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.