31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Wild Beasts

Still catching up from the weekend. My second Creature Feature flick was:


Wild Beasts (1984)
Since I've been doing 31 Days I've always done a Creature Feature weekend that (mostly) consisted of 70's era 'animal attack' movies, like Piranha, Frogs and Kingdom of the Spiders. There's a particular style to these things that I enjoy (and enjoy making fun of) and they feel like a spiritual successor to the giant bug movies of the 1950's - replacing radiation with pollution/destruction of the environment. (And being much cheaper, as the animals are generally life-sized - except for Burt I. Gordon flicks.)

It also seems like a very American genre. (Although Australia makes a play with The Long Weekend and any number of killer croc movies.) I'm not sure why that is, beyond the widespread cultural awareness of pollution and the environment that the 70's had. I still remember the 'crying indian' ads, for instance. For whatever the reason, most - if not all - of the 70's 'nature rebels' films I've seen so far have been American. So when I saw there was an Italian entry (albeit late - it's from 1984), I just had to replace my original pick (Bert I. Gordon's Food of the Gods).

Fair warning - Wild Beasts was directed by Franco Prosperi of Mondo Cane fame. There are several scenes of real animal deaths/attacks that are disturbing (particularly a sequence of rats burning alive). These are legit horrifying and if you think that those will bother you in any way, I urge you to avoid watching the film. (They're still bothering me now.)

The Medium
Streaming on Shudder.

The Movie
The opening sequences of Wild Beasts treat us to a wailing 80's sax on the soundtrack and alternating visuals of a big European city, sewage and gray water running through open channels, and animals at a local zoo. It's cut like an 80's music video and does the job of conflating all of those elements into your expectations. Animals will be affected by pollution and get loose in the big city. The film does not disappoint on that front.

PCP gets into the water supply, animals go crazy, technology fails and suddenly roaming gangs of elephnants are strangling people with their trunks and stomping on their heads. I'm not kidding. That happens.

If it wasn't for the real animal deaths/woundings I think this would end up being one of my favorite 'guilty pleasure' films. It's terrible and awesome in equal measure. You get scenes of a cheetah chasing a convertible, rats eating a couple in a car, a tiger eating a priest in a subway car full of screaming people and a polar bear calmly stalking two children down a school hallway. It's just full of stuff that makes you go "did I really just see elephants cause a plane crash?" Yes, yes you did.

You also get to hear lines like, "What do you mean you can't find elephants? You know what elephants are? They're elephants, not lice!" And "She's not crazy, she's being chased by a cheetah!"

There is a nominal plot line involving a zookeeper and his cop buddy/chauffer and a reporter who happens to be the worst parent on earth, but really it's just so we have a few recognizable faces to give us plot details while the animals run through a street fair or attack a dance class.

The animal attacks are all at night and are staged and shot in a way that makes them far more effective than most films in the genre. There is something amazing about seeing a cheetah just roaming the streets of a shopping district. (You get the sense the cat is just as freaked out by all the mannequins as I would be.) The actors are also often in the same shot with the animals, which adds a sense of danger that the quick-cut or racked focus shot doesn't accomplish in other films.

In most American animal attack films the intransigence and incompetence of the authorities is what allows the attacks to propagate, but in Italy the police station is futuristic (for the 80's), including a glass wall with calculations.( Apparently police cars are organized via complex orbital mechanics in Italy.) This allows them to get the warning out pretty quickly and the authorities in general seem competent - albeit stretched thin in the face of attacks and a power outage (caused by those elephants and the plane crash earlier).

In addition to the animal attacks there are car chases, plane crashes, explosions and knife attacks. It's like a weird combination of animal attack film and disaster movie. The plot point about the PCP comes late in the film and is followed immediately by... it wearing off. The animals start to go docile just as most animal attack films are gearing up. But don't worry, things aren't over quite yet.

You see, the children in the dance class have all been drinking the water as well.

Bottom Line
Wild Beasts alternates between being hilarious, effective and disturbing. I really wish the filmmakers hadn't used killed real animals or used them in such disturbing situations, because the film doesn't need it, and their inclusion means I can't really recommend or enjoy it.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: The Bird With the Crystal Plumage

I should do these writeups earlier in the day, but I'm barely coherent without coffee. Anyway, last night's film was:

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970)

I like to start off reviews of classic movies with my memory or experience with them. I don't know if it's helpful or not, but I just like people to know where I'm coming from, my particular biases/favoritism towards films I've already seen. Unfortunately, I can't do that with Dario Argento's first film, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage. I know I've seen it - watching it this time around I found the key scenes and set pieces familiar enough - but I couldn't tell you WHEN I first saw it. I'd like to think it was back in the days of VHS, but I've looked at the two VHS covers for the US releases and neither look familiar. (The one from United looks awesomely 80's in an Asia album cover sort of way.)

The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that I saw it through Netflix, back when they were strictly a DVD-by-mail outfit. I know I went on a bit of a splurge when they first started getting some of the obscure titles I hadn't been able to see or hadn't seen in years. (Like Zombie or Videodrome.) My Netflix activity list only goes back to 2013 and is probably the streaming only version, so I can't check. But yeah, I think if I'd seen Bird in my formative horror-watching years, I would have remembered it.

The Medium

I was lucky enough to trade for a copy of the recent Arrow Limited Edition. The packaging is pretty sharp, with a solid slipcase holding the Blu-ray case, a poster and a booklet with a few essays. Lobby card reproductions are included in the Blu-ray case.

So... sniff... so beautiful.

Quality wise - well, it's the best I've ever seen it, but given that I've probably only seen it on DVD it sort of has to be. With nothing to compare it to, all I can say is it looks extremely good for a movie released in 1970. The info on the box says this is a new restoration and, with my limited technical knowledge, it seems they did a fantastic job. Well worth picking up - especially when the non-limited set is released.

The Film

Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante), a brass, crass American writer living in Rome is heading back to his apartment when he sees a beautiful woman in white being assaulted by a mysterious figure in black. Racing to her aid he finds himself trapped between two glass walls, unable to help as the attacker escapes and is forced to watch as the woman struggles for breath and life. The woman survives and Sam is drawn into the investigation, which appears to be part of a larger pattern of attacks against young women around the city.

Are two sets of glass really a secure entry to a building?

Initially a suspect, Sam finds himself pursuing and pursued by the real killer, all while trying to decipher a general suspicion that he's seen something during the attack that could be important. The only question is - will he and his friends survive his amateur pursuit of the killer?

There are things that happen in the film before that first attack - there's scenes of a killer preparing and his target walking the streets, there's a scene with Sam and his editor talking about the publication of his newest book, a guide to the identification of birds. (This is where we get a first indicator of Sam's crassness - he's far more interested in the check than the book.) However, it's that first attack in the art gallery that causes you to sit up and take notice. Because it's... well, it's beautiful. A brightly lit white space framed in glass, a woman in white with a splash of red on her torso, the black-garbed figure dashing into the shadows. It's startling and riveting. While tame by modern standards (and very tame by Argento standards) it's still difficult to watch as the woman struggles, reaching out to Sam with blood-soaked hands and with him unable to do anything but impotently pound on the glass that separates them.

"I'm sorry, I'm just not getting it... two words, sounds like...?"

So, yeah, I like this film.

I like the characters - Tony Musante has a definite charisma that makes you like Sam, even if he's a bit of a prick sometimes, particularly to his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendal - who does yoeman's work with a thankless role). The detective in charge of the case, Inspector Morisini (Enrico Maria Salerno) is more likeable and more competent than you might expect from an Argento film - even if he's unable to keep a foreign citizen from meddling in a case, or even keep his own men from being killed.

"I also don't understand my phone bill. Explain again."

Everything I've read about The Bird With the Crystal Plumage mentions how the film was a watershed for Italian cinema. It revived and energized a genre - the giallo - that was moribund and failing, turning it into the one thing the Italian public wanted to see at the cinema. It also established a number of images and plot points that became standard for gialli going forward: Killers always wear gloves. Beautiful woman are always threatened. Killings are always stylish set pieces. The titles should be baroque and only tangentially related to the film. Finally, the plots must be intricate and feature several twists and turns before a final reveal. (That those plots make sense or even be internally consistent was not a requirement.)

Also, boobies.

Coming to the film late in my Argento viewing I find it to be one of the most straightforward and restrained films in his body of work. The plot is complicated, yes, but easy enough to follow and the twist is telegraphed fairly broadly, at least for me. The characters are more fully fleshed out than some of his later films and even the supporting actors make the most of what material they're given.

Even the killings aren't as elaborate or violent as they would come to be in Deep Red or Opera. That being said, it's almost more difficult to watch at times. There's a scene in which Julia is threatened by the killer. She's trapped in her apartment and the killer is slowly chopping away at the door. She's isolated, unable to call for help and has no way to escape. The scene seems endlessly long as she tries, desperately, to find a way to survive, before collapsing in terror to await the inevitable. It felt somehow darker and more cruel than later films where the violence made things quicker and the terror of the victims is thus mercifully curtailed.

The most excruciating scene - with absolutely no blood whatsoever.

One of the other things I noticed was the lack of the distinctive Argento/Goblin soundtrack. I realize it's probably and eighties thing, but I found myself looking for that synthesizer. Not to say the soundtrack is bad - Ennio Morricone doesn't do bad soundtracks. It's got an unsettling children's chorus during scenes with the killer and is generally serviceable. There's also more of a sense of humor than Argento's later films (though I found this to be the case in Four Flies on Grey Velvet as well). "Bring out the perverts!" Made me laugh, as did Moricini's line that one person "belongs with the cross-dressers, not the perverts!" (And the cross-dresser's response, "I should hope not.")

Let's just show this scene again for no reason.

The Bottom Line

For a first film, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (said bird appears in approximately 10 seconds of the film) is an assured and masterful debut. It's still a low-budget Italian slasher flick, if you get right down to it, and if you don't like gialli in general, this is not going to float your boat. If you don't mind a little flash to your murder and a little nonsense to your plot twists, though, it's a pretty fantastic first film from one of the greats.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Kill, Baby... Kill!

Kill, Baby... Kill!

Here's the summary I wrote down as I was watching this Mario Bava classic last night: "Doctor Flinty McChinjaw and his assistant Cheekbones Magee must investigate a spate of murders in Ruraleuropeville, a town full of assholes."

I was in a mood, apparently.

You may want to keep that in mind during this review. In general I enjoy Bava's work, but I need to be in a particular mood to truly enjoy it. I should probably re-watch Twitch of the Death Nerve because I HATED that movie, and everyone I know who's seen it calls it a classic. I didn't much like 5 Dolls for an August Moon, either. On the other hand I really enjoyed Black Sabbath, Black Sunday and Planet of the Vampires.

They fight crime!

The Medium
Amazon Prime again. This was another of a number of 'boxed' movies I've seen on the platform - that is, the entire film has a black frame around all four sides. My awareness of it went away eventually, but it's annoying. The picture quality was also not particularly good and I get the feeling I'd have been much more impressed by the cinematography if I could watch it in high def.

The Movie
My earlier description is flippant, but apt - a Doctor (Paul, I think - I had to look it up, I really do just think of him as Flinty McChinjaw) arrives in a small, isolated European town to conduct an autopsy on a murder victim. Its vaguely late 19th century and he arrives by carriage (the driver refuses to enter the actual town). He's meeting an inspector, but the townsfolk seem none too happy to see him. In fact, a couple of men try to bury the victim before he can 'desecrate' the body.

It's interesting right away, because there's this conflict between the Gothic trappings and the more modern sensibilities of both the doctor and the inspector. Much hay is made of this, with the Doctor repeatedly cursing "superstition" and "ignorance" while the townsfolk try and work around the authorities who simply don't 'get it.'

Because science will be no help here.

"Why do they hate you so, Flinty?"
"No everyone appreciates steely-eyed condescension and moral superiority, Magee."

What's really going on is that the ghost of a seven year old girl is haunting the town, and causing those she blames for her death (pretty much everyone) to take their own lives. The girl's appearances are nicely creepy, with silhouettes, hands on window panes and occasional giggling echos while a ball bounces down an empty alleyway.

Boo!

The good doctor loses track of the inspector early on and spends much of his time with a recently returned local woman (again, her name is apparently Monica, but I think of her as Cheekbones Magee). Together they investigate the mystery and run a lot - sometimes screaming or looking perplexed. As far as I can tell most of the time they put people into positions where they'll be killed. When McChinjaw removes the protection from the innkeeper's child (citing "science!" and "superstitious nonsense") she ends up being forced by the ghost girl to impale herself. The innkeeper almost shoots McChinjaw, and I kind of wanted him to.

"What are you doing, Notawitch?"
"It doesn't really matter, as McChinjaw will just screw it up."

Some people try to help. The burgomeister, Almost Yulbrynner, and his wife, Crazyhair Notawitch, point him in the direction of the local castle... er, estate, where the old Baroness Graps lives. It's her daughter who's the ghost, you see. And Cheekbones Magee has a connection to the Graps as well.

They all shared a 'my first lobotomy' doll.

The dubbing is mostly terrible, with only a couple of characters managing anything more than a stern monotone. It's been at least a decade and probably more since the girl's death (by horses at a festival) and there's just not that many people in the town. At the rate people die during the film she should have had the whole damn place cleared out in a few months. Maybe Crazyhair Notawitch helped fend her off? The cinematography is grainy and washed out on streaming, but there remains enough of the detail to get a sense that it probably looks tremendous in a good copy.

There are plenty of good things in the film as well - There's some nice framing and set design and parts of the town are like an eerie labyrinth. One sequence where McChinJaw chases a man through a repeating set of rooms only to see himself turn when he finally catches him is wonderfully surreal.

This is where they put a swingset. It's a creepy town, I'm just saying.

The Bottom Line
I wish I'd been more settled down when I watched Kill, Baby, Kill! as I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. As it is I was able to enjoy some bits of it, while making fun of others. And that name - it really needs to be something else. Even the original title - Operation Fear - doesn't work. Dead Mean Girl, maybe? The Town that Dreaded Science? Ghost Girl Already Hates You?

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Inferno

Inferno

My Argento viewing is spotty. I came to Italian horror movies pretty late, and I don't know that I've ever really caught up. Fulci and Argento in particular have large bodies of work - not all of it horror - and I slowly slot things in as mood and opportunity collide. For instance, I've seen Fulci's Sword & Sorcery entry, Conquest, but still haven't seen New York Ripper. Argento has fewer films, but I still haven't seen Opera or Mother of Tears.

This is to explain that I only recently (in the last five years or so) watched Inferno. This is despite that fact that this movie is a sequel of sorts to my absolute favorite Argento film, Suspiria. I think part of me knew I would be disappointed - and it's true, I was. Sorely disappointed. I remember thinking how poor this film was not only in comparison to Suspiria, but to the level of quality of every other Argento film I had seen. I remembered liking the underwater room below the basement... and that was it.

Still one of the coolest parts fo the film.

Over the last year I've been contemplating finally seeing Mother of Tears - the conclusion of Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy (along with Inferno and Suspiria). I've heard nothing but bad things about it, but it still seems like something I should watch. As a preamble to watching it I thought I should probably re-watch Inferno. Yeah, it was bad, but I felt I should at least rewatch all of the stuff about the Three Mothers. I saw the film was available on Hulu and had once again run out of time to watch Kwaidan last night, so I started it up...

And it was like a completely different movie. Seriously - the movie in my head was of such low quality that I could have mistaken it for a later (or earlier) Fulci film. Flat lighting, bad music - just a terrible production. At least that's what I remembered. I must have been in quite a mood that day. Because it's really quite good, at least on par with Cat o Nine Tails and The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, though not quite up to the level of Deep Red, Suspiria, or even Phenomena.

The Medium
I watched Inferno on Hulu, as I mentioned, but I think I might have to pick up the blu-ray now - the colors alone are worth it.

The Movie

Inferno is classic Argento. A loose plot that is an excuse to string together violent and stylish set pieces set to electronic/rock music (leavened in this case with some Verdi). There's dramatic use of color, plenty of blood, bizarre sets and characters as well as the inevitable twists of identity.

If Call of Cthulhu has taught me anything, it's that poets and mysterious tomes should never cross paths.

The movie is, nominally, about a resident of a building in New York City, Rose. She comes across a book called The Three Mothers, written by an Italian architect that claims he created buildings for each of three evil sisters who rule the world - Mater Suspiriorum, Mater Tenebrarum and Mater Lachrymarum. Rose begins to suspect that her residence is one of those buildings. Using clues in the book she explores the building, finding - among other things - a flooded room below the basement level.

She sends a letter to her brother Mark who is at music school in Italy. He misplaces it and a classmate, Sara, reads it instead. Intrigued, she heads to a library to find a copy of The Three Mothers. She attempts to steal the book, but is attacked by a strange figure and drops it. Fleeing to her apartment she asks a neighbor to come stay with her, as she's afraid. Both of them are murdered. (I note that actors in Argento films use the same advice my first acting professor game me, "Face front, talk loud, die slow.")

If this was the basement of my local library I'd be terrified too.

Mark finds the bodies and fragments of his sisters letter. This and a brief phone call with Rose lead him to New York, but when he arrives his sister is missing. Of course by this point we have already seen someone - or something - stalk Rose through the building before killing her. The building is... well, let's just say it's probably not up to code. Between the hidden areas, the broken windows and the weird voice-carrying tubes it's safe to say this is probably a sister building to the one in Ghostbusters. Built for purposes other than human habitation.

Let me see if this location is in Tobin's Spirit Guide...

Mark doesn't find his sister, but he does meet some of the other tenants, including a nurse - caring for a weelchair bound professor, a caretaker and the Countess Elise and her manservant. With Elise's help he finds bloodstains outside Rose's apartment. When he follows them he's overcome by gas and Elise is stabbed to death. Mark makes his way to the lobby where he collapses.

This is not the lobby. But it should be.

The murders come swiftly after that - the old book shop owner who sold Rose The Three Mothers is attacked by rats - and a hot dog stand vendor - in Central Park. Elise's manservant is murdered and the caretaker is so startled by his corpse that she sets the apartment on fire with a dropped candle - she ends up on fire and falls out a window.

I'm not sure why or how this all fits together. I get the vague sense that someone - Mater  Tenebrarum, probably - is destroying copies of The Three Mothers and most of the murders are just cleaning up her tracks. The death of the bookseller also suggests that she has a wide network of agents - as does a mysterious woman in Italy that Mark sees a few times (unless she's supposed to be the Mother of Tears). Other deaths aren't so clear cut and it's possible the caretaker and Countess' butler murder Elise for their own agenda. It's all a bit confusing towards the end, but stylishly so.

Speaking of stylishly confusing...

Mark eventually finds a secret floor beneath his sister's apartment. Descending into the depths of the building he confronts first the architect and finally the Mother of Shadows herself in a final apocalyptic inferno.

Oh, you meant a literal Inferno! My bad.

Inferno is a bit too uneven to really be on par with Suspiria. Pacing is disjointed and no character is really given enough time to flesh them out or make us care about them. It also makes the mistake of giving us both too much information (all that voiceover reading of the book, as well as Mater Tenebrarum's final monologue) and not enough. Are all the events orchestrated by the Mother of Shadows? If so, what was the point? What was her endgame? The fire seems beyond her control, but she's not surprised. And Mark lives, so if her goal was to destroy any evidence of her existence then that plan failed.

Maybe my failure is to try and make sense of an Argento plot.

The Beyond - Fear Flashback Review at Best Horror Movie List

In the absence of a new assignment from Best Horror Movie List I decided to review one of my favorite Italian horror movies. I'd just picked up the Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray of The Beyond and it's well worth picking up, especially if you don't have a previous release. (I've also got the Arrow Blu-ray, but I'm happy to have double-dipped, as there are some great new extras and the picture quality is - IMHO - a tick higher on the Grindhouse disc.)

I've got a new assignment for BHML for next week (As Above, So Below), but will hopefully still review older films on occasion.

"The plot of your standard Fulci film is usually a thin excuse for random imagery and gory set pieces at the best of times..." [more]

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Four Flies on Grey Velvet

Four Flies on Grey Velvet

I never even heard of this film until recently. It was apparently released in the US for the first time in 2009, and only sporadically elsewhere in what might have been bootleg versions. It's Argento's third film and is sometimes referenced as the final part of his 'Animal Trilogy' - along with The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and The Cat o' Nine Tails. (There's really no connection other than the titles, so FFoGV can be safely watched without having seen the other films.)

I went into this knowing nothing about it, except that it was an Argento film I hadn't seen. (There are a few, actually, but this was the only one I that was completely new to me.) My enjoyment of the film may be outsized compared to the actual quality (and the quality of later films, like Deep Red or Suspiria), but that's probably a result of watching it so soon after Fulci's A Cat in the Brain. The difference in level of quality and skill was pretty striking.

The Medium
I watched Four Flies on Grey Velvet via streaming. The quality was decent, though not HD. It had the '40 missing seconds' added, but in Italian and without subtitles. If the movie is ever released on Blu-ray in the US, I'll probably pick it up.

The Movie
Roberto is a drummer in a rock band. (All the music is provided by Enio Morricone and there's prog-rock, jazz and some electronic sounding stuff.)  There's a mysterious figure following him around after rehearsals and even during the day. One night he finally confronts the stalker, having followed them to an abandoned theater. The stalker pulls a knife, they struggle and in the melee Roberto stabs the stalker. This is bad enough, but there's also someone else in the theater. Someone wearing a creepy puppet mask takes pictures of Robert standing over the body, holding the bloody knife. Roberto runs, but is soon contacted by the person who took the pictures. They're not going to the police, no - they want to torment Robert, before killing him.

"This was not at all how I saw my day going."

Man this is a stylish film. I know that's like Argento's thing, but there's some really awesome cinematography and framing in this film.  Right off the bat we've got shots from the inside of a guitar, slow spins to reveal people standing outside of windows, and a shot of a fly between two cymbals with the drummer out of focus behind it. It's just so visually interesting compared to Fulci's straightforward compositions. 

Also, that puppet mask? That is damn creepy. I kind of wish it had kept appearing throughout the film, but it's not that sort of giallo.

Peekaboo!

I'm not sure what to make of Roberto. He seems a likeable enough guy, but he's also willing to cover up his involvement in a man's death. He appears to be somewhat distant and isolated, even from his beautiful wife and his band mates. Maybe that's just the stress he's under, but it ended up having the effect of leaving me feeling distanced from him as well.

"I just feel flat and uninspired, you know?"
"Something feels flat and uninspired."

There's a shot that appears to be a cemetery. Headstones in a white glare, over-exposed. Then the contrast starts to drop, the glare fades... and it's a public square on a middle-eastern country. What we thought were tombstones are actually the curved entrances into the surrounding building. There's a public execution going on and we watch the executioner begin his work. This is a recurring dream that Roberto has and is one of the few potentially supernatural touches in the film - if we take it as a premonition. Though it's just as likely that it's a representation of Roberto's increasing fear and paranoia, mixed with a story told at a party.

The blackmailer invades Roberto's house, leaving pictures of the killing. They even enter at night and almost kill Roberto with a garrote before telling him that they want him to suffer first. At this point I'd be going to the police, murder rap or no, but instead Robert seeks out the advice of God.

Not the God you were expecting, I'm sure.

I don't generally expect a Dario Argento film to be funny. So when Roberto goes to talk to his friend Godfrey and calls out 'hey God!' and there's a burst of music and a chorus singing 'hallelujah!' I almost snorted my drink. There's a substantial amount of humor in the film - between a bumbling mailman, God and the Professor (two homeless gentlemen), and a gay detective. Whether it works for anyone else or not, I actually enjoyed the humor. It's a little jarring, but the scenes - particularly with God and the Professor talking to Roberto at a Funeral Arts convention - are just hilarious to me. (One of the people at the convention tries lying in a coffin only to complain that it's a little too tight. The response of the vendor - "None of our customers have ever come back with a complaint...")

Roberto spends a lot of the film in this exact pose.

The gay detective is way too over the top, but the actor is so good in the role that I can almost forgive the cartoony nature of the presentation. I found myself wishing the entire movie was about this guy on his quest to finally solve a case. He's only around for a short time, though, and he's sorely missed after an unfortunate meeting with the killer. I was pretty impressed that there was a positively portrayed gay character in a giallo in 1971, even if he's almost a caricature.

Roberto, second guessing the 'and expenses' part of the deal with Detective Arrosio.

There are a number of plot twists and turns of course. This is, after all, an Argento film. Murders are highly stylized affairs with inventive and almost beautiful imagery. A maid out to blackmail the blackmailer is in a park full of people during the day - and then she's suddenly alone at night, locked in with the blackmailer (who quickly becomes a killer). A cousin of Roberto's wife is a suspect - until she too is murdered in spectacular style.

And then - oh dear. The 'last image can be recovered from the victim's eyes' crap. This is why I quit watching Fringe the first time it aired.  It's still dumb... but it does look kinda cool, with eyeballs, lasers, glass globes, and a blurry image projected on a circular screen.

Very dumb, but very cool.

The end comes quickly after the reveal of the murderer - there's some crappy pop psychology, slow motion bullet time (decades before The Matrix - though it's pretty limited), slow motion car crash decapitations and more prog-rock soundtrack music than you can shake a stick at. Does it all make sense? Probably not - though it felt more coherent than some of Argento's films.

The acting is fairly decent, if broad, and I was pleasantly surprised by the dubbing. Mimsy Farmer as Roberto's wife Nina is a standout, as is Jean-Pierre Marielle as the detective Arrosio. The final confrontation was marred by the inclusion of several seconds that had been excluded from previous versions of the film. These are mostly part of a sequence in which the killer explains their actions and are all in Italian with no subtitles. So I was left with the impression that the killer had gone crazy because sometimes they just randomly speak in Italian.

"See you in your nightmares!"

The Bottom Line
This is a really enjoyable giallo with all that entails - including elaborate killings, stylish people and settings, and some convoluted plot twists. It may not represent Argento at the height of his powers, but it's still a pretty entertaining film.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: A Cat in the Brain

The first film of my weekend theme, which was: Films by Famous Italian Horror Directors That I Haven't Seen. Hope to have the second later today - trying to get caught up!

A Cat in the Brain (AKA Nightmare Concert)

A Cat in the Brain is a weird little film, which I know sounds redundant when I'm talking about a Lucio Fulci movie. It's kind of a clip-show - with some of the gorier bits of previous Fulci movies edited in around a framing story about a director that may or may not be going mad. And the director in question is Lucio Fulci - and by that I mean he's playing himself. A simplified highly stylized version of himself, I'm sure, but it makes everything that goes on so much weirder.

I had the film described to me as a proto-meta horror movie, a direct precursor to movies like Wes Craven's New Nightmare. A commentary on both horror movies in general and on Fulci horror movies in specific. Of course I also had it described to me as the lazy 'greatest hits' tour of a hack director out of original ideas, so there's that.

Medium
I rented the 2009 DVD from Grindhouse Releasing. Normally this is a 2 DVD set with extras on the second DVD, but I got it from Netflix so it was only the main disk. There are some trailers and a Q&A with Fulci at Fangoria's 1996 Weekend of Horrors. Not sure what's on the second disk, but there's no commentary track on the film itself. The picture is fine for a DVD.

Maybe there's an extra with Fulci's tips on firearms.

The Movie
There's an opening sequence in which someone - presumably Fulci - sits at a large desk, working on something. The camera descends... and suddenly we're inside his soft, pink, bloody brain. And then a cat starts tearing at it. Two cats, maybe. Tearing with their claws and devouring bits of brain.

Given the context of the rest of the film this is an interesting metaphor for the strange and disturbing ideas and imagery that are the obsession of horror film directors. What kind of brain is it that comes up with things like splinters in eyeballs and feeding people to pigs? A disturbed brain, a brain with some kind of creature pulling and tearing. Geez - I'd hate to see what kind of things are playing with my soft grey matter. Probably spiders.

After that we have some clips from Touch of Death, which involves a cannibal. Lots of gory shots of dismemberment. We then see that this is the film Lucio Fulci is working on, and after finishing the last shot (the feeding to pigs scene) he calls for lunch. However when he arrives at the restaurant he can't get past visions of the film - a filet and steak tartar just remind him of the awful things he's just shot. He ends up leaving the restaurant and going home.

"I'm less concerned with the steak Tartar and more with why I dressed in plaid today."

It seems that the horrific visions he creates in front of the camera are starting to infect his normal  life. He starts to have hallucinations in which normal, day-to-day occurrences become terrible recreations of bits of his movies (or new bits - I'll admit to not recognizing every gory moment as being from another film). Worried that he's becoming unstable and losing his grip on reality he goes to a psychiatrist who advises him that he's 'breaking down the barriers between what's real and what you film." Yeah, helpful, thanks doc.

"Trust me, I'm a doctor!"

Pressure mounts on Fulci, as he appears to be filming two movies at once. One of them appears to be a soft-core porn movie about Nazis and sadism, and Fulci questions the point of even making these sorts of films anymore. A German film crew arrives to interview him, but an extended hallucination of shooting another Nazi scene occurs and in the aftermath Fulci finds that he's assaulted the film crew.

Fulci doesn't appear to pulling a lot of punches in this film - he's not out to make himself look good. In the hallucination of shooting the Nazi orgy he's presented as both voyeuristic and even fueling the events - licking his lips and urging the actors on to even more degrading acts. That he looks a little like a bumbling professor most of the time makes those moments when he's acting the degenerate all the more disturbing.

This looks like a selfie gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Soon his psychiatrist has decided to take advantage of Fulci's problem, hypnotizing the hapless director into thinking that the hallucinations are real and that he's descending into madness, committing horrible murders. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist, Professor Swharz, takes out his rage at his wife's infidelity by murdering prostitutes. This... is all pretty ridiculous. The good doctor looks absurd in a hoody and enormous grin. I think he's supposed to be setting up Fulci to take the fall for these, but it's honestly not very clear (Fulci film - should have expected). He even had an epic villain speech where he announces his intentions and waxes about how stupid it is to blame real-life violence on movies - but it's to an empty room, so kinda wasted.

Why is he so happy? He looks ridiculous.

Fulci's visions get worse and worse. Pretty much every mundane thing - a drink, a microwaved dinner, a local girl in a wheelchair - all turn into visions of some horrific moment from his films. (The film clips are all the gory bits and come frequently - they're all low-budget, but entertaining in their own way. The burnt girl in the wheelchair is particularly creepy, though.) Eventually, convinced that the murders he's seeing on the TV are things he's done, he calls a detective friend, presumably to confess. However, the detective is on vacation, so Fulci goes once again to the psychiatrist.

Time to fire the gardener.

At one point he's driving down a road and starts chasing a guy who flees directly down the road, of course, never thinking to move the side into the trees. (I'd give him more crap about that, but I've seen Prometheus.) Hilariously, this guy - who seems to be homeless - recognizes the man trying to run him down and yells "What's the matter with you, Fulci?" Like Lucio Fulci is famous enough that random people on the street recognize him. Like if I was walking and Wes Craven tried to run me down. What's your problem, Wes? And then, just when I'm thinking Fulci only wants to get by and to his destination, he runs the homeless guy over. Like four times.

It's a hallucination of course. Most of the film is of poor Fulci reacting to these horrible scenes he's created. There's a lot of subtext about art and whether the man who creates monsters must be a monster himself, but it's all throwaway - more sub-subtext. While Fulci is honestly horrified to see these things outside of their context - the film set - within the film production context he actively seeks out and revels in them. The film crew that he assaults seems to be pleased to have a Fulci story to tell. And the psychiatrist gets to spout all the dialogue about violence and media. Of course the authorities will believe it's Fulci! He makes those horrible movies, after all.

The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying. Fulci faints at a murder scene and when the police arrive the next morning he fumbles to explain - but they've already caught the real killer, who followed Fulci to the park. It's all wrapped up, but Fulci's problems are never really followed up on - maybe because they're struggles he just has to live with. There's a fun little second ending after that, but the plot line - that I really did become involved in - has already ended, and badly.

"Well, we caught the bad guy. Should we wake him up and tell him?"
"Nah, he looks so peaceful - let him sleep."

The Bottom Line
I was surprised at this film. It really is a low-budget clip show. But it's also an interesting and somewhat fun meta-commentary on Fulci's films and being a person associated with creating horror. It's low budget - I mean it's cheap as hell - but strangely endearing. As with all Fulci, enter at your own risk. But it's definitely an worth a watch.

Fear Flashback Friday: Phenomena (aka Creepers)

Phenomena (aka Creepers, 1985)

I have a soft spot for Italian horror movies. It's an acquired taste, like my enjoyment of Moxie, and not something for everyone. I can usually find something to enjoy in even the worst Giallo or low-budget zombie flick, however, and filmmakers like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and, most especially, Dario Argento, have directed some of my favorite horror movies of all time.

My first experience of Italian horror films was not an auspicious one. The film was Cannibal Holocaust, and I hated it. Having watched it again recently I realize that the very reasons I hated it - it was too realistic and full of hateful, awful people - are some of the reasons why it works so well. I mean, this is a movie where the director had to bring the actors into court to prove that they hadn't been brutally murdered during the making of the film!

This is literally the only non-horrifying screencap from the movie.

Regardless, having seen Cannibal Holocaust and really, REALLY not enjoyed it, I was in no hurry to view any other films directed by anyone with an Italian surname. I passed by films like Demons, Suspiria and City of the Living Dead, and things may have continued on that path, leaving me with that huge gap in my horror watching, if it hadn't been for my brother Scott.

Scott is and has always been a massive heavy metal fan (as well as a lover of horror movies) and his favorite band in the 80's (and probably today) was Iron Maiden. I was not so much into metal, but I could appreciate his enthusiasm (and endless parade of Iron Maiden t-shirts). One day at the video store he came up to me with a copy of Creepers and began waxing poetically about how cool the movie was supposed to be and how we should definitely see it. I looked at it. It did look cool, and that guy from Halloween was in it, but... Argento sounded Italian. How about The Mutilator instead?

Scott was insistent, though, and I soon found out why - there were heavy metal songs on the soundtrack. There was an IRON MAIDEN song on the soundtrack! I sighed - there was no other recourse, we'd have to watch it. Maybe we could watch The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 after. 

Creepers got me right from the start, though, with that whole opening sequence involving a teenage girl lost in the Alps. The opening music - by Argento stalwarts Goblin - also hooked me. In fact, I love the whole thing, except for the heavy metal bits (they just seemed incongruous and often ruined the mood). I was hooked and went out to rent whatever I could find with an Italian name attached.

The Medium

Creepers was the original US release title and had a bit over 20 minutes cut from the original film. For this viewing I had the Anchor Bay Special Edition of Phenomena, the original title and original edit. The DVD also includes a commentary track, a short documentary, some music videos and other miscellany. 

The picture quality is... okay on my HDTV. There are some significant moments of 'swimming,' where parts of the image seem to move and shift erratically. It's also not without some heavy grain and inconsistent softness. As there's no current blu-ray release, however, this is probably the best option if you're looking to buy. (It's available to stream on Amazon Prime under the Creepers name, but I can't vouch for the edit or quality.)

The Movie

Phenemona is about the American daughter of a famous movie star going to school in Switzerland who teams up with a Scottish entomologist and his helper chimp to track a serial killer. Oh, and the girl can communicate telepathically with insects.

Wait... I thought I was auditioning for Heathers?

Listen, if you’re looking for a logical narrative or understandable dialogue, you’re in the wrong place. This is an Argento film and you have to sort of check your brain at the door and go along for the ride. Yes, “It’s perfectly normal for insects to be slightly telepathic” is one of the crazier lines Donald Pleasance has ever had to say, but it’s no worse than his egregious “Scottish” accent and come on – SHE TALKS TO INSECTS. It’s a madhouse, just nod and go along.

Jennifer Connelly’s character (and yeah, total teenage crush when I first saw this movie) also sleepwalks, and that sense of unreality, that dream-like quality pervades the whole film. It’s more a dark fantasy than a horror film (although there are plenty of horrific moments) and its logic is dream logic. What’s the school’s response to Jennifer’s sleepwalking? To give her an EKG – she could be schizophrenic. Never mind that she been examined by specialists already. And when she threatens to go all Carrie on the bullying schoolgirls with a swarm of insects? Sedate her and call the mental hospital. Apparently the proper reaction to potential demonic influence (the headmistress refers to her as ‘diabolic’ and mentions Beelzebub) is straightjackets and potential lobotomy. And of course it’s perfectly logical to send a 15 year old girl and a corpse-chomping fly on their own to find a serial killer who likes to kill teenage girls.

Having me hunt a murderer with a fly in a box - he really is the worst scientist ever.

And that’s all tangential. For another director the story of a girl with awakening psychic powers in the pubescent pressure-cooker of an all-girls school would be a movie all by itself. For Argento it’s mere window dressing, one of half a dozen different stories that don’t really relate but somehow combine to form this gestalt of weirdness. I mean, in addition to kooky entomologist and psychic bug girl you’ve got this sort of Giallo story with a serial killer stalking adolescent girls and keeping their bodies somewhere. You’ve got the ‘original sin’ bullshit of a woman raped by a madman giving birth to a monster. There’s a Friday the 13^th double (or triple) ending as well and more subtext (abandonment, awakening sexuality, father issues, loss of control) than you can shake a stick at.

And it’s got a chimp with a straight razor. 

And weirdly, for an Argento film, some genuine emotion. After one of the scariest bits (when the killer stalks McGregor while Inga, the helper chimp, tries to tear her way back in to help) the reaction of the chimp to McGregor’s death is truly touching.

The Bottom Line

I know some reviewers (Kim Newman, for instance) dislike Phenomena, but it was my first Argento film AND my first Jennifer Connelly movie, and I still love it. From the opening sequences in the windy Alps (set to Goblin’s moody electronic score) to the frenzied multiple-endings (including a pit of rotting corpses and a razor-wielding chimpanzee) it never fails to entertain – even when it’s not making much sense.

I know it’s not epic in the way that Suspiria is or as tight and suspenseful as Deep Red (my two favorite Argento films), but it’s full up on dark wonder and well worth a look. Even if the occasional heavy-metal feature sequence starts to drive you a little nuts.