The Monster (1925)

The Monster, directed by early master of terror and possible murderer of Thelma Todd, Roland West, is--in terms of sheer ability to create suspense and terror--probably the most effective silent horror film I've ever seen. This is due both to a particularly menacing performance from the great Lon Chaney and a good script.

After a shocker opening in which a strange Hobgoblin-like man purposely causes a car crash and drags away the body, the film begins as a lighthearted comedy amongst its protagonists. In fact, the intertitles in the first fifteen minutes are quite amusing, with lines like "[the] detectives deduce a few deductions" and "Johnny Goodlittle -- he has ambition, which in Dansburg is as bad as having eczema." This comedy section introduces us to the characters, Johnny the meek amateur detective, Amos his wealthy, pompous boss, and the woman they both love.

By chance, all three of them end up trapped in an old sanitarium, which is being run by the genuinely frightening Dr. Ziska (Lon Chaney)--whom we meet in an amazing entrance. Ziska, it takes a second or two to realize, is evil. He's a mad scientist and a hypnotist ta boot. He keeps the creepy Hobgoblin Rigo in a trance to do his bidding. Another servant is an enormous Arab who seems to have just been spit out of an Arabian Nights tale. A third servant, Dan, is too insane to even be dangerous, though he tries his best.

At this point The Monster becomes an old dark house film; a highly successful one, in fact. Dr. Ziska keeps the group locked in the house and gradually tries to manipulate them for ends we just know must be sinister. In the meanwhile, the group tries to find a way out of the house before it's too late.

Every time I've had a chance to see one of Roland West's films, the same thought has occurred to me, "How was he doing this so long ago?" In many of the things West pulls off, he is years, decades ahead of his time. Johnny's duel with Rigo is the most stand-out moment in this one, taking place suspended on power lines.

The film is stylishly shot, obviously taking some hints from German expressionism. The actors are quite good, especially Lon Chaney. The heroes are likable; the villains are truly menacing and interesting. Most importantly, though, is that the suspense really works. It's the only silent horror film that ever successfully made me feel terror and it succeeding in doing so several times.

I highly recommend viewing this one if you get the chance. It has played on TCM, which is where I got my copy from. It's also available to download if you look. This is especially a must for Lon Chaney fans.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Epilogue

You should read this article first, as it gives this epilogue its context.
I should also note that some of the views expressed in this essay are no longer accurate representations of my position. See The Question Concerning Watchability for an exposition of my current position.

While I undertook the challenge in a spirit of amusement, I do think there is a serious point to be gleaned from it. This was by no means an ulterior motive of mine, but rather a derivative of my basic attitude towards the recent fashion in literature and film studies departments in the academies.

Since Freud, New Criticism, and finally Foucault--who drove the nail into the proverbial coffin--the death of the author has been declared complete. Freud paved the way, because he believed the author's subconscious workings more important than his conscious ones. So, for Freud, though Hamlet may be about many things, what is interesting is how it centers upon the relationship of a son to his mother and stepfather, and how this expresses Freud's various theories of the subconscious.

The problem with this is obvious. Freud invented psychoanalysis, so he already knows all of his psychoanalytic theories. If he assumes all there is to be gained by literature is psychoanalytic insight, what can he, the man who made it all up anyway, possibly have to gain from literature? So is it from the standpoint of any ideology: if you read everything into it, you're only reflecting your own thoughts back to yourself when you read--you're not learning, not improving yourself.
Come New Criticism, the emphasis shifts from the author, or the text as an expression of the author, to the text is a pure artifact. This is where notions like, "The text has a life of its own," come from. Obviously that expression is just a metaphor, since a text is not alive. The expression just means that once the text is created, its connection to its author is no more privileged than its connection to any other human being.

This conceit, also, has a fairly obvious flaw. The text's relationship to the author is one of creating mind to created object. It's an output-to-product function. The text's relationship to other readers is not creative in the least. It's a product-to-input function. This is very like conversation, where one person expresses something, another hears and understands it, and is then free to make one's own response. How ridiculous it would be in a conversation were one to declare, "Well, your words have a life of their own, so I'll analyze what you've just said in the way that feels right for me, then I'll get back to you." Art, as an expressive medium, is indeed conversational in form. To participate in the conversation fruitfully, an attitude of respect for one another is required.

Finally, Foucault took some notes from Hegel and Heidegger, adding in the notion that the ideas of human beings--what they consider to be true or false, beautiful or ugly, right or wrong--are not Platonic truths eternally one way or the other, but rather the products of historical forces beyond our control. "Truth is a function of power," argued Foucault. The dominant group, such as white, European culture in USA, is responsible for what gets considered knowledge or truth (science, e.g.), as well as for standards of beauty (the literary and cinematic classics, e.g.). This isn't a conscious decision, of course, but merely a product of history, which moves one group into power with its cultural ideas, etc..

In conjunction with the previous two points, Foucault's theories made possible all the ideological (or subtextual) criticism of the academies today. No author is believed to be thinking for himself. He's just a mouthpiece out of which flows all the subconscious motivations of his biological being and his socio-cultural, ideological milieu. Dickens didn't write to express his deep sentiments and tell an entertaining tale, he rather subconsciously wrote to reenforce patriarchal, European dominance and maybe in response to some anal fixation.

It seems like no woman leaves the academy unspoiled by feminism these days. It's a real Invasion of the Mind Snatchers. They don't think for themselves. They absorb the feminism, justify it as well as they can, and then dronelike set to reading their pre-learned theories into everything they find. Same with the psychoanalysts, the Marxists, the queer studies people, etc.. It never occurs to them that it might be embarrassing to claim a text is about something it clearly isn't; it doesn't occur to them because they've had it drilled into their heads that their view is more important as the text author's and anyone who says otherwise belongs to the old, Patriarchal, European ideology that had dominated aesthetics for so long.

Indeed, this very message of mine will be so interpreted by one of them. But what happens to the human-ness of communication, of art? What makes art human is that it's two people communicating. You can never know too many people. But life is short. With great books and great movies, you can really meet new, great people. You can learn what of their deepest selves they are expressing on the page, in the only way they could express it. However, you can also do what our ideologically-oriented f(r)iends do and look for the unconscious motivations in it all. Doing so, you remove the human element. The author is no longer a human expressing himself, the text is an artifact that is a product of socio-historical forces out of human control; read into it whatever you like, as long as it works, because it's pretty much an empty vessel. This way, you don't get to know of or learn from other humans, you never encounter them--you merely scrutinize their thoughts and words like cold, causeless artifacts, with no significance, no human connection. That's intellectual masturbation, not criticism. Or to clarify, such attempts at criticism are in fact exercises of theory and can help elucidate the theory to others who are interested in the theory, but is uninteresting for anyone trying to understand the work allegedy being critiqued.

So, what I have done in this subtextual criticism challenge is show just how ridiculous these theories are. It's not a reductio ad absurdum, of course; but the results are pretty damn absurd, aren't they?

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Troll 2

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the last of my critiques.


Film: Troll 2 (1990)
Subtext analysis: Feminism


Troll 2 is ostensibly the story of a little boy in a normal American family who is getting warnings from his dead grandfather that all is not right in chosen vacation-spot, the town of Nilbog. It turns out Grandpa Seth is right: Nilbog is 'goblin' spelled backwards, you see, and everyone in the town is a vegetarian goblin who wants to turn humans into plants to eat them.

In truth, of course, Troll 2 is about so much more. It is about an oppressive family structure brought under an objectifying, feminizing gaze in the absence of a sufficiently effectual patriarchal figure.

The film begins with a subversion of the fairy tale romance, an androcentric form geared for the male mind to view the woman as a sex object prize. In this version, a "boy" named Peter meets goblins in the woods and instead of fighting he begins to run away. After falling and going unconscious, he awakes to a beautiful female. Here the narrator tells us, "Peter was bewitched by that gaze, and it was that look that deceived him." We are instantly, in this prologue of the film, brought face-to-face with an alternative gaze, the female gaze. The male narrator presents it as a threat. Indeed, the beautiful female turns out to be a goblin, who turns Peter into an edible plant for she and the goblins. The male is made into an object that can be consumed by the feminine gaze. This whole fairy tale is a cautionary tale told by a grandfather to his grandson--the males preparing themselves against subversive feminine power.

Tellingly, the next moment the boy's mother walks into the room, flicks on the switch, and the grandfather disappears. She informs us the grandfather is dead. The patriarch is absent. She also warns the boy to stop fantasizing about his grandfather's presence. In this family, the mother is clearly dominant. The father is an ineffectual softy: a sissyboy. Our introduction to him is reclining in a feminine pose chatting on the phone, as if Fragasso were worried we would be unable to figure it out on our own. The other family member, the boy's sister, Hollie, is shown lifting weights: a powerful female, she dominates her dorky boyfriend Eliot and fights for authority over her father.

With this all set up, this androcentric family unit, as well as an RV full of Eliot's friends--teenage boys told by Eliot that Nilbog is full of lonely, sexually liberated, beautiful women, making them perfect representatives of the agents of female objectification--all head out to Nilbog.

The reality is that Nilbog is the goblin kingdom. From the first fairy tale prologue, goblins are already associated with feminine subversion of the patriarchal order and the male gaze. This is emphasized when we discover that the queen of the goblins is, in fact, an ancient druid sorceress who uses the powers of Stone Henge. This is important, because it was the role of Hellenic-Christian culture that gave women in society a role of subordination. Pre-Christian Europe gave women a stronger role in society. This sorceress is therefore effecting a purgative solution to the Patriarchal-Christian problem of society.

The apogee of this role the Goblin Queen plays is the most stunning set-piece of the film. One of the teenage boys watches a television screen of dancing women. This is a perfectly exemplification of what Mulvey calls the Male Gaze. Women are being displayed as sex objects for his scopophilic gratification. Suddenly the television is taken over by the powers of the Goblin Queen, who has made herself look particularly young and seductive for this conquest, strutting provocatively with a cob of corn. She breaks the forth wall and demands the teen leave the RV to find her, which he does. She takes complete control of the situation, dominates him, makes him take her corn in her mouth--as if she were taking phallic power of the situation. His gaze is destroyed under a swell of popcorn--symbolic of cinematic voyeurism--while she prepares to kill him.

In the meanwhile, two of the teenage boys are dealt with by the Queen, turned into plants. One boy, to emphasizing the impotence, emasculating force the Queen turns on him, asks, "And why can't I move? There must be a logical explanation for all of this." Logic, the tool of masculine intellectual domination, fails; this character, Arnold, is made into the Queen's houseplant for her to gaze on, "my pretty flower." The food the goblins give is, thus, a subverting force, feminizing: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

The family is also being terrorized by the goblins, initially in the guise of townsfolk. As long as the mother is in charge of the family, they are useless to fight back. The only force in the diagetic context with power to fight the goblins is Grandpa Seth--the ghost of patriarchy. He gives the boy, Joshua, the tools to fight against the goblins. Eventually, all the family members give in, ending with the mother, and they even hold a seance to summon Grandpa Seth's aid. This is a reversion of the family unit to patriarchal forces, a counter-reformation against the subverting forces of femininity.

Grandpa Seth brings the boy to touch the stone of Stone Henge, which takes power away from the Goblin Queen. They must do this all as a family. Grandpa Seth emphasizes this is the power of 'goodness' over the goblins. The notion of 'goodness,' a Christian notion, which has historically demanded female docility, virtues of caring and submission. The few moments we are allowed to see into the goblin mind, however, give us good arguments that their way has a goodness of its own.

After defeating the goblins in this way, the family attempts to return to a mundane life. Immediately upon entering the driveway, the father blandly states he must check in at the office. The seed of subversion has been sown, however. Entering the house, the mother is turned into a plant and quickly consumed by goblins before Joshua's eyes, "They're eating mom!" The last line is, "Do you want some, Joshua?" Does Joshua want to see things with new eyes, risk accepting the goblin point of view?

The maker of this film, Claudio Fragasso, appears to ultimately sides not with the hegemonic forces, but with the subversive, alternative forces--the goblins. On the other hand, it is worth considering that the character of Grandpa Seth, and his grandson Joshua, are the most sympathetically viewed characters in the film. Grandpa Seth, the missing patriarch, taints the entire world with his absence. There is a sense that, "If only Grandpa Seth were here," the goblins could not possibly triumph.

Despite the ambiguities of Fragasso's position, or perhaps because of them, this film is especially worthy of consideration as a work of critical cinema, a cinema critical of the normal, voyeuristic cinema that has dominated cinema from the beginning. This film is potentially empowering and consciousness-raising. Enthusiasts of feminist filmmaking, or of experimental, alternative forms, should hold Troll 2 in high regard.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Manos: The Hands of Fate

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the fourth of my critiques and the one you've all been waiting for.

Film: Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)
Subtext: Marxism

Made just one year before Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise and just two years before Bernardo Bertolucci's Partner, Manos is a delirious plunge into the same dialectical terrors of bourgeois oppression and of the futility of proletarian struggle.

The film concerns a family--a man, a woman, their prepubescent daughter, and their poodle--looking for a holiday resort. By chance, they stumble upon the lair of the High Priest of Manos, The Master, who lives with his servant, Torgo, and his six wives.

This set-up immediately reveals to us the class struggle. The Master is the bourgeoisie, the land-owner--he is the thesis. Manos, meaning 'hands,' an evil deity who is never seen, clearly represents the power of labour: the means of production. The Master has the power because in his hands are the means of production; this gives him power over others around him and even, he claims, immortality.

Enter the typical American family--the antithesis--a car full of consumers. They meet first with Uberservant, Torgo. Torgo is shifty, full of nervous habits, who takes care of the place "while the Master is away." Torgo is one of the dominated: peasantry, proletariat.

When Torgo lays eyes on the young, pretty American wife, however, he gets ideas of revolt. "The Master wants you," he tells her, "but he can't have you. I want you." He wants to be free, to take control of his own life, to wrest the means of (re)production equally into his hands. The spirit of communism walks in Torgo.

This class struggle between Torgo and the Master is later emphasized as the Master tells Torgo he cannot have a wife of his own because, "You're not one of us." Torgo is low-class, proletariat, destined for service only. Torgo often says the Master has six wives, he doesn't need any more. Of course, need has nothing to do with it: class inequality exists because the means of production (Manos) are in the hands of the few, the Master. Torgo has no wives.

When the Master gets air of the rebellion, he awakes his six wives, that they might perform sacrifices upon the rebels, the unwanted, and maybe take a wife or two in the process. This generates rebellion even amongst his wives. Some refuse to kill a child, some are pleased to kill everyone. These wives are like the aristocrats, some of whom gave their support to the bourgeois to their own destruction, while others fought but wound off no better.

Soon the Master has punished Torgo, burning off his hand--hands being symbolic, in this film, of power--and subduing his rebellious first wife. His first wife believes he is impotent, saying she does not fear his power. The Master, however, does have all the power.

In the meantime, the family is attempting to flee. The capitalist consumers do not want to be caught up in the struggle, in the Revolution. They are afraid. However, finding they have no resources--finding they cannot indulge themselves without the product of the producers--they return to the house of the Master.

Attempting to join into the Revolution far too late in the game, the whole family is overcome. The bullets do not work: Manos really does give immortality to the bourgeoisie. The father is made into a servant, replacing Torgo, who has fled into oblivion (being entirely impotent without his hands), and his wife and daughter have both become new wives of the Master.

This film is special in that it is one of very few Marxist dramas in which the victory belongs to the bourgeoisie. The film's dialectic is such that the consumers arrive to the ordered bourgeois plantation. The plantation's conditions offend the delicate sensibilities of the consumers, who then instigate a revolt by their horror. Where the thesis of the bourgeois Master and antithesis of the consumerist family might have unveiled a synthesis of revolution, this is not the case; in this synthesis, the consumers are swallowed up into the bourgeois domination, the Revolt is suppressed.

If ever there was a true Marxist horror film, then, Manos is certainly the first and possibly the only. While not handled as competently as Bertolucci's 1900, it stands as an offset, showing the other possible course--the more realistic course, perhaps, given recent history. It is recommended for the interested to watch 1900 and Manos: The Hands of Fate as a doublebill.

Because the film does not provide the Revolution, however, it can be argued that the film is the thesis, and Warren has made the audience--we ourselves--the antithesis. If there is to be a synthesis, the synthesis of Revolution, it is to be carried out by us. The action of revolution, as Lina Wertmuller argued, cannot take place in film, for the film is passive; the Revolution must be in reality. The horror of the film places the onus of revolution on us.

This film is highly recommended for Marxist analysts, film studies groups, and for comrades who are preparing for the triumph over capitalism. It could well be watched alongside Wertmuller's Swept Away for a similar depth of insight, with less attractive actors.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Dr. Giggles

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the third of my critiques.
Thankfully, this film wasn't so awful after all.

This Analysis Contains Spoilers

Film: Dr. Giggles (1992)
Subtextual analysis: Classic Psychoanalytic Theory (no Lacan)

Ostensibly a gory, above-average slasher, Dr. Giggles is an investigation into the potential for repressed psychosexual trauma to destroy individuals, families, and even whole towns.

The first frame of the film is a quote from medical pioneer Hippocrates, indicating that extreme treatments are required for extreme illnesses. Indeed, in this film we shall be witness to extreme treatment, in the form of the battle against the titular doctor, against extreme trauma.

The film begins with the doctor escaping from a mental institution, where he had been held--held out of sight, out of mind. This is the first manifestations of the repressed trauma's potential for destroying order. The doctor slices his way to freedom and heads to his home town.

We are next introduced to our heroine, Girl, and her boyfriend, Boyfriend. Girl is somewhat stand-offish around Boyfriend. A group of libidinous teens appear, inviting Girl and Boyfriend to a creepy old house (the site of trauma, as creepy old houses must always be in art). Girl is then shown with her family doctor, who reveals to us the cause of her troubles: it's her heart--a valve has gone wonky and she must avoid stress.

The motif of the heart is important in the richly woven web Manny Coto weaves in Dr. Giggles. For the next scene is of Dr. Giggles, in the basement of an old, dilapidated house (the "creepy old house," naturally). The basement is always symbolic of the subconscious. This is the place of repression. The doctor begins beating the wall with a mallet, revealing a secret area--the depths of the subconscious, the place of secret things hidden from the conscious mind. It is also the home of the Id.

Indeed, in this office, the doctor looks at an old photo of his father, and we are given a flashback. The traumatic past is being bubbled forth. The long-suppressed memories are kicking. It is revealed the doctor is the son of a doctor, a doctor, we're eventually told, who went mad when his wife's heart also went wonky. He began killing patients to save his wife with a heart transplant--the trauma for the town. The son helped. The town then killed the father--the trauma for the doctor.

At this same time, Girl and Dad have a chat revealing the trauma in Girl's life. It seems Mom died from a routine surgery. Girl is afraid of surgery and has a heart problem. Dad, however, has already found a woman, Stepmom, with whom Girl has passive aggressive sparring.

Now we discover how three psychosexual traumas are linked. The town's trauma, Girl's trauma, and Doc's trauma. The heart represents the place of trauma, hidden as it is within the chest. Girl is afraid of surgery, so as not to bring forth her secret love for her father--her heart. Her superego forbids it, just as for the sake of her heart she is forbidden from drinking alcohol, coffee, having sex with Boyfriend, or doing anything strenuous--lest she discover she loves her father.

The teens meet, as arranged, at the creepy old house, Traumasite, we shall call it. Two teens are locked in Traumasite and dispatched. A nosey dog-walker is dispatched. So is another teen couple. Each murder has a medical motif, indicative of the medical source of all three traumas.

All the while, a rookie cop and and old cop have no idea what is going on. In truth, the old cop has an idea, but refuses to accept it. He is the symbolic defensive mechanism of the town's trauma repression. He reacts violently the more he is pressed. The rookie, like an analyst, needing to know, pushes forth and discovers the trauma: the Doctor is alive--shown effectively in flashback cutting his way, as a child, from his dead mother's abdominal cavity, where he had been hidden.

Indeed, this last image is hamfisted. The doctor, called Giggles because of his childlike giggles, is fixated in the oral stage (many of Doc's kills involving inserting phallic objects into orifices, peering through holes--mouths). He giggles and takes what he wants, because the child has an underdeveloped ego and superego; it is pure id, appetitive. There is nothing sexual in the doctor's motivations, then.

Learning of the heart problem of Girl, Doc becomes obsessed with her, due to her similarity to the trauma. Doc specifically states his purpose is to cure the town, because it is sick. Indeed, Doc's presence is both symptom and cure for the sick town and the sick girl. He wants to cure the girl's broken heart. However, the doctor is the trauma.

Doc finally captures Girl, after killing Old Cop. Now that Old Cop is dead, the defense mechanism is removed. It is now possible to get to the trauma and destroy it. However, it is trying to destroy itself. Trauma pulls towards Thanatos, rather than Eros.

The Doc takes Girl down into the basement, into the secret room--in fact, it is not a secret room, but a secret hospital. This is pure expressionism; it is so implausible, it must be taken as purely expression of the depth of the subconscious disturbance. Rookie follows into this subterranean hospital, through a waiting room full of dead, heartless bodies--casualties of the trauma.

Rookie manages to distract Doc long enough for Girl and Boyfriend to make a getaway. The stairs fall. The subconscious does not want to let go. It wants to subsume consciousness. Girl, with the help of Boyfriend--perhaps symbolic of consciousness, but this analysis should not get carried away--escape into consciousness and may now be at peace.

Furthermore, with Stepmom dead and Dad recovering, the world seems rosy for Girl. The has left trauma in the subconsciouss, the Traumasite has been exploded. What remains? The trauma does. It attacks again while Girl is getting surgery for her heart. Again, Girl triumphs and kills Doc with medical implements.

Dr. Giggles is thus less a slasher than an expressionistic psychodrama, in which the subject recovers itself through a process of self-analysis, engaging with the trauma at the Traumasite, in the subconscious, with the aid of Rookie and Boyfriend--analysis and consciousness--to free herself from trauma and ready herself for the becoming well, ordered in life, represented by the surgery. Hippocrates was right, 'for extreme diseases, extreme remedies.'

This film is recommended for students of psychoanalysis and literary departments for a fascinating depiction of psychosexual trauma playing out in a cinematic field.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: The Beast of Yucca Flats

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the second of my critiques.

Film: The Beast of Yucca Flats (1965)
Subtextual analysis: Queer theory

In The Beast of Yucca Flats, filmmaker Coleman Francis brings his audience a startling depiction of heteronormativity defending its hegemony against deviations from its sexual standard.

The film begins with a pre-credit sequence of a beautiful, slightly androgynous woman coming out of the shower. She is then killed by an unseen man. This sequence sets the stage for the films thematic concern with repressed homosexuality bubbling up into violence.

After the credits, we are shown a Russian scientist, who has lost his family, bringing scientific secrets to America. He is chased by Russian spies into Yucca flats, where A-Bomb testing is being done. The explosion transforms him into a monster that desires only to kill. Or so it seems.

The scientist has just lost his family. This alienation from a normal family is not the cause of, but is caused by, his becoming a monster, thematically speaking. For in this film, the constant, clipped narration insists on equating science and 'progress'--the 'whirlwind of progress.' Characters are referred to as 'caught' in progress. Science is not itself in this film; it is a symbolic stand-in for liberality in society; that is, the beginning of alternative lifestyles.

The scientist is transformed into a monster by 'science'; he has come out of the closet, and for society, this is a transgressive figure, because uncategorizable, neither male nor female. He is a monster. Hence, he is chased into Yucca Flats bringing secrets to America. The secret of his homosexuality. His becoming a monster is his coming out of the closet.

The first killing the monster performs, then, is naturally upon a heteronormal couple. A young man and a young woman stop along the side of the road with car troubles. The monster kills first the man then the young woman. This is a semiotic enactment of the fears of heterosexual society that homosexuals are destructive of family.

The heroes of the film are then revealed, Jim and Joe. Joe is the first to discover the bodies. He then drives to Jim's house and calls him down. Though Jim--Jim Archer, to emphasize the phallic masculinity of his character, the one who aims a phallus and shoots--is found in bed with a beautiful woman, he instantly leaves the bed upon Joe's call.

We are even told that Jim and Joe patrol the desert together seven days a week. Jim and Joe are, as is emphasized by their similar-sounding names, repressed homosexuals. They love one another, but cannot reveal it. They are the perfect team to do battle with the monster--the monster they cannot face in themselves. It is the monster because, in Julia Kristeva's terms, it is Abject--it is what they themselves potentially could, and perhaps will, become.

At the same time, we are introduced to a family of city-folk passing through. The children feed soda to pigs and notice coyotes around the road. The narration states that the coyotes are being driven from their grounds by missile testing. Again, this is emphasizing how science--social progress--is destructive of the order of nature; for pigs normally don't drink soda, and coyotes normally avoid human settlements. Hence the arguments of conservatives that homosexuality is against nature.

This family stops along the road and the children become lost. The father goes looking for them, worried. The worry is the exposure of children to the monster of homosexuality.

At the same time, Jim Archer has decided to enter a plane to hunt for the monster by rifle. He spots the father, assuming the father is the monster, begins shooting. This is only too appropriate. Jim is unconsciously trying to destroy the very family form he has deceived himself into trying to belong to; he is unconsciously aiding the monster.

Meanwhile the monster watches the children bending over a pool to drink. As he does, he holds his large stick horizontally, pointing his phallus at the vulnerable boys. When the boys detect him, they run screaming, while the monster waves his stick.

The boys hide in a cave--taking shelter in the womb, in a vaginal opening. The monster cannot find them there, though it comes right to the opening itself. It cannot plumb the depths of femininity. It merely tosses down its stick in representation of sexual frustration.

As the boys make an escape, Joe and Jim have a showdown with the monster. They shoot it--with their phallic guns--and the monster begins to wrestle with them. Joe and Jim wrestle with their latent homosexual desires, and eventually heteronormativity triumphs, as they destroy the monster--though Joe, the most effeminate, is almost overcome.

The final shot is of a rabbit wandering before the face of the dead monster--Coleman Francis emphasizing the triumph of the natural over the unnatural.

All throughout this film a mysterious voice-over renders the proceedings abstract. Though we know it is Jim shooting the father from a plane, the narrator states, "A man runs; somebody shoots at him." The universality of the events are thus brought forward by Francis, who is trying to incite the fear of the family-destroying homosexuality alternative lifestyles, "progress," is ushering in.

There is no missing the strong attack of this film. For a greater understanding of the way heteronormative discourse is used to discourage and diminish the esteem of alternative sexualities, The Beast of Yucca Flats is highly recommended to gay/bi/lesbian groups.

What a load of hooey.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Monster a Go-Go

Introduction
December 1st, 2008, several friends challenged me to give positive, subtextual analyses of five awful films. Braving the torture of the most brain-sucking, insipid barbarisms ever committed to celluloid, I now bring you the first of my critiques.


Film: Monster a Go-Go (1965)
Subtext: Post-colonialism

Monster a Go-Go is a deep, probing investigation into the conflicts between imperialist oppression and dominated, colonized races that strive to attain their own autonomy and authenticity, rather than be assimilated and lose their Otherness.

The film concerns a space shuttle that has been sent forth to investigate space, to prepare space of colonization. This mission reverberates with 16th century imperialist exploration. As with those explorations, the ship returns, bearing something dangerous for the Empire: the Other. This Other is a monster, possibly the very astronaut first sent out--just as colonialists eventually become a part of the culture they colonize--that begins killing people it finds with radiation and strangulation.

The Empire, Western European society, in this film is represented by two parties: the scientists and the military. Scarcely has there been more adequate representation of the theories of Michel Foucault. Foucault postulated that Truth is a function of Power; that the group with the greatest power determines what is true or false. The military, which is symbolic of power, has at it's command science, which determines what counts as true or false.

The presence of the Other always creates between itself and the Empire what is called Difference. While the autonomy of the Other depends upon the survival of Difference, the Empire's Power depends upon the destruction of Difference.

Thus in Monster a Go Go, Difference is represented by the radiation that emits from the monster. This radiation is referred to by one of the scientists as 'contaminating.' In one scene, the monster appears to sunbathing women, who run away, afraid of contamination by the Other. Otherness is not acceptable to the Empire.

Initially the monster is in the wild--representative of the savage, uncivilized state Western society presumes is held by those it hasn't assimilated. In the wild it kills only those that emerge from cars or helicopters, indicating a rejection of industrialist forces of conformity.

Finally, however, a scientist manages to take possession of the monster, where he gives it an antidote to try make it normal. This is an obvious reference to education, whereby the 'savage' or non-westerner is made to think according to European standard--the standard of Truth prescribed by Power. While institutionalized in this manner, the monster does no harm, and things go quiet.

Eventually the monster rejects its bondage and escapes the institution, running back into the wild, where it proceeds to terrorize with its Otherness, again killing a truck driver.

The monster then goes into the city. The city is the center of civilization. The presence of the Other in civilization's center risks contaminating civilization with savage Otherness. Hence, the radiation, we are told, can contaminate everyone within a fifty-mile radius.

The military at this point is given command. Where socializing forces of education have been rejected, sheer institutionlized Power must be turned against the Other to bring it into conformity or to destroy it.

In the meanwhile the scientists are trying to figure out and analyze the monster. If Knowledge can explain away Difference, to place the Other under a reductionist microscope, its autonomy is held in check.

However, the scientists do not succeed. The film ends with the monster cornered by the military and the scientists, only to instantly vanish. It has no place in the ontology of the Empire. If it will not conform, its very existence is not acknowledged.

In a final, puzzling moment, we are told that the astronaut has actually been found in a boat out to sea, alive and normal. The monster, then, was both a monstrous doppleganger, indicating how the Other and ourselves are potentially the same; and both the astronaut and not the astronaut, to emphasize the potential within each individual to return to attain one's own autonomy outside of the bounds prescribed by Western hegemony.

Topping off this whole tale is a voice-over in the style of a cautionary educational short, or a piece of propaganda. The narration announces, prior to each death or accident, a trite, cautionary statement, "if only," to emphasize the errors surrounding the treatment of the Other. It is vehemently on the side of Power, warning the viewer of the dangers of allowing the Other excessive freedom: a reactionary statement to the rights moments of the '60s, at which time this film was made.

The final lines of the narration solidly emphasizes the victory of Power and Empire, and its ability to dictate what is true and real, "The lines between science fiction and science fact are microscopically thin." Indeed, it is Power that decides what is fact and what is fiction.

This film is recommended to all rights groups as a reminder of the oppressive forces that one must fight against for one's cultural and personal autonomy. It is worth watching for its ideological power, capacity for consciousness raising, and empowering, sympathetic depiction of a being completely erased from existence simply for being different.

Subtextual Criticism Challenge: Intro

I love subtextual film criticism, especially when it's fun, when a guy knows how to write in a readable, charming way. What I love the most about it is that it doesn't have a fucking thing to do with what the writer or the actor or the filmmakers intended. It just has to work. And if you can make your case with as few exceptions as possible, then that's great.
- Quentin Tarantino, on subtextual (i.e. ideological) criticism.

At this point, I'd only been writing reviews of films I like. This is very safe territory for me. I thought it was time I beforced to review films I don't like. So I asked some friends to suggest any film they might want me to review--no matter how awful or vapid--and I would try to find something positive to say about it by providing a different type of subtextual analysis for each film.

These were the rules I stipulated.

1. Film must be over an hour in length.
2. Film must be made between 1950 and 1998 (inclusive).
3. Film must be horror.
4. Film must be readily available, by netflix or, ahem, torrent.
5. Film must be available with English audio or subs.
6. Suggest only one or two films per person.

From Monday to Friday on week in December, 2008, I wrote an analysis per day after viewing and taking notes on each of the films I was suggested.

Monday: Monster a Go-Go
Tuesday: The Beast of Yucca Flats
Wednesday: Dr. Giggles
Thursday: Manos: The Hands of Fate
Friday: Troll 2

You can read my conclusion on the long week of analyzing these subtle masterpieces, as well, in the epilogue.

Wolfblood (1925)

Wolfblood: A Tale of the Forest (1925)

Chesebro, you ask? Here is what Wikipedia yields,
"George Chesebro (29 July 1888 – 28 May 1959), was an American film actor. He appeared in over 400 films between 1915 and 1954. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and died in Los Angeles, California."
This is true. He was a prolific actor. He had a moderately handsome face and often took the lead in silent westerns and serials.
Of interest to us, however, is his sole outing as a director, Wolfblood: A Tale of the Forest. This is perhaps one of the most evocative film titles if the silent era. How does the film measure up?
The film concerns a logging company foreman, Dick Bannister, working in Northern Canada. Across the river is a rival logging company that resorts to sinister means to keep the upper hand. One of those means is shooting lumberjacks in the legs to prevent them from working!
After one such incident, Bannister decides to call the owner of Ford Logging Co. to get him to come in with a surgeon. It turns out the owner is a pretty young heiress and her fiancee just happens to be a surgeon (whom, we're informed, is so rich he never performs actual surgery, but treats it as an academic discipline).
The owner and the surgeon show up just when things are getting even more heated with the enemy foreman, Devereux. Devereux has Bannister beaten so badly that he busts an important artery. The only blood nearby is wolf's blood. Our surgeon, being so learned, knows it's possible to use animal blood, though the side-effects are unknown.
With the wolf-blood coursing through his veins and suffering from a concussion, Bannister becomes obsessed with the notion that he's a werewolf and wants to rejoin the pack--the pack of Phantom Wolves.
Lupine motifs increase as we bound towards the end, though it all resolves rather neatly, I'm afraid to say.
Wolfblood not a bad film. It has no great visual style like you would get from German horror of the time. The story itself bubbles down to a Gothic-inspired, lumberjack melodrama. However, if you enjoy silent films in general, the one hour is no waste of time. And it is perhaps the first instance of an attempt to base the werewolf ('Loup Garou') legend on science.
(For horror completists, Wolfblood has the distinction of being the oldest surviving werewolf movie. There was, in fact, a 1913 Canadian werewolf movie called The Werewolf that was destroyed in a fire.)

PHOTOS:

This wolf is thinking, 'I knew I shouldn't have volunteered; I hate needles.'
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3067/3068013916_555520e208.jpg?v=0

Scruffy Canadian meets a not-very-threatening wolf. Oh dear.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3184/3068013686_8d06c44a6c.jpg?v=0

Bannister chasing the Phantom Wolf Pack.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3041/3067175981_975fdb7279.jpg?v=0

A kiss,
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3027/3068013376_e159bb8358.jpg?v=0

The Silent Horror of Otto Rippert

Otto Rippert (1869-1940) had a directorial career spanning from 1913 to 1924. Out of his dozen or so feature-length films, he directed four horrors that are either lost or simply not available.

1. Homunculus - Homunculus is a six part serial dealing with the creation of an artificial man. Before The Golem, Alraune, and Metropolis, this film dealt with the theme of artificial life built from scratch. A scientists builds a homunculus, an artificial man; when the homunculus discovers that he is artificial, has no soul, and that true love can never be his, he is furious and uses his superpowers to begin a tyrannical reign of terror.
Early serials were often excellent, unintentionally avant-garde, like Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires and Judex. To my knowledge, Homunculus would be the first horror serial. It's a shame it isn't available.
Pictures:
The homunculus
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3139/3054722397_7c0cd65195.jpg?v=0
The homunculus shows his amazing strength
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3225/3054722437_5e80e2a980.jpg?v=0
The homunculus rescuing(?) a child (Edit: It's very clearly a dog, what was I thinking?)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3177/3055557960_41bc7b9a1c.jpg?v=0
The homunculus, not looking terribly happy
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/3054722461_209087e4a7.jpg?v=0

2. Das Verwunschene Schloß (The Haunted Castle) - There's not a lot available on this one. From what I can gather, a Count flees from something or other and leaves the castle without an heir. The castle is haunted and casts strange lights over the village. A farmer guards the castle and is trying to get an heir from the Count's daughter. If anyone can clear this up, please do. Werner Krauss (who played Dr. Caligari) is in this one.
Pictures:
(Alas, none could be found.)

3. Totentanz (The Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre) - Written by Fritz Lang, this is unfortunately a lost film. Doug Sederberg writes in the IMDB plot summary,
"In this apparently lost film, a beautiful dancer's sexual allure is used by an evil cripple to entice men to their deaths. Falling in love with one of the potential victims, she is told by the cripple that he will set her free if her lover, actually a murderer himself, survives and escapes a bizarre labyrinthe which runs beneath the cripple's house."
It sounds fantastic! It's a shame it's lost. Even if it weren't lost, would it be available?
Pictures:
A woman (the dancer?) and a man lie slumped, another man is entering from behind
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3004/3054722531_462c0384d8.jpg?v=0

4. Die Pest in Florenz (The Plague in Florence) - Another Fritz Lang script, this time adapting Poe. Again, I give you a synopsis from Mr. Sederberg,
"Suddenly appearing in Florence, an evil seductress causes Cesare, the city's ruler, and his son to both fall madly in love with her. The son, killing his father before an order to torture the woman can be carried out, then turns the city's churches into dens of sexual debauchery. Acts of evil and corruption continue unabated until the arrival of Death, who brings with her a horrible plague which she is about to loose upon the city."
This film, which also sounds amazing, is still extent, but is simply not available. A Fritz Lang-penned German Expressionist silent Poe adaptation and it's not available? Where is justice in the universe?
Pictures:
Death (or some creepy monk) walks with a young lady:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/3054722277_88426b79a3.jpg?v=0
Cesare's son and the seductress? Note the deep focus, long before Citizen Kane.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3019/3055557852_c2a08858a2.jpg?v=0

[Fritz Lang also wrote a third script for Otto Rippert, Die Frau mit den Orchideen (The Woman with the Orchid)--also starring Werner Krauss--but it's a melodrama, not a horror.]

The Serpent's Egg (1977)

Ingmar Bergman’s work, especially of his middle-period in the sixties and seventies, is characterized by a deep psychological focus, a fixation, filtering the rest of the world through a series of close-ups on his characters’ faces (usually Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow). Dark and brooding, it is as if the camera wants to read the very thoughts of the characters, and perhaps even of the actors who play them.

One wouldn’t expect, then, to find Bergman, in this middle-period, to try to tell a sprawling sci-fi horror epic; but that is just what he does in The Serpent’s Egg. A lesser filmmaker might adapt his style to fit the content, but not Bergman. He filters the nightmare world he creates through his sharp, penetrating close-ups and narrow fixation upon a character or two.

In this case, the fixation is almost entirely upon Abel Rosenberg, played by a young, puppyish David Carradine. Rosenberg, a Jewish trapeze artist, is unemployed in 1920s Berlin and spends most of his time drunk. In the midst of this stupor, he witnesses surreal horrors on the street—people being beaten to clean sidewalks, dead horses being stripped of meat—and oddities in cabaret bars, while those near him keep inexplicably dying, usually by suicide.

Entering his life at this time are his deceased brother’s ex-wife, Manuela (Liv Ullman), and a sinister childhood companion, Hans Vergerus, whom Rosenberg despises for reasons he tries to articulate but fails. While Vergerus seems intent on helping Rosenberg and Manuela with housing and employment, Manuela suffers from guilt and a mysterious illness and Rosenberg is drunkenly stumbling ever closer to discovering a conspiracy at work in his life.

The beauty of the film is that, while Bergman focuses, throughout most of the film, solely on the emotional and psychological crises of its Rosenberg and Manuela, and their struggles in the hardships of Berlin, he gradually builds up through inconspicuously delivered information, implication, and subtle alterations in mood a sense of something larger and malevolent in the world around them. Watching it the first time, one could be forgiven for thinking it is a dismal, slightly surreal period drama, with noir influences, until the ending delivers its stunning blow and a re-evaluation of everything that came prior is in order, revealing the horror beneath the surface.

Bergman scholar Marc Gervais argues—I think successfully—that Bergman was trying to create a film about 1920s Berlin by using the very cinematic style of 1920s Germany, to wit, expressionism.

Expressionism, in American cinema, had profound influence over two genres: film-noir and horror. In Germany, it was the default mode for sci-fi and horror. Not surprisingly, The Serpent’s Egg plays in part like a noir, like a sci-fi, and like a horror, always with that form of surrealism unique to expressionism. Although Bergman’s intense study of his characters is dominant, just under the surface of every close-up, two-person conference, or shot of Rosenberg going down an empty street is Scarlet Street (Lang), Metropolis (Lang), and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (originally intended for Lang).*

Each time I watch this film, I’m struck by what a remarkable achievement in storytelling and style this is. However, upon first watching, one may well be bored, underwhelmed. With good films, watching is the most important; with great films, re-watching is the most important. The Serpent's Egg is a great film. If you pick this one up on my recommendation, give it a second chance, a third chance, and then it’ll work its magic on you—it’ll shock and chill you.


-
*I wanted to write more about the nature and use of expressionism, noir, and horror in this film, but I can't do so without spoiling the film. So, you'll have to figure that out on your own, I guess.

The Ninth Gate (1999)

Old books have a destiny of their own and a life of their own.
Some books are dangerous, not to be opened with impunity.

It’s a very particular sort of person who is into rare books. The sort of person who would know that Shakespeare invented the word ‘assassinate,’ and might still say ‘perchance’ without a hint of irony. Antiquarian, unusual, and probably rich, it is into the midst of such people Roman Polanski takes us in The Ninth Gate.

Polanski is a director I’ve always admired for his exploration of unique themes. In Rosemary’s Baby, he explores the state of the couple, the family in an urban environment: has it lost or gained something by its independence from traditional solidarity? In The Tenant, he explores the nature of modern apartment dwelling. In The Ninth Gate, he explores the power and mystique of the book. Films about films are innumerable, but films about books are perchance fewer than a dozen.

Of note is also Polanski’s approach to horror. He does not deliver shocks. He is decidedly unhitchcockian. Polanski’s method is to create an unsettled mood; a sense that something is wrong, disordered in the world. In Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant, for instance, it is paranoia about neighbours. In Chinatown, though a noir, there is a horrific sense of awful things hidden in plain sight. With The Ninth Gate, that feeling of unsettlement is created early on and builds to the climax: there is just something not right with these book people, with their unhealthy interest in old, forgotten tomes; neither is there with the book at the center of the film.

The film begins with an introductory vignette of a man hanging himself. After the camera pans about his lovely study, a gap is revealed in his bookcase. The camera zooms into the gap, which takes us down CGI courtyards through a series of gates (nine, not surprisingly) while the credits roll. From this first moment, we’re being pulled forward by the book to an uncertain end: when we hit the ninth gate, we see only bright light, opening onto a pan of the city that backs into the apartment where we meet Dean Corso, our anti-hero, at work.

The character of Dean Corso is quickly revealed to be a cynical, amoral figure. He is frequently referred to as a mercenary, someone whose loyalty can be bought. Polanski has Depp deliberately speak Corso’s lines with a tinge of Jack Nicholson, reminding one of Chinatown’s Giddes. One also gets hints of Philip Marlowe, especially as portrayed by Bogart in The Big Sleep. Adding to this is the way Corso smokes everywhere, around even the rarest books, and only one of the book collectors ever suggests this isn’t such a good idea—Polanski knows you can’t smoke around antique books; he doesn’t care about facts, but about a mood. Corso creates a noir mood about him as he carries out the investigation he’s been hired to investigate; a true cynic, it means nothing to him, but it pays well. A rare book dealer is accustomed to weirdoes.

As Corso (a name with overtones of running to an end) proceeds in the investigation into the book, people wind up getting murdered. A sense of destiny is added to this, as each murder is prefaced by Corso looking at an engraving in the book, where the people in the engravings look remarkably like each of the victims. Added to this are mysterious forces that seem to be forcing Corso along the path, aiding him to accomplish his task: A black-gloved killer, his own employer, the mysterious girl with mismatched socks (who may be Satan).

One catches Polanski paying homage to several masters of horror, including Hitchcock, Argento, and himself. There is a black-gloved killer following Corso, murdering many of those he comes into contact with—not unlike in Deep Red. However, there will be no grand unmasking in this film: try as I might, I can find no simple answer for who the black-gloved killer is, after seeing the film many times. A devil cult make an appearance, but perhaps with a hint of self-deprecation, Polanski has Frank Langella strangle the cult’s leader in front of the members, while they watch, and later flee, in terror.

The end of The Ninth Gate is perhaps given away in its credit sequence. It can leave the viewer disappointed and annoyed; it can also leave the viewer with something to think about. Can Corso’s cynicism be moved to outright evil? Does he realize the forces he’s gotten himself mixed up in? What is Polanski, one of the greatest horror filmmakers of all time, really up to? What is he trying to say about horror, reflecting on his past career in the genre?

For a film I find so intriguing, a film that yields some new discovery every time I watch it, while always entertaining me, it is startling how neglected it is in discussions of Polanski and in discussions of horror films of the last decade. Made in only ’99, The Ninth Gate is still fresh and has a lot to offer.

_
*Note that I purposely chose not to mention Polanski's life, which is usually brought up in discussion of his work. But for any Polanski scholars out there, there's doubtless a fair share of 'personal' material to be found in The Ninth Gate.

Gothic (1986)

Ken Russell has always been a master of excess. Characters scream and rave with large gestures; sexual immorality seems that much more immoral; passions rage to operatic heights; wild and bizarre images are jam-packed into the frames. Who better than the Wild Man of British cinema to create cinema’s most loving homage to Gothic fiction?

Gothic fiction, for those who have yet to peruse the works and words of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, or Charles Maturin, is a branch of quintessentially British literature credited as forebear of the horror genre. If the British are as repressed as they are stereotypically represented, Gothic fiction is where they escaped, filled as it is with decadence, depravity, and supernatural evils. On the one hand, there is the real decay, with crumbling mansions and castles, outdated religious views, old monasteries and churches, tombs, mouldering bones, vampires, ghosts, and so on. On the other hand, there is the moral decay of family secrets, sinful lust, sexual excesses, murders, scheming, devil worship and dabbling in sorcery, Catholicism gone wrong, and so on.

So, when Ken Russell decided to turn his attention to that special night that generated both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Polidori’s The Vampyre, two seminal works of late Gothic literature, how thrilled he must have been realizing he could indulge in all the decadent tropes of Gothic style.

There is more to it than shameless visual extravagance, however. Ken Russell’s oeuvre shows a continual fascination with creative genius, usually composers. He has made films of Elgar, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Liszt. All of these works are a little bit libellous, a little bit scandalous, and even fly off into histrionic, hyperreal fantasies as in Lisztomania. What is clear from these films is that Russell is not interested so much in the real lives of these geniuses, but in an exploration of what makes genius tick, what makes it produce masterpieces. His worlds consequently are a strange fusion of the real life of the genius with the psychosexual undertones Russell perceives or imagines superimposed in a literalist manner. For example, Wagner is literally a vampire—and later a Frankenstein’s monster—in Lisztomania and Mahler’s wife literally makes an entire countryside be quiet so Mahler can compose in Mahler.

In Gothic, Ken Russell is focused in several creative geniuses: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and John Polidori. In real life, Polidori was Byron’s personal physician, constantly with him. And the Shelley’s did indeed visit Byron’s riverside mansion one night. That night did indeed result in both Frankenstein and The Vampyre (which created the vampire genre, incidentally).

Like his other works, Ken Russell does not care to show his geniuses sitting by the fire telling ghost stories. Instead, after some set-up revealing the relationships amongst the characters and their individual psychoses, they indeed begin to tell ghost stories, when suddenly, thanks to some opium no doubt, all of their moral decadence bubbles to the surface and real horrors invade Byron’s mansion. That’s when the fun begins.

The result is an hour of non-stop Gothic motifs. There are scenes with sex orgies and nudity, spider webs, masochistic self-abuse, a monster in a barn, thunder and lightning, a beast in a knight’s armour, séances, skulls, animatronic dolls, leeches, and more.

Whether Ken Russell’s deviant fantasies really go any way to explain the creation of Frankenstein and the vampire is open to debate. However, he certainly gives it a try. Polidori is a conflicted homosexual in Victorian society, who watched the way Byron seduces women with both revulsion and desire. The modern vampire is Russellian reimagining of Byron. Frankenstein is a little more complicated, involving a miscarriage and speculations about life and death.

For horror fans, the film offers some wild imagery equal to anything in the equally incoherent Fulci, though without the gore. More interesting, however, is that it may be the only truly Gothic movie. There was no cinema in the era of Gothic fiction. While Gothic fiction begat the horror genre, it was not itself concerned with grisly deaths, as much as what the characters witnessed. You know these characters are not going to die. There will be no grisly deaths.

This, combined with the subject matter of Shelley and Polidori, makes the film an investigation into the beginning and nature of horror itself: What is horror? What does it come from? Why does it affect us the way it does? While this means horror is treated more abstractly in Gothic than in most horror films, it is worth greater consideration and attention from the genre’s fans.

The Reincarnation of Isabel (1973)

REVIEW
There have been a few films in cinematic history that are known to be two or more films combined. Al Adamson's Blood of Ghastly Horror and Bill Rebanes Monster A Go-Go, for instance. I don't know for sure if The Reincarnation of Isabel is one of those, but if you watch it carefully--like keeping your face close to the microwave to watch your Michelina's Salisbury steak cook--Isabel seems to be quite the patchwork girl.

The plot, so far as I can make out, is about an Italian village nestled in some gorgeous valley, where a possessed witch was burned alive a century or two or three ago. Now a wealthy man has just purchased half of the village's castle and is moving in with his daughter. In the other half of the castle is a sinister-looking scholar and his hunchback assistant. The man throws a party in the castle--there are plenty of rooms--inviting primarily pretty schoolgirls from the girl's school next door, as well as a few normal people. Turns out all of these people in the castle are dopplegangers of the people who killed the witch way back when.

Also, somewhere in the castle--sort of--is the real Isabel, with a huge hole in her chest; and she needs blood to revive. Fortunately, a cult has built up around her, and they're ready to bring her beautiful girls from the party.

Then strange things start happening. Each of the men seems to be a vampire and not a vampire; the girls seem to be dead and then not dead; they're witches, and then not witches; characters are in the past and then they're in the future; and there's a Ron Jeremy look-a-like having sex with two of the schoolgirls that never connects with the rest of the plot. It's just what you're thinking: there's a timewarp in the castle, and there are evil dopplegangers for all the castle's denizens, existing in some place outside of time and space, and...and... no, it's not my fault it's not making sense, it's because this is likely two movies edited together.

Stylistically, there is a lot going on--a lot of sound and fury, possibly. Polselli is trying to out-Bava the master, for one: it's gels-ahoy in this film! In some shots, each character in frame is lit with a different-coloured key light.

Then there's the editing. For anyone who has seen Nicolas Roeg's earliest pictures (Performance, Don't Look Now), the style will be familiar. Moments disconnected in space, possibly in time, are edited together in very quick cuts; sequences that should be fluid are intercut with shots of something apparently unrelated. After seeing the whole film, I still think it's unrelated.

Maybe, just maybe, rewatching this film will yield answers. I'm not sure. It's a conundrum that reminds me in many ways of Mulholland Dr. and INLAND EMPIRE, but without that intuitive knack--and without the brand-name--that Lynch brings, which inspires deeper digging. Another title for this film is Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century, which makes it sound like a scholarly text--something Frances Yates might have written. Perhaps this is a clue to what's really going on in the film. Perhaps it's more ambitious than I'm giving it credit for; but probably not.

Polselli attempts to combine Bava's supernatural films with the sleaziness of, say, Umberto Lenzi, sprinkled with some high-concept plot-points and editing. While I'm not convinced The Reincarnation of Isabel is a masterpiece or even successful overall, I don't regret having watched it. If you don't mind being puzzled, sometimes bored--particularly by the underwhelming scenes of terror--this is a fascinating oddity in the repertoire of '70s Italian horror that might be worth checking out.

FACTS
Director - Renato Polselli
Starring - Mickey Hergitay, Rita Calderoni
1973
98 min.

WHERE TO GET IT
It has been released on DVD by Redemption and is available on NetFlix.

TIDBITS
One of this film's many titles is The Ghastly Orgies of Count Dracula. Actually, the film has nothing at all to do with Dracula and there's not a single orgy to be found, save the threesome with Pseudo-Ron Jeremy.

In the scene in which the Pseudo-Ron Jeremy ravishes the girls, there is a shot that shows one of the girls supposedly talking to him on the bed--the mirror behind her clearly shows a completely different man. Two films merged together or just a mistake?

A Chronicle of Corpses (2001)

REVIEW
The liner notes that come with the DVD suggest A Chronicle of Corpses is a period slasher film. The back of the box has blurb, "a Bresson-meets-Bergman-meets-Wes Craven suspenser." Except it's nowhere near as good as any of those on their own.

A Chronicle of Corpses is about a decaying family of wealthy landowners in New England (I think). The film tries hard to show us they are a decadent, sinful bunch, whose self-indulgent--and therefore, as in all decadent literature, self-destructive--tendencies have angered the gods. (Actually, just one God. There is a priest in this film, played by the most conspicuously Jewish-looking fellow I've seen in a while.)

The destined destruction for this family comes primarily in the form of a mysterious murderer in the woods, who begins by killing the servants and then the family members themselves. Who could that mysterious bald lady be?

You'll find out in a lengthy, tight medium-shot soliloquy by the family's matriarch. Yes, a genuine soliloquy. This film is extremely stagey. For anyone who's seen the BBC Shakespeare series, there's a family resemblance. The dialogue is highly stylized and you have to be willing to accept that, otherwise the film will anger you considerably. You'll be constantly yelling, "Nobody talks like that!" People's mouths move, but they don't speak: a gush of what they should be feeling and thinking is expressed in highly-contrived prose.

Similarly, the camera tends to focus on monologue-performances. I would call them dialogues, but even with two people in the shot, they are strangely detached. They rarely look at one another. The camera is rarely moving, but letting these characters, standing in their contrived positions, in abstract spaces, speak their monologues.

The 'slasher' scenes are not much more effective than the (melo)drama scenes. The killer bops people on the head, but we never see the blow. The most horrific scene, in which a baby is butchered, is mildly jarring, but with absolutely no blood and only a single thrust, it's over soon.

There are a few things I did like. The film's patience reminded me of the European directors the DVD box claims it does. Antonioni and Bergman come to mind, as does Jacques Rivette a bit. The character of the matriarch, in her final soliloquy, did intrigue me: I wanted to learn more about her, but alas, it's an 83 minute slasher film. The one thing the film gets right is a general atmosphere of decadence, decay, morbidity--a character even specifically remarks on this. Yet, overall, it is a failure, neither fish nor fowl.

So, why am I covering this film in my Strange Horror Discoveries series? Because this is certainly a strange horror film. I don't believe I've ever seen a horror film done quite like this before. It has some sizable flaws, in my view, and don't believe they'll disappear with rewatching. But for its effort, for what it's trying to do and be, I applaud it.

I would only recommend A Chronicle of Corpses for more adventurous viewers who want to try something different, who tend to like arthouse pictures, and who don't mind films slow as treacle, stagey as Shakespeare.

FACTS
Director - Andrew Repasky McElhinney
Writer - McElhinney
Starring - Marj Dusay, Ryan Foley
2001
83 min.

WHERE TO GET IT
It's an Alpha New Cinema release. You can get it for only $1.98 on their site.

TIDBITS
This is something you should know: The film seems to have been shot in 1:1 ratio, so it's perfectly square. You have black border on all sides on the DVD. It's very odd, but I didn't find it too distracting.

Star Marj Dusay is a veteran television actress, and was even in an episode of Star Trek:TOS. Not surprisingly, she's the best actor in the film.
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Like this review? Check my profile for more Strange Horror Discoveries.

Two Animated Shorts

REVIEWS:
Who Killed Who? (1943)

With more visual inventiveness in under eight minutes than any David Lynch or Lucio Fulci picture has in an hour, all of Tex Avery's shorts are fantastic.

While ostensibly a murder mystery, Who Killed Who? plays as an old dark house picture. We begin with a long, slow pan into a window above the mansion's front door, all the while archetypal horror sound effects are played non-stop--gee, what's going on in there? Nothing. But it's spooky, isn't it?

As the detective arrives to solve the murder of the man we first find sitting a chair labeled 'Victim,' skeletons, ghosts, suspicious servants, and a hooded murderer pop out of the woodwork.

Oh yeah, and it's even got some cheesecake for the guys. Great fun. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U89qW4-ht7w


Bold King Cole (1936)

Felix the Cat is too darned happy, so nature conspires to throw a thunderstorm at him in the midst of his banjo solo. Well, the only refuge for poor Felix is an old castle across the gorge, where dwelleth King Cole.

King Cole is a pear-shaped coward, but he boasts a lot. Enter Felix. Cole begins boasting to Felix in the hall of paintings, where the ghosts of previous kings--all with working-class Bostonian accents, oddly enough--conspire to teach the old windbag a lesson. And holy **** do they ever!

This little short actually traumatized its fair share of children when originally shown, or when placed on budget VHS cartoon compilations.

Now it's disturbing a brand new audience on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isbzfRh4za8

Check it out, enjoy the terrific score, and the general playfulness with image and sound--especially sound.

FACTS:
Who Killed Who?
Director - Tex Avery
Voices - Tex Avery, Billy Bletcher
1943
8 min

Bold King Cole
Director - Burt Gillett
Voices - ?
1936
8 min

WHERE TO GET THEM:
On Youtube.
Who Killed Who? is also a special feature on the DVD for Presenting Lily Mars.

TIDBITS:
In Hellraiser: Deader, a character is seen watching Bold King Cole.
Who Killed Who? is featured in Twelve Monkeys.

Gertrude Stein's Night of the Living Dead

Remaining fragments of the single horror story written by the great Gertrude Stein, found in archives by yours truly.

...but if, when the living dead is there, then there is living dead in that place that it is. This and thats afford the living dead great pleasure. Although the living dead would, if they knew that they were that they were what they were, would to the place for this, yet the living dead is a living dead is a living dead is a living...
...the farmhouse was that it is to be with those that still are of what was, but the living dead is to be if only the living dead had not been but is. That is who, what, where those it is that what is where. The living dead are most opposed to being shot in the head. To be shot in the head is opposed by the living dead. They die from that. The living dead die if shot in the head and become the dying dead, then the dead dead, the dead dead being the future of the dying dead and that the future of the living dead, if and only if shot in the head...

The rest was lost to moths.

Dr. Caligari (1989)

REVIEW
You know you're in for something wild when you find a sequel to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari made in the '80s by a man whose filmography, with the one exception, consists entirely of artsy hardcore pornography.

Yes, this is a sequel to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It is imaginatively titled Dr. Caligari. However, the Caligari of this picture is the granddaughter of the original Caligari. She's a psychiatrist who works for the CIA--in fact, if we're to believe her, she's the greatest psychiatrist in the USA, along with Jung and Wilhelm Reich.

Well, it turns out this Caligari is worse than her grandfather. She performs demented experiments on her patients, using them as guinea pigs for science or maybe for her own enjoyment. In the words of one of the characters you might call a protagonist, "She's no longer a research doctor; she's a flat-out sadist!" Two of her colleagues have had enough and are setting out to stop her.

In the meantime, Les van Houten's having some difficulties with his wife. He wants a good Christian sex life, whereas his wife wants it all the time. We're told she has a "disease of the libido." So he contacts the great psychiatrist Caligari for help. Will his wife be Caligari's next guinea pig?

I always try to give some sense of the weirdness of the films I review after the plot summary. I'm afraid I can't imagine a paragraph that could adequately describe this film. I'm pretty good with words; this film defies me. The best I can think of is to provide you with some stills and some snippets of dialogue.

"I know someone who has to tango, I know someone who has to move, when all the eyeballs scream, 'Stand still.'"

"I see that face and I'm a love-slut, uh-huh!"

"Chinchilla! Chinchilla! Chinchilla!"

"I'm a juice-dog! I'm a twitchin' ski-ball! And you won't let me shiverrrr!"

"I want his boy-thing! To twist it like a rubber-band until it snaps."

"Call me sentimental, but when I see a fresh sheep trotter, I can't help but think, 'There is a god.'"


This film is beyond weird. It is perhaps the single most stylized film since the original Caligari, even exceeding it, with its tongue-in-cheek dialogue and neon colour scheme. It also certainly lays claim to carrying on the Caligarian spirit of radical originality. It even delivers some suspenseful moments, a few moments of horror (one involving implied fisting that should make the men squirm), and a lot of laughs at the sheer bizarreness of it all. It's well-made, well-acted, good, quirky fun.

FACTS
Director - Stephen Sayadian
Writer - Jerry Stahl and Sayadian
Starring - Madeleine Reynal, Laura Albert, Gene Zerna
1989
80 min.

WHERE TO GET IT
I believe it's exclusively at Excalibur Films:
http://www.excaliburfilms.com/adultdvd/91084D1_Dr_Caligari_dvd.htm
This company specializes in distributing porn films. While Dr. Caligari is rated R and contains only a little nudity, Stephen Sayadian is known for his porn.

TIDBITS
Madeleine Reynal's only film.
Sayadian's only non-porn film. His porn films are renowned for their plot and style--apparently he nearly legitimized porn films.
Writer Jerry Stahl played Devon's agent in INLAND EMPIRE. The plot thickens.

The Devil-Doll (1936)

REVIEW
Every now and then, maybe once a decade, a film comes along that is so inspired in its goofiness, so courageous in its preposterousness, so earnest in its madness, that it navigates past seemingly impossible obstacles to a sort of perfection. The Devil-Doll is one of those rarities.

Directed by none other than Tod Browning, we are given a tale that involves a mad scientist with frightening ambitions, a jail-break, a truly touching father-daughter reconciliation, a crime-committing shrunken woman, a conspiracy by a triad of bankers, a revenge plot, a dashing taxi-driver, the Eiffel tower, and Lionel Barrymore in drag.

I try to keep these reviews serious, but The Devil-Doll defies me. I shall try my best. We begin with Lionel Barrymore--who is fantastic in this film--breaking out of jail. He stumbles into a cabin that just happens to be filled with mad scientists. Fortunately for Barrymore, he hits it off with the scientists and they soon want to enlist his aid in their diabolical plans to shrink the world!

In fact, the plan is not diabolical at all. The scientist wishes to solve the problem of world hunger. So, if he shrinks everything in the world, there'll be plenty... no, wait, that doesn't work. Barrymore knows it doesn't work. The scientist, however, is really a madman. In this film anything can happen, and it does: the scientist suddenly has a stroke and dies. Barrymore is thus left with the marvelous new technology and the scientist's even madder scientist of a wife.

Barrymore now has everything he needs to exact revenge on those who had him wrongfully placed in prison: a shrink ray, a mad scientist, and drag. He sets up shop as an old granny toymaker and sets about his revenge while he tries to strike up a friendship with the daughter he never got to see grow up.

That covers the first fifteen minutes. The film is densely-plotted. The writers squeezed everything they could into this already-wild story, and Browning somehow pulls it off. It is a great film, the equal of anything Browning's ever done.

The relationship Barrymore has with his daughter is genuinely affecting. The love he feels for her, the anguish he feels in a situation that prevents him from reaching out to her, and her bitterness over never knowing her father are all deeply felt.

The revenge plot brings various moral questions to the fore. How can a man who loves his daughter be using a shrunken woman--the titular devil-doll--to commit horrible crimes, when he knows it will prevent him from seeing her? Does he really plan to give the mad scientist what she wants in exchange for her help?

With some neat special effects obviously inspired by Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Baghdad, some excellent writing, outstanding acting, and Browning's masterful direction, this goofy film is guaranteed to entertain and move.

FACTS
Director - Tod Browning
Writers - Garrett Fort, Guy Endore
Starring - Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan
1936
78min

WHERE TO GET IT
This film is not so rare or unknown as the others in this series. It is available on MGM's Hollywood Legends of Horror Collection.

TIDBITS
Guy Maddin highly praises this film. He even selected it for screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Screenwriter Guy Endore also wrote the novel that was adapted into Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf.

Maciste All'Inferno (1925)

REVIEW
Cinema's first action hero, the Italian Maciste, makes his first descent into the underworld in Brignone's Maciste All'Inferno, a thoroughly entertaining and inventive silent.

Maciste is a gentle giant, strong and virtuous. Some emissaries, dressed in capes, tophats, and goatees, are sent up from Pluto, the King of Hades, to lure Maciste into Hell.

Though the trickery succeeds, Maciste is free to leave Hell within three days--unless, of course, he's kissed by a female devil. The females in Hell are all too willing, never having seen a man as big and strong as Maciste before.

When Maciste succumbs to the allures of the sexy demonesses, not only does it seem he is trapped in hell as a devil himself, but, as it so happens that Hell is in the midst of a civil war, he must also lead an army of devils to defend his new lord Pluto from the usurper. Will Maciste ever get out of hell?

If you're trying to imagine this plot carried out in a silent film, you no doubt have a slight notion of how weird this picture is. You don't know the half of it. Devils who get their heads knocked off by an angry Maciste play football with them, an enormous Satan plucks human souls from the hellish landscape to munch on, and a fire-breathing dragon offers Maciste a ride--these are just a few of the spectacles one has to look forward to in this film.

This is one of those rare cases where an impressive, expensive production (for its time) results in a truly fine, inventive film, not unlike Fritz Lang's Nibelungen a year earlier and Murnau's Faust a year later. Yet, there is no denying this is an early special-effects picture, invested primarily in exciting visuals. The scenes of the underworld are exceptional visions of hell. Stalactites hang down sharply over damned souls labouring in chains. Dozens of extras in unusually good devil-imp costumes roam, usually attacking Maciste in droves.

While Maciste All'Inferno is as much fantasy-adventure as it is horror, it has a lot to offer horror fans. If you like sexy devil girls, a hero who knows how to kick ass, fiendish monsters, hellish imagery, as well as a few laughs along the way, try get your hands on this one.

FACTS
Director - Guido Brignone
Writer - Riccardo Artufo, w/ credit to Dante Alighieri.
Starring - Bartolomeo Pagano, Elena Sangro
1925
95 min.

WHERE TO GET IT
Unfortunately, it is not available on a proper DVD in North America--I don't even know if it's available in Italy. Don't let that stop you, however. It is quite available on eMule in a quite good, quality avi.
UPDATE: Capkronos has informed me that the Nightmare Worlds 50 Movie Collection contains this film. This box set is easy to find.

TIDBITS
Maciste All'Inferno is the film that made Fellini decide to be a director.
Was an influence on Mario Bava, such that he paid tribute with Hercules in the Haunted World.
Riccardo Freda remade it in 1962, which I reviewed earlier in this series.

L'assassin jouait du trombone (1991)

REVIEW
Canada does not have a great number of thrillers under its belt. Quebec has even fewer. However, when they do make thrillers, they have an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach.

Thus is it with Roger Cantin's L'assassin jouait du trombone, possibly Quebec's only giallo-style thriller and possibly the weirdest giallo-style thriller ever made.

Augustin Merleau is a wannabe actor-comedian. He has finally accepted defeat, however, and taken a job as night security guard at a movie studio. One night, when his teenage daughter drops by, they witness a series of murders in the studio, performed by a mysterious trombone-playing assassin, seen only in silhouette. (In homage to Fritz Lang's M, the assassin plays "In the Hall of the Mountain King.")

In an effort to clear his name, Merleau sets out to solve the mystery, in the meantime getting hooked up with a gang of thugs and their sexy leader, The Countess.

It is hard to describe this film's oddness without spoilers; but suffice to say this is probably the only thriller containing a trombone-playing assassin, an evil robot, a wheelchair-bound mad scientist, and a secret underground lair beneath a movie studio.

Bizarre, sometimes farcical, pushing the envelope on 'suspension of disbelief,' this film is recommended to anyone with a taste for off-beat thrillers and gialli and unusual genre-mixing.


FACTS
Writer-Director - Roger Cantin
Starring - Germain Houde, Anaïs Goulet-Robitaille, Gildor Roy
1991
96 min.

WHERE TO GET IT:
While it is quite hard to find, it is available on DVD in Quebec, and can be found at Quebec video stores (www.archambault.ca, e.g.). If you're interested, please send a Title Request to Netflix. If they receive a few requests, they'll certainly pick it up.

TIDBITS:
Briefly run on English Canadian television as Four Stiffs and a Trombone.

The cinematographer, Rodney Gibbons, was also cinematographer for My Bloody Valentine and Screamers.

The Mask (1961)

REVIEW:
Just seven years after Aldous Huxley published The Doors of Perception (1954) and five after Heaven and Hell (1956), The Mask delves into similar themes of exploring other, possibly deeper states of consciousness than any of which psychology has been aware.

For better or for worse, the thin plot serves only as an excuse for this delving. A psychiatrist, Barnes, comes into possession of an ancient "Indian" mask--"Indian" referring to mesoamerican aboriginal cultures, in this case. It just so happens this mask has mysterious powers, which include psychedelic hallucinations and strong addiction--oh yes, and a propensity for murder.

While Barnes is convinced the mask can teach him "of man's most secret mind, of a world that exists even deeper than the subconscious," his friends and an obligatory homicide detective are becoming increasingly worried and suspicious, respectively.

What makes this film stand out is the genuinely amazing hallucination sequences. One is treated to an utterly surreal barrage of tribal-infused Gothic imagery, sometimes coming faster than one can compute: dozens of hands are seen reaching, grabbing from beneath a river; a flaming eye crashes from the sky and becomes a flame-throwing, skull-headed beast; a giant skull floats above a strange temple, where a woman is reclining upon an altar. What can it all mean?

Not only is The Mask Canada's first horror film, it also happens to be Canada's only 3D film. All of the psychedelic mask sequences are arranged in 3D, to give the viewer the same experience Barnes is receiving from the mask. No fan of 3D films myself, it is here handled competently and, while the imagery would be effective even without the 3D, it is neither intrusive nor detracting.

(For the original theatrical release of this picture, the 3D glasses were attached to a wearable mask. Whenever one would hear the Voice in the film tell Barnes, "Put on the mask," the audience knew to do likewise with their own masks.)

Regardless of whether its hallucinations mean anything or not, this film offers a tripping experience. I can guarantee you've not seen anything like it.

FACTS:
Director: Julian Roffman
Starring: Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins
1961
77 min.

WHERE TO GET IT:
Long out of print, it has just recently been released on DVD by Cheezy Flicks. It can be found on Amazon.ca for a decent price. It comes with 3D glasses.

TIDBIT:
The poster of The Mask supplies the cover of Re/Search #10: Incredibly Strange Films.
http://www.researchpubs.com/Blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/product_images/rs10full.jpg

Maciste All'Inferno (1962)

REVIEW:
By 1962, the peplum genre, with its sandal-wearing musclemen, had already run out of steam in Italy. Italians are not troubled by such matters. They mix the stale with another genre as quickly as you can say 'casserole.' Whence came Maciste All'Inferno, a horror peplum.
This film is more accurately titled in English as The Witch's Curse. In fact, you won't meet Maciste until thirty minutes into the film. You won't learn his name for another fifteen minutes. It is only when he shows up, however, that things become interesting.
The film begins in 18th century Scotland with the burning of a witch, who insinuates that the clergyman doing the burning is a spurned lover. She curses the village, the clergyman, and goes up in smoke.
A century later, a descendant with the exact same name as the witch shows up in the same village and moves into the witch's old castle with her new husband. Well, who can blame the superstitious villagers for becoming a little hysterical? In fact, they launch a torch-and-pitchfork attack on the castle, imprisoning the couple in preparation for a centenary barbecue of witches. Oh dear.
Enter Maciste, who, despite wearing nothing but a loincloth in 19th century Scotland, is greeted with little to no surprise. Maciste saves the couple with his physical might alone and agrees to journey into hell itself--which is conveniently located beneath a local tree--to find the witch and end the curse.
The prime joys of this film occur from this point on. The imagery of hell, however crude, is quite unforgettable and at times startlingly beautiful.
Maciste himself is also startlingly beautiful. Kirk Morris' impressive physique is shamelessly flaunted here as his Maciste solves all difficulties, be it a stampede of bulls, Goliath, or a tree that needs uprooting, by gripping, straining, straining, and straining. The homoeroticism is difficult to miss.
For unintentional laughs, some fascinating visions of hell, and a certainly unique cinematic experience, The Witch's Curse is a worthy excursion into weird.


FACTS:
Director - Riccardo Freda
Starring - Kirk Morris
1962
76 minutes

WHERE TO GET IT:
It's cheaply available on DVD from Alpha Video as The Witch's Curse.

TIDBIT:
Richard Dyer placed the film 7th on the Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll of 2002 for greatest films of all time. I emailed him about this. He told me the movie is entertaining and Kirk Morris is nice to look at.

About

About Lair of the Boyg

The Boyg, Peer Gynt! the one only one.
It's the Boyg that's unwounded, and the Boyg that was hurt,
it's the Boyg that is dead, and the Boyg that's alive.

The Boyg is a creature in Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, my favourite play. Encountered in total dark, all we know if it is from Peer's assessment: slimy and formless, like one of Lovecraft's eldritch terrors. Its formlessness and frightfulness struck me as an ideal symbol for the project of writing about independent genre cinema.

The idea of Lair of the Boyg is, like the slimy, formless Boyg himself, to somehow be two contradictory things at once. With this site I want to both delight in the exciting and exploitational elements of the 'great trash' genre cinema occasionally turns out and engage the same films intellectually wherever possible. To fall too far on either side is to become self-parodical.

My name is Jared Roberts. I studied philosophy at the University of Ottawa and undertook writing reviews only because I felt I had something to say about the movies I was watching. This film discussion site began as a means of preserving the short reviews of classic horror films that I had written for friends on a message board. As I began to write more reviews and essays of higher quality, I saw the need to transform what was once an archival blog into a more professional film discussion and review site. Many of the older reviews remain on the site and I do occasionally like to address an older film.

However, the focus is now on recent, independent films. While the horror and thriller genres are without a doubt the essence of this site, I do sometimes look into other genres or even arthouse pictures that are not getting much attention. I try to give special attention to Canadian and Quebec cinema, being from Quebec myself.