Virus Buster Serge (1997)

From http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0FirRqp5dCs/hqdefault.jpg

Dir. Masami Obari

So much anime has been made since its origins in the sixties, just in the era when the West caught onto the medium, that you don't need to go far into it to reach the ninety nine percent that you take the best, the one percent, from. Be it obscurities, the underrated, criminally forgotten, the guilty pleasures, the mediocre, the product and the worst. Even in the UK, before we got a lot of anime now, always behind on the USA of having so much titles get released, we still got some obscure titles on VHS and DVD, probably to be found in a second hand DVD store or charity shop. Virus Buster Serge is amongst this anime, it's history vague for me - a videogame adaptation, from the same creators of Bomberman Hudson Soft, though I cannot find screenshots of the Sega Saturn game in question, just the PlayStation one from 1999 that proves this franchise did have fans. When the anime starts on its first episode, the first information, the setup, repeated in the opening title credits between a male and female voiceover, immediately reveals why this title has became obscure. Immediately it sets up its crippling flaw, that it feels like a twenty four or so episode anime series crammed into just twelve episodes. You already have complicated dialogue that tries to sound important and throws in words like "Black Valentine" which, while eventually explained, aren't revealed as early as possible in the episodes themselves or are particularly needed. Already, I'm criticising the anime in the first paragraph, but I'll give the following statement. It is utterly fascinating in my obsession with nineties anime, but I'm not going to recommend the series except only to those curious with anything I say or the screenshots you see. This is an anime which wanted to be and sound important but comes off as something vague and peculiar instead, as much of its interest as well as its weakness from the fact this feels like it was handicapped before it even got out onto television, not necessarily because of anyone in particular working on it.

From http://www.animated-divots.net/images/serge.jpg

As the series doesn't actually explain its plot as it starts, I'll simplify it from all the jargon that gets thrown at the viewer immediately in the first episodes for a simple outline. A form of satellite hovers above a future Earth, sending down a form of virus which effects computers and human beings equally, causing horrible mutations and with the clear goal of weakening humanity, to spread and control the population if left unstopped. The problem has been lengthy when the series start, Earth unable to eliminate the satellite, but have kept the virus in some control. Set in Neo Hong Kong, the group employed to eliminate any virus outbreaks are S.T.A.N.D., (the acronym is never actually explained), part of a larger, potentially corrupt organisation, and are effectively the moodier cousins of the Power Rangers. The group is led by the enigmatic Raven, a man who is cryptic and rarely providing information that would've helped his group if they were informed of it. Actually, to get to the ending of the series immediately, a lot of problems that take place in the series could've been softened if he told someone any of the information of a bleak background story he knows of, furthered by the unexplained prescience of a female main computer hologram named Donna whose interactions with him in hushed tones clearly mean she represents something of importance. He's has long black hair, he looks pretty when he broods, and eventually even his own group rebel against him in the final episodes. Said team originally starts out as four members, one staying back to pilot their assault ship and provide tech help, the others (literally) melding their power suits, Variable Gears, onto their bare flesh before combat. Marcus the methodical veteran with a penchant for jackets with fur on the neck. Jouichirou, the cocky guy. Mirei, a teenage girl who pilots their assault craft and, a talented computer hacker, makes the perfect tech person for the team. And Erika, the convention of the female anime character - hand-to-hand combat specialist, the sexy pin up figure for viewers, the potential love interest for the main protagonist, and unfortunately given the position of being the one who gets emotional and cry at least once rather than be as tough as the smart male viewers would want her to be. An inexplicable fifth member, titular protagonist Serge, appears out of nowhere during a virus related incident to try and kill Raven. Rather than have him imprisoned, Raven hires him, knowing something secret about the mysterious Serge and his dark countenance.

From http://anime-fanservice.org/coppermine/albums/
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From here, S.T.A.N.D. must take on the virus outbreaks while being targeted from their own side as well as through what they face. It's been possible, with flaws or not, for an anime to cram a much bigger story into a much shorter length then would seem practical. It would common especially in the nineties however for anime to have abrupt endings or none at all. Virus Buster Serge even as a TV series has a frantic tone to getting all its content, including an ending, into just twelve episodes. Twelve episode anime can work, but this story and what it desires to do clearly needed double its length, especially when it's more concerned with esoteric dialogue rather than action or pushing the plot along. Virus Buster Serge could've been as generic and as off-paced as a twenty four or so episode series, but it would've spaced out all this series tries to cram in. It's a series, as someone who usually isn't a big fan of them, where episodic, one shot episodes would've been welcome, needing the four tier plot structure of longer anime series - opening quarter introducing the world, plot and characters; next quarter setting up the main plot; the third quarter the dynamic turn of events; the final quarter the finale - rather than smush it all in as it does. The series decision to try to be mysterious, of conspiracy, secret identities, a psychological drama with people in power suits fighting bio-mechanical monsters, doesn't help. It clearly wants to be Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996).

From http://www.homemademech.com/Uploads/Areview/24341102806324.jpg

The comparison makes a lot of sense considering Virus Buster Serge came to be two years after the first episode of Evangelion. Evangelion is one of the most popular anime franchises in Japan and the West, as well as one of the controversial. One which pushed the potential for unsettling content, which would mean a lot of television anime would be made to shown at two or so in the morning from then on, as much because of the production difficulties, of how to end it and how co-creator Hideaki Anno had a psychological breakdown  halfway through producing it, thus leading to improvised experimentation and even darker psychological content. When animated sci-fi is usually seen as Transformers in geek culture, Evangelion pushed for more adult, psychologically complicated sci-fi in anime. It meant, after, there was a period where more experimental anime series were given a chance, from Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to Boogiepop Phantom (2000). It also led to imitators, something I don't criticise as, considering Evangelion is still a gigantic merchandising industry by itself, I wouldn't blame anyone else wanting a piece of the moody sci-fi pie. I cannot look at Virus Buster Serge and not think someone had been influenced by the popular franchise, only rather than characters and their back stories against the situations taking place, Virus Buster Serge was more interested in a lot of jargon that sounds significant. This series also saw Evangelion's later episodes, once something went weird, and maybe The End of Evangelion (1997), where everything went to hell, and it throws symbology and freakish imagery around continually. A ghostly woman with angels wings, a white throne in a septic white room, vague swirling colours and depictions of cyberspace like a cybernetic, omninous snowball. Nothing about it has any real depth to it, but God bless the series, it's poor but it's memorable for its structurally pointless, but well drawn, symbolism. It even borrows Evangelion's crucifix imagery, which even Evangelion didn't depict with any actual depth to it originally.

From http://virusbusterserge.blox.pl/resource/Virus_Buster_Serge_baje_pl_8.jpg

Most of the series, when it's not these scenes, or an occasional action scene, are characters in static talking of vague things. Obvious plot points don't get explained until much later on then they should as already mentioned. Everything, despite the bright nineties, hand drawn colours of the characters, is muted, grey or darkly painted. There are no real background details if you notice, not a lot of background figures or detail, adding a lifeless feeling. The other divisive issue with this series is the character designs by the director himself. I am not criticising his abilities as an animator, as I still need to see his best work which has some pedigree of his behind it from what I've read of. He has become obscured in his craft from the early 2000s or so, having ended up directing hentai (porn) anime and steadily directing other work within the last decade, but is someone who has some well known titles in his career, including a few fighting game adaptations. His character designs are distinct, but are exaggerated in a way that feel they could've only worked in the nineties, not palatable for many in the last few decades looking on at them. The male character designs aren't that drastic, barring the lithe muscular figures, but it's the female character designs that stick out like a sore thumb. It's not even the proportions, as there have been many an anime you can accuse for female characters with insanely large breasts, waspishly thin waists, and lengthy legs. It's the faces, drawn and on these stereotypical proportions, which stand out, especially with the character Erika. Unconventionally shaped faces and eyes, snaggletooths and a ill-proportioned mix between cartoonish and attractive. At times, the designs work, but drawn at certain perspectives and angles, they look off in symmetry and quality. I also suspect this series was handicapped in being a television series - unlike feature film or straight to video anime, the former usually high budgeted, the later able to have more time to work on them depending on the specific project, television had a strict deadline, and Virus Buster Serge does feel like one with not the highest budget it could've gotten.

From http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4SRTf-LJCz8/hqdefault.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

So what exactly happens in Virus Buster Serge when it's all put together? There's a lot of mystery, vague events taking place in the background, but were they worth doing when we could've have a more conventional superhero team story which more action, a little of the sci-fi and intrigue? The thing with Neon Genesis Evangelion, for its psychological drama, was that, being inspired by Ultraman, it was an action sci-fi first, with the character building and unsettling content built around this genre core. It's not even that it had the advantage of more episodes, as for its rocky production history, where line drawings were used in episode previews instead of animation, and probably not out of stylistic flourish, it managed to do well for itself with a giant legacy as a reward. Virus Buster Serge could have worked with what it had. The episodes have to juggle the symbolism, the esoteric and the exposition in a mad cocktail. It should be legitimately weird and interesting for all its intrigue, and in some ways it is as a curiosity of the nineties anime industry. The colours, the genre melding, the view of the future coming up to the Millennium, the hand drawn results certainly for me entertaining to view rather than a good narrative story. The irony is that, despite its trippy symbolism, it never becomes trippy in structure and tone. It becomes fraught between the action sci-fi and the mysterious drama, and its more the conventional action sci-fi in the end, making the intrigue pointless, wasting time that could've been somewhere else, and not making it strange enough to get on the Abstract List.

From http://www.rubberslug.com/user/2df32791a6014fd7
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Personal Rating:

I find more to get from this examining the result as it stands, not good, but to look on at with interest. As stated early on in the review, this is an anime only for the curious. Most people will find it generic and not that interesting. That's not to say there aren't fans of Virus Buster Serge online, but I can see many that won't like it. For me it's interesting to look at instead.

The Night of the Hunted (1980)

From http://www.scifi-movies.com/images
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Dir. Jean Rollin

A young woman Elisabeth (Brigitte Lahaie) is being persued in the woods, only to be discovered by Robert (Vincent Gardnere), while he is driving, rescuing her. However she cannot remember who she is, who she was escaping with, who she was escaping from, and any short term memory after a few minutes. The pursuers eventually locate her and take her back to a black tower block in the city, ran by a doctor to cover up an incident where many people have developed the same affliction, losing all memories and even basic motor skills, all put together in the tower out of public view. Elisabeth intends to escape again, while eventually Robert appears at the black tower to try and help her leave, the doctor and the armed guards around the tower in the way. With the possible exception of Killing Car (1993), drastically different to his filmography though still linked in mood and style to his traditional horror films, The Night of the Hunted has some drastic changes from many of the others. Gone are the gothic castles, the vampires, the trademark beach scenes and the such, and in its place, the pre to early 20th century aesthetic inspirations of Jean Rollin are replaced by contemporary, harsh and cold urbanism of an early David Cronenberg. The result is unexpected; as I am finding Rollin is far more different then his cult reputation originally suggested, this film emphasising the fact.

From http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/jean-rollin/
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At his most restricted financially, making a lot of porn under a pseudonym, Rollin suddenly turned to a producer, made a gamble and asked if he could make a horror film instead. He was successful, a horror film with sci-fi tinges and the budget of one of the porn movies he would make, with many actors Rollin worked with in them allowed to try something new and fresh. The surprise for me watching the film is, without knowing this back-story originally, I never saw any structural or budget restrictions that badly affected the film. Now knowing of the back-story, it never feels like it's of a lesser quality still. The only real divisive aspect of this film, in hindsight, was the abrupt inclusions of sex and violence to appease the producer. This includes a ridiculously long sex scene between Elisabeth and Robert, and countless nude and undressing scenes with the other actresses, not sensual like other Rollin films but more stark and blatant. The violence, including sexual violence, as the mental disintegration causes violent behaviour in the victims, is even more abrupt, nasty and for many it will feel out-of-place and off-putting, more so as violence is never this strong in other Jean Rollin films I've watched. As much as it is also of my own personal taste, these aspects aren't compromises for the film's quality. In fact, in vast contrast to Rollin's preferred elegance, it works to add an anxiety over The Night of the Hunted that makes it more darker and malicious in tone. It feels outside of Rollin's usual filmmaking, even compared to Killing Car, envisioned almost as a Videodrome (1983) type of movie, the sex and violence in that film's zone of emotional detachment. Hell, even the bizarre circumstances around a character using scissors on herself has an appropriate oddness to it.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLmlhmxJjigDk7j_O-TsOjvv_R0LXkwvp9xBJV-P0Sb_0KZJHdbr9t5DXC5TOfPsGVDn71m4kaYpSKpzKValPZUSy1yJAYwaHay-6UTkku5W6PzV9UzvsbZJbVAFb1ixFwR_m7_dJBrtMn/s1600-h/Night+of+the+Hunted+22.JPG

With Jean Rollin as well, having to compromise or improvise is as much part of his auteurist style, (like many of my favourite directors), so you cannot ignore the accidents that happened to be able to make this film in the first place, the scratches on its celluloid as of much importance as his fascinations. It's a bleaker film as a result, the urban and industrial settings dehumanised. There is a strong aesthetic  as always for Rollin, the brutal scarlet reds on the interior walls of the black tower, the modern design etc., more imposing and claustrophobic than other films. It's a good lesson to learn from for potential filmmakers that, far from a detriment, having the budget severely restricted like Rollin did here wasn't that big of a hindrance, the kind of locations you might've found in a porn film of the time, maybe even one of Rollin's own, having a fittingly dead quality to them. Why this lesson has been lost in the recent decades I'm not sure, causing one to wonder what has led to the drab look of many a modern genre film - digital cameras, locations not easy to find, budgets even more restricted or pure laziness? Here in this film, even the gym has a stilted air to it, along with the other locations. Long corridors like a maze, and cold, perfunctory furnished rooms for the unwilling occupants, who ling or slump themselves on mass around said corridors aimlessly.

From https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/
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The concept of a disease that causes mental disintegration takes one into a existential version of Rollin's cinema, as much importance on what happens to the occupants as their memories are lost as it is on Elizabeth trying to escape the tower again. That it feels to throw away the potential for this concept, in favour of the trademark mood piece tone of a Rollin film, is not an issue but probably perfect for this particular film. Enough is said in what is shown to savour. The occupants are a form of living dead, inventing new names for daughters another may have had or making up new memories together. There's no clear theme or message behind the film, but as a scenario of what such a concept would be like, the obsession in Rollin's films with their dream logics by way of pulp entertainment, allows for a poignant take on the idea. Time is passed, because Jean Rollin is not a conventional director, watching someone with an old photo book one minute, reflecting on whether it's their family or not, the other on characters musing on whether they knew each other once and pretending they were classroom friends as young girls regardless; what's true or not is left for you to imagine by Rollin. It does have moments as a result which are far more potent than if treated in a more conventional way, such as the uncomfortable moment a character's motor skills are so disintegrated they cannot hold a spoon properly and feed themselves. Rather than have to follow a message, the playing around with such a scenario evokes far more interesting ideas in-between the compromises.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_wECN2uot8u8/S7y19U1TYqI
/AAAAAAAAHpY/ZNCuCID680I/s400/nuit01.jpg

This is a genre film first and foremost, Rollin a genre film director more so than everything else, one who happened to make genre films in his own idiosyncratic way. Despite his difficulties getting films funded, he was still able to in an era where exploitation cinema could be made in personal ways as long as there was something sensation and titillation for the pundits and international markets. With this film I get further proof "pulp" is a key inspiration and interest for the director as horror is, the reason I've used the word twice in this review - pre or early 20th century adventure stories, crime and mystery stories, tales of masked criminals and secret organisations, and anything you can also think of that can be linked to this area. Even in the closest thing science fiction, Rollin still has influences from the past in here. Even in his nastiest toned film I've got Georges Franju stuck in my head think of Rollin. Once guns are involved in The Night of the Hunted, when Elisabeth tries to escape the black tower and Robert gets involved, there is as much a tone of crime or thriller movie inherent here, furthered by the urban locations. It furthers how more unconventional Rollin is as a director than what I initially learnt of him as, able to mix and celebrate each genre he's interested in by making those that exist in the middle and part of all of them.

From http://t1.someimage.com/OAeMH9P.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Out of Rollin's films I've covered so far, it's not one of the most abstract he's made, very concise narratively. Despite the moments that feel disjointed - the gore scenes and the random moments an actresses takes her clothes off - the film follows a full narrative, which elaborates on the main premise up to a sobering finale, including scenes of what is done to the amnesiacs that cannot help but evoke reality in a way that may have been more than intended. By its final scenes it builds pulp characters in a situation, and while they are archetypes, they have enough time onscreen to intrigue us, leading to a sad, powerful final image, where the characters have as much importance as the content around them. It's a narrative driven Jean Rollin, unlike the kind of narrative driven cinema he made The Nude Vampire (1970) where the plot strands added as the story goes on push it into more inherently unconventional tangents, changing what has been set up before drastically.

From http://www.midnightonly.com/wp-content/
uploads/2013/05/Night-of-the-Hunted-5.jpg

That's not to say The Night of the Hunted is "normal". With its clinical, uneasy tone for its content, "medical" based sci-fi horror with a thriller tone to its palette, the film is so far from mainstream for a genre film, lengthy moments of characters musing on the back-story and their situations with relish for the dialogue as exposition. There's moments as well, due to the requirements Rollin had to fulfil to make this film, and his own interests, that are different in from conventional cinema. The scene that stands out as one of the best, and perfect as an example of this, is when the doctor's female assistant, to delay Robert reaching Elizabeth, asks him to dance with her to imagined music in an outside are area before she will tell him where she is. Someone I know online evoked Jacques Rivette in his thoughts of this scene; whether the case it was an unpredictable moment, briefer then I remember it as yet inspired, the same magic realistic of Rivette who is another director with equal interest playing with genre in unexpected ways, seen suddenly with Rollin's film here and something I relish. It's immensely abstract in that conventions, moments like this constant throughout the film, played with in interesting ways, so even as one of the more straight-forward of the director's movies, it's still different from many other films in its genres of interest.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/
OGRQpxA7plQ/UXXrWr1byKI/AAAAAAAADww/EgF8q4lIZ0Q/s640/NightoftheHunted19.jpg

Personal Opinion:

The best Jean Rollin film? We shall see, but it's interesting as being drastically different from many of the others, an underrated work possible in the filmography. It stands out uniquely in a unique director's career and, flawed or not, it's damn well impressive.

Scream (1996)

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PK7A7gdXIR0/VAE459EWDOI/AAAAAAAADN8/
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Dir. Wes Craven

No, it's not a flashback to the Halloween 31 For 31 series of the last month, but I did see Scream on the 31st October of this year in a cinema screening at my local community art centre. The screening itself? Due to a mishap with the projector or the disc being played, the film's colour palette was saturated with red. With the actors faces as bright as tomatoes, it wasn't off-putting but inexplicably evoked Italian genre films like Suspiria (1977). It was proof why screenings need to be planned so the viewer can get the closest to what the original form of the film was in terms of image and audio, but as a one-off, with blood red morning skies, pink high school walls and especially the crimson added to the opening set piece, of a young woman (Drew Barrymore) being terrorised by a killer at her home, this technical botch actually added an incredible stylistic tone. The real disappointment is that, including myself, there were only eight of us in the cinema. Yes there was an event on nearby, but one would wish for a screening to have more people. I want to experience a hollering and wild crowd once before I die with a horror film. I wanted more than one person as Ghost Face from the Scream franchise, though I'm grateful for the guy in this screening who did. I'm disappointed by the lack of horror enthusiasm in my small town community. In fact the film finished around ten at night and the town was entirely dead already, on a Friday night, causing one to wonder what's going on with the community when you could drop a pin on a street corner.

From https://khfilm.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/4ed79-scream4-costume_dvd1.jpg

Scream as a film? The film that brought back an entire subgenre from the wilderness of obscurity, the slasher film, back into the mainstream when other pop culture fads of the eighties like glam metal is now nostalgia or a niche audience. It's entirely responsible for the type of young adult horror movies I grew up with in the late nineties and early 2000s, so revisiting Scream means stepping back into my adolescence slowly starting with the origin of it all. This is also significant because, as last month showed, I am curious where Scream's director Wes Craven stands for me as a horror director, and also because slasher films were once one of my least favourite genre of cinema, just above biopics, only for this to slowly change within the last year to the potential for a few gems to appear. Revisiting Scream is tackling the type of slasher films I grew up with, and honestly, were why my teenager self first hated slasher films, which I wonder is going to be the same revisiting these movies. A series of murders befalls a small town. Sydney (Neve Campbell) is in the centre of this, targeted by the killer, especially as there may be a connection to the murder of her mother a year earlier, an event she still is having difficulty coping with. Her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich), their relationship fraught already, may be suspicious, and the killer is making fine work massacring numerous people. From there it's your typical slasher film - masked killer murders victims one after another in gory death scenes unless someone finds out who the culprit is. The big difference with Scream from what was before, at least in the mainstream, was that with its script by Kevin Williamson it was a self reflective slasher film, which commentated on its own sub-genre, in the grain of Quentin Tarantino in the early part of the same decade. Characters - especially Randy (Jamie Kennedy), a slasher film nerd who claims the police should've watched Prom Night (1980) to learn how to find the culprit - who know what a slasher film and talk about the clichés and tropes within them.

From http://www.beyondhollywood.com/posterx/scream_3.jpg

The script was what I found a huge weakness in viewings before, viewing it as being too snarky in tone. I took issue to the perceived thought that it mocked clichés of the sub genre but still repeated them, the scene that I always thought of being an example when a female character criticises how female characters in the films are usually running up stairs to escape killers rather than out the door, only for this cliché to take place. This is a non-existent issue on this viewing, no know-it-all mentality visible in Williamson's script. In fact he's intelligent in his writing, and such as the example mentioned above, the cliché happens for logical reasons, subtle details or is part of the joke without looking down on the viewer. In fact now, able to appreciate the slasher films more, the clichés are fun because his script and Wes Craven's direction have macabre fun with them. The characters are clichés but interesting, fleshed out individuals. Campbell as the sympathetic Final Girl, with more depth to her then those she's inspired by. Ulrich as the potentially dangerous Billy. Rose McGowan, utterly charismatic, as the peppy friend. Matthew Lillard  showing how to chew scenery properly as the wise cracking joker character, and Kennedy saying why being a virgin protects you from serial killers in slasher film logic. Add to this as well the characters of Detective Dewey, played by former WCW World Champion David Arquette, and Courteney Cox as reporter Gale Weathers, the later an interesting complicated character as the film goes on, the two of them together having a sweet romantic comedic side to the movie furthered by the obvious chemistry that lead the actors to marry in real life. The story has the right beats and great moments throughout, fun and funny whilst able to be unbelievably dark in tone.

From http://imagescine.critictoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Scream10.jpg

That's not to say the script isn't flawed. That which is the most celebrated in the film by critics, the meta references, are the least interesting aspect of the entirety of Scream. For one, it makes sense and is funny when its Randy or someone whose painted with a nugget of knowledge on slasher films that references them, or the context and characterisation is right, but a character you don't expect to or someone relating their romance abruptly to American film censorship ratings comes off as forced. I hate film references and references to film making and culture in films for the most part because it comes off as egocentric or suddenly entering a tiny club's mindset whose language wouldn't be said by most people on the street. Quentin Tarantino may come to mind but he's actually far from the worse person to do this, especially when he's at his best, using pop culture references, like the "Like The Virgin" speech in Reservoir Dogs (1992) to show the characters' personalities, and has as much interest in having characters just after that particular scene debate about the virtues of tipping waitresses or not. Bad examples just make the references without there being any real context to do so. In Scream, for the references, like the Prom Night one, that do work, there's many that don't, and the meta content is just cute, not deep or profound at all. Any sense of cleverness to it is to be found in what a self awareness gives the basic slasher template in terms of tone. That characters in a film have at least seen one Friday The 13th film, which is realistic and, if there has to be a meta referential side, its better when it's how the killer asks victims about scary movies and torments them with it, character building, rather than out of nowhere from an individual's mouth. That it adds to the film's dark, nasty streak in that the characters reflect on whether killers actually need motivations, the real serial killers in reality which couldn't be ignored eventually. When a motivation is behind the killings in Scream, it adds to the dark nature of the story because in lovingly referencing the older slashers, it still has a seriousness to it that is bleaker despite the humour.

From http://img.rp.vhd.me/2162570_l5.jpg

The Kevin Williamson script conveys a significantly vicious story than I thought it had without losing the humour and becoming grim. Adult themes were even depicted in the likes of Friday The 13th (1980), but there a slashers that have thin bare plots that are merely window dressing, while Williamson here wrote proper story to orchestrate through his interest in the sub-genre. Most of the darker content of the film, the mature emotional content, is through dialogue and back story, but it has a significant effect on the material onscreen because it is the reason for all that happens. Scream is also, as a slasher, incredibly violent despite being partly comedic. Wes Craven as a director depicts violence in his films with much more nastiness, such as a opening scene with Drew Barrymore that, while a perfect opening jolt to get you on the edge of your seat, is unbelievably nasty in how it ends. This was a film that had to be censored for American release, and Craven managed to take his depiction on violence from his rougher seventies films to more mainstream movies like Scream. He's also a very good director. Admittedly, the viewing experience for Scream this time wasn't necessarily the best for judging the cinematic qualities of the film, but the style is effecting and is someone on top of his game.

From http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1996_Scream/fhd996SCR_Neve_Campbell_010.jpg

Whether the film succeeds from there as much about your liking of slasher films. Strangely, my potential issue with the sub-genre now is that the clichés I once hated in the films are now enticing, but the films don't actually live up to them. They might not be gory or cheesy enough despite what fans say, and unless they are unique or incredibly well made, the slasher films may be still of disinterest because this viewpoint. With Scream, its structurally perfect, the content entertaining and has the right ending, but something feels missing for it to be a great horror film. It ends without a big enough impact. Maybe this is one of those cases where the cliché where the killer appears at the end to show a sequel will happen was needed.

From http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb412/cinemania285/357qa8p.png

Cinema of the Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Not a sausage. Though the slasher genre may reveal an appropriate film or two for the list. The Slayer (1982) for one immediately comes to mind, but like said example, the potential candidates are likely not the well known films like Scream.

From https://janeaustenrunsmylife.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/
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Personal Opinion:

Honestly, I much prefer I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), another Kevin Williamson scripted film I once hated but liked immensely revisiting this year, a serious and entertaining slasher. Going through these films from my youth is bound to have some complete reversals of opinion from what I originally thought, though it'll be an odd experience to revisit them, especially as their era was a peculiar pop culture in hindsight. Scream isn't bad though, and has a lot to love. As for Wes Craven, time will tell still, as it's as much about the entire picture of his work that says how good he is or not. 

Halloween 31 For 31: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

From http://www.steve-calvert.co.uk/pub-dom/imgs/
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Dir. Robert Wiene

The last review for the Halloween season...and with this I'm stepping further than Wild Zero (1999) into something I first saw, on a college campus, which has had a subconscious effect on me. I was studying this film in fact in my Film Studies class alongside Nosferatu (1922), a immense pair to see, amongst other films, if there ever was one. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari has a weight to it that is utterly profound. One of the first horror films, and such a drastic influence on what was to come. The brilliance of it as a film is that, yet, the movie still feels drastically unique compared to all that came after it in the same genre. In a story within a story, Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) arrives at a town with his carnival attraction, a somnambulist named Caesar (Conrad Veidt). As murders are taking place it's not long before the friend of the one of the victims Francis (Friedrich Feher) suspects that the two are involved somehow, a threat to the love of his life Jane Olsen (Lil Dagover) significant. Immediately the film stands out, for what is under the umbrella of German Expressionism, an artistic style of multiple mediums that wanted to depicted the internal, subconscious reality of the mind instead of realism. This was the context that the film was being taught to us in Film Studies, so at the same time I was being introduced to German Expressionism as well. Using hand made sets, the world of Caligari's is an irregular, distorted place, of angular, disturbed buildings, heavy use of blacks even for a monochrome film, and claustrophobic interiors and urban streets where the buildings seem to be leaning to each other. It's a depiction of a nightmare, and what'll be more interesting for me to write of is what it was like to see this for the first time in college. I was taken aback by it, fascinated by its singular look, seeing the sense of the distorted portrayed fully. Even back then, not able to appreciate films that alarmed and forced viewers into unconventional and uncomfortable positions, Caligari was still able to succeed because its style translated all the menace and unease required for its story to me, and would be able to for any normal film goer, despite its age and potential technical limitations, possessing a fully formed world.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0C6MGIpRoFE/T6KLLW5vuFI/
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You can see the debt directors like Tim Burton have to this, but the film is still radically different, viewing it again, from many films. Even against the couple German Expressionist films I have seen its drastically different and goes further. There is still something unnerving about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in mood because of its aesthetic and tone. A warped frame of mind befitting the fact that the story-within-a-story is possibly up for question, whose obvious artificiality makes it impossible for the film to be absorbed and loosened of its effect. It's too menacing and dark still to be digestible, to be the fun spookiness of Tim Burton or as far as being defanged like a lot of older horror films. So much so that, on a big screen, the little details are what build up the world being depicted the most, even to how impractical the furniture looks to sit on for characters, remoulded a person if they were to use them. Everything has a connection to the aesthetic being used and, of course, being physically real, the weight is felt. Unlike a Burton as well, the small scale of the film gives them a better ability to draw you as a viewer to the atmosphere.

From http://www.silveremulsion.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/cabinetofdrcaligari_1.jpg

A person like me viewing this film is going to be pulled in by how unconventional it is, and being a silent film adds to this factor. With there being no onscreen dialogue at all, only inter titles, there is an additional sense of the film taking place in a different reality. It actually took me a long time, within the last few years in fact, to be able to fully appreciate silent cinema, but back at college this film and Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1925), being taught in the same subject on Germany's and the Soviet Union's radically different cinematic innovations in the twenties,  immediately caught me because of their elaborate and distinct use of the visuals. Caligari is not a radically advanced film in terms of technique - the camera is static each shot, editing basic, none of the complicated technique of D.W. Griffith that would become mainstream or that of Soviet filmmakers whose editing is even more avant garde now - but aesthetically its advanced. In its use of background and production design, lighting, a scene where text appears in shot overlaid on the images and generally pushing the look of cinema to express its nightmarish story of murder and secrets. A film depicting less than a rational world, while it would influence many films to come, and has a conventional mystery plot for the most part in its core, it's style yet is completely at odds still with most cinema. Acting and how actors are made up is also a factor in this, as German Expressionism went for intentionally unrealistic and choreographed acting, characters depicted with heavy makeup and acting more broadly than was already arch in silent cinema to register meanings without access for sound.

From http://www.black-and-white-movies.com/images/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari-jail.jpg

Encountering a film like this, with an elaborate style, was an eye opening experience. Famously, it's twist ending is just as immortalised, a hackneyed plot twist in modern movies but here still an unsettling sting for how old the film is, one of the first to do this, and for how in lieu of its tone it works perfectly for the mood. I wouldn't be surprised if this film is what got me hooked onto darker, more abstract films I have been covering for this season and watch in general. Certainly watching it again, its captivating still, an immense power to the content and images. The rawness of being an early film in cinema's history with the sophistication of the content making it still incredibly rewarding to watch.

From http://ufa-filmnaechte.de/fileadmin/user_upload/caligari_big_2.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

It would've been insane not to give this the highest rating. Not only does it deserve it for being one of the first films to do many of the things that make up this type of cinema - locations designed to match the protagonist's state of mind, unconventional acting, the abnormal plot content including madness and psychiatry, the twist ending - but it's still a very unconventional film to this day. Its age in fact has added to this, a creation from another era of cinema lost to us because of advancing technology but, made with hand painted sets and a group of actors, its closed-in world is uniquely its own, graspable as filming sets and a world familiar to us, but more disconnected from reality at the same time.

From https://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0unetj4751qzdvhio1_500.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Pretty safe to say that this was one of the films that built this blog and my entire interest in this sort of cinema in the first place, leaving an imprint that has fed my imagination, which is immensely obvious now revisiting the film. It's a representative, the best, for what this blog is meant to be, the poster film above many others for what "Cinema of the Abstract" is meant to mean. Films that you leave feeling you've stepped into another world, which in this case was, fittingly, one of the films that did it first and better than most of its offspring.