1980s Foreign Horror Shorts Part One

FISHEYE
(1980)
Dir - Joško Marušić
Overall: GOOD

A noteworthy short from famed Croatian animator Joško Marušić, Fisheye, (Riblje oko), is less than ten minutes, dialog-less, and rather to the point.  Its simplicity in look and structure is due to Marušić being part of the Zagreb School of Animation which is meant to more heavily emphasize style through its limitations.  This works well here where the lack of anatomically realistic bodies appear more blobby than anything.  The humans have tiny heads with too many lines in their faces and the rest of them often seems massive in comparison, while the fish all vary in size depending on how menacing they are meant to appear.  Utilizing a small array of colors, (mostly diluted greens, greys, and blues), the tiny fishing village is void of detail which helps make it both otherworldly and relatable as it could be happening virtually anywhere.  If any humor is indeed present, it is dark enough to not notice, but still expressively done.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
(1982)
Dir - Jan Svankmajer
Overall: MEH

Czech surrealist stop-motion animator and filmmaker Jan Svankmajer's vast filmography includes more than one foray into horror and this adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher from the genre's most celebrated writer Edgar Alan Poe certainly qualifies.  Featuring no on-screen actors, (only the narration of Petr Cepek), and deliberately grainy black and white photography, Zánik domu Usherú, (its original title), is a fairly interesting experience though not necessarily the most ideal one for the famous source material.  Not that yet another adaptation of Poe's story need be made in a conventional sense, but most of the images in this fifteen-minute long interpretation seem unrelated to the actual story and are just kind of there to put something on screen besides any actual people.  It works better when the narration does jive perfectly with the visuals, but elsewhere it is rather avant-garde for the sake of it and kind of distracting to follow the voice-over along with it.

THE PHANTOM OF REGULAR SIZE
(1986)
Dir - Shin'ya Tsukamoto
Overall: MEH

Some things are difficult to understand.  While Futsû saizu no kaijin, (The Phantom of Regular Size), was not the first short or otherwise-lengthed film from Shin'ya Tsukamoto, it was the precursor to his most famous work Tetsuo: The Iron Man.  Shot on 8 mm film and primitive in all of its technical details, this is essentially the exact same movie as Tetsuo, (down to even featuring the same lead actor Tomorô Taguchi), except mercifully condensed to a mere eighteen minutes.  Hyper-fast, utterly nonsensical, poorly photographed, and above all else boring, it wastes no time in being a waste of time.  Tsukamoto is well-respected in bizarro-world cinema, but his scatterbrained, bizarre, steampunk vision simply can easily go right over one's head.  Being so identically styled as Tetsuo whose appeal is likewise tricky to wrap one's head around, this one here is equally for an acquired taste.

THE LAST THEFT
(1987)
Dir - Jiří Barta
Overall: GOOD

Another project from a prominent Czech animator, The Last Thefis is in fact the only live action film from Jiří Barta.  Equal parts Gothic horror and silent film with a macabre twist right out of EC comics and some of the most atmospheric creepy mansion/creepy cemetery cinematography you are likely to see anywhere, The Last Theft has no need for dialog as the story makes its protagonist a caricature of cartoonish greed; one whose intentions are crystal clear via the wonderfully stylish way that Barta portrays everything.  Primarily black and white with various color tints used throughout, (most of which give clues as to the emotional state of who is on screen as well as the significance of what objects are on screen), parts of the film are slowed down or sped up.  This helps emphasize the strange setting which is both still like an old photograph and alive in only a ghostly fashion all at once.  The film is also rather consistently amusing, intentionally so as the fate of our chubby, mustached thief can really only end up one way.  Once the audience is let in on the spooky joke, it is a successful one to say the least.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Seven

CURTAINS
(1983)
Dir - Richard Ciupka/Peter R. Simpson
Overall: MEH

Wrought with production problems for three years around initial director Richard Ciupka clashing with producer Peter R. Simpsons, (who subsequently took the helm), it is rather sad that Curtains ends up being so bland after all of the trouble.  It was conceived from the beginning to be a slasher film that focused around adults instead of teenagers or college students and Ciupka wanted to go one further from the trend of the day by steering it in a more arthouse direction.  This never came to pass and what was eventually released is a tired rehash of another masked killer mystery with a ludicrous, unnecessary twist.  The story comes off a bit messy as well, setting up some interesting avenues to go down but then never really establishing its characters enough to work.  Instead, it just cruises along to the next illogical death scene.  There are numerous set pieces that seem like they would be unnerving such as a slow motion attack on ice skates in broad daylight, a random doll standing in the middle of the road, and a cat and mouse chase through a prop house.  Yet these are all accompanied by typical, "dumb horror movie" logic that regrettably is attributed almost exclusively to women who behave only the way textbook horror movie victims do.

RAWHEAD REX
(1987)
Dir - George Pavlou
Overall: MEH

Released the same year as Hellraiser, Rawhead Rex was technically the second film whose screenplay Clive Barker had written, based off of the short story that had appeared in his third Books of Blood volume.  Similar to the British film Underworld, (Transmutations), which came out two years prior, the Irish production Rawhead Rex is plagued by budgetary problems.  The titular demon/pagan god monster looks exceptionally dumb and no attempt is made to disguise the rubber suit and ridiculous Halloween mask, making the character unintentionally goofy each and every time he is on screen.  While this effectively robs the movie's star creature of all of its menace, what is left is some hammy acting, cliche dialog, and a rather unremarkable plot about a small Irish village trying to stop him.  The violent set pieces are not particularly that great, several of the monster's victims are people that we do not care about anyway, and a lame and kind of silly ending does not help much either.  As is often the case unfortunately, Barker's written work provokes far more chills and captivation so when brought to the screen in a B-movie fashion with such a meager budget like this, it becomes a more frivolous experience.

BLACK PAST
(1989)
Dir - Olaf Ittenbach
Overall: MEH

This shot-on-video debut from German gore maestro Olaf Ittenbach can be seen as the country's answer to The Evil Dead and at the same time, 80s slasher/splatter films in general.  Though this one revels more in its supernatural aspects, to be fair.  As impressive as the relentless violence is which is clearly the main selling point, (and some of the sound design effectively channels the aforementioned first Evil Dead), Black Past cannot muster up any enjoyment beyond how painfully amateurish all of the other aspects are.  Frumpy, non-actors and sets that have got to be nothing more than the homes of the filmmakers, plus being a S.O.V production, the technical limitations easily dwarf any other perverse upsides the movie may have.  Some of the other cliches used like a kid getting picked on in high school and misunderstood by his family are quite hacky, with some montages over absolutely horrible music being unintentionally laughable.  This is also the case with Olaf Ittenbach himself in the lead who with his mullet fully in tow and often posing on his bed in his underwear in a curiously and probably accidentally feminine manner, makes for some goofy visuals.  The lame story and incompetent cinematic elements aside, it is a solid showcase for Ittenbach's gruesome special effects skills and something to take note of for gore aficionados at least.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Six

VISITING HOURS
(1982)
Dir - Jean-Claude Lord
Overall: MEH

Some of the lazy slasher tropes are thankfully dismissed in Jean-Claude Lord's Visiting Hours, but it is still a movie that manages to underwhelm quite heavily in the end.  There is a quite solid performance from Michael Ironside, looking like Canada's answer to Jack Nicholson yet delivering a comparatively more low-key performance as a knife-wielding sociopath with daddy issues.  Revealing the killer within the first scene and periodically giving us flashback answers as to his psychotic nature, Visiting Hours has no mystery which while refreshing to not routinely mislead us with red herrings, leaves very little else for the movie to do besides plod along until Ironside's Colt Hawker is ultimately done-in by his targeted victim.  This happens after one-hundred and five minutes and the route to get there is anything but heart-racing.  The story simply backs itself into a corner where if it blindly pandered to the slasher framework and was another umpteenth example of insulting the viewer in such a manner, it would have to be over-the-top ridiculous to have any hope of sticking with its audience long after the credits rolled.  Instead, it is played very straight and virtually humorless.  Even with its feminist themes in tow, the story ultimately has no momentum to make it that compelling.

MAD MUTILATOR
(1983)
Dir - N.G. Mount
Overall: WOOF

If there is a positive to be found in N.G. Mount's face-slappingly absurd Mad Mutilator, (aka Ogroff), it is that it takes all of the "Oh, no..." expectations you get within the first few frames and manages to get even more terrible than you could have predicted.  As soon as the "movie" starts, you could do the logical, sane thing and cut your losses immediately and move on.  Yet if you are a glutton for punishment, you can instead proceed with an unhealthy amount of self-loathing.  This particular example from France is the sort that fiercely makes anyone watching it question why they are bothering.  As far as the actual, (not), film goes, what can you really say?  There is actually no plot, the guy who made it was a video store owner and fanzine publisher who lacks every ability there is when it comes to movie making, there are zombies for no reason, a vampire for even more no reason, and it is powerfully boring.  There is nothing to complain about when it comes to the gore which is relentless and unconvincing, the performances which are non-existent, or the completely random way it throws anything it wants into frame with a daring disregard for purpose or coherency.  Yet at just shy of ninety-minutes, it is way too long to waste one's time with and why such a thing exists at all is a mystery best left to time and space.

CELIA
(1989)
Dir - Ann Turner
Overall: MEH

Too impenetrable for its own good, Ann Turner's debut Celia, (aka Celia: Child of Terror), is a Cold War drama with some bizarre, occasionally horror-esque sprinklings here or there.  Taking place during the 1950's Red Scare and rabbit plague in suburban Melbourne, the film follows around its weird, nine-year old title character who cannot get a break in her home life while continuing to behave more and more morbidly, gradually losing the audience's sympathy for her along the way.  It is not to the film's benefit that the screenplay, (also by Turner), is frequently difficult to follow.  A number of adults and different kids come and go at such a rate that it is a bit tricky to keep track of even whose parents are whose.  In addition, we are dropped right in a backdrop of middle class citizens caught up in the communism scare without any user-friendly context and it honestly becomes difficult to understand what exactly all the hubbub is about.  The spooky moments are reduced to a few brief hallucinations which are infrequent enough to not really carry that much weight.  It mostly just becomes a chore to get invested in what is going on while trying to discern your feelings for the main character whose life stays steady on the traumatic side.  There are some interesting ideas here about a child's confusion and over active imagination getting the better of them, but again, the film itself is just too murky to connect with.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Five

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
(1981)
Dir - J. Lee Thompson
Overall: WOOF

When does it end?  Once again again, yet another Canadian-produced slasher movie cashing in on the trend that production studios were apparently legally obligated to churn out, Happy Birthday to Me scraped the barrel to get another holiday to check off as a premise, this time why not someone's birthday?  While this one has a more classy production and look than others, make no mistake; it is just as moronic and stock in every last detail.  The entire film focuses on red herrings and as we get closer and closer to the conclusion, more and more plot holes erupt with more and more laughable consequences.  As you can clearly tell, the appeal of these movies is altogether a befuddlement.  They hit the same beats in the same fashion over and over and the fact that so many where vomited out to theaters, (not counting the hundreds more that did nott even make it that far and gasp, even continue to be made ad nausem), the slasher film is a sub-genre so set in its uninspired ways that it is futile to go anywhere remotely interesting with it.  The only pleasantry with here is that the characters are not the most obnoxious possible and it is only insulting in its laziness, at least until the ending practically goes Scooby-Doo stupid and beats you in the face mercilessly with how asinine it is.

NEKROMANTIK
(1987)
Dir - Jörg Buttgereit
Overall: MEH

This infamous, no budget exploitation film that Alex Webster for one has long championed is primarily what you would expect from its intentionally gross-out title.  Nekromantik is meant to be as shocking as possible, aggressively showcasing taboos that are queasy to watch to say the least.  Sex with corpses, animal mutilation, rape, and a guy committing suicide by stabbing himself in the gut while his rock-hard dick orgasms with massive amounts of blood and semen are all shown in brightly-lit detail.  None are meant to be the least bit tasteful either, as doing so would obviously be impossible.  First time filmmaker Jörg Buttgereit is glorifying nothing here and though the goal positively seems to be in repulsing and appalling his audience, it is not necessarily a brain-dead and obnoxious splatter movie completely void of merit.  Buttgereit seems to be examining human desensitization where his impotent and wimpish main character can only come alive through such cartoonishly vile acts and fantasies.  That said, watching the movie is no joy ride even from a curiosity standpoint.  Movies like Nekromantik generally suffer the same problem in how unpleasant they are to experience and basically once you have seen it, re-visiting such unapologetic nastiness is something only a comparative few would indulge in.

AMSTERDAMNED
(1988)
Dir - Dick Maas
Overall: MEH

Despite being a somewhat rare offering from the Netherlands that barely qualifies as something of note to horror enthusiasts, the fittingly titled Amsterdamned is slow and lackluster in most regards.  The backdrop of a scuba-diving serial killer sounds more fun on paper than it ends up being here, primarily due to the serious pacing issues on hand.  It does not just fail to deliver an interesting payoff after so long of a wait, but it also does not make for a compelling story in the first place.  The film meanders around, boringly going from day to day and predictable kill to kill while the police force remains incapable of catching a guy who is ultimately killing people for a lame reason anyway.  This is not even taking into account the stock love interest angle and sub-plot around two uninteresting kids, one of whom pretends to have psychic powers.  The ending seems like a downright cheat, quickly unloading expository dialog and then wrapping up right before any kind of exciting confrontation can be made.  We actually KIND of get one of those with a drawn-out boat chase sequence throughout the canals of Amsterdam, but that basically shows up twenty minutes too early.  Even though the whole thing still feels like an hour and some change too late.  A few gruesome moments and light chuckles here or there is all that it is ultimately worth.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Four

MY BLOODY VALENTINE
(1981)
Dir - George Mihalka
Overall: WOOF

One of the gorier Canadian slasher movies to come out of the gratuitous wave of them in the 1980s, My Bloody Valentine is part of the lazy, horrendously uninspired trend of Holiday-themed horror films that were exploited mercilessly by every two-bit producer looking to make another quick buck off of morons who find this stuff entertaining.  Morons or just people with questionable taste, either/or.  This particular snore-fest is particularly irksome.  Things collapse right about the time that we get the single most forced, exposition-dropping flashback sequence in any of these stupid ass movies.  In it, a "I'm warning you kids" bartender right out of the cliche book interrupts all of his drunk guests by telling them a story everyone in the town has long memorized, just so us viewers can hear it.  Isn't that nice of the screenwriters?  Elsewhere, every character sucks, they are all idiots, there is a twist and blah, blah, blah same shit different slasher movie.  If you condense this film down to the handful of hilariously violent death sequences and get it over with in a couple of minutes then great, but otherwise what another colossal waste of nintey-ish minutes.

DER FAN
(1982)
Dir - Eckhart Schmidt
Overall: MEH

This intentionally cold and very low-key thriller from Eckhart Schmidt, (who adapted it from his own novel), stews a little too long in its eccentric juices to be as satisfying as it could be.  The premise for Der Fan is amazingly simple, though Schmidt takes it into unforeseen territory halfway through which is good in that it refocuses the viewer from the rather one-note beginning.  Things continue to drag though even from there and it is a relatively simple matter of editing a number of scenes far shorter to get the pacing to a point where it stays both captivating and nail-biting.  While this is the only unfortunate attribute one can find here, it is still an impossible one to look past.  Seventeen year old Désirée Nosbusch is miles away from reality in every nuance of her excellent performance, ignoring all of the activities and men who are openly interested in her besides her Kraut-pop obsession R, (Bodo Steiger).  Still, she grows even more aloof and unsympathetic once their inevitable meeting takes place.  Which is not a bad thing.  The strange fate of both of them plays out just as deliberately as the rest of the film and no one can accuse Schmidt with making anything crowd-pleasing here.  That is ultimately just a more interesting route to take than an altogether good one though.

RAZORBACK
(1984)
Dir - Russell Mulcahy
Overall: MEH

Serving as the non-documentary debut from future Highlander director Russell Mulcahy, Razorback suffers from the usual ailments of other nature horror outings as well as offering up further outback genre cliches such as wild, kangaroo murdering yokels who are portrayed as just a hair above Neanderthal-level savages.  Usually with these movies, the best case scenario is that the animal monster looks cool and poses a believable threat while the characters and subplots do not bore you too terribly and Razorback more or less delivers in this low-expectation capacity.  The film is benefited from moody cinematography which frames rusted factories and the desolate Australian deserts in many ominous shadows, while the soundtrack features the morphed screams of its titular wild boar that is honing in on its victims.  Mulcahy had the good sense to mostly show his giant, animatronic hog in quick and dark flashes or closeups, which makes it appropriately menacing and convincing enough as it rips walls out and bulldozes through every structure it can.  The actual humans here are either pretty bland and somewhat underwritten though, while others are so unlikable they become obnoxious to watch.  Story-wise, it does not equal anything more than "giant animal is killing people so let's stop it" so the premise cannot help but feel stretched due to how generic it is. 

1980s Foreign Horror Part Three

DOCTOR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES
(1981)
Dir - Walerian Borowczyk
Overall: MEH

Known erotic filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk's unintentionally goofy adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson's tirelessly retreaded The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a highly flawed and aggravating one.  Some scenes are effectively disturbing, moody, or technically impressive, (such as the eerie opening, some twisted violence, and Udo Kier's one-shot transformation into another actor), but often they are just as easily undone by ridiculous acting, boring and pretentious dialog, and distracting cinematography.  Much of the movie, (particularly the last act), is filmed by hand-held cameras in increasingly poor lighting and while it seems like it might produce some interesting, voyeuristic results at first, it just becomes a pain in the ass to watch before too long.  The bigger problem though is how laughably and perhaps accidentally the tones clash throughout.  It would be one thing if Dr. Jekyll was just running amok as Mr. Hyde and willingly giving him more free reign to terrorize his house guests, but it is another when so many other characters without an excuse succumb to random bursts of brutality as well, further delighting in just as much evil shenanigans.  All the while, no one in the crew turned enough lights on to even see anything.  The overtly visceral and bizarre finale is probably fitting, but its sloppy course to get there is hard to jump on board with.

NEXT OF KIN
(1982)
Dir - Tony Williams
Overall: MEH

The second and last non-documentary full-length from New Zealander Tony Williams is an annoying one that drops the ball in some places while being rather inventive in others.  Next of Kin plays with its audience in more ways than just the method in which it utilizes vague haunted house cliches and red herrings for its mystery.  It is detrimental that the film is tremendously boring and moves at such a crawl, removing what impact would be had by the well-photographed and stylish, macabre sequences.  Taken out of context, several scenes are impressively done, including a corpse being found and removed from a bathtub, plus the lead protagonist running away from her pursuer in slow motion while the soundtrack disturbingly blares and distorts her screams.  Yet in the framework of the mediocre at best story and how lackadaisically paced it is, it becomes troublesome to stay even remotely invested enough to notice the good bits.  This is a common occurrence unfortunately for many non-pandering horror films that try and fail to successfully break the mold and do something unique with the genre.  Next of Kin overstays its welcome in this respect while not providing an interesting enough footing to build on.

MEDIUM
(1985)
Dir - Jacek Koprowicz
Overall: MEH

While certainly moody enough, Medium is a bit too impenetrable to get under one's skin.  A period piece set during 1933 in the German-occupied city of Sopot, it was the debut from Polish filmmaker Jacek Koprowicz and uses an interesting though aggravatingly unexplained premise revolving around psychic abilities, immortality, and mind control.  There are a number of reveals that would have been pretty creepy had Koprowicz structured his story in a more fleshed-out way.  Instead, we are thrust head-first into the confusing goings-ons from the very beginning, sp the viewer's brains are trying to play catch-up to all pf the information that we are consistently not given.  Medium simply goes too far in this regard, losing its audience early on and not delivering a satisfying enough pay-off, even in a mystifying, ambiguous sense.  It just seems underwritten instead.  Most of the characters are so poorly introduced that it is difficult to decipher what their motivation is, whether it is deliberate or manipulated by the movie's unseen title-villain.  If this was intentional, then it makes the narrative all the more sloppy and unforgiving.  The cinematography and sound design are excellent, but they definitely would have suited a more solid overall film.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Two

THE TERRITORY
(1981)
Dir - Raúl Ruiz
Overall: WOOF

Wha...umm...huh?  It is difficult to tell if Raúl Ruiz' The Territory became an incomprehensible art film by default since the production was supposedly treacherous and brimful of problems.  The resulting footage that was left after the hazardous shooting conditions were endured is almost fascinatingly terrible.  So many aspects of the movie are so bizarre that at least some of them have to be intentional.  Whether they are or not though, it is an incredibly aggravating ordeal to sit through.  We witness several completely unrelatable characters boringly get lost in the woods and exchange some of the most asinine dialog imaginable, delivered in an overlapping, improvisational manner that remains more annoying than curious from the get go.  Every plot point that happens is made even more confusing by how unnatural and again, obnoxious everyone is acting.  Then when you add inappropriate music, (used at utterly random intervals no less), and an editing job that leaves out numerous instances only to bulldoze the whole trainwreck into the next confounding scene, it is quite the mess.  Apparently the movie is about disregarding nature, civilization, class, languages, and geographical borders or something, but whatever.  It is just nonsense and the wrong, wrong kind of weird from start to finish.

VARIOLA VERA
(1982)
Dir - Goran Marković
Overall: GOOD

This part-horror dramatization of the Yugoslavian smallpox outbreak of 1972 handles its simple, occasionally indifferent story well enough, mostly due to its steady performances.  The multi-cultural cast play up their unfortunate situation rather realistically, slowly submitting to the cabin fever of their government-sanctioned quarantine in different ways.  Serbian filmmaker Goran Marković finds room for both humor and some fitting, outbreak horror genre sequences, sparsely utilizing an ominous score, darkness, and almost zombie-like make-up on those poor souls caught with the highly infectious disease.  Variola Vera is not particularly dramatic which may or may not be a problem depending on how one likes their "based on a true story" movies.  Yet the controlled pace does afford Marković the chance to stay grounded to reality and not overemphasize any would-be unnecessary plot twists.  It still presents itself as a harrowing enough ordeal for the hospital full of people who had to very patiently wait nearly a month for the virus to run its course, while at the same time trying to steer clear of anyone with it in such a claustrophobic environment.  Does it rattle your bones and make your skin crawl as an eerie, mysterious horror movie?  Not so much, but that is not its agenda anyway.

HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II
(1987)
Dir - Bruce Pittman
Overall: GOOD

Another victim of the once common practice of re-titling or re-shooting, (both in this case), a finished film to piggyback off the success of an already successful one, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II has absolutely nothing to do with the forgettable, Jamie Lee Curtis-stared Prom Night from seven years prior.  Tossing any preconceived sequel notions aside then, this can be taken in as the knowingly ridiculous and often amusing Carrie/Nightmare on Elm Street hybrid it is.  While it is ultimately too derivative of countless high school comedy/horror movies to be all that memorable, it is surprisingly well done for how silly it is.  Bruce Pittman never lets his audience forget that they are watching a nonsensical horror movie where all of the supernatural occurrences are as random as they are numerous, assigning his revenge-seeking, demon-prom-queen-ghost-whatever the type of arbitrary powers that would look cool for that particular scene.  This element is hammered home early on and becomes the main focus throughout, so complaining about it in a way is like complaining about wet paint being wet.  Tone wise, it is more well-balanced than most.  There are still groan-worthy one-liners and popcorn-crowd pandering cliches a plenty, but the set pieces are both schlocky and relatively spooky at times and it seems in on its joke while not blatantly hitting you over the head with it.