My Cinematic Yearbook - Betrayed (1988)

Be it for misplaced self-importance, misguided metaphysical probing or just jadedness, I've made an effort to consume the art that was released in my birthyear, 1988.  Sometimes that can lead to tears but fortunately there were a lot of great movies released that year, such as Akira, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Naked Gun, Rain Man, Dead Ringers and one of my all-time favorite movies, the blogworthy Paperhouse.  '88 also featured a number of great flicks that have fallen by the wayside or were undervalued upon their release and by dang that's what home video was invented to fix, so every now and then I'll review a Crazy 88 that needs another peep, and there's a timeliness in reviewing the first one of these, Betrayed.  Actually, it's not a fortunate timeliness, as not only do I have to talk about racism but I have to talk about Trump.  

Of the many, many gaffs Donald Trump has made so far in his presidential race, taking time to carefully avoid discrediting a former KKK Grand Wizard on the air while whipping out blanket condemnations of Mexicans is pretty memorable, doubly memorable as it forces us to remember that the KKK and other White Supremacy groups are still alive and kickin'.  Hollywood has long hated groups like this, with the KKK appearing in plenty of movies like The Blues Brothers and Mississippi Burning, but less colorful terrorist groups like the Aryan Brotherhood have appeared a bit less frequently though are equally hated.  I think that infrequency is due to the AB appearing less like a cult or old-fashioned men's club than the KKK, more human, easier to see someone joining.  Groups like that don't immediately declare their political leanings but rather insinuate new members in by initially appearing as a group of friends with similar backgrounds, and the fact that they're close enough to "normal" people to pass makes them slightly more problematic targets as a whole for writers.  It's this fine line that Betrayed walks with total assurance, making it one of the most emotionally brutal political dramas of it's time.

In response to the assassination of Midwestern shock jock Sam Kraus (Richard Libertini), the FBI sends agent Cathy Weaver (Debra Winger) undercover as a combine driver to investigate a prime suspect, farmer Gary Simmons (Tom Berenger), Vietnam vet and single father.  Cathy's search for evidence is initially unfruitful, not helped by her decision to feign romantic interest in Gary, but Gary decides to take her "hunting" one night and she sees the truth - Gary and his friends are militant White Supremacists and their "hunting" trips are training sessions where they set a captured black man loose in order to shoot him down.  Cathy, distraught over how her duty to her cover kept her from saving the man, wants to bail on the mission but her bosses, among them her former lover Michael Carnes (John Heard) press her to go further in order to connect Gary to the assassination.  Things only get deeper, and more difficult to control or rectify, from there.

This formula is tried-'n'-true Hollywood logline, certainly understandable as the script was written by Joe "Showgirls" Eszterhas, a fact that surprised me after I found out, but the subject matter and execution are deeply disturbing, just as it should be.  I don't care how jaded you are, seeing little kids being taught to shoot rifles at racist cutouts in the middle of a White Supremacist training camp is upsetting on a trillion levels, not to mention when Gary's Kindergarten-aged daughter says "We're the good guys.  One day we're gonna kill all the dirty niggers and the Jews and everything's gonna be neat."  The mark of good acting in these kinds of films is if the actors can say horrifying lines like not only without flinching but with such banality as if they say it each Sunday to their town's pastor.  Winger and Berenger both pull off their not-so-dual roles expertly, Berenger's performance being especially important as he comes across both as a determined killer and a decently charming guy and good father, a concept that is impossible to fathom for most people, the film's FBI included.  Winger exudes a lot of internal strength and integrity throughout, something that makes her gradual emotional destruction hurt even more, and the excellent supporting cast, including Ted Levine, John Mahoney and David Clennon, play their tunes with timing and style.  Unlike much of Joe Eszterhas's work Betrayed has an overabundance of subtle characterization, quiet moments and raw truth, aspects that have aged considerably well in the nearly 30 years since the film's release.  The director, Costa-Gavras, might be familiar to those with an eye on international cinema as he directed the smash-hit political thriller Z as well as the smack-in-the-face gripping The Confession, and this film shows him staying true to his roots inside a Hollywood framework.  His eye is expansive and swift, the camera neither lagging behind the action or distracting with flash, and features some exceptional magic-hour photography in the Great Plains.  His patience and knack for building momentum on simple moments result in some lovely small moments, such as a scene early in the film where Cathy watches Gary chew out some other farmers.  It's the first time Gary shows his true, clear-eyed hostility and the shot is Cathy's perspective, focusing on the back of Gary's head - a no-no in traditional filmmaking but a fine detail here.  The only thing that doesn't hold up anymore is the music, synth-'n'-country-heavy and too often weakening the impact (a problem not shared by the near-contemporaneous synth score to Mississippi Burning), as well as some usual plot dubiousness that comes with any undercover operative story, but the class production more than makes up for it.  Why did the slow dissolve cut go out of style again?  For that matter, why doesn't anybody remember that the '80's had just as many great dramas as comedies and horror films?

Betrayed didn't get the best reviews when it came out, nor the most viewers, and Costa-Gavras's Hollywood career would flame out a few years later with the colossal flop that was Mad City.  It didn't really turn around on video, either, and the slew of underwhelming promotional art show that its distributor, MGM, has never had a clue as to how to market it.  I can understand why some people wouldn't like it simply for the idea that the protagonist finds herself unable to completely side against such repugnant antagonists, but that impossible situation is part of what makes great drama and it's a heart-wrenching way to confront how even the most philosophically repulsive people are still people.  We need more films that show sympathetic people who've painted themselves into philosophically and emotionally impossible corners, not only in spite of the fact that these movies aren't exactly crowd-pleasers but precisely because of their difficult provocation of thought.  Berenger went on the record years later and admitted that it's his favorite movie, a move that might come across as hideously self-important as he starred in the thing but rung true to me, especially as he defended the film by saying "It was exactly what it was meant to be."  Like it or not, you can't deny that Betrayed thrusts the viewer into the heart of the ugliest side of American identity as intelligently and empathetically as anyone could expect, and I for one appreciate the effort.

~PNK

In the Eye of the Robot War - AUTOMATONS (2006)

I don't think anybody is going to take me to task if I declare this January one of the worst months in a long time for losing major figures in film.  The very first day we lost legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, a longtime collaborator of Robert Altman and Michael Cimino, and then in quick succession we were hit with the big news of David Bowie and Alan Rickman dying, both 69 and dead from cancers that were kept secret, and the death of yet another beloved British actor, Brian Bedford, the voice of Disney's Robin Hood.  What was lost in all that shuffle was the passing of 89-year-old Lawrence Rory Guy, better known by his stage name Angus Scrimm.  Much like fellow Brit William Henry Pratt, Scrimm was a tall, imposing character actor who didn't get their break until well into middle age, in Pratt's case under the stage name Boris Karloff.  Scrimm's first role was in L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson's first film, the Roger Corman-produced Sweet Kill (1972, aka The Arousers) when he was in his mid-40's, but his best-remembered role came in '79 in Don Coscarelli's classic Phantasm as the Tall Man.  His character was the owner of a funeral home and was at the center of mysterious and evil doings, including being able to carry a full coffin by himself and unleashing a strange weapon on people - a silver ball that flew into people's faces and drilled a hole into their skull, draining their blood.  Scrimm's 6'4'' stature, grim face and doomy voice made for a heck of a horror villain on their own, much less one at the heart of an intergalactic human trafficking plot:

While Scrimm never found mainstream success, aside from a recurring side character on Alias, he was beloved by Horror fans and filmmakers and popped up in various franchises such as the Subspecies and Wishmaster series as well as the rest of the Phantasm movies.  He kept going well into his 80's, appearing in Glenn McQuaid's Burke and Hare-based comedy I Sell the Dead and Coscarelli's John Dies at the End, and eventually we'll see his final performance in the upcoming Phantasm: Ravager, a movie a lot of people have been waiting a heck of a long time for and hopefully a fitting end to Scrimm's career.  In the meantime now's as good a time as any for us to explore the lesser-known entries in his filmography, and my choice is a quirky independent post-apocalyptic film from 2006 called Automatons, a film as inherently interesting as the story of its inception.

It's director, James Felix McKenney, conceived the film due to a funny childhood misunderstanding.  When he was a little kid he was watching TV with an uncle and an old Sci-Fi movie was on featuring robots.  His uncle said it was like a lot of other movies, so McKenney thought for years that there was a genre of films with robots and monsters fighting each other, like cowboys and Indians, and was disappointed to find out that no such genre existed.  I'm pretty disappointed too having read that story, but McKenney went one step further and made a movie in that imaginary genre.  Despite being made in 2006 McKenney designed robots and special effects to match cheap '50's Sci-Fi flicks, using dinky, poorly detailed models in shoddy miniature sets, shot the film in black & white and confined most of the action to a single room equipped with TV screens.  The aesthetic was called "Robo-monstervision" and the film, produced by indie Horror icon Larry Fessenden, who co-starred in I Sell the Dead and helps out dozens of little Horror flicks, such as The House of the Devil, through his company Glass Eye Pix (and makes a cameo near the end), is akin to if Guy Maddin helmed a Terminator movie, an endearing slice of pessimism from the end of humanity as we know it.

In a lonely bunker, a Girl (Christine Spencer) keeps on guard, waiting for her inevitable plunge into the Robot War.  Her info comes from battlefield footage as well as video messages from a Scientist (Angus Scrimm) who foresaw the coming of the war but was powerless to stop it.  The Girl has harnessed some robots to help in her survival but has no tangible human companionship, leaving herself a sole force for good in a senseless, seemingly lost war.  The war itself is not between robots and humans but rather the last dregs of humanity itself, merely using robots as tools in their own demise, and the leader of the "enemy" taunts her through her TV screens.  As the body count rises outside the Girl finds herself among the last humans alive, and the choices she makes once the enemy reaches her door will determine the last day of what is left of humanity.

From the bleak, strobing opening credits to the total doom of the ending, Automatons is a brief, somber dreamscape of what might have happened if the world ended after being overtaken by Flash Gordon.  The film's most valuable attribute, the one that keeps it from total disposability, is its seriousness, an oddly noble goal when combined with the absurdity of its gimmick.  The retro-'50's conceit could have been overwhelmingly tedious, as a number of snarky indie movies have been in the past (*COUGH* Lost Skeleton of Cadavra *COUGH*) but McKenney manages to keep things sober and minimalistic, at times even static.  For example, the opening shot is a long take of a radar display showing a dot far from the center of the screen.  The next is a series of shots of a robot slowly retrieving an object and walking.  Then the radar screen shows up again with the dot closer to the center, and finally we see the robot reach a door.  This is done with simple, repetitive sounds, making the effect nearly hypnotic, showing a patience and sense of atmosphere sorely lacking from films like this, even more remarkable considering how cramped everything feels.  Everything, even landscape shots, is shot in closeup, and the grainy fullscreen footage only adds to the effect.  The low, stifled resolution was partially to replicate McKenney's experiences watching snow-covered bootlegs of old Doctor Who episodes on cruddy VHS tapes.  The robots themselves are as charmingly lame as they come, mostly cardboard trashcans with duct tube arms and legs and maybe a few rivets around the edges, though a couple of rolling plastic whatsits show up now and again.  

This combination of desolate B&W footage, droning industrial noise and static pacing is highly reminiscent of Eraserhead, though the closest parallel to Lynch to be had is his one-minute-long short Premonitions Following an Evil Deed, shot on an old Edison camera for the international anthology project Lumière and Company.  Another big comparison point is Shock! Shock! Shock! (1987), the absolute best '50's schlock nostalgia flick and a film I've wanted to talk about for a long time.  Shot on grainy, smeary Super 8 on the streets of Brooklyn, Shock! Shock! Shock! makes a mad, No Wave dash through hilarious spoofs on superheroes, gangsters, claymation, ancient Mayans, slasher movies and postpunk music, seeing far too little exposure by going straight to video under Rhino's home video label (the guys behind releasing MST3K on DVD before Shout! Factory took over their library).  On the other hand, Shock! Shock! Shock! didn't have Angus Scrimm, here a welcome balm to the grinding despair of the rest of the film, showing him as as intelligent and articulate as British actors get.  Shame all the dialogue is dubbed in post, though I gather that was part of the feel - it does newbie actor Christine Spencer no favors.  Neither do the absurdist kill scenes, complete with piss takes and chopped-off limbs, in the climax.  The whole thing feels a little long, too, though at 83 minutes you're not really losing much time.  These are minor quibbles, though, and the lo-fi existentialism of Automatons has a self-evident greatness that makes it more than worth your time, even in the face of our own extinction, voluntary or not.  And, as always, R.I.P. Angus Scrimm - let's raise a glass and hope you were able to carry your own coffin to the funeral.

~PNK

The Blair Witch Offspring, part 2 - ALTERED (2006)

Part 2 of this year's reviews of The Blair Witch Offspring focuses on the first movie that Eduardo Sanchez made after the unexpected success of The Blair Witch Project.  Much like our previous offspring Lovely Molly, Altered showed at some festivals before getting picked up by a major distributor who plopped it out on DVD with little fanfare (as was the case with every other Blair Witch Offspring).  While Blair Witch and Molly both relied on slowly unveiling mysterious supernatural presences, Altered rips the guts out of that concept and tells its buddies to get on their hunting gear.  Strap on some goggles, this is going to be messy.

In the wilds of Deep, South South, three good ol' boys, Cody (Not John Hawkes), Duke (Not Danny McBride), and Otis (Not Real-Life Steelworker From The Deer Hunter), are hunting unusual game.  Sporting modified weapons they go after something not quite animal but certainly not human, finally capturing it and bringing it to the fortified doorstep of Wyatt (Not I Ran Out Of Actors).  All of them are connected by this thing, connected by the alien race it comes from, connected by a history of abduction and death.  Wyatt has a particular connection to the alien, as his encounter was more drawn out than the others and left him with an organic, psychic communication device in his intestines, and despite having ripped it out years ago he still senses the presence of the aliens.  Nobody quite knows what to do with the wounded alien, and the E.T.-cidal wishes of Cody, whose brother was killed by the aliens long ago, aren't helping things.  Neither is the fact that the alien was able to hypnotize Wyatt's wife into nearly letting it go.  Or the local sheriff (the older police captain from The Cell) showing up investigating a "hostage situation".  Neither is the fact that Cody has gotten infected by an alien disease/parasite that starts eating away at his skin.

I was a bit worried about this flick before I first saw it, mostly because it was before I'd seen Lovely Molly and the only trailer I'd seen for it didn't show a single frame of real footage, leading me to believe that its distributors, Rogue Pictures, thought they had a stinker on their hands.  I was delighted to find that not only is the film really good but it wasn't at all a found footage movie, showing that Eduardo Sánchez was able to make the leap to real cameras and proper shot framing and narrative structure with aplomb.  The script here is credited entirely to Jamie Nash and it does a great job of showing the real weight these men have on their shoulders because of their experiences, as well as the terror of an enemy snooping on their planet to see if humans should be left alive.  While this is another movie filled with crass hillbillies arguing with each other the acting and dialogue is good enough that they come across as very real people with decades of comradery between them.  The effects are great, both the aliens and the copious amounts of gore (the aliens have a penchant for ripping out people's small intestines in order to attach the tracking devices).  Particularly impressive is what happens to Cody, as his affliction gradually eats away his flesh during the movie and his appearance during the climax is both impressive and haunting.  I'll admit that the alien design isn't anything I haven't seen before but it's very well executed for such a low-budget flick.  There's a lot of great cinematography on display, most notably the entrancingly clear night sky crammed with stars, an effect people only get to see when far away from society but in the context of story means that the characters are anything but alone.  If you've got a hankering for alien-based horror and a strong stomach hunt down Altered for a wild-'n'-vicious ride.  You weren't planning on keeping your small intestines, were you?

(See, if I'd seen this trailer first I might have seen this flick sooner, Rogue.)

~PNK

The Blair Witch Offspring, part 1 - LOVELY MOLLY (2011)

Anybody who's been subjected to my gaping maw flapping on about horror movies knows that I'm a huge fan of The Blair Witch Project, so much so that I bought a CD pitched as an alternative soundtrack to the film (which notably has no music) for a review without hesitation.  While luck might have played a significant role in the film's success I still think it's one of the best horror films of the last 20 years and it's still one of all-time favorites after more than a dozen viewings.  It's also a good example of a great film with two directors at the helm, first-timers Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, who each went on to have successful solo careers in low-budget genre cinema.  I've been trying to track down and watch all the movies each director separately made after Blair Witch in the hopes that they're worthwhile and the two I've seen, both directed by Sánchez, are very good and quite different from each other, and I'm reviewing both of them in the days preceding Halloween.  One is a puzzle and the other a battle, so let's start with the puzzle, 2011's Lovely Molly.

No production logo, no "Some Guy Presents", nothing - the film begins with a smash cut to home video footage of Molly (Gretchen Lodge) tearfully pleading to whoever might be watching about "it"'s actions, and then puts a knife to her throat.  She can't go through with it, but that's just for now.  The film flashes back to Molly's recent wedding, and then to Molly's new life in her family's large, old home with her husband Tim (Johnny Lewis).  Late one night their security alarm goes off and they find their front door opened, but nobody is found by the police.  Molly starts exploring the house with her camcorder, making her way into an old shack and prying some floorboards up to see what's underneath.  She finds a strange insignia or crest, showing two horse heads attached to a sword, and her private humming is met by unknown voices.  It's not the only secret the house holds, as Molly can't bear to stay in certain rooms, especially those with pictures and knickknacks of her troubled, recently deceased parents.  Molly's unease about her new living situation isn't helped by an unknown person rattling her back door so hard it makes a deafening noise, nor do her husband's frequent work-related absences and her crudbomb job as a mall custodian.  The disturbances escalate, sending Molly looking into closet to find walking nightmares and filming inside her neighbors' houses late at night, and Tim returns to find her naked and freezing cold, staring at nothing, saying "he's alive."  Molly's malaise turns physical as her skin takes on a clammy, dull color, she relapses into old drug habits, and someone has been following her, someone that sings to her and has hooves...someone she thought she'd never, ever see again.

If Lovely Molly is good at anything it's good at drawing the viewer into an increasing atmosphere of horrific recurrence - a return of old demons, personal and mythical, physical and habitual.  The script, cowritten by Sanchez and screenwriter Jamie Nash (who debuted with the insane Christmas-themed horror comedy Two Front Teeth in 2006), deepen the thematic well of the story by using deftly intertwining narrative devices, most fascinatingly Molly's drug dependence and her need to collect evidence and confessions on video.  Pretty much everybody's favorite scene from Blair Witch is the "confession" by Heather near the film's ending, her face mostly off camera and brimming with tears.  Lovely Molly isn't a found footage film at all but Sanchez understood the power of characters in a horror setting who feel a need to immortalize a moment or perceived truth on film, as well as the need to be filmed themselves.  What's brilliant about the camcorder footage in this film is that Molly is filming explicitly to prove what she thinks is going on to the world, but half of the footage is maddeningly inconclusive and the other half shows her in states where she's not really herself.  Her relapse to addiction and increasingly erratic behavior only feed into the unreliability of her own actions to exonerate herself and expose the true nature of whatever is threatening her, and while in another film this might come across as hackneyed the elliptical, almost dizzying pace keeps the interplay fresh and the incidents unnerving and unexpected.  Gretchen Lodge is another key to the film's success - even though this is her first film her performance is unhinged and deeply frightening.  Another strength of Blair Witch ported to the film is the use of small incidents and running symbols to spiderweb the supernatural into existence.  Everything about the Blair Witch was discovered in fragments and anecdotes, and the otherworldly being at the heart of Lovely Molly is revealed with such patience as to make its presence as evocative and ultimately overwhelming as possible.  The film also manages to make a case for handheld camerawork as a platform for visual beauty, capturing dust in beams of light and creating booming interplay with contrasting focuses.  And certainly not least is the piercing, behind-the-eardrum musical score by post-rock legends Tortoise, as well as the use of extremely high pitches that slip into your brain like metal slivers.

While I'm more than happy to sing Lovely Molly's praises I seem to be in a minority of people who really liked it, as it's sitting at a meager 5.3 stars on IMDB, though I'll admit that it does have small flaws, such as spotty acting and a collection of varyingly informative moments that might be too cryptic and unconventional for some viewers.  Even I'll admit that there were tidbits I don't get after watching the movie a second time for this review, but I feel that the unexplained and unexplainable have a surer place in horror than in any other genre and it'd be nice to get a bunch of fellow Molly viewers in a restaurant booth together so we can hash out theories over big plates of hash browns.  At the very least the film convinced me that the filmmakers knew exactly what was going on even if I didn't know, something all films like this must have before filming starts if they want to have any cohesion.  If you want something filled with creeping, mysterious dread this Halloween, pop in Lovely Molly by itself or as part 1 of a double feature with the similarly-themed and sorely underrated American remake of Silent House.  Or double feature it with our next foray into Eduardo Sánchez's nightmares...

~PNK

The Sewer Rocking the Boat - THE GHOULS (2003)

If you're like me you're a big fan of the Gyllenhaals (and pine for more movies with both Jake and Maggie, preferably playing siblings a la Donnie Darko) and shrieked with delight, as well as fear, at Jake's amazingly creepy turn as the petty-thief-turned-TV-news-stringer Louis Bloom in last year's brilliant Nightcrawler.  Arguably 2014's best mainstream film after Birdman, Nightcrawler did an unbelievable job introducing the world to the horrific possibilities of gathering lurid footage for local news outlets...or so the producers thought.  That's not a knock on Nightcrawler's quality, just a note that it wasn't the first movie to look at L.A. news stringers in a less than flattering light.  A much smaller film, The Ghouls, snuck out on video a decade earlier after modest festival circulation and never became well-known enough to be forgotten.  I would've never seen it if not for a handy positive review by Fred Adelman over at his indispensable genre film review site Critical Condition.  With only a few days left before Halloween I felt it a welcome obligation to get the reviews back up and running to spotlight a few horror flicks that needed more recognition, and The Ghouls is a sucker-punch way to get into the spirit.  While Nightcrawler drew its viewers into its creeps gradually and got a lot of unsettling material with great restraint, The Ghouls leaps right for the jugular and then sells it to the 6 A.M. block for easy ratings.

Eric Hayes (Timothy Muskatell) scratches out a living filming grisly crimes and their aftermaths for sale to local news outlets, and less than two minutes into the movie is found filming a man stab his naked girlfriend to death while their baby cries in the corner.  Almost everybody he knows despises him, including the producers he sells his tapes to and possibly even his girlfriend Sue (Tina Birchfield).  One night while stumbling to his car after a good boozing he sees a woman being dragged into an alley, and he runs to her with his camera expecting a juicy mugging or rape.  What he sees instead is a bunch of dirty, barely human beings eating her alive, and not only does he barely make it out unscathed but he had the misfortune of forgetting to put a tape into his camera.  Desperate to get evidence of urban cannibals on film, he promises big results to one of his news clients and decides to follow any lead he can to find his perps.  The only thing is, the only people willing to talk about them are scared to death and lead him into the sewers, and not even the news is ready for what he might find...

Shot on grainy digital video and drowning in unpalatable subject matter and visuals, The Ghouls is one of the bleakest and grimiest films I've ever seen about the dark side of media.  Eric Hayes is about as anti as a hero gets, more than willing to let people get attacked and even killed for a chance at profitable footage and lashing out at people who criticize him for it.  What's so fascinating is how the film makes you sympathize with him despite his obvious flaws, his curiosity and willingness to plunge into darkness to find out the truth about L.A.'s seediest underbelly making him compellingly human against a decidedly inhuman threat.  Let's be clear here - this film could easily be pitched as Nightcrawlers meets C.H.U.D. and in no way is that a bad thing, as it manages to synthesize the better themes of both films and carve out its own identity in the process.  You might be thinking that a 2003 movie shot on digital video, and exclusively at night, might be unpleasant to look at, but thankfully writer-director Chad Ferrin, has a fine eye for shot composition and remembered to bring some good lighting.  A lot of movies shot on video can't help but look like the director secretly shot his friends goofing off using a hidden camera in his glasses, but Ferrin manages to shoot The Ghouls so professionally that it's easy to forget you're watching a medium that wouldn't start looking really good for years.  Ferrin, a Troma graduate, managed to write a script that's both intelligent and engaging but also allows for the production to be as cheap and minimal as possible, as all its characters live and work in hovels and the actors probably wore their own clothes while shooting.  What he saved on sets and costumes he made up for in good gore effects and a good casting director, as with a film this cheap everybody needs to be pitch perfect right away and there's not a whiffed performance in the house.  Especially notable is Timothy Muskatell as Eric, an actor whose most mainstream role has been a supporting role in  Deadgirl yet he brings a real intelligence and heart to a role that desperately needs its empathetic qualities proven rather than just shown.  There's also an eerie-yet-minimal free-jazz-meets-tomandandy to heighten the caustic danger of the story, with most of the film letting the droning din of a nocturnal urban landscape immerse us in dread.  And then there's that soul-crushing last line.  I mean, damn.

With its graphic violence and depressing story, The Ghouls might look like a hard sell - don't let it be.  The smart script, solid direction, excellent acting and good pacing all make The Ghouls way more enjoyable than you might be expecting, crafting a minor horror classic out of limited means and stark realism.  Is it better than Nightcrawler?  No, but what recent movie is?  Is it better than C.H.U.D.I?  Well, I don't know, but C.H.U.D. wasn't exactly perfect, either (but was still way better than C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud).  You've got a little more time in your Halloween viewing block, don't you?  Here, I'll sweeten the deal - its distributor threw it up on YouTube in full for free.  How's that for grabbing your attention?

~PNK

The DVD age hears THE SWEET SOUND OF DEATH (1965)

There's a special class of film that has arisen in the DVD age, the movie that is only (currently) available as a special feature on another movie's DVD.  I'm not talking about double feature DVDs where both films are displayed prominently on the cover and are considered equals, or at least close in stature - I'm talking about when a whole feature film is listed in the special features of the DVD and not mentioned on the cover at all.  Something Weird did this all the time with their jam-packed, special edition DVDs, such as including J. G. "Pat" Patterson's The Electric Chair as a special feature on their Axe DVD.  Another notable case is the double-feature DVD of Nick Millard's Satan's Black Wedding and Criminally Insane featuring Criminally Insane 2 as a special feature, meaning it crammed three movies and other special features onto one disc (albeit three movies that don't exceed 65 minutes each).  While this practice can make it seem that the "bonus" movie isn't worth as much as the feature I understand its place as a way to release films that might not have sold on solo DVDs and I've been thankful that a lot of really rare movies have become available recently even if they've had to piggy-back on other movies, some of which I don't like.  Yes, occasionally the "B" movie surpasses the "A" movie, and such is the case with Troma's 2009 release of the "final cut" of The Hanging Woman, an obscure Paul Naschy movie from the early 70's.  That movie belongs to a fine class of 70's horror movies that featured zombies in some capacity but weren't necessarily zombie movies, as what we think of as a zombie movie was actually really uncommon before Dawn of the Dead.  A good example of this is The Child, a deliciously spooky 1977 flick that I featured in my Something Weird favorites roll-call.  In the case of The Hanging Woman (which can be seen in full here) had a lot going for it, such as 19th century witches and hunchbacks, but just wasn't cohesive enough for my tastes.  Luckily the DVD gave me a much better reason to pick it up - the first official US video release of The Sweet Sound of Death (La Llamada), a stylish and endearing Spanish ghost movie from the mid-60's.  The movie had once been available from the great Sinister Cinema but that ship sailed long ago, and my boot-of-a-boot wasn't cutting it, so I was super glad to find the movie available in a clean transfer on a real DVD and at the low price of just under $6.

Pablo and Dominique are just the cutest young couple you've ever seen, though Pablo is a bit puzzled at Dominique's weird habit of taking him to cemeteries and making oaths to keep in touch beyond the grave.  She leaves for Brittany to visit her folks, and Pablo thinks nothing of it...until he gets a spot of deafness out of the blue and then hears a loud explosion.  As it turns out Dominique's plane crashed and Pablo got a premonition of her death.  The weirder thing is that he gets a call from Dominique soon after saying that she's fine, but when Pablo questions the airline they insist that Dominique died in the crash.  She comes back to him to visit, but when the airline drops off an official list of the crash's casualties Dominique acquiesces and admits that she's actually dead, which Pablo naturally denies.  That, of course, is before he goes to see her family in a crumbling mansion in Brittany, after which Pablo may never see life and death the same way again.

One might think that they've heard plots like that before, and there's plenty of familiar stuff here (even the spots of deafness seemingly lifted from Carnival of Souls), but the goodness comes in the presentation.  Director Javier Seto loads on the class in ever shot, from the frosty Autumn exteriors to the wryly dated, jazz-inflected score, spooky photography and capable acting all around.  This is an old-fashioned horror tale with a 60's chicness, keeping the story straightforward and focusing on that classic, late-night-TV horror mood we all love.  The lighting and atmospherics when Pablo goes to the mansion are about as lovably old-school as it gets, with lots of blurry close-ups, spotlights from below people's faces and spookhouse theatrics.  The thing that puts The Sweet Sound of Death a cut above similar ghost movies is the steady, assured presentation of its materials, especially when it comes to Dominique's family and their dark secrets.  Everybody involved knows that you might have seen a movie like it before, so they don't waste your time - but they don't cheat anything, either.  It's a perfectly balanced programmer that doesn't need to show off, and it's always nice when those movies come around.

The Troma DVD is readily available at their online store, so don't fall for eBay and Amazon clowns who are asking $50 or more because it's "out of print".  For those who don't like paying money a newish YouTube channel uploaded it in full a couple months ago; the print isn't as clean as the Troma copy but a bit of dirt and fuzz is welcome with this kind of flick.  The Sweet Sound of Death is a programmer in the best way - dependable, professional and classy, perfect for a weeknight in with some popcorn and a root beer.  After a skull-slammer like Angst it's nice to take a breather, isn't it?

~PNK

Special Report - ANGST (1983)

Back when I first started seeking out obscure movies I read a lot of lists by fellow travelers, mostly through Amazon's defunct Listmania tool.  I'm not really sure why the site doesn't do that anymore, as it was a really convenient way to see what other people liked and see if it was for sale, and I made a few of them myself.  I also started a list of movies to see that would be constantly updated through the years, though when I started it I had a habit of putting tons of movies on the list without really absorbing what they were about and as a result.  One of those was Angst, an acutely obscure Austrian horror movie that I was extremely unlikely to see, as it dated from 1983 and had never been released on video in the US, and until very recently has nagged my mind as a missing link in my horror education.  This situation was remedied this past Saturday night when the great Grand Illusion Cinema screened the film, and as there's one more screening coming up this coming Saturday (June 20 at 9 pm) I feel the need to tell the world (of Seattle) about this unbelievable film in time for them to decide whether or not to see the film.  The screening is most likely in anticipation of the upcoming Blu-Ray and DVD release from Cult Epics, the company that did a great job resurrecting Death Bed: the Bed that Eats (yes, that's a real movie), this coming August 18th.  It will be a fully uncut and restored version of the film and the first time the movie will be available in the US in any form, and will most likely be seen as a high point in this year's home video lineup.  These options mean that it will be easier than ever before for people like you and me to see Angst, but don't say that I didn't warn you.

A young man (Erwin Leder) walks down a suburban street, comes up to a house, and shoots the old woman who answers the door, running away and into the hands of the authorities.  A psychologist narrator informs us of the man's long history of childhood disturbance, sadism and violent crimes, putting the man behind bars so much that nearly half of his life has been spent in jail.  Upon his release after the opening murder he goes to a local cafe and leers at two young women, then hails a cab driven by a different young woman.  He nearly strangles her with his shoelaces before she scares him out of her car and he runs terrified through the woods, not stopping until he reaches a stately but seemingly empty house.  He breaks in and finds that a mentally handicapped man in a wheelchair is in the house, and his sister and mother soon return from shopping.  Finally given a chance to act out his sadistic homicidal fantasies, the man throws himself at his new victims with unprecedented and horrifying results, and as he gets closer to realizing his sick dreams we realize he, and us, may never see things the same way again.

There have been many serial killer movies through the years, many of which are docudramas which reconstruct real killings in the hopes of answering some of life's toughest questions.  Most films of this type, such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Monster, Dahmer and Next Time I'll Aim for the Heart, try to put the viewer in to the head of the killers in order so they may get closer to understanding their crimes and inner souls.  While Angst isn't set up much differently the effect is so intense and terrifying that it might actually be the scariest serial killer movie I've ever seen.  The effect might be difficult to explain without seeing it, so keep in mind that while I'll do my best to describe how the film works to you you'll need to see the movie to get the real experience.  

You know how movies have a "default" camera angle?  It's usually at eye level, with the camera set up between 5 and 10 feet away from the subject which is put in the middle of the frame.  Angst has none of those.  From the first shot we know Angst is going to go a singular route in depicting the killings, as its the first shot to use the SnorriCam, a device that attaches the camera to a rig attached to the body of the person it's filming.  While the technology dates back to John Frankenheimer's Seconds and earlier, the first movie I saw it used extensively in was Darren Aronofsky's Pi, wherein the camera was fixed as to point directly at actor Sean Guillete in a straight-on angle as he walked down the street, the frame pitching and bowing with every step he took.  Angst takes this tech one step further by allowing it to swivel around the actor as if on a 360-degree metal rail and guided by the cameraman.  These shots never let actor Erwin Leder escape our gaze, his paranoia made physical as the camera can't help but circle and hound him like a wounded animal.  Almost every other shot is some kind of angled tracking shot, either from above, below or jammed into awkward corners, and never in my life have I seen tracking shots so intense, sweeping and frightening.  Imagine if you took a security camera and mounted it on a crane that could reach fifty feet in the air, then rolled it around at the speed of a coked-up RC car, and you'l get a feel for how much of this film looks.  Every shot is voyeuristic and viscerally unsettling, blowing the interiors and exteriors wide open and creating seemingly impossible shots, such as where the camera swings upside down and across in a trick that would make Amelie jealous.  Other shots drag the camera right behind people crawling up staircases, falling over while taped to doors and being thrown out of wheelchairs, each shot tied to the action so well that the audience feels every movement in their bones.  This film was made soon after the invention of Steadicam, a piece of technology used extensively by Stanley Kubrick in The Shining to create smooth, versatile tracking movements in extended time spans, but not only did Angst not have access to this tech the lack of those cameras actually makes the action even more unsettling.  The mounted tracking shots, such as those above and below people, are seemingly done with the crappiest dollies the filmmakers could find, making sure that the camera picks up every rock, piece of dirt and crack in whatever ground it's traversing, and the shuddering frame perfectly mirrors the killer's unstable perception of the world.  It's an astonishing cinematographic achievement that should be studied in film schools the world over, and that's something I don't say lightly.

 

Angst's unique SnorriCam sequences

All of that would have been amazing on its own but what really completes Angst is the central performance by Erwin Leder (his character is never named), an actor I was previously unfamiliar with but now wish he was never in any other films simply so this performance could remain a perfect, isolated artistic statement.  This is the most unstable, balls-to-the-wall serial killer performance I've ever seen, topping even Charlize Theron's stunning performance as Aileen Wuorinos in Monster in sheer catastrophic abandon.  Leder's gaunt, lanky build and over-large eyes give him the look of a skeleton dipped in latex, and never before have I been so worried someone would simply fly apart from overaction in every scene.  Not even Baird Stafford in Nightmares in a Damaged Brain was this out of control of his own actions.  The filmmakers don't shy away from the the physical taxation the man puts on himself, not only in his killings but even his attempts to relax, such as eating and stopping for breath, and he is often drenched in sweat and deathly pale.  And dear God, does he throw himself around a lot, lunging into people, doors, windows and the air itself as if breaking down the door between himself and a loved one trapped inside a burning building.  The other great performance, almost as essential as Leder's, is that of a wiener dog owned by the family he attacks.  It follows him around for the whole second half of the movie, its presence a ticking time bomb as we already know his history with animal cruelty, and each second that passes with the dog in his presence is another twist of the thumbscrew.  And finally there's the droning, minimalist synthesizer score by German electronica God Klaus Schulze, at times slightly dated but nonetheless engulfing the film in a horripilative gauze that removes any possibility of exit for the viewer, forcing them to run alongside Leder's actions, never stopping but simply observing an awful truth.

I sometimes wonder why I love horror films so much, and specifically why I would want to watch a movie like Angst, one that seems transgressive every time it is described in words.  It certainly isn't the most violent, sadistic or disturbing film I've seen, but it is one of the most brutally scary films I've seen from any genre and era.  Who was the audience supposed to be for a movie like this, and what would that audience have been expecting?  Nobody could have anticipated this, and many viewers might have found themselves running out of the theater in terror or disgust.  The answer is that the film is for everyone, because its questions go the heart of how we define ourselves as human beings and members of society.  I talked before about how we use movies about the vilest people who ever lived as an extreme comparison to our own actions, and that peering into the darkest abyss of humanity is a necessity if society wants to achieve real results in its desire for self-improvement.  We have to know why people like Angst's young man do what they do even if an exact answer is impossible to attain.  Nobody is going to try to trick you into thinking a film like Schindler's List is any less disturbing than it actually is, because the act of watching the film is one way to understand one of the most horrifying episodes in human history. 

 This kind of cinematic experience had one of its most unusual and effective realizations in Alan Clarke's Elephant, one of the most potent calls for peace ever put to film.  A short film made for Northern Irish television, the film shows a series of killings committed without explanation or commentary, all done by anonymous gunmen with seemingly no motivation or allegiance.  Each murder begins by following the assassin in a long, walking tracking shot, showing the man shoot his victim, let him walk away, and then show the dead body in a static shot that lasts several seconds.  This happens 18 times with no music and almost no dialogue.  This oppressively repetitive presentation is a brilliant illustration of what the Troubles looked like to the rest of the world - a bunch of people who are totally indistinguishable from one another but murdered each other so regularly and with such poor motivation that any kind of political message was totally squandered in the face of a mounting pile of dead bodies.  Some critics felt watching the seemingly endless parade of senseless murders so unbearable that they wanted to yell "Stop!" at their TV screens, and that effect is precisely the point.  That kind of conflict simply cannot be allowed to continue, and we feel that need for peace in our gut.  We simply can't let serial killers exist, and the fact society keeps producing them and often fails to capture them is a deeply unsettling reality that we have no solution for.  Watching Angst I realized that all horror comes from things that are unacceptable to our understanding of reality, that impossibility, or desire for impossibility, exceeding mere fright.  In that sense all horror subjects can be put into two categories: things that can't exist (the supernatural) and things that shouldn't exist (human evil).  Angst is the most intense and direct attempt to ask the unanswerable questions of serial murder, the one thing that more than any other thing shouldn't exist, throwing the viewer into the unimaginable so forcefully and completely that nothing can let them escape.  There's one more chance for my Seattle area readers to see it on the big screen, so if you dare to take this suspense masterpiece head on the door is wide open.  I'll never come to regret taking the plunge but I can't guarantee you won't.  Watch at your own risk.

~PNK