(1970)
Dir - Hans W. Geißendörfer
Overall: MEH
There is a thin line between being too smart for your audience and just being pretentious because you can. Hans W. Geißendörfer's debut film Jonathan, (which was also the first that famed cinematographer Robby Müller worked on), rides this line rather consistently. While certainly flawed, it is anything but uninteresting. Geißendörfer and Müller shoot nearly every scene in very long, slow, one-take panning shots and the behavior of every character is so bizarre that not much of anything the frame lingers on will compute much. A bunch of villagers surround and stare comatose-like at a couple having sex in a barn, a man is kicked nearly to death for no decipherable reason, a priest and a shoe-less alter boy pray in a dilapidated church and then the boy sets fire to a large haystack, a flock of children appear out of nowhere and dance around whilst singing, a guy wakes up to a woman boning him and they just kind of lay there silent afterwards, and vampire women in red and white robes hover around a Count who is clearly a stand-in for Hitler. The lumbering pace gets a bit much and the metaphoric elements of "vampires = the Third Reich" do not really go anywhere beyond obvious surface level, but there are more than enough curious and strange ingredients that complemen this as an art film with no agenda to tell a coherent story.
(1972)
Dir - Terry Bourke
Overall: MEH
Yawn. The major/only plus side to Night of Fear, (which was originally commissioned as a potential pilot by the Australian Broadcasting Company for a television show called Fright), is that it is only fifty-minutes long. Not that it needs to be any longer than that to quickly put you to sleep. Written and produced by Rod Hay and directed by Terry Bourke, the concept is somewhat interesting as a down under version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with no character names and no dialog. Yet all that it ends up being is nearly an hour of a grunting hermit slowly stalking women and then ripping at their clothes to unleash rats on them. Seriously, that is it and then the credits role. There is a clear attempt here to be experimental with the slasher format and to up the disturbing elements so it gets an "OK" for effort at least. There are a couple of somewhat nightmare scenes that are visually rather macabre enough as well. It is horrendously boring though to sit through, beginning and ending by solely showcasing the most boring part about slasher movies in general which is just the stupid cat and mouse chase. It is nearly impossible to see it as anything except very forgettable.
(1977)
Dir - Peter Carter
Overall: MEH
Canada's answer to John Boorman's Deliverance was Rituals, a film that is unmistakably derivative as well as unfortunately wrought with illogical slasher troupes and obnoxious characters. In some respects, Ian Sutherland's script works to make the group of doctors that are hunted and marooned in the Ontario wilderness rather fully formed. There is a fair amount of screen time given to them arguing with each other in both playful and overly dramatic ways and their comradery early on does appear to be genuine. As the tension wracks up though, the endless yelling and bitching between them starts to get grating on the senses and though it is clearly done to make the audience feel uncomfortable along with the people on the screen, this along with the movie's other shortcomings rear their ugly head. It is too generous of a leap for us to take with yet another scenario of a deranged mountain man playing cat and mouse with people. When does this guy sleep? How is he such a criminal mastermind as to be seven steps ahead of them at all times? Are we to believe what we are told that he is so vengeful and diabolical as to justify him not murdering them easily when he has constant chances? While Peter Carter's direction is at times very atmospheric and the barren landscape is perfectly matched with the hopeless plight of the parties involved, it still lacks the necessary plausibility to truly connect. Also the music is for the most part awful and sappy and as is unfortunately common, not enough scenes play out to disturbing silence as they should.
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