Tulpa (2012): Number 4 in a Series of Reviews of Neo-Giallo Films

While it was originally my intention to try and make an overarching examination of the multi country interpretation of the Giallo with this little series of reviews, I have discovered that the majority of Neo-Giallo films are still being produced in Italy rather than elsewhere.  That is not to say, of course, that filmmakers are not trying to make Giallo's so much as it is to say that there are more of them trying to do it in Italy then everywhere else.  So I'm back in Italy with the Dardano Sachetti co-penned Tulpa - Perdizioni Mortali.

Opening with an erotic discourse in the world of bondage play, Tulpa takes no time in getting to the mean spirited murder that has characterized much of Sachetti's work over the years.  The story follows Lisa, who works for an international trading firm.  She's good at her job and obviously has the favor of her boss, much to her co-worker's distaste, but she is driven by a hunger to a secret club hidden in a parking garage where she engages in erotic adventure with other club members.  Not as classy as the club in Eyes Wide Shut, but functional and effective.  The only problem is that someone is killing off members of the club that Lisa in particular has come into contact with.  Couple that with the regular stress from work and Lisa quickly finds herself being driven toward a nervous breakdown.

Sachetti is most famous for his work with iconic gore master Lucio Fulci, co-writing or embellishing many of the late auteur's greatest films, and his mark is quite evident here.  The opening scene contains a murder scene so mean spirited that it gives The New York Ripper's nipple slicing scene a run for it's money.  Couple that with it's somewhat typical view of "sexual deviancy" and presto!  Giallo a Italia.  That is not to say that film doesn't work, but it does unfortunately succumb to many of the more disappointing stereotypes of the genre.

The lighting of the film is bathed in shadows, evoking a sense of film noir and danger at every corner.  Juxtaposed with the club being washed in deep red, a not so subtle foreshadowing, Tulpa definitely feels like a true Giallo a la Fulci, only missing out in the zoom lens department.  The shots are all composed well to maintain the air of fear and dread as the killer stalks and kills their victims.  I found myself delighted to see that the wardrobe of the killer was a clear nod to the faceless fedora and trench coat wearing killers of Blood and Black Lace and other early entries to the genre.

While it's not my favorite of what I've seen so far, it's not a bad entry into the canon by any means, it's just not particularly outstanding either.  Though it's better than Blackaria, even with Sachetti attached on the script, Tulpa is still a little too straight forward in it's approach to mark it above other films of the genre.  Worth a watch, but outside of the opening scene, there isn't too much replay value.

Blackaria (2010): Number 3 in a Series of Reviews of Neo-Giallo Films

If I've learned anything from my forays into exploitation cinema it is a simple fact that along the way to those nuggets of gold, I'm going to come across a lot of garbage.  That is not to say that some of the trash doesn't have it's moments, but on the whole, a bad film is still a bad film.  Among the incredible amount of Giallo films there are quite a number of film that fall short.  It makes sense then that among the resurgence of the genre there will be a number of entries that fail to hit the mark.  Unfortunately that is the case of Francois Gaillard and Christophe Robin's Blackaria.

The plot is centered on Angela, who is having strangely erotic and violent dreams about her neighbor Anna Maria.  After hearing strange noises from Anna Maria's apartment, Angela goes to check on her, only to find Anna Maria dead.  Accidentally smashing Anna Maria's crystal ball reveals that glass has an actual power, allowing Angela to see an incredibly violent future in which she is murdered by Anna Maria's killer, a deranged Woman in Red.

Does this sound convoluted enough yet?  That's okay, really, because some of the best Gialli have similarly convoluted plots that come together in a spectacular fashion by the close of the film.  The bad news is that Blackaria is amateurish at best and more focused on lighting and gore than acting, writing, and plot.  While we're lead to believe the story is primarily about Angela, the focus inexplicably shifts to that of the Woman in Red who goes on a murderous rampage after failing to find Angela at her apartment.  The attention is so much more focused to this section than the rest of the movie, leading one to believe that the beginning and end were added to book end the middle and give it an actual feature length run time.

That said, the lighting and gore effects are definitely the highlight of the film, recalling Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper.  The bad news is that it isn't inventive enough to distract from Clara Vallet's Angela and most of the other cast's atrociously blank acting.  The only actor who really feels believable is Aurelie Godefroy as the psychopathic murderer in red, who's visage is incredibly reminiscent of Clara Calamai in Dario Argento's Deep Red.

Another major issue is the camera.  Good Gialli are known for an almost hyper stylized use of the camera and while Blackaria certainly tries, it doesn't quite succeed.  Shot in some sort of digital format (which is not uncommon in low budget film making) it looks much like an 80s TV movie with a soft lens filter on every single shot.  At first I thought, from the opening, that this was to create a hallucinogenic dreamlike look, which made sense assuming that it would eventually shift visually.  This was not the case.  Instead, there is a soft look to every single shot which further marks the film in the realms of amateur.  The score, a strange sounding 80s synth score, has trouble fitting in the body of the story, but worked as well as could be expected most of the time.

On the whole, Blackaria means well, but could probably do with a better budget or at least better actors and a more focused story.  For the Giallo obsessed and the gore hounds, but probably not for many others. 

Masks (2011): Number 2 in a Series of Reviews of Neo-Giallo Films

Where does one draw the line between inspiration and theft?  Better yet, where does one perceive said line?  If you're a film goer you have probably heard every opinion in the world about Quentin Tarantino, between people calling him a thieving hack, or a tributary genius.  Personally, I find it peculiar that so much attention is focused on anyone's originality, or lack thereof, in an industry that is chiefly focused on getting money out of your pocket by way of entertaining you.  I'll grant the fact that some films are such obvious ripoffs that they may as well be "theme porn," but I can't really fault anyone for taking their inspiration and pushing it as far as they can go.  Masks, a German Neo-Giallo, has been described as a Suspiria ripoff by commentators on the imdb boards, but I think that's far too simple of a dismissal of a film who's third act literally punches the viewer right in the gut.

While the focus of this is not about comparison, there are a few that need to be addressed so we can get down to business.  Like Suspiria, Masks is about a female protagonist who enrolls at a strange Academy in the countryside.  Transpose Dance to Drama and voila!  Aside from a similar use to theatrical lighting in certain segments, this is the only real similarity to Dario Argento's supernatural horror story.  The lead of the story, Stella (debut performance by Susan Ermich), goes to the Matteusz Gdula School after rejection from almost every other acting Academy in town.  Though clunky at first, the teacher's see a spark in here and accept her to the school.  Unfortunately, the school, and Gdula's method, have a dark and unsettling past.  Eager to become a great actress, Stella is drawn into the darkness like a moth to the flame, with some rather unsettling consequences.

This film, is a Giallo through and through.  The acting, while not bad, isn't the greatest thing on Earth, but the characters and story are interesting enough to enjoy the more banal parts of the exposition until it gets to the delightfully fucked up meat that make up the second half of the film.  The title of the film only has one literal reference (though there is a masked killer in the story) and is linked metaphorically to Stella.  Everyone is wearing a mask shaped by their experiences and to truly break free of themselves and become their characters they need to strip this mask off.  The idea of being artistically reborn is even literally placed into the context of Gdula's acting method, which involves a cornucopia of strange and unsettling drills, including hallucinogenic drug use, hypnotic suggestion, physical abuse, and other torments to bring the pure emotions of fear and rage out of the actors.

Writer, Director, Editor Andreas Marschall knows his stuff, in this case, and employs many satisfying methods to fit Masks into the Giallo canon.  The thudding bass and piercing guitar driven score by Sebastian Levermann recalls Bruno Nicolai's intro theme to Sergio Martino's The Case Of The Scorpion's Tail.  The creeping camera and beautiful lighting of Sven Jakob also add to the atmosphere of impending dread.  The sound design could probably have used a bit more of a punch, but the other elements made up for it's lack, though I noticed a couple of familiar canned screams that almost made me burst out with laughter at their inappropriate placement.

At 112 minutes runtime, Masks is definitely more of a slow burn that, even when it gives itself away, packs a few surprises and a rather ambiguous, albeit, bloody finale that is worth the wait.

The Hideout (2007): Number 1 of a Series of Reviews of Neo-Giallo Films.

As I have displayed in a few reviews here; I am an unabashed fan of the Giallo film genre.  In the past I would call it a guilty pleasure because, in fact, there are many things about the genre as a whole to feel guilty about.  Frequently, the films in the genre involve fetishism of extreme violence towards women, earning many of them the label of misogynist and to be fair this descriptor is quite well deserved, but to write off the entire genre because of the more truly exploitative aspects of 50% of the films isn't really quite fair.  There are films in the genre that stand quite well upon their own legs without adopting the more mean spirited violent approach, focusing more on the mystery/thriller aspect, without the fetishistic violence.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the genre, which all but died out in the 90s, as the filmmakers who grew up loving these strange little murder mysteries have adapted the form into something new while maintaining many of the genre's tropes.  What makes The Hideout (Il Nascondiglio) interesting, in this context, is that it is directed by a veteran of the genre, Pupi Avati, who's The House With Laughing Windows is considered among the greats of the mid 70s Giallo heyday.

The film starts out in the 1950s at a boarding house in Davenport, Minnesota.  We learn of a dilemma faced by two girls at the hands of the Nuns who run the house before we are abruptly brought to the present day and the perspective shifts.  The film is now firmly centered on Francesca (played with anxious curiosity by Laura Morante) who has recently been discharged from a psychiatric facility and plans to get back on her feet by opening an Italian Restaurant in Davenport.  The kicker is that the house she rents to stage the restaurant is also the house from the beginning of the film and that a bizarre murder that took place 50 years ago.  Intrigued by the hushed manner amongst the locals, she delves into the mystery only to find that what she begins to unravel will not only test her resolve, but her sanity.

The visual atmosphere of the film is the centerpiece here.  The large Gothic looking house has a looming presence, even in the daylight, and in the darkness it's just downright creepy.  Francesca's anxieties are well amplified by the shadowy Gothic lighting and set design of the house's oppressiveness.  The story itself, is slightly convoluted, though not in an unnecessary way, as a mystery is never supposed to be completely straightforward.  We're not quite sure who is part of the presumed conspiracy and who is not until the last 10 minutes of the film, which I thought worked to the film's advantage.  The pacing is deliberately slow to enhance this feeling and while it's not always successful in tension building, the successes outweigh the failures.

The ending, while I hesitate to use the word "twist," was indeed twist-ed and left me feeling quite shaken.  Thought it was generally ravaged by critics upon its release, The Hideout is well worth a watch to the Giallo aficionado, and certainly has more substance than anything I've seen coming out of Hollywood in the last few years.

Unfortunately there is no trailer of the English dubbed version, nor is their a trailer with subtitles available.

Violence, Bloody Violence: "The World of Kanako"

Last year at Beyond Fest, the rapidly steam building genre festival at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, a film called The World of Kanako was screened.  At the time I had tried to watch it, I had drank just one too many beers and the rapid cutting of the opening sequences gave me just enough motion sickness feeling that I had to walk out and curse my stupidity for drinking that last beer.  So imagine my lack of surprise that the film still hasn't received US distribution.  I then turned to my usual alternative methods of finding the film.  Lo and behold, there is a Hong Kong DVD release with English Subtitles!  So let's get to it shall we?

Kanako is a story about a mentally unhinged, violent, ex-cop Akikazu Fujishima (veteran actor Koji Yakusho) who is asked by his estranged wife to find their daughter, Kanako, who has gone missing 5 days ago.  The story unfolds in a time jumping fashion where we slowly get closer and closer to the truth of Kanako's world; a world where innocence is lost and violence, secrets, and lies are the common core.

This film is, to put it simply, intense.  From the beginning with it's fast paced editing and it's chronological jumping we know that we're about to dive into a perversely dark world and the main question immediately becomes, who is the worst monster?  In that sense, the movie is incredibly mean spirited, with most of the main cast of characters being overly cruel and at times incredibly sadistic.  But there's something arresting about this cruel world and its inhabitants.

In an almost voyeuristic fashion the audience is pulled into the story and it's hard to look away, no matter how disturbing the scene may be.  In this way, the film is an almost candid look at the nature of violence in a society that tends to hide behind the veil of politeness.  The brashly violent Akikazu, in that way, is the perfect antidote for the otherwise passively scheming group of people he encounters.

The film features some very slick direction, camera work, and editing, but it is definitely not for the feint of heart.  It is unrelenting in it's violence, which is portrayed in almost every gamete, from physical to mental.  Characters are beaten savagely, murdered, raped, you name it, the film has pretty much got it.  In that way it's almost a testament to the violence and corruption that occurs in every level of society, from the police force, the Yakuza, to the school yard and behind the closed doors of one's home.  The film's original title is Kawaki which literally means thirst.  Given the style of the film, this is an apt title, as each character seems to go through the story driven by an unquenchable thirst, be it for answers, for love, or for retribution.  Worth a watch, but it might not land many repeat viewings for most.

A travers la foret (Through The Forest)

Multi-genre films are difficult to pull off and as a result there are only a few directors I can name off the tip of my tongue that do/did a good job of it.  The main one, of course, is Andrei Tarkovsky, who had an ability to meld human drama with surreal dream theory, science fiction, and near occult horror, in a way that made his films transcendent and beautiful.  Another such director with this ability, albeit in a much more pulpy way, is Sion Sono.  Love Exposure: Is it a horror film? Is it a domestic drama?  Is it a romance film?  It's all three, and you can't take your eyes off of it.  Recently I discovered the work of Jean-Paul Civeyrac via happenstance and decided to take a dive in with Á travers la forêt, or Through The Forest.

This may be the shortest synopsis I ever give because I wouldn't be able to convey what the film is about without giving the entire story away.  It's a short film, a little over 1 hour in length, about Armelle (played by Camille Berthomier aka Jehny Beth), a girl who is stricken with grief over the death of her boyfriend Renaud, and how her inability to cope with this reality pushes her to attempt extra-spiritual ways to get back into his arms.

This film blends genre very well.  What could have simply been a psychological study of grief is mixed in a surreal way to pose theories about the possibilities of life after death.  The cinematographic design of the film is superb, breaking the story down into 9 scenes that are each filmed in a single take.  They also chose to keep the camera at a mid shot, never showing us a full head to toe of any of the actors, going so far as to keep them in extreme close ups as they move around the set pieces of apartments, coffee shops, and the outside world.  In this way the performances of the actors are enhanced.  We are with them, specifically Armelle; we feel her every emotion.

This may be cutting away from the critical analysis a little bit, but I discovered this film because of my recent obsession with a band called Savages.  Camille Berthomier, under the alias Jehny Beth, is the vocalist for this group and seeing the film with that in mind reminded me of the complexity of the human soul.  Our ability to convey so much thought and emotion into different forms of expression is simply astounding.  We make all the mistakes and suffer all the triumphs and tragedies that life has to offer, attempting to then share these experiences in a meaningful way in order to preserve the legacy of our time on this Earth.  It is films like this that capture all the essences of this inexplicable feeling.

Surprisingly, in an age where there are countless streaming subscriber services, Civeyrac's films appear to be damn impossible to get at.  You can find this one with a small collection of his films in a UK box set with english subtitles, but that's pretty much it.  If you have the scratch, I highly recommend doing so, especially if you're looking for something outside the typical Hollywood fair.

Nightcrawler

There is something about the New Hollywood movement in the 70s that speaks to me more so than any other period of American Film History (except maybe the late 40s to 50s).  It was an era where the European Art House sensibility was met with a thoroughly American grit, unfortunately abandoned for the blockbuster action pieces near the end of the decade.  Lately, it is a period that is fondly getting referenced both stylistically and satirically in modern cinema.  Sometimes lauded, sometimes lampooned, there is something indelible about it that pervades (in a good way) some of the better, if not more cult like, films of the recent year.  One such film is veteran screen writer Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler.

Set in modern day Los Angeles, the film is a character piece about a sociopath anti-hero Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal in one of his best screen performances to date) who becomes attracted to the paparazzi world of accident and crime news video.  Armed with a camera, police scanner, and a near psychotic drive to get the grizzliest shot we watch Louis slowly become more and more engrossed in this world, stopping at nothing to top the competition in complete disregard of morals or professional ethics.

The film just reeks of the 70s.  You have your Anti-hero, you have your gritty subject matter, you have the landscape of Los Angeles, you have a high octane chase sequence, one of the best filmed sequences SINCE the 70s if I might add (I do NOT count The Fast and the Furious series), and you have an improbable ending that somehow makes complete sense with one wickedly dark sense of humor.  It's hard to believe that a film of this caliber could be scorned so much by the critics and generally ignored by the public following it's success at the Toronto Film Festival, but that's probably because they market the character completely different from how he is portrayed.

The cinematography is excellent.  I don't know what else to say about it.  This is a film that lovingly dotes on the camera and all of the surrounding concepts of it's use to create an artful image, regardless of the subject matter.  Every frame fits together so well, acting as the toughest imaginable thread for the canvas that makes up the film.  Gyllenhaal, who has taken a step away from mainstream Hollywood films in favor of the more interesting characters provided in the indies, is at the top of his game here.  Award ceremonies can kiss my ass, this is just damn fine acting and commitment to the character.  Not once do you see Jake.  You only see Lou.  Riz Ahmed is a wonderful foil as the manipulated "employee" of Louis, providing the voice of reason that often falls on deaf ears.  Toss in wonderful supporting performances from Bill Paxton and Rene Russo and you've got one hell of a movie.

Well paced, well written, well acted.  It's very hard to find anything wrong with this film.  However, I can see how certain couch potato, meat head, beer chugging, action fans probably would call it the worst waste of time of their lives, but these are also the same people that I secretly wish would choke on their beer and chicken wings while watching the next big game, thus ridding the rest of culture of their impudent shrills of discontent in all things seeking to be something other than vapid, baseless, bullshit masquerading as "film."  Go watch the damn movie.