(1990)
Dir - Nikos Nikolaidis
Overall: MEH
A truly perplexing and off-putting avant-garde film from Nikos Nikolaidis, Singapore Sling: The Man Who Loved a Corpse, (Singapore Sling: O Ánthropos pou Agápise éna Ptóma), combines black humor and perverse sexuality with film noir, all in a relentlessly pretentious manner. Also there is a mummy who has sex with his maybe daughter because weird. Nikolaidis claims that his original intention was to make an exploitative comedy with Ancient Greek tragedy elements and knowing this, it does rather adhere to such aesthetics even if audiences may find it more unapologeticly ostentatious than funny. The film is edited in a completely impenetrable manner where random music plays whenever it wants, scenes are constantly interrupting themselves with flashbacks or flash-forwards, and characters speak directly to the camera while in the middle of conversations with each other. Not that bypassing such tactics would have made the movie any less confusing since it all only chalks up to one-hundred and eleven minutes of clearly insane people doing clearly insane things. It is wonderfully photographed though and stubbornly sticks to its arthouse spoofing guns so if one can turn their brains off and just bask in the lunacy of it all, a rewarding experience may very well be had.
(1993)
Dir - Garth Maxwell
Overall: MEH
While most of its curious, supernatural ideas are half-baked, New Zealand writer/director Garth Maxwell's Jack Be Nimble makes it a primary focus to present an adequately heightened look at severe childhood trauma and separation suffered by abandoned siblings. Maxwell's ambitious seem genuinely sincere as things are played straight, bloody, and dark. The performances are all quite strong with Alexis Arquette and Sarah Smuts-Kennedy carrying most of the weight in the leads, handling such heavy material that requires a persistent amount of intensity which both actors thankfully keep from ever becoming problematically camped-up. Story-wise, it feels a bit rushed at times and besides Arquette and Kennedy, every other character is underwritten to varying degrees. There is a creepy atmosphere that intensifies in the third act where overlapping, screaming voices psychically bombard inside of Kennedy's head, all while the keyboard music blares and the images become more surreal. The results are a tad too messy to persistently work, but this is disturbing, macabre stuff that is admirably and interestingly approached at least.
(1997)
Dir - Jean Rollin
Overall: MEH
A return to form for filmmaker Jean Rollin, Les deux orphelines vampires, (The Two Orphan Vampires), is his first vampire movie in nearly two decades and it does amazingly seem to have stepped out of a bygone era. This is largely due to the fact that Rollin's films are inherently singular in the first place, even during the 1970s when he was turning out strange, deliberately paced, no-budget arthouse horror that was persistently unlike the work of any of his peers. This fits very much at home then with La Vampire Nue, Requiem pour un Vampire, La Rose de fer, Lèvres de Sang, or even La Nuit des Traquées in its depiction of two undead "twins" who spend large parts of time wandering around chateaus and cemeteries. Even the most patient of Rollin's admires can admit to having a hard time staying persistently engaged with his low-key, zoned-out aesthetic and at over a hundred minutes in length, this one very much could use a tighter edit to approach some semblance of user friendliness. Problematic meandering aside, it also has a jaunty, cheap keyboard score that occasionally disrupts the mood. At least Rollin finds a way to narratively explain the day for night scenes though, which dominate the proceedings.
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