70's Czech Horror Part One

WITCHHAMMER
(1970)
Dir - Otakar Vávra
Overall: GOOD

On the surface, Otakar Vávra's Witchhammer, (Kladivo na čarodějnice), is yet another thoroughly dower witch trial film, one that remains so very depressing due to how little of its story is glamorized from its actual historical context.  That particular context here was the Northern Moravia witch trials that took place in the 1670s, specifically here surrounding the fate of priest Kryštof Lautner.  Because these mass, church sanctioned persecutions, tortures, and murders were all likely worse than anything some screenwriter could fabricate for dramatic effect, watching any movie with this subject matter alone can do wonders to ruin your day.  The film gets some extra subtext from the era it was made though, where Czechoslovakian Communist show trials were hardly something just from old history books to meditate on.  As a horror film, this pretty much does not qualify, at least in a conventional sense.  Yes there is nudity, gore-via-torture, deplorable villains, and a clear sexual repression subtext, all of which make their way often into said genre.  In this case though, it is the very serious tone that sets it apart from something like Ken Russel's The Devils per ludicrously-over-the-top example.  Not for the faint of heart, but such movies rarely if at all are.

VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS
(1970)
Dir - Jaromil Jireš
Overall: GOOD

Arriving somewhat later in the Czech New Wave, Jaromil Jireš' very otherworldly Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, (Valerie a týden divů), followed his The Cry and The Joke, both seminal films in said movement.  Compared to Juraz Herz' fantastic The Cremator, Valerie is certainly the more "horror" out of this New Wave's offerings and whether you watch it with a large or nonexistent knowledge of film history, it is very bonkers.  "Dreamlike" is a word that is impossible not to use when describing this movie, deliberately so surely.  As surreal as can be and well under an hour and a half, Valerie endlessly jumps from moment to moment, where characters are or may appear to be different characters, monsters, or victims, and they all seem to be aching for the love and affection of the title character, played by a whimsical, thirteen-year old Jaroslava Schallerová.  The soft, bright lighting and often lovely music and scenery go very against the horror movie type, even if they naturally seem part of the same world here with a Nosferatu like, gruesome vampire, a witch burning, and heavily cobwebbed catacombs.  In other words, there is no rule book being utilized and it is a marvelous thing.  Much of Valerie reminds one of both Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural and the USSR classic Viy, but it really exists in its own universe; a universe more horror films could afford to visit now and again.

MORGIANA
(1972)
Dir - Juraz Herz
Overall: GOOD

This adaption of the Alexander Grin novel Jessie and Morgiana from Juraz Herz basically plays like a full length Tales from the Crypt episode, which is a good thing for genre buffs.  Many of the elements in Morgiana are very commonplace; twin sisters (both played by the same actress) and a rivalry over their parents inheritance leads to much sinisterness.  There are some nice hallucination scenes and occasional suspense is maintained as to how exactly everything is going to play out, though the one sister that is doomed seems predetermined from scene one.  That is mostly because there is a clear villain here, down to the obvious "one of them dresses in white and is cheerful and the other is in black and is a total bitch that everyone is afraid of" motif.  Still, having a simple as can be story with virtually zero humor or camp value aside, it is certainly told beautifully.  Herz has a way of moving his camera around that is quite enticing in and of itself, be it with flowing close-ups and zooms to numerous point-of-view shots, representing the feline title character in this case.  This is also one of those "soft focus/vibrant colors" 70s films and as a period piece, it is both Gothic and pretty all at once.

70's Sergio Martino Part One

THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL

(1971)
Overall: GOOD

Sergio Martino's second giallo outing The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, (Tail of the Scorpion), came out before the superior All the Colors of the Dark which upped the typical knife-stabbing stalker plot with some occult details.  This one still prevails as a more conventional giallo, if not necessarily a landmark in the genre.  There is plenty of wonderful scenery around Athens, Greece and Martino and cinematographer Emilio Foriscot utilize a hefty amount of claustrophobic and killer-point-of-view camera work that flash things up a bit.  The murders are not Argento level ridiculous/awesome, (nor should they be exclusively expected to be), but a few are rather brutal and inventive enough.  A nasty eye-gouging takes place as well as a guy hanging from a roof for dear life who looses his grip in a slicey way.  The script effectively has every character and audience member guessing as to who the black leather clad murderer is and depending on how much of a genre expert you are, you may or may not see the obvious/not obvious/back to obvious twist coming.  Even without going too overboard, (which is certainly welcome where giallo is concerned), this one is plenty sexy and contains a high body count to pretty fairly cross it over into recommendable terrain.

TORSO
(1973)
Overall: GOOD

Giallo or otherwise, perhaps Sergio Martino's most well-known movie Torso, (I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale), has a deserving reputation as a slasher-pre-curser and one of the finer ones at that.  So much that has sadly become cliche is front and center here, particularly the misogyny that is oozing in nearly every scene.  It is one thing that women who show their boobs get brutally murdered and then have those very same boobs sliced and diced up at a steady rate, but it is another that nearly every male in the entire film is audibly gawking at every woman on screen, licking their lips whilst creeping on them, or simply beating them up.  This is all more laughably inappropriate than offensive in a modern context and no one could mistake that there is a direct line from this to all the countless, slasher nasties that came in droves starting around the early 80s.  What is excellent about it though is not the gore and copious amounts of naked ladies on the screen, but how stylishly directed it is.  Martino has a flair for racking up the tension and toying with his audience, keeping the killer's identity misleading and killing-off main characters by means of great set-pieces.  Even something that seems eye-ball-rollingly stupid like a clumsy girl falling down the stairs actually comes back into play later in a major plot point way.  Slasher movies need not be a thing anymore and certainly need not follow any of the "rules" that beautifully work here, but this is a borderline-excellent example of when this stuff was still exciting and intelligently done.

THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD
(1978)
Overall: MEH

The jungle cannibal tribe horror sub-genre was in high swing around the late 70s when Sergio Martino got the chance to make an entry into it with The Mountain of the Cannibal God, (La montagna del dio cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal God, Prisoner of the Cannibal God).  Stacy Keach and a forty-two year old Ursula Andress are this movie's version of A-listers and the latter gets lathered in goo while naked, so it certainly delivers the exploitative sex appeal.  Speaking of exploitation, there is also some horrible animal mutilation, bestiality, and one guy's gentiles get forcibly removed.  This is all on top of the standard orgy and human organ feasting moments such movies are required to have.  So it hits all the marks, plus a few extras for the audience who goes for these gross-out things.  Unfortunately (or not depending on one's tastes and stomachs), most of these nasty moments come within the last twenty-minutes, leaving the near hour and a half before it to plod and plod along.  Martino does his best to keep the pace up when you could fit the script for this movie on one page probably, such as with some nice handheld camera work during some jungle rapids scenes.  Still, it does not keep the film from being disastrously boring until we get to the actual cannibals.  Still, the shock value near the end nearly makes the whole ordeal worth it.

60's Italian Horror Part Two

SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES
(1962)
Dir - Roberto Mauri
Overall: MEH

One of the more unremarkable Gothic horror films to come out of Italy in any era, Roberto Mauri's tiny-budgeted Slaughter of the Vampires, (La strage dei vampiri, Curse of the Blood Ghouls), is utterly textbook stuff.   The plot could have been written by a five year old who has seen any "dashing vampire slowly drains the life out of a pretty maiden in a castle" movie.  German television actor Dieter Eppler's nameless lead vampire is a walking cliche in every detail and the husband who does not know what is going on, his wife who is turning into a helpless, bosomy vampiress herself night after night, the doctor who has all the answers that lives a days carriage ride away, and the peasant caretakers and maids all likewise hit every required, run-of-the-mill mark.  None of this nor the music, scenery, or silly dubbing are any better or worse than any other countless movie of exactly the same kind before it.  So this is basically the "problem", in that the film adds absolutely zero new to cinematic vampire lore and adheres to such things so strictly as to be utterly redundant.   It seems like a competently, quickly, and cheaply made, double-feature, export, B-movie theater-filler and that is because that is absolutely what it is.  For genre purists only.

NIGHTMARE CASTLE
(1965)
Dir - Mario Caiano
Overall: MEH

Barbara Steele back again, this time working with Mario Caiano, who tailor made the wonderfully titled Nightmare Castle, (Amanti d’Oltretomba), explicitly for her.  Caiano, (a long time Gothic horror and Edgar Alan Poe fan), wrote the script with Fabio De Agostini and it is more or less a re-design of Mario Bava's Black Sunday or various other "evil doctor has a crazy wife in a haunted castle" type Italian genre movies.  So. it looses some points for originality.  That and the soundtrack is occasionally frustrating.  There is a happy little ditty that one of Barbara Steele's dual-characters plays on the piano that gets thrown into random scenes here or there and it becomes increasingly jarring.  This is made more obvious by the fact that the movie's most successful moments are the spooky ones that play to zero music.  Heartbeat's and some creepy, ambient humming during ALL the "scary" scenes instead of just some of them would have excelled the whole film tenfold.  Steele as usual is laughably dubbed but pitch-perfect otherwise as an alluring scream queen.  As mentioned, she plays two roles here and they both cover opposite ends of the spectrum.  It is definitely worth seeing for Steele fans, but just falls to the slightly below average level as a supernatural mad-scientist/ghost story

MALENKA, THE VAMPIRE'S NIECE
(1969)
Dir - Amando de Ossorio
Overall: WOOF 

Before he went on to make the beloved yet wretchedly-paced Blind Dead series, Amando de Ossorio did something remarkably terrible with his first outing in the genre, the Spanish/Italian joint-effort Malekna, the Vampires Niece, (Fangs of the Living Dead).  Hardly anything works here.  If you are forced to come up with any highlights, it is that the Italian women are heavily chested and easy on the eyes, (Anita Ekberg is present in the lead after all), and some of the sets look rather spooky in a classical, cinematic horror sense.  A combination of an awful script, almost unlistenable dubbing, some of the worst editing there is, and two completely different endings floating around, (neither of which make any sense), result in this film being one of the most absurd in all of European genre inema.  Which is saying something.  Multiple times it seems that large chunks of scenes are missing and the longer the movie goes on, the more it spirals into baffling terrain.  There is comic relief that is absolutely head-scratching and Ekberg's title character may be the dumbest horror movie dame of all time, just as much as Julian Ugarte's Count Walbrooke is one of the dumbest vampires.  No nudity or blood either for what it is worth.  Moving on...

2016 Horror Part One

THE LOVE WITCH
Dir - Anna Biller
Overall: MEH

Anna Biller's The Love Witch is a blatant throwback that recalls a former era of bright colors, Gothic scenery, the occult, clunky dialog, the zoom, screechy violins on the soundtrack, burlesque dancing, and oodles more from late 60s-early 70s genre films.  Aside from the bygone era window dressing, the script is loaded with problems that have nothing to do with it being an unimaginative rehash of older genre cinema that was also loaded with problems.  To say that Biller's work here is unimaginative would be an untruth though.  Her second majorly released movie that filters such B-movie sub-genres through a feminist lens, (the other was 2007's sexplotation semi-parody Viva), what Biller does with the sets, costumes, music, editing, and actors is visually impressive.  Nearly every shot truly looks like it came from the intended time period.  There are also modern cars, modern cell phones, and at least one modern toilet though that throw it into a contemporary setting which in effect makes it confusing at best and uneven at worst.  Issues persist with sub-par acting, lousy dialog, a few dreadful set pieces, and the unforgiving length.  This movie drags along several times and quite easily did not have to be two hours long.  Such random scenes like a spontaneous, Wiccan Ren Faire in the woods and an even more embarrassing one in a bar where angry, 21st century villagers go into a "burn the witch" frenzy are just bad bad, not "good" bad movie bad.  

LIGHTS OUT
Dir - David F. Sandberg
Overall: WOOF   

The premise to Swedish director David F. Sandberg's full-length debut Lights Out has nothing going against it, but certainly nothing going for it either if that makes sense.  Vengeful ghost/insane asylum/family dysfunction/stupid kid, your standard fare to be sure.  It also does that really annoying thing where at one point nobody in the movie is a skeptic anymore and the mystery as to what is going on is long solved, but they all continue to not openly talk about the supernatural stuff that is going on.  In addition to this, more plot revelations unnecessarily take up screen time.  The execution by Sandberg is also very unremarkable, be it even annoying.  There are jump scares a plenty, an insulting lack of logic, and would-be scary things are unintentionally comical instead.  The ghost itself is one of those creaky, lanky, lightning fast moving, head-tilt things that makes loud noises out of nowhere and how any modern audience completely over-exposed to such cliche-adhering specters can still be frightened by them is anyone's guess.  The whole movie falls into such a predicament where it is so genre-pandering as to deflate any of its intended creepiness.

DON'T BREATHE
Dir - Fede Alvarez
Overall: GOOD

This is quite an improvement for filmmaker Fede Alvarez over the teeeeeeeeerible Evil Dead remake he unfortunately debuted with.  Don't Breathe has a few minor script holes here or there, (one character should jhave died or at least been crippled several scenes earlier than he finally was and why would a man doing this shit in his basement install a security system that automatically alarms the cops when triggered, per example), but nothing anywhere takes you out of the movie because Alvarez does a superb job in structuring the film.  It becomes very clear why the movie is called what it is as this is one of the most tense thrillers in recent memory.  As history proves, it is a tricky genre to pull off where characters more often than not are doing idiotic things that make the audience laugh in frustration instead of feeling mind-numbing dread like they are supposed to.  No good horror movie is complete without some kind of mystery and the reveals for this one is almost comically disturbing.  Though this is not a total game-changer, it is still a skillfully put-together, supernatural-less horror movie that gets nearly everything spot-on in its construction.

2015 Horror Part Three

THE INVITATION
Dir - Karyn Kusama
Overall: GOOD 

Filmmaker Karyn Kusama's latest offering The Invitation is an interesting departure from her previous, horror/comedy entry Jennifer's Body.  Any humor that can be found here is in witnessing how odd some of these people behave during a dinner party.  This is one of the main themes of The Invitation; how social niceties both can blind people to apparent danger and ease others into subtle or even blatant manipulation.  There is plenty more than that though, particularly how the dealing of one's grief can further make that person susceptible to harmful influence.  As is often the case, it is impossible not to inject a viewer's own emotions into such things and more often than not, we can get annoyed that the protagonists are not acting the way we think we would act in such a situation.  Yet Kusama handles her lot here rather well, even if some of their behavior is a little too eccentric and the endgame is a tad thin, plot-wise.  When the reveal does hit at the end, the tension has been very slowly mounting to the point where the finale is easy to spot at least several scenes if not many scenes earlier.  Regardless, everything holds up due to good acting all around, good atmosphere, and only one kind-of jump scare.

GREEN ROOM
Dir - Jeremy Saulnier
Overall: MEH

It is not necessarily fair to give Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room a negative review as it is certainly not in the ballpark of being bad, nor even sub-par really.  The premise itself is rather uncomfortable, be it deliberately so.  A run-of-the-mill punk band getting a last minute gig at a skinhead club and then some murder happening, Saulnier plays it virtually humor-less which becomes quite increasingly heavy.  The Patrick Stewart led, Portland based Neo-Nazis are without any question the bad guys here, but this is not a message movie and refuses to beat one over the head with how evil beliefs beget evil people.  Similar to Saulnier's previous Blue Ruin, the best moments here are the unexpected ones where characters start to make cleverly scripted speeches or give us some crucial plot points only to get cut-off with a shotgun blast to the head or a ferocious dog attack instead.  Such subverting shocks coupled with some well-handed suspense make it a successfully intense watch.  Then again, the elephant in the room questions are A) why would you take a last minute gig to play for an exclusively white supremacist crowd in the first place and then B) proceed to open your set with The Dead Kennedy's "Nazi Scum Fuck Off"?  Kinda playing with stupid fire there

KRAMPUS
Dir - Michael Dougherty
Overall: MEH 

Having CGI gingerbread men with Alvin and the Chipmunk voices attacking someone with a nail gun and an alcoholic, fat Aunt using a firearm while the camera zooms up on her to deliver a groan-level one-liner are just a few moments that set the comedic tone for Michael Dougherty's holiday horror romp Krampus.  The overboard elements are not limited to the well-thought-out schlock though, as even the opening title credits depict what can only be described as Hollywood's version of what Christmas shopping from hell would look like.  The amount of decorations and scenery on display to make the whole thing Christmasy are exactly on par with how ridiculous the town in Dougherty's Trick 'r Treat looked, so this all seems to be the director's intended style.  In such a PG-13 context, things can never get too disturbingly dark, but the would-be creepy imagery jives somewhat lukewarmly with the over-the-top hokiness of everything else.  Numerous low-to-no-budget horror films based off the same Alpine folklore have littered Redboxes, dollar DVD bins, and steaming services elsewhere, so in a way this more generously budgeted attempt can be seen as the be-all-end-all version.  It is not for everyone's tastes, but for those who prefer subtlety left at the doorstep, this will certainly suffice.

Logan

LOGAN
(2017)
Dir - James Mangold
Overall: GOOD

Comic book movies are in an interesting state.  In fact the movie industry in general is.  More money than ever before is plowed into a handful of select blockbusters, nearly all of which are films that continue, start-over, or adapt a pre-existing franchise in some medium.  While at the same time, less money, promotion, and effort from major studios, (which are becoming more and more monopolized since probably in our lifetime it is looking like Disney will own even the air we breathe), are being given to smaller, not-based-on-any-previous-source-material movies than ever before.  It is an inevitable shift because A) the internet and B) inflation.  Complaining about it will pretty much get one nowhere.  So let us not bother with that.

When it comes to movies that have superheroes in them, I pretty much spend my disposable income to go see all of them in a movie theater.  Except Suicide Squad of course.  So they get my money willingly and fortunately, most of these movies I see are pretty good.  Very few of them are great, but that is OK too because when they ARE great, they are really great and stand-out above the "worth my cash" ones that come out, several deep a year.  Also a splendid thing is that in the last two decades when comic book adaptations have begun to become serious business and are being made in more hefty numbers, a few advances seem to be being made.  Last years Deadpool per example proved that a Fox/Marvel movie could be both intentionally ridiculous and very R rated and this directly impacted what we have here, 2017's Logan; Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart's last hurrah as both Wolverine and Professor Charles Xavier respectfully.

Give it time Mr. Stewart.  Give it time...

So how was this final curtain bow of a superhero movie?  Pretty solid.  It was also pretty violent and there was enough profanity from virtually every character in it to make up for the lack of profanity in every other X-Men movie combined, besides the aforementioned Deadpool of course.  Both good things.  Why not have Wolverine hacking limbs in CGI laced, bloody detail that makes you wince while dropping the F bomb like Lewis Black wrote the script?  Ask any comic book fan and most if not all will probably tell you that Logan should have been doing this since day one.

That brings us to the MARVELous, (har, har), Hugh Jackman, who has been playing the animistic, adamantium-boned, healing machine Wolverine for seventeen years now.  Patrick Stewart likewise gave his first Prof. X performance in that same X-Men movie that same number of years ago, but Jackman has appeared on screen nine times now with the claws, a record thus far that probably Robert Downey Jr. will be the first to break.  These many years as the uber-brooding mutant, and Jackman looks and IS understandably old.  At forty-eight, he more closely resembles a seventy-eight year old here, as is appropriate for the (very) vaguely Old Man Logan storyline.  This was no doubt deliberate as from the very first shot of the movie, it is pretty clear that these are the last days of Wolverine we are witnessing and he is very much done.  Just done with it all.

That moment when looking at your fake wounds in a mirror for the bazillionth time is no longer worth the fat pay check.

In the cinematic universe that Fox has created for the X-Men, Jackman has done a more than admirable job.  Yeah he is about a foot taller than Wolverine is "supposed" to be, but from X-Men till now, he has portrayed an arc for this beloved character that is absolutely pitch perfect.  He has killed a lot, seen a lot, done a lot, and the people he loves or that love him are all fucking dead.  This comes back to the curse of the immortal, where at first being indestructible might seem great, but the longer you stick around and the more people you outlive, the more mind-numbingly brutal day-to-day-life becomes.  Nobody can tell Logan to cheer up, (even dear old, demented Xavier, try as he might).  Jackman's scowl and battered-down limp says it all.  Walk that long in Wolverine's shoes and the only thing bombarding your mind is "when will this shit finally end?".

This whole concept has been part of Wolverine's arc for a long, long time now and the movie version is no different.  I am sad to see Jackman go, but understand that just like the character, enough is enough.  The actor himself obviously is not getting any younger, so eight films in, let us make the ninth count.  Let us use profanity, brutally kill lots of people where red stuff comes out of their hacked bodies, even show some quick boobies, and wrap up the rather tragic life of James Howlett as a stylistic Western that literally quotes Shane in the finale.  Yeah that speech was a little eye-ball rolling btw, but hell, it deserves a pass.

Her other mutant ability is to be able to memorize entire monologues from movies after having seen them only once.

I am glad that Logan did not pander to the comic book dork too much.  In general, I feel we should get past this.  Captain America: Civil War could be the to-date biggest offender of "fuck it, let's just put everyone on screen together cause fans will eat this shit up" motif, where making a really fantastic movie that works as a movie comes second to supplying the screen with superhero geek masturbation.  I certainly understand this as each film has to top itself, but the novelty of The Avengers is something to leave in the rear-view mirror.  I recall saying "this is so fucking cool" just to see Captain America and Iron Man share their first screen shot together, but now, I just want a better movie and again, these films are good, but why not make them better?

The MCU is going to get more and more crammed up, frame by frame and that is a given.  It is going to take everyone in top form to take down Thanos afterall.  I expect those movies to be fist-throwing spectacles of course; pure popcorn fare.  Go big and make everybody yell in slow motion.  These movies have their place I suppose, but they need not necessarily be the norm.  Look at the cliche, go-to-example of superior comic book movie making The Dark Knight.  That film was not great because it had two iconic Batman villains in it and he got to punch Joker in the face a lot.  It was great because the cinematic scope of it was huge yet firmly rooted in reality and every character's motivation was crystal clear and only helped build upon that scope.  Take all the costumes and comic book imagery out in other words and it was still a damn good movie.

And now Christopher Nolan gets to make a hugely budgeted WWII film.  Everybody wins!

The refreshing thing all the same about Logan is here we are at the end of an arc, even an era, and the story is simple, the characters are sparse, and it is a far more emotionally pleasing film that any X-Men movie ever was.  This is what we need more of.  Take a single character and tell a story, a good story.  We all want sequels and we all want to spend our money on sequels.  Shit, we all binge-watch TV shows on Netflix now, so everybody and their mother likes to see the story continue.  There is a wide, vast world of fascinating mutants whose personal journeys we can patiently explore through the years and films.  As First Class brilliantly proved, you can even keep recasting these same mutants and keep telling their stories and the movie going public minds not a tit.

Logan is something beautiful to aspire to.  A bloody bow on a long-in-the-wrapping package.  Wolverine can have his rest.  Let us now open up the gates to the others in Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and see where their stories lead.  So many can carry their own films and franchises and I am confident movie executives will realize this even if in their mind, they are just scraping the barrel.  Also if it is a prequel and Hugh Jackman wants to swing by and say "fuck off" on camera for a quick cameo, who amongst us can honestly complain?

Bang-up job good sir.  You've earned the right to dance.