(1980)
Dir - Calvin Floyd
Overall: WOOF
For his follow-up to the interesting and somber Terror of Frankenstein, Swedish-born filmmaker Calvin Floyd wrapped up his directorial career by adapted another literary work, this time being Sheridan Le Fanu's The Room in the Dragon Volant, here titled The Sleep of Death, (The Inn of the Flying Dragon, Ondskans Värdshus). Unfortunately, it is a lackluster affair with wretchedly dormant pacing that renders it largely incomprehensible. This is odd in that the central story has the ghoulish-on-paper element of a narcotic that puts people in a death-like slumber, vampires are utilized as a red herring, and Patrick Magee turns in a typically showy performance that is subtle on the effeminate flamboyancy. In other words, there should be enough here to maintain one's interest, but this is not the case with Floyd's persistently dull presentation making it far too easy to both emotionally and mentally check out of the proceedings. As a period piece that is set at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it has a lush production design that makes the most out of a modest budget, yet is is shot in a murky and pedestrian manner that further dulls down what is already a dull movie.
(1986)
Dir - Věra Chytilová
Overall: MEH
Noted Czech New Wave filmmaker Věra Chytilová made her only quasi-horror movie with 1987's Wolf's Hole, (Vlčí bouda); a cinematic essay on paranoia and manipulation that can also be read as a critique of communist takeover, oppression, and control. Such an assumption is not a stretch considering Chytilová's work was banned in her native Czechoslovakia during the 1960s for its deliberately challenging views against the country's socialist government. Similar in some ways then to America's boom of alien invasion films from the Cold War era, the story here concerns extraterrestrials posing as humans who take a group of teenagers into the mountains on a skiing camp expedition in order to study their behavior for future conquest. There are moments of chilling and oddball behavior on display as far as the calculating villains are concerned, plus the remote, snowbound locale is appropriate for the intended atmosphere of suspicious isolation where everyone grows more short-tempered with one another. Still, the characterizations are uneven, with people at each other's throats one moment only to be laughing at their situation with no one taking it seriously the next. This could be saying something about mankind's ability to cope with tyrannical maltreatment by finding a communal sense of humor in it all, but it is presented here in a manner that is more monotonous than compelling.
(1989)
Dir - Robert Sigl
Overall: MEH
The first and only theatrically released full-length from German television director Robert Sigl was the Hungarian co-production Laurin; a coming-of-age tale that is largely uneventful and frustrating in its narrative outcome. That said, the movie is also visually lush and alludes to far more haunting things than what actually transpires. Cinematographer Nyika Jancsó utilizes both natural candle light and primal, Mario Bava color schemes to showcase the anxiety-ridden fantasies of the young title character, (played by thirteen-year-old Dóra Szinetár), who hears wailing in the distance while catching visions of her dead mother. The disturbing heart of the story concerns children who have gone missing in a rural port, with various adults spying on kids or exhibiting otherwise eccentric mannerisms as to provide some red herrings as to who is behind such unwholesomeness. Such a reveal is more lackluster than properly suspenseful, even as the musical score by Hans Jansen and Jacques Zwart suggests otherwise. "Suggestion" is the key word here as it plays more of a psychological game, showing things through the eyes of Szinetár's innocent protagonist who is forced to comprehend a grown-up world full of heartbreak and violence. It meanders more than it thrills, but there is still some stylistic merit to the proceedings.
No comments:
Post a Comment