of Mindsnatchers takes-place.

It's a really engaging-film, and you really care about the characters, even when they do horrible things. Of course, this is Christopher Walken's film, he is both hilarious and believable as a non-conformist G.I. with a bad-temper. The comparison between the film and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", and "A Clockwork Orange" are apt, but the film stands-on-its-own as being very original and disturbing. It is not a copy of either movie, as "Cuckoo's Nest" came-out in 1975, and "A Clockwork Orange" and Mindsnatchers were definitely in-production simultaneously.

Also chewing-scenes in this film is a younger Ronny Cox (Robocop), who is excellent as a crazy redneck inmate of the secret facility in Germany. An interesting-twist is the film's connection with other experiments in free-will and obedience-to-authority (the Milgram experiment), and the applications of electroshock for-compliance.Yes, we have brain-implants, even ones that induce-pleasure in the test-subjects. To say these scenes are depraved and disturbing is an understatement, especially knowing that they happened. On top of this is the character of the controller/Doctor: he justifies his experiments as "voluntary", and "for the greater-good", so this is also a tale of medical and scientific-ethics. Interestingly, the Doctor also has a "controller" in the character of "the Major"--it appears the Major has lied-to the Doctor about how "voluntary" the program really is. So, this is also a tale of medical and scientific-ethics.

All-in-all, a very good film that is oddly-entertaining, while being absolutely unsettling. It is strangely informative, too. "Mindsnatchers" delivers, and-then-some. Image entertainment has a very-good DVD available, and it has some great extras too. The transfer is not perfect, but appears to be from the best available-sources, just not the original-negative. This was an extremely-cheap film, but it rises-above this fact by some really assured directing, acting, and writing. The score is a little cheesy at-times, but it has some excellent electronic-cues that are effective for the time. You could do-worse, like watching the Final Destination franchise, or Snakes on a Plane. Depraved.

Cannibals in the Streets (1980)

Another Child of Dawn of the Dead, but Worth-a-Look (Leak?)

[7/10 · 22 August 2006]

I have to admit, this film reminded me of how drab and ugly styles were in 1980, yechh! From that opener, you can tell this film is pretty-dated, but it has a few charms that are worth exploring: namely, an outrageous-script by Margheriti and Dardano Sacchetti that would NEVER get green-lighted today by any studio. Yes, this is another one of Quentin Tarantino's favorites, and it isn't hard to see why. It's just an insane genre-explosion that owes a lot to the Italian "cannibal" genre, and a good-bite of George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". You might add Jacopeti and Prosperi's "Mondo Documentaries" too, because I think they really opened this particular door. "Zombie" (the Italian title for DOTD) was a hit in Italy in 1979, thanks to the Argento's promotional-campaign and better-editing (I know, a sacrilege, but I have always preferred the Argento-cut, it's more fun!). With that came a wave of imitators, most-notably in Lucio Fulci's "Zombi (USA)/Zombie 2 (Italy & other " and "City of the Living Dead". The worst were the copies by Bruno Mattei, but that's another-story.

1980: a drab, miserable year, but a time when the culture was still pretty active and vibrant. Corporate-domination of film and most other media hadn't been-consummated yet, so there were still genuine indie films, and it was a sad thing to watch all this die as a kid. This is really why horror wasn't that good in North America for some-time, and it's still trying to recover (a wait-and-see). The Vietnam war had only been over for five-years when Cannibal Apocalypse was released, so the wounds were still ripe. That's what makes this film so gutsy--pun-intended--and even depressing. At one-point during the production, star John Saxon was so-depressed by having signed-on to such a bleak movie that he contemplated-suicide. Now, how many films can say that? It just wasn't a good-time in America, though in-retrospect, life was better than it is today (2006), which should scare most young-people.

There were more outlets for frustration and rage in 1980, and horror went-to-bat, since catharsis is one of its best-features. You have to release those fears and frustrations, and that's what horror is for many people. Horror is healthy people, we know this! Cannibal Apocalypse works-well in this area, so it has some very good-points to it. We should remember that this movie was made at a time when the draft still-existed. The draft is definitely coming-back, you can bet-on-it. Still not scared? John Saxon stars as Lt. Norman Hopper, who leads a rescue-party into a Vietcong camp to recapture some of his own troops. A battle-ensues, and a Vietcong-woman (where were the black-pajamas?!) is torched with a flamethrower, and falls into the pit she and her compatriots have been holding Hopper's men in. All this seems like a normal, low-budget war movie that was shot in Georgia, until...the starving-G.I.s begin EATING-HER. OK, C-rations and Halliburton's catering are pretty- bad, but Jesus Christ. Somehow--because the writers don't tell us how--the soldiers have become infected with a rabies-like virus that makes them cannibalistic. Cut-to 1980: one of Hopper's soldiers is released from a veteran's hospital, disrupting his already strained-life, and wreaking-havoc on American society (or at least Atlanta)! Hopper has already been fighting his cannibalistic-impulses (and winning), but the return of PFC Bukowski (done with charm by the legendary John Morghen) has brought-back flashbacks and memories of Vietnam he thought he'd forgotten. In an early-scene, Hopper bites a flirty neighborhood-girl, and he begins to succumb to the cannibalistic disease.

And this is what is so great about Cannibal Apocalypse--it challenges your loyalties to the characters, and coaxes you into siding with a band of cannibals, led by none-other than JOHN SAXON!! For this reason, and the gore, I think this is why the film became so infamous and censored. Yet, these are the things that make is as good as it is! In many areas, it was censored of heavily-edited. Until the release of the 2002 DVD (Margheriti died in November of 2002), Americans have never seen this film in its entirety. Saxon has said he has never seen it, and I doubt he ever will. Who can blame him? Yet, he gives an incredible-performance as Norman Hopper, even one of his best in his entire-career outside of Enter the Dragon. Granted, it's just another in a long-line of exploitation films that Mr. Saxon acted in, but it's a great role that he did justice to. Of course, his own personal-misery didn't hurt either. But, Antonio Margheriti's (Castle of Blood, The Virgin of Nuremberg) direction is excellent, and he didn't have much to work-with here. Sacchetti's theme of a violent-cannibalism spreading by bites is a solid-move, however. It's very primal and hits the audience on a subconscious-level, even though it owes a debt to Romero. It isn't as-developed as it should have been, but this was another rush-production.

So, as an anti-war film--not-so-good, the theme gets lost in the action and gore. But that's OK, it's a film that leaves people speechless, and that's what a decent horror-film is about, too. From "Cannibal Holocaust", to Dawn of the Dead, this is a hybrid-film that is unique to the time that made it. But, it is so audacious, so brazen, that it must be seen. It lags in the middle-section--pun-intended--but really picks-up towards the climax, and reminds us that movies about "the infected" are not new. I would even credit Cronenberg's "Rabid" (1977) as being first on this one, and a definite-influence on this film. There was something in the air then, and it seems to have returned. Call it war, chaos, genocide, social-unrest--but it's back. Best-move: just p*ss-on-it, you remember. No-wonder Morghen's character was named-after the American poet Charles Bukowski! If America is good at anything, it is slang.

Frenzy (1972)

What Hitchcock Showed When He Could: His Singular R-rated Film

[9/10 · 22 August 2006]

"Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely!" This is one of the master's most underrated-films ever, and his only "R-rated" one. Is it good? It is incredible. For those who would argue that "Hitchcock didn't show everything because he didn't want to" are proved-wrong by this film and Psycho (where he pushed-the-envelope, changing movies forever). There is a simple reason for why Alfred Hitchcock didn't "show everything" in his earlier depictions of violence and murder: he wasn't allowed-to. By 1972, the changes wrought by Psycho and the imitators were being-felt (as well as major cultural-changes throughout the West), and he could get-away with showing some pretty graphic-violence. Does he? Oh yeah, you bet. There isn't much blood, but you see some pretty horrific-depictions of murder that the camera dwells-on for a long-long time. He showed as much as he could in all of his films, and said so for decades. His usual sexual-subtext is out-in-the-open, and gloriously so.

Ostensibly, this was to be Hitchcock's triumphant return to the UK, and it put him squarely back-at-the-top again. London in the early-1970s still looked Victorian, there were still scars from the Blitz, and it held an interesting-charm that this film captures so well. Frenzy is very-much like the film of a young man, and yet Hitch was in his 70s! The fact is, he was willing to take-chances and experimented with sound and image-techniques. He was often well-ahead of his time. There is a great cinematic moment in the story where "Babs" the barmaid is walking-out of a flat, when the entire soundtrack goes-silent--the necktie-murderer, Bob Rusk ("Bob's your uncle!"), suddenly appearing- from-behind her smirking. It is riveting and startling. Why? Because in classic Hitchcockian-fashion, he has already told us that Rusk is the serial-killer. Yes, this is possibly one of the very-first films to clearly illustrate this kind of killer, even before Uli Lommel's "Tenderness of Wolves" (1973). In 1972, the concept of the "serial-killer" was very new, and almost unknown. Fritz Lang's "M" (1931) has the distinction of being first.

The "wrong man" in this story was originally called "Blamey" (or, "blame ME'!), but Hitch wisely changed it, it would have been too-obvious. BUT, he does play the audience, sending mixed-messages about Mr. Blaney's possible guilt, until a key-scene that comes very-early in the film with Mr. Rusk. You won't miss-it, and it includes the most nudity in any Hitchcock film we will ever see (a first for Hitch). Hey, Hitchcock rarely did "mysteries", he did thrillers. In a suspense-thriller, you show-everything to the audience that you can. There are so many aspects of technique in this film that work, and the cinematography is really solid and eye-catching. Hitch had a great eye for composition too, and it often surprises viewers that he rarely ever looked-through the lens--ever.

Again, this is familiar-territory for Hitchcock-fans. The premise of the "wrongly-accused" protagonist is a running-theme in his films, and a very personal one. You see, Hitch disliked and feared the Police, and was fearful of their incompetence in apprehending the guilty. It is said that he avoided the presence of Policemen, and became extremely-nervous when they were around him in public. This is what makes a great suspense/thriller/horror director--a man with many-many fears and complexes! As-usual, we also get the patented gallows-humor, best-expressed by the poor Police Chief's meals at-the-hands of his wife! A real hoot.

It's safe-to-say that Alfred Hitchcock invented the suspense-thriller,and innovated horror into the modern-age in movies.Certainly, there were others like George Romero with his "Night of the Living Dead", and even the teleplays and screenplays of Richard Matheson, but it was Hitchcock who made it all possible. We could use another director like him, but they only come-along so often. They have to be cultivated, and this isn't happening in this period of film history very often. With-luck, Hollywood will stop making films and simply distribute them again. If the career of Alfred Hitchcock illustrates anything, it is that you have to allow the artist to get on with what they do best. "Frenzy" was a hit, after-all, and literally suffered ONE cut, a close-up of a victim's tongue sticking out of her mouth! You couldn't make this film today, not with the topless strangling-scene.

Inferno (1980)

Part II of the "Three Mothers Trilogy"

[9/10 · 22 August 2006]

This is the second of Dario Argento's slated "Three Mothers Trilogy", and has a stronger-emphasis on alchemical symbolism, and occultism. For this reason, it is more psychological, more thematic, and doesn't follow normal narrative-conventions. For most horror-fans in North America, this means: boring. Sometimes, it's hard to disagree with them, but this is still a horror-masterpiece for all its weaknesses. Born-from one of Argento's bouts with hepatitis (Heroin? Argento has been known to do drugs), the film was a difficult-experience for Il Maestro, and described as a "hellish"-shoot.

The Argento-clan had attempted a co-production and distribution-deal with 20th Century Fox, ending with the film being-shown everywhere but the United States! Only great American corporation and bureaucracy can achieve this. BUT, what a failure! From-the-get-go, there is mayhem and the fantastical, shot in a color-palette that more-resembles graphic novel horror of the time it was made (even a little Bernie Wrightson is present), than "Suspiria" does. Fangoria has reported that Argento is in-fact creating the final-part of this trilogy, right now. It has also been reported that Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch, the co-writers of the Argento-infused "Toolbox Murders" (2004) will be doing the screenplay, which is exciting! They had better hurry, Dario Argento is nearing-66. Now, if someone would please give Ken Russell a theatrical horror-project again (actually, they HAVE!for a horror-anthology).

The genesis of Inferno's plot is disputed by Argento's former-lover (and mother of Asia), Daria Niccolodi, as it is directly-tied to Suspiria and the Three Mothers. However, I believe that Dario Argento was already intimately-acquainted with Thomas DeQuincy's "Confessions of an Opium Eater", and though Niccolodi did contribute greatly to Suspiria, the overarching-story (and cosmology) is his creation. Asia also backs-him on this, a woman known as much for her beauty as her literacy and directness. There is a touch of the "Gnostic-mythos" in Inferno, too. The Three Mothers are described as weaving-our-reality, controlling what we see, and ruling-over-us as "poisonous-mothers". They are sub-deities of deeper, darker-powers...emanations, but of-what? Maybe it's obvious, but most of the horror in a Dario Argento film is feminine, and he certainly fears women (who doesn't?). His take on this fear is unique in horror.

The tale begins in New York City, away from the German-setting of Suspiria. Each Mother is situated-within a Mansion, one-each near-or-in a major metropolis, carefully-triangulated to weave-their-web-of-illusion over us. The main-characters stumble-upon these lairs, usually living in them! Inferno is a film of curiosity and discovery, and as we all know, discovery is a horror-reveal. The film is at-once a child's dream, and a horrible-reality of murder and madness. Argento ably combines his alchemical-horror with his giallo-roots for the murders, and it simply explodes. There are definitely lulls where the film lags, but I advise all viewers to CRANK the volume, as these scenes are subtle in the sound-design, and made for atmosphere.

Inferno is an allegory. If you ever wondered about the reality beneath-ours, Inferno will reward you. What is truly creepy about this film is, there are occult groups and individuals like this in our world, such as the suicidal "Solar Temple" in Switzerland, occult-networks, a ritual-murder by Daniel and Manuela Ruda in the UK (convicted, 2002), the rise of satanic-killings in Italy by youth, and-more. And this is NOT coming-from a Christian. The Anchor Bay DVD for this film was put-together by William Lustig and Blue Underground, and it is excellent all-around. When judging a film and a director, examine how much they were able to create within their respective-budgets. Taken-alongside contemporary Hollywood-fare, Argento always beats-them, like all great directors. He could make a masterpiece with the catering-budget of any of the "blockbusters". Even at-65, he has more of a future than most of Hollywood

Masters of Horror: Homecoming (2005) Season 1, Episode 6

They're coming to draft-you Barbara!

[8/10 · 22 August 2006]

"All horror films are political."--Joe Dante

When watching-this, people should keep-in-mind that Joe Dante is not known as a political-director, though you could find the subtext in many of his films. But, you'd have to look pretty-deeply. Certainly, "Gremlins" is a criticism of American-consumerism and just how ill-behaved we are as a culture (then-and-now), and surely "The Howling" takes a few jabs at the sexual-revolution--but if-anything, Joe Dante has been known as a director of genre-films, and a damned fine one. He is also noteworthy for his championing of genre history, and has helped save several films (classics) from oblivion. It's safe to say that Joe Dante is probably one-of horror's best-friends of the last 40-years, period. Let's all be honest here: the Left has ALWAYS owned horror as her creators. There are precious-few classics in the genre that are 'right-wing' (aristocrats don't count)in their thrust, and sorry, you cannot count Heinlein. Lovecraft was a racist and a reactionary, but he changed by the time of his death.

It's not controversial to say that Iraq and the entire Middle East is in a mess that should have been avoided. This basic-truth is very difficult to locate in our mainstream-media, it is taboo to even acknowledge it. Consider-this: how many stories like this really get made in horror nowadays? Actor Robert Picardo--a Republican--states in his interview-featurette that he came to the project partly because he was deeply-concerned that the debate is being limited in this country's media, and that it alarmed him. Yes, this is coming from a Republican actor. Even Grover Norquist--the ideological-architect of our current-disaster--has stated he is concerned that things have "gone-too-far", and worries that the Democratic Party won't "reign-in the excesses" of the GOP and the Bush administration. If there really was a "liberal media-bias", films like this would be everywhere.

The story begins much like our daily-lives: with television "bobble-heads" telling us the daily-lies (and leaving-out more). The main-protagonist David Murch (played with restraint by the excellent Jon Tenney) is a Right-wing pundit and former Presidential speech-writer. While usually representing the "more-moderate" side of the GOP's talking-points, Murch is really a decoy for political talk-shows to Jane Cleaver's far-right comments. This is actually how the media works now: rarely have any genuine people from other political-viewpoints (never-mind a left-leaning one) in the corporate-owned media, and just have two right-wing viewpoints debating. It's all-about narrowing the debate. Enter characters like Jane Cleaver and David Murch.

Canadian-actress Thea Gill does an incredible-performance as Cleaver--clearly, she's modeled-after Ann Coulter, though there are other talking-necks who would fit-the-bill. Ironically, the writer and director toned-down the rhetoric of the character from the real-life ones. I honestly found most of the story and scenes very-scary, because they are such familiar North American-settings. This is about our lives, not somebody living-on-Mars, obviously.

Pundit-Murch is put-on-the-spot by a Gold Star mother of a soldier killed in an unpopular-war on a talk-program, and he tells her he wished her son could "come-back" to tell everyone that his sacrifice was worthwhile. Be careful what you wish-for. Before-long, even the President is mouthing Murch's talking-point, again-and-again, and before-long they get their wish. All the dead-soldiers from the conflict who feel betrayed return, becoming an embarrassment to the GOP and their bobble-heads. Murch is eventually summoned by Kurt Rand (played with vigor and hilarity by the superb Rob Picardo), the guy who makes most of the P.R. and policy-decisions for the President. Some have said that this character is modeled-after Karl Rove, which is true. However, I thought Picardo also bore some resemblance to Vice President Dick Cheney. Check the scene in-which Murch is shown one of the early-returners--the zombie does the usual "grrrrr!", and Picardo returns-in-kind. That's pure-Cheney ("Go f*ck-yourself!"). Like the neocons, these are people who don't even care about the suffering of the damned. Shockingly, it becomes-clear that the dead-soldiers merely want to vote. Of course, there's a catch to this: they want to vote-against the criminals who made them "die for a lie". This powerful-moment depicts a zombie-soldier telling the press at a political-gathering, "We'll vote for anyone who ends this evil war." It's a real moment of catharsis for anyone who has watched the Iraq war with a healthy-dose of skepticism.

Also moving, was the scene of the dead-soldier being comforted by the black-couple. It made me think of all the lives that have been abused and thrown-away by the Bush administration--though Bush and company are hardly-alone in their guilt. Yes, the Democratic Party also got us into our present-quagmire, where young-men and women die for a lie they knew was a lie from-the-start. This is a basic-truth. Their absence in "Homecoming" is their absence as a viable opposition-party to the GOP, and the film can be viewed as an Capraesque call to patriotic-duty. You see, this is a story of OUR guilt. When the dead-soldiers vote (then die), it's made-clear the election was stolen (just like in real-life), and the dead from all American-conflicts rise from their graves. Dante and Hamm make-it-plain that the criminals who stole those elections have betrayed the sacrifices of generations of Americans who gave their lives, sincerely, for their country, and for democracy. What is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon is shameful, and it all dishonors the sacrifices made by all American troops. By ending this evil war and jailing this criminal administration and Congress, we do them and ourselves right by acting. My family has given all the way back to the American Revolution, what have you done for democracy today? We're all guilty, like the villains from the darkest EC comic...THEY'RE COMING FOR YOU. THEY'RE COMING TO DRAFT-YOU, BARBARA.

11/08/2006: the war is going to end, and the neocons can expect to be investigated for the next-two-years. Glad I got to you war-mongers.

Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995 TV Movie)

Gesualdo: Herzog in Peak-form

[10/10 · 13 August 2006]

This is the place where the modern-horror genre begins--people like Italian Renaissance Prince, Carlo Gesualdo. Possibly born in 1561 (or 1566, depending on who you believe), Gesualdo was born into nobility, and was the recipient of a Principality in the town of Venosa, and a Duke of the Kingdom of Naples. The Gesualdos were connected by blood-ties to nearly every noble family in Renaissance Italy. Carlo was considered a child-prodigy like Mozart, and was an accomplished performer of the lute and harpsichord. In 1586, he married his cousin, Maria d'Avalos. The woman was known for both her incredible beauty and her amorousness (though this is debatable), and the marriage was possibly ill-fated due to Gesualdo's abusive-behavior. It is unknown whether this is the reason for d'Avalos's infidelities, though his second-wife consulted a witch who poisoned the Prince in an attempt to enchant him. Both his wife and concubine were imprisoned and tortured for the deed, dying shortly-afterwards from the ordeal. It's uncontroversial that the Prince was a sadist, and Gesualdo had wanted them hanged, but the Church interceded. However, it does appear that infidelity was the reason why Carlo murdered d'Avalos and her lover in what is considered the most heinous murder in the history of music.

By 1590, the marriage had gone-sour: the Prince had found the apartment that the two lovers were using from an uncle (a Cardinal who had unsuccessfully attempted his own affair with d'Avalos). The place was a niche-room in his own palace, and he commenced the planning of a murder. In a premeditated-act, Gesualdo told d'Avalos he would be away on a hunting-trip overnight, but he and a personal guard waited-nearby until the two had consummated their lovemaking, falling-asleep. Gesualdo kicked-in the door and stabbed Maria d'Avalos dozens-of-times in the abdomen and vagina, as well as similar sexual-mutilations on her consort, the Duke of Andria. It is said in the local-legends of Venosa that after Gesualdo had dragged their bodies into-the-street, a San Dominican monk committed an act of necrophilia on the body of d'Avalos. Afterwards, Gesualdo had their bodies publicly-displayed on the steps of a Church, eventually using the corpses for an alchemical-experiment that rubberized their organs and circulatory-systems. The bodies are still on-display in a Church in Venosa, as Carlo was an alchemical-genius. Because he was a Princeps, there were no charges.

From the time that Carlo Gesualdo murdered his first-wife, until his death in 1613, he did penance by composition and flagellation. It is said that he suffered from asthma and constipation, and was possibly further-enfeebled by his poisoning by the witch and sorcerer at-the-behest of his concubine and his second-wife. For the rest-of-his life, Gesualdo composed his haunting madrigals, and was well-known in his time as a composer of genius. Today, he is even more well-known, which is probably due to the depraved life he led, and this documentary by the also-legendary Werner Herzog (commissioned in 1995 by ZDF). The murders haunted him until-the-end: immediately-after the killings, he personally cut-down the forest surrounding Castle Gesualdo, much like Macbeth's fear of Birnham woods. Interest in the occult was universal in the time of the Prince, and it begs-the-question whether Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were informed-of Gesualdo's story through the court of Elizabeth the I. A surprising number of Elizabethan plays come from stories whose origins reside in Renaissance Italy. It's my opinion that it bears some investigation. By the end of his life, Prince Carlo Gesualdo was madder than Macbeth. Why do I think the modern horror-story originated with Gesualdo? A hunch.

Werner Herzog does incredible justice to the story of Gesualdo, and the events which made him famous. But, he goes further by interviewing contemporary-residents of Venosa on the impact left by the man into today. In contemporary Venosa, many people around the town still shun the name of Carlo Gesualdo, while the mentally-ill fancy they ARE the Prince, reincarnated. Others, such as the mad opera-singer who "haunts" Castle Gesualdo, fancy they are Maria d'Avalos. It seems the belief in magic is alive-and-well in Venosa and Ferrera, and local-occultists enter the castle to exorcise it regularly with all-manner of approaches (one uses a bellows-bagpipe). With skill, Herzog wipes-away centuries with his approach, making this story a living one about the battles within all of humankind that continue into these times. The music of Carlo Gesualdo is unearthly, yet it is so terminally-human, just like his legacy. Perhaps we find him so interesting because he was 300-years ahead of his time, compositionally (and alchemically). This is the documentary as high-art.

Lisa and the Devil (1973)

Luis Bunuel Goes to Hell

[8/10 · 1 August 2006]

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

--from Mark Twain's, "Number 44: the Mysterious Stranger"

This is often listed as Mario Bava's best-film, and it's pretty good. There is a cosmological-horror here that mirrors Lovecraft, and predates a similar-approach that Lucio Fulci would employ--a kind of ubiquitous-horror that has consumed everything. A place of no-escape. If this sounds like a Michele Soavi film, you're correct! I think Cemetery Man/Dellamore Dellamorte owes a great-debt to this film, as well as a few others from Bava's body-of-work. If you've ever had a feeling that dream-reality is more concrete than our own, this one is for you. The subconscious runs-riot in most of Bava's films, and his producer (Alfred Leone) let him do whatever he wanted here. The results are impressive, though the film suffers from a tedious middle. Alas, when it was screened at Cannes in 1973, nobody was offering much for a distribution-deal, so Leone had Bava shoot additions that would remake Lisa & the Devil into "House of Exorcism". The stories that Bava didn't shoot any of the retakes and additional-footage are untrue, he did. 1975 rolled-around, and House of Exorcism got a good distro-deal, and is cited as one of the most-successful Exorcist-ripoffs.

But, the original-cut by Bava somehow survived in TV-syndication copies, and was relocated in the 1980s. Finally, in the 1990s, Anchor Bay released VHS-versions of both-cuts to add-to-the-confusion. But, at-least Lisa & the Devil was now available to the fans, which was something even Bava was unable to enjoy in his lifetime. He died believing his cut had been lost, forgotten forever. Mario Bava thought all of his films would be forgotten. It's no-secret that without the championing of Tim Lucas (and even Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese), most of Bava's films would probably have met the fate he expected them to meet. So, there is a confusion about these two films, and they should be viewed as separate. Lisa & the Devil has nothing to do with possession or exorcism, only House of Exorcism does. It is a recut-version of Lisa, but it has its own merits (another story).

In the story, Lisa (Elke Sommer) is a tourist to a small Spanish village, one which she has become-convinced she has been-to before. She views a Medieval-painting on her entry into the town, which depicts the devil tormenting the souls of the damned. Throughout the film, she encounters a mysterious-man (played by Telly Savalas) who is often seen carrying a mannequin of a mustachioed-man in a suit. Other-times, the dummy seems alive, a real body made of flesh-and-blood, a nice touch of surrealist-cinema. Before-long, Lisa has made her way to an old Spanish Manse populated by a demented aristocratic-family with a butler named Landre who looks-familiar...it's Savalas again. Is Lisa wrong? Did she see the Butler controlling the family-members? Did she see the butler breaking the legs of a cadaver to fit it into a coffin (a nod to Lovecraft, one of Bava's favorite writers)? Has the family's sole male-heir a fixation (sexually) on the dead? Is this life death-itself? Is Lisa alive? What is this place? What is this life? By the end, you will know, and it will make you despair.

This is one creepy movie, one that will haunt you for days, maybe forever. In a way, it's the last, great Gothic horror-film. Very few movies say "death" this many times over, and Lisa & the Devil is a film about the loneliness of the human-condition. Conveying the hell that is solitude, it even has some echoes of Mark Twain's final-novel, "Number 44: The Mysterious Stranger" (written-from 1890 and 1910), where the main-character realizes he is a unitary-God, alone in the abyss. Everything in the story--all the characters, events--was part-of a dream conjured-up to hide this fact.

The best route for this film on DVD is to buy the double-feature that includes House of Exorcism. Sadly, Image didn't do a recut with Lisa & the Devil from the superior film-elements from House of Exorcism, it's a little weaker in image-quality. Why they would make House look-better is a mystery, but at least we have a full-cut of the film. There have been rumors that Anchor Bay is obtaining the rights to do fully-remastered versions of the Bava-catalog that Image has previously-held. If they do HD-transfers, that would be great, as most of the Image-versions have been from inferior-materials. Bava's films are best-appreciated fully-restored, or at least from good elements. We'll see.