The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[domino harvey]

Well, there's no way I'm not watching a movie called 976-EVIL

[knives]

Fearnet has it on demand right now (at least through Cox). It's not great cinema, but it's fun.

[colinr0380]

How does it compare to another telephone-titled horror film, Transylvania 6-5000?

I've just seen your post about Popcorn domino, where you talk about the cover for the film being the best thing about it. I wonder if the makers of that film were riffing off the Society poster?

[domino harvey]

How does it compare to another telephone-titled horror film, Transylvania 6-5000?

God, that's a great title too

And man, the poster plus Society's tagline being a play on Pieces' definitely makes me want to bump it up in the To Watch queue

[domino harvey]

Isabel (Paul Almond 1968) Gorgeous tone exercise that creates an unsettling rhythm in exploring the process of a young woman, Geneviève Bujold, returning back to her small town home after her mother dies. What happens to her once she's acclimated back into the ways she sought to escape in the big city is debatable, though. Isabel, written/produced/directed by Bujold's then-husband, is a stylistically bold film, wherein an alternating, often disorienting editing style is coupled with a hypnotic sound design reliant on clever bridging and carefully composed silences to produce a steady disquiet and unease as the film progresses. Isabel unfolds in the dying days of winter, when intermittent freezing rain does little to wash away the soiled snow still covering the ground. It's an environment as dreary and miserable as the scenario Bujold finds herself in.

The film is unabashedly indebted to Repulsion, with a sexually-troubled young heroine suffering a disastrous mental break, but the sexual repression here is more subtly painted-- and more troubling. Take the film's single greatest sequence, in which Bujold, holed up in her attic-adjacent bedroom, slowly begins the process of masturbation, focusing entirely on her needs as reflected through a make-up mirror. As she moves through the disrobing and light touching, she continues to be drawn between her image and the open attic door, wherein the violent relics of WWI that defined her grandfather are stored. There is talk of the house being haunted. Who is she performing this ritual for, exactly? And more disturbing in its implications, why? What does it say about how others interact with her that her own image instigates her uncontrollable arousal?

This paragraph concerns the ending of the film, however obliquely. I'm not sure this is the kind of film that can be spoiled by addressing the rather fluid issues the film raises, but fair warning

Isabel is deeply concerned with the horrors male sexuality presents to a comely young woman like Bujold in such an isolated town. Almond does such a good job selling the audience on the possibility of a spectral threat using the bare minimum of screentime necessary to distract from the more corporeal sexual threat which emerges. But the film isn't so simple as to devolve into rote reductive sexual politics ("Every Man Will Rape You," &c), because the resolution of the sexual danger implies an ingrained and willing desire for heterosexual incestuousness on the part of a character who had previously distanced herself from heterosexual relationships entirely as a coping mechanism for the behaviors of men in her life. The destruction of Bujold's illusory relationship in the big city coupled with the heightened backslide the small town life affords her leads to a regression into mental unbalance and a willing belief in the supernatural. I say this as though the shadowy figures were her imagination, yet as the light seems to imply in her final encounter in the film, are they though? What exactly is Bujold submitting to in the final scene? Isabel is a film that finds beauty in the possibility of mental unbalances and psychosexual disasters that can only be glimpsed and acknowledged peripherally-- and as such, it is a film that is one with its protagonist.

(Isabel is not out on DVD but there is a very good VHS rip up on That Site Which Shall Not Be Mentioned. If you cannot track this film down, PM me. It gets my strongest recommendation)

[knives]

Night of the Eagle
Super thanks to whoever spotlighted this. Playing like the source book to all of Polanski's thrillers this sweetly paced film with the set up of a much more famous sitcom is just tough as nails. Even before the spooky stuff officially starts (about half of the short run time is set up) there's a wonderful sense of unease that blankets the film like a dying cow. It's also rather interesting to contrast this with Drag Me to Hell which contains a similar sense of finality and story line of unfair punishment. I actually liked the Rami picture a lot, but this film has opened up a lot of the criticisms to me so that I can understand them better. The wanton cruelty is taken away so that the 'punished' lead takes a more active role in their destruction leaving everything on their hands. Night of the Eagle still has a few problems on this account (I'm sure some wiseacre could say the film hates skepticism), but these problems seem to be largely handled with care and consideration giving the lead every opportunity to regain control. So the finality doesn't come from the death sentence at the start of the misgivings, but because of who he is as a person and how he reacts to the fantastic. In the face of all of this though he's never the victim of some outside force which is what renders him so strong as a character even as he proves himself weak as a person as the movie marches on.

[domino harvey]

Et mourir de plaisir / Blood and Roses (Roger Vadim 1960) --Dylan Spotlight-- Slight but enjoyable French vampire film that does the usual linkage of vampirism and sexuality. Vadim's heroine, a cross between Monica Vitti and BB, looks the part of the young descendant of royal vampire blood who may or may not be a vampire herself. The feigned ambiguity gets points for trying, and the film is stylish without drawing a lot of attention to itself-- though to be fair, I quite liked its boldest scene involving the blood-soaked dress (which even made its way to the poster art in some territories).

the Man From Planet X (Edgar G Ulmer 1951) --Tarpilot Spotlight-- Hmm, I think maybe I'm just not the right audience for films like this. Ulmer comes close to capturing some compelling ideas, but ultimately the film offers only a surface-level scenario that plays out with a minimum of dramatic flourish.

SpoilerShow

Perhaps years of Twilight Zone/Outer Limits have spoiled me, but I thought the film's climax was leading towards a revelation that the homing beacon was warning the alien planet to stay away since we were so violent to the scout, thus when the violent humans destroyed the alien's ship and beacon, they'd be destroying themselves by removing the warning and inviting an invasion. That's a little bold for a film as straight-forward as this, I'll admit, but it would've been something.

Night of the Eagle / Burn Witch Burn (Sidney Hayers 1962) --Mr Sausage Spotlight-- Finally, a demon-conjuring film I can enjoy! This one works because it amps up the energy while, as knives astutely points out, mostly focusing its vitriol on those who "have it coming" (though that poor lovelorn student girl didn't fare too well, did she?) so as to give everything a sense of fairness, at least as far as such notions go, re: withcraft. I can't agree with Sausage's assertion that the film remains ambiguous on whether devilry really is afoot, but there's nothing wrong with buying into something like this in a film like this.

the Old Dark House (James Whale 1932) At the risk of ostracizing myself further, I must confess that Whale's two Frankenstein films do nothing for me, but this, now this I can throw superlatives at. A freewheeling, endlessly entertaining studio pic that lays out the hoary titular cliches without forgetting to have a good time, it's something too many horror films forget to be: FUN. This is the kind of pic that introduces one comedic distraction from the bland would-be central couple then twenty minutes later introduces another just because. It's a form of generosity the film does well-- Whale's pic gives the goods, delivers every twist above expected levels, and even finds time to be immensely good-natured towards the blossoming ragtag relationship between Melvyn Douglas' drunk and the chorus girl. What more could you ask for?

[Mr Sausage]

I can't agree with Sausage's assertion that the film remains ambiguous on whether devilry really is afoot, but there's nothing wrong with buying into something like this in a film like this.

I think it leaves just enough room for the possibility that everything is in the character's heads. Granted, not much room--it's definitely not on the same level of ambiguity as stuff like The Haunting or Cat People--but enough to come just short of being as unambiguously committed as, say, The Exorcist.

[knives]

SpoilerShow

I think the whole house burning thing kills off what very little sense of ambiguity the film had. Maybe at the start there was a question of reality, but as soon as we get that cut to that other woman with the doll that suggestion is shot in the foot. That said I don't think ambiguity is even amongst the five most compelling parts of the film.

[Mr Sausage]

Yesterday's viewings:

Black Magic (Ho Meng-Hua, 1975): Coming to this movie after having seen stuff like The Seventh Curse and Boxer's Omen has the unfortunate effect of making it seem stodgy and unimaginative. There are very few surprises here; even the titular magic boils down mostly to unimaginative rituals involving hanging chickens over houses, sticking pins in voodoo dolls, and pouring powder into someone's drink. The story is the kind of thing whose every twist you can accurately predict without having seen more than its set-up. A spoiled heiress wants our everyman hero so she hires a shaman to cook up a love potion. Cue centipede eating.

Black Magic 2 (Ho Meng-Hua, 1976): Wilder and more energetic than its predecessor, this one jettisons any attempt at a plot in favour of bizarre scenes of magic, ghosts, zombies, and some of the stranger rituals you'll ever come across. Did you know drinking breast milk keeps you eternally youthful? And that you can make an unpregnant woman lactate by concocting a potion from her burnt pubic hair? Notions of good and bad seem beside the point. Ridiculous and very entertaining.

Nadja (Michael Almereyda, 1994): A stylish, sometimes bordering on experimental reimagining of Dracula's Daughter. It frequently has that recognizable air of high-art indie pretension that it balances with a droll, dead-pan sense of humour and an awareness of its own absurdity. A more assured, balanced, and all-around better film than Almereyda's follow-up, Eternal. And yet it left me unmoved. I admired its stylishness without feeling captivated by it, and its characters are too caught up in their own ennui and melancholy to be interesting. Very much worth seeing and seeking out, even if it didn't do much for me.

[domino harvey]

Hey guys, house it going?

the House of Clocks (Lucio Fulci 1989) I will consent that the concept is actually clever: a murderous geriatric couple are inadvertently murdered by some young ne'er-do-wells, only for the murderers to find the deceased patriarch's vast collection of clocks now running backwards, bringing the recently departed back to life to seek vengeance on the criminals. Sometimes this rewinding of time makes a kind of sense: blood stains and evidence of the crimes evaporate, the girl gets stabbed in the hand and then later notices her wound is healed, &c. Sometimes it doesn't: another is shot in the stomach with a shotgun and is stuck with the gutwound for the picture. Sorry, should've been the girl if you wanted to be spared. If the film had bothered to care, to go through another couple rewrites to utilize its gimmick and make some self-aware scares, this could've been something special. As it is, this turns out to be a slightly more interesting than average horror flick where everyone's horrible so everyone deserves to die (even the old couple, as early in the film the woman fires a maid by impaling her in the crotch with a pole-- back from assaulting eyes to vees I see Fulci).

the House of Lost Souls (Umberto Lenzi 1989) Choice quote from early in the film: "The doctors gave you a reasonable explanation: They said that you have psychic powers, that you're a medium." Even better, said medium's powers are not a plot point in this haunted hotel no-one-gave-a-shit-athon involving ecology students getting pared down in an abandoned hotel by the spirits of those were already murdered there. For fans of little boys getting decapitated by clothes dryers and undead Buddhist monks in wheel chairs chasing after the living only.

the House of Witchcraft (Umberto Lenzi 1989) Weakest of the four House of Doom films not in quality but entertainment. Rote story of a man with recurring dreams in which a witch throws his decapitated head into a stewpot. Will said dream eventually come true at the end of the film?! Obviously there's not much to do in a film like this other than think about something else, so I spent some time wondering why witches, so powerful and full of ability to transform their appearance, so often still choose look like busted crones? Is there a sliding scale for attractivewitchness that operates on another plane than our concepts of beauty? If Satan's handing out favors to his brides, wouldn't you think he'd favor the slutty types, not the homely ones? Just a thought. Another thought: is the Grim Reaper, who ***SPOILER ALERT*** makes an appearance here aiding said witch, compatible with Satanism/witchery? Is this like an Occult Avengers? A stray observation: the same voice actor did work dubbing in all of these movies and he sounds distractingly like Eddie Albert. One last observation: I wish I'd written down some of the more tortuous lines in these films (the other Lenzi film had a good one about a cement wall having to be "at least 27 cm thick"), but I do recall with some clarity the teenaged character in this pic, who looks forty, talking about how he wishes his paramour had a poster of "The Madonna" (the singer) and about sneaking off to the city to see "The Pink Floyd."

the Sweet House of Horrors (Lucio Fulci 1989) Burglar is interrupted whilst burgling and decides to kill the tenants for no reason other than that it's a Fulci film-- why yes, the criminal does clomp out both of the woman's eyes with a meat tenderizer, thank you for asking! The unbelievably annoying kids of the dearly departed (who fucking blow chewing gum bubbles at their 'rents' funeral) are placed under new management and somehow escape being smothered while they sleep. Maybe because they're being guarded by their parents, who of course have been brought back to life as candle-flames thanx to the love of their kids (although "love" in this film really manifests itself as whiny dependency more than anything). The Godparents watching over the brats try to kick the spirits out, which only leads to wacky Disney moments like a Jeep being levitated three feet off the ground when they try to leave, or toys coming to life, or a hand being melted off.

[Cold Bishop]

Italian horror films from the late 80s? Are you a masochist or are you purposely scraping the bottom of the barrel?

[knives]

There's a healthy number of good Italian horrors from the period even if we discount Argento.

[domino harvey]

Italian horror films from the late 80s? Are you a masochist or are you purposely scraping the bottom of the barrel?

I watched the House of Clocks, liked it enough and discovered there were more films in the series-- and that's really where the whole plan went off the rails

[Cold Bishop]

Honestly, other than Soavi, the late 80s were a wasteland for Italian genre cinema, the beginning of the end from which it's never recovered.

[domino harvey]

But, if memory serves, every single victim in the House of Lost Souls is decapitated in a different way. I mean, that's at least devotion to an ideal

[Mr Sausage]

Jesus Christ, even I'm not crazy enough to watch late eighties Fulci and Lenzi tv films. Now I guess Domino's off to find The House with Laughing Windows.

[domino harvey]

I don't know enough about these kinds of movies to know what not to watch yet

[Mr Sausage]

At least you have an excuse. I'm about to sit down to watch five hours of Antonio Margheriti sci-fi films on TCM. I have no excuse (unless they improbably turn out to be good, then I'm a savvy tracker down of unknown gems!).

[mfunk9786]

[colinr0380]

I don't know enough about these kinds of movies to know what not to watch yet

In terms of Fulci it sounds very much as if The Sweet House of Horrors is still riffing off material previously worked through in Manhattan Baby, a nutty film which generally seems to be agreed to be the last watchable film from Fulci's golden horror age. Manhattan Baby itself is smooshing together the possessed child subgenre (it gives Exorcist II a run for its money in the crazy stakes! But is structured more like The Omen, especially in the deaths of the minor characters, especially the scene which takes place in the lift, which feels a steal from the lift scene in Damien: Omen II!) and cashing in on the brief revivial of Egyptian horror in the early 80s, of which the big mainstream example was probably the Mike Newell directed, Charlton Heston starring The Awakening.

While I have not seen it yet, perhaps the one late Fulci domino might be interested in would be Door Into Silence, which features John Savage in the lead role! The big film from Fulci's late period among horror fans is A Cat In The Brain (aka Nightmare Concert), a kind of self-reflexive horror film in which Fulci himself plays a stressed horror director getting murderous nightmares which begin to play out in real life. Charitable viewers sometimes describe it as a precursor to a film like Wes Craven's New Nightmare in the dangerous merging together of fantasies, fictional creations and 'reality'. But I wouldn't recommend it too much to domino since it could also just be taken as an excuse for Fulci to re-play the gory highlights of his previous films and revel in even less context for the carnage than he did the first time around!

[knives]

At least you have an excuse. I'm about to sit down to watch five hours of Antonio Margheriti sci-fi films on TCM. I have no excuse (unless they improbably turn out to be good, then I'm a savvy tracker down of unknown gems!).

Aw, I really love Margheriti even if his films wind up more nonsensical camp than anything else. He may be no Ricardo Freda, but he's still real fun.

[Mr Sausage]

At least you have an excuse. I'm about to sit down to watch five hours of Antonio Margheriti sci-fi films on TCM. I have no excuse (unless they improbably turn out to be good, then I'm a savvy tracker down of unknown gems!).

Aw, I really love Margheriti even if his films wind up more nonsensical camp than anything else. He may be no Ricardo Freda, but he's still real fun.

Well, in fairness I do actually like the Margheriti films I'd seen before today: Castle of Blood, Nude...You Die!, Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye. They're good Bava imitations. But there's no way stuff like The Wild, Wild Planet and Snow Devils was going to be good. And sure enough, these films are terrible. Yetis played by extras with their faces painted blue and white fur glued to their chests; special effects that look like cardboard models constructed by children; aliens made of green smoke; laser guns that just shoot sparks out the end; lines like, "you space fool you!".

[knives]

To be fair on the space guns (though this is probably accidental) that's probably how laser guns would work and the Star Wars/ Buck Rogers thing is far less realistic. Though I'm not sure if that's a good defense of a movie with the same plot as the '60s Batman film.

[domino harvey]

Thanks for the suggestions Colin. I wouldn't say I've liked any of Fulci's films outside of Zombi, but I still have some of his "big" titles in the unwatched pile and I'll keep an eye out (oh, I get it) for the ones you've suggested