29 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: The Gift (2000)

When I was in High School and I started binging on Horror films I was given a copy of The Evil Dead.  Needless to say, that crazy film hooked me for life.  I've watched almost all of Sam Raimi's films since and have a lifelong obsession with Bruce Campbell thanks to it.  Among his post Army of Darkness films are a number of intrigues entries (as well as a few duds) but whatever you say about Raimi you can't say he doesn't have a certain way about his films that makes them uniquely his.  Even when he's treading more studio friendly ground there are unmistakable Raimi moments.  Whether it's that yellow '73 Oldsmobile, a shot of a full moon on a foggy night, or strangely slapstick humor in otherwise frightening situations, a Sam Raimi film is a Sam Raimi film.  That's what makes the Billy Bob Thornton/Tom Epperson penned The Gift so interesting.

Cate Blanchette stars as Annie, a single mother with a unique gift of extrasensory perception in a small southern town called Brixton.  She spends her days offering card readings to locals in exchange for donations of food and supplies.  After a woman goes missing, the investigators turn to Annie and her gift as a last result to try and find her.

While the plot synopsis of the film is relatively simple, what makes the gift so intriguing is the sense of Southern Gothic mixed with Raimi's stylistic elements.  A good deal of the script is spent getting to know the characters who, as people in small towns  are, have a good deal of dark secrets under their well meaning mannerisms.  Complex issues of abuse and mental disturbance abound on the periphery but all of the sub plots combine toward the conclusion making for a truly complete story.  Giovanni Ribisi shines particularly as Buddy, the local mechanic who suffers from serious mental trauma surrounding his father.

One can really feel the small town aesthetic attributable to both Raimi and Thornton's youth.  I would almost be so bold as to call it a spiritual sibling to Thornton's Sling Blade if in setting alone.  Regardless of the large star ridden ensemble cast there is a truthfulness to the characters that reads marvelously.  I found myself stunned by how much I enjoyed actors that I normally don't think much of, like Keanu Reeves and Katie Holmes.  Reeves as a truly despicable wife abusing redneck was fascinating to watch and the amount of animosity that he instills is perfect to the character.  All in all, it fits well thematically as a follow up to A Simple Plan (which starred Thornton), in it's exploration of the darkness inherent in all people.  Not as outrageous as his earlier works, but still a worthy film to the Raimi oeuvre.

28 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Night Train Murders (1975)

If it hasn't become apparent in the last few reviews, I've got a weird obsession with Italian Horror.  The Italians seemed to figure out that everything had been done already and made a great point to blatantly capitalize off of then current films overseas with shoestring budgets and looser aesthetic morals.  The directors in the film studios were often very prolific, if they weren't directing multiple films per year, they were producing other directors, writing, and sometimes acting.  In 1975, Aldo Lado endeavored to put the Italian stamp on Wes Craven's wildly successful Grindhouse classic, The Last House On The Left (which is also a remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring) with the equally disturbing and squirm inducing Night Train Murders.

The basic plot of Night Train Murders is very identical to Last House On The Left but the details are subtly different.  Lisa (Laura D'Angelo) and Margaret (Irene Miracle) are taking a night train from Germany to Italy to spend Christmas with Lisa's family.  On the train ride they encounter a trio of sadistic people (Flavio Bucci, Gianfranco De Grassi, Macha Méril) who toy with, violate, and ultimately murder the two girls and in a twist of fate they wind up in the hands of Lisa's parents.

What I found incredibly effective about the film is how the first half is spent examining the mundane goings of life and the clueless naivety of the wealthy.  It's almost 40 minutes or longer into the film before the psychotic trio sets themselves upon the two girls.  Lado treats it a little differently here too.  Unlike most films of the genre, he doesn't fetishize the violence at all.  It's horrific, jarring, and completely disturbing (as it well should be) and feels more like an endurance test.  His stylistic flair is all in lighting as the violent violation of the girls takes place under the cold blue light of night.  Unlike Craven, Lado's villains are simpletons.  They're disgusting, but murder is never a present thought on their minds until the act occurs in the heat of the moment.  It is precisely at this moment when the harsh light of day exposes the scene in the train car and reality comes crashing upon our villains like a ton of bricks.

The writing is a little clunky, but there are a number of interesting moments where discussions of morality take place.  The villains only fall into the hands of Lisa's parents because the parents believe themselves to be upstanding people of generous morals and when the discovery of the children's death makes it's play all those moral quandaries are forgotten.  The question becomes simple:  If given the chance, would a parent be able to forgive their transgressor or would they take vengeance?  While clearly a retelling of the same moral story, Night Train Murders succeeds in it's subtle differences and it's unflinching portrayal to be a truly disturbing piece of shock horror.

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer: 20 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

Yes, there are classic films I've never seen.  In fact, there are classic films that plenty of people haven't seen.  I'm willing to bet that the majority of people reading this right now have never seen Made in USA, but that doesn't make me think that they're uncultured, just that they missed something I particularly enjoyed.  So yeah, I've never seen Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer until today.

How do I make a synopsis of a film that is a cult classic?  The title pretty much says it all.  The film examines a sociopath character in an attempt to portray the inner workings of the Serial Killer.  This is where the film is actually pretty accurate.  Henry is played as a REAL sociopath.  Even when we, the audience, begin to believe that maybe there's something sympathetic about Henry, the film is quick to remind us that there is no empathy in any serial killer.

Shot with an obviously small budget, Henry uses it's surroundings as a metaphor for the bleak viewpoints of the lead characters.  There is nothing but a visceral hatred present in Henry and his room mate Ottis, and when Ottis' sister Becky joins the fray the film makers are careful to disguise this hatred, as a sociopath would disguise it to any authoritarian figure, but once the net drops, it drops hard.

The film makes due with it's low budget by being inventive.  This may be one of the earliest examples of using VHS as a medium to aid the story telling process.  The filmmakers utilized this medium within context of the story, being watching by the characters on a color set they obtained via nefarious (murder) means, as a plot device, but by using it to actually tell the story as well, a method that is more prevalent now with the craze of Found Footage style horror films in the wake of The Blair Witch Project and in more recent films like the anthology V/H/S series and The Sacrament.

Another thing that I found particularly delightful about my experience watching the film was the discovery that the titular character of Henry was played by Michael Rooker, who I previously discovered as "The psycho dad from Mallrats."  I'm rather fond of Rooker's work following his relationship with director James Gunn and even his work in The Walking Dead (which I'm otherwise not particularly fond of) so you can probably imagine my gleeful realization that it was him when I finally got a good close up.

Most of my friends, who watch horror movies, have probably seen this film before me.  I like to think that I'm fairly transparent about the fact that there are many "cult classics" that I haven't seen due to my own tastes at the time, but sometimes I guess I'm not.  Anyway, if you're like me and haven't taken the time to check this one out, there's a streaming HD transfer on Netflix, or you can just rent the Bluray/DVD.  Be warned though: As enjoyable as the music is, it's mixed much louder than the rest of the sound in the film.

4 out of 5 skulls.

"If There Is No Love, Make Him Pay For It"

I love Japanese Cinema. If it weren't for Japanese Cinema, I doubt I would've gotten interested in working in the film industry. That said, my favorite of the contemporary Japanese Directors is, without a doubt, Sion Sono. Most people know him, if they're aware of him at all, for The Suicide Club a bizarre trip into psychological horror.  Over the past couple of years he's been making his films at break neck speed, producing a minimum of 2 films a year, which makes this review almost dated.  Luckily, the film I'm going to talk about is relatively hard to find in America, so in that way this review will hopefully be relevant.

Based on true events, Guilty of Romance is the third and final part of Sono's "Hatred Trilogy" which began with his 237 minute epic, Love Exposure.  The film opens with a blurb about Love Hotels in Shibuya (a district in Tokyo) and prostitutes who frequent them.  It then launches into a mystery about a murder in which a parts of a body were found fused with the plastic arms, legs, and head of a mannequin.  Sono tells us his story via past and present tense revealing the past tense details in time with their discovery by the present tense detectives.  What unfolds is a sort of negative hero's journey in which the lead character Izumi Kikuchi (fantastically performed by Megumi Kagurazaka), a bored housewife living in a very chaste relationship with her husband is drawn into a seedy world of depravity.  Ironically, it is this depraved world that allows her to express herself fully, putting somewhat of a skip in her step.  Until...

Everything starts spiraling out of control.  Izumi is mentored by another woman Mitsuko Ozawa (Makoto Togashi.) Literature Lecturer by day, prostitute by night, Mitsuko teaches Izumi methods to take control and further gain confidence in herself.  Mitsuko is an enigmatic force with questionable motives that will keep the viewer guessing up until the end of the film.

Sono has become a master of finding poetry in the dumpster.  Here we have a story about the rejection of decency and the headlong dive into the obscene and yet there is a sense of tragic beauty in his characters.  Are they completely to blame for their present condition or are the norms of society so strangely defined that they are pushed in one direction or another?  Sono doesn't entirely answer this question.  While at moments it feels like he is taking one side or another, it's almost always a red herring.  He leaves it up to the audience to decide, rather than try to instill some sort of ideology.

The one moment where it seems like Sono is making a statement is at a bizarre dining table scene.  The scene speaks loads about societal class division and he advertantly critiques the way of underhanded politeness in Japanese society.  While his seem is very on the head, full of frank dialogue, the characters are all smiles and laughs.  In many of Yasujiro Ozu's films, such scenes do NOT contain the frank stabbing dialogue.  Instead, while a character may be chastising or criticizing another, they use polite language in a most passive aggressive manner.

Upon completing the film, I discovered that the cut I watched is also 30 minutes shorter than the Japanese release.  This, of course, has me curious and I will definitely seek out the longer cut to compare the differences.  That is not to say, that I didn't enjoy the international cut, but I am a stickler for watching the absolute closest thing to a true "Directors Cut."  Regardless, Guilty of Romance, may very well be considered a poem of depravity.  As beautiful as it is disgusting, Sono has once more tapped into the not so hidden dark side of an overtly polite and clean society.

What I Mean When I Say "GIALLO!"

For the last few days I've been avoiding watching new films, probably in a subconscious effort to sabotage this blog, which seems ludicrous and is just like me.  To circumvent my own stupidity I submit to you this film from 1973 by Italian director Antonio Margheriti (here credited as Anthony M. Dawson), the name used by Eli Roth's character in the final scenes of Inglourious Basterds.  If you know anything about this period of Italian Cinema, you know it was dominated by a genre of pulpy, murder/mystery, exploitation films called Giallo.  The name comes from the little pulp paperbacks that many of the films are based on which were printed rather cheaply with yellow covers.  Giallo is also the Italian world for Yellow, as it were, so the name just stuck.  Enough history, let's get into Six Deaths In The Cat's Eye.

The story is set in a small Scottish village and follows a series of murders taking place near a castle and the MacGrieff family who dwell in it.  According to legend (in context of the story) when a MacGrieff kills one of his kin the deceased will become a vampire.  All of the murders seem to be witnessed by the family cat which lurks around the film letting the audience question whether or not it is somewhat of an ethereal being itself.

Corringa (played by Jane Birken, mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg), the niece of Lady Mary MacGrieff, is the principal lead of the story.  She arrives at Castle Dragonston where her Aunt and Mother are arguing about the future of the castle.  A dinner scene introduces the rest of the characters, a Priest, a seductive French Teacher, a secretive Doctor, and Lord James MacGrieff (played by Hiram Keller), the supposedly 'Mad' son of Mary.  Motive is set almost immediately for murder but as is a staple of good Giallos, we are constantly made to guess until the climax of the film.  That being said, the film is in no way a typical Giallo, instead having a very Gothic horror feel to it similar to the Hammer Studios pictures of the same era.

One of the things I really like about the film is the atmosphere.  The film makes great use of shadow and motivated light sources.  One light source in particular is an oil lamp with a multicolored hood that throws out an array of red, green, yellow, and blue at a few crucially creepy moments thereby emphasizing the terror (and sometimes eroticism) portrayed by the actors.

Many Giallo's are well known for the exploitative look at sex and violence.  As the years progressed and the technology progressed many of them got gorier and some practically devolved into hardcore pornography.  That is not the case of this film.  While the blood does certainly flow, it is not without a macabre sense of taste.  The weapon of choice in the film is a straight razor to the jugular and unlike a Fulci film the emphasis is not on the tearing open of the neck, but of the blood flying from the wound.  Whether this was due to makeup or time constraints is debatable, but it was quite effective regardless.

While many Giallo's suffer from censorship and long term neglect, this film has been preserved quite well and can be found on DVD in both English and Italian languages.  The English dubbing is particularly interesting because many of the side characters, who were dubbed over, have thick Scottish accents including slang.  One such appearance is of Birken's partner, the late the Serge Gainsbourg, as a Scotland Yard inspector.