Footprints On The Moon (1975)

From http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews49/
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Dirs. Luigi Bazzoni (and Mario Fanelli)

One of the last things a viewer would expect with an Italian giallo is for the first scene to take place on the Moon, but this is the miracle of European genre films of this film's period. It doesn't  qualify as a giallo film in the conventional template either - no masked killers, no black gloves - instead Footprints On The Moon is a very eerie psychological drama. A translator Alice Cespi (Florinda Bolkan) discovers she has no recollections of the last three days since she woke up one morning. A postcard gives her a clue to visit a beach resort to uncover what is going on but it is speculated an entirely different woman was there instead of her, paranoid that people were after her. The resolution is simple and can be guessed quickly but Footprints... is an absorbing little gem plucked out of obscurity thanks to the DVD age.

From https://cigaretteburnscinema.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/footprints4.jpg

It also comes off as a wonderful tribute to Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan. Paradoxically, for all the understandable issues of sexism and/or misogyny in Italian genre cinema, there have yet been actresses in them that have stood above any scuzzy content staining the screen around them on podiums, not pin-ups but individuals who leave the male protagonists in the dirt in terms of charisma. Even when they depicted sexually in explicit ways they stood out as having a charisma and credibility that made them noble. Bolkan for me, in the few films of hers I've seen, is an unbreakable counter argument against anyone dismissing theses films as worthy sexist trash just by herself. She is not "pretty", she is beautiful. From Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture A Duckling (1972) to this film, she always comes off even dubbed as the serious character actor there for the performance. Dubbing for Italian films always catches one off-guard as hearing an actor's voice is usually the thing that one draws their attention to in terms of judging a good performance or not. Bolkan nonetheless is captivating in a film where, as the questions build up, the story becomes more claustrophobic. 

From https://locotigrero.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/klaus-footprints.jpg

Footprints On The Moon is a ghostly film, a hazy deliberate tone attached to cinematography from probably one of the greatest cinematographers ever to exist, Vittorio Storaro, of Apocalypse Now (1979) to The Conformist (1970). Thanks to how the Italian genre industry worked in its heyday, like the Japanese one or Hong Kong's or many in all honesty, a man as talented as Storaro could work on The Conformist the same year as Dario Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970). Storaro is clearly fascinated by space and the connection of people dwarfed or surrounded by said space, be it interior of rooms or the exterior of Vietnam jungle-scape. Even Dick Tracey (1990) two tone, artificial sets swamp the world of its pulp newspaper strip gangsters. Countless scenes of Footprints... is following Alice through corridors or streets or public buildings and shops where the environments add to the maze that grows when she asks questions and tries to learn what is happening, especially from a young girl (Nicoletta Elmi) she befriends, his aesthetic about the space adding to the detachment as the narrative taking place.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dEGW3kI5_f0/Tgr9NFBdpBI
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This is of course a very unconventional film in terms of narrative, the obvious conclusion not disappointing because the terrain to get to it is very unexpected. Footprints... automatically qualifies as a film indebted to dream logic even if by coincidence. There is of course the entire subplot surrounding the Moon, but that is a form of surrealism indebted to its original meaning, the subconscious, rather than weird images. Looking like the prototype footage to Andrzej Zulawski's On The Silver Globe (1988), with the astronauts' giant bubble helmets, shot in sepia scratched film with a dubbed Klaus Kinski unexpectedly in the centre of attention, the Moon footage is described as a film Alice walked out of halfway through because it was too intense for her, returning as a reoccurring dream in her sleep. Eventually it starts to bleed over into something more than that. It's as leftfield a plot choice as you could get for a film in this sub-genre, but that's part of its brilliance, combining two wayward and separate plot styles into something unique. The film goes as far as evoke Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of Finzi-Continis (1970) with sumptuous, harmonious flashbacks to what may be Alice's childhood, as a man (Peter McEnery) she meets becomes closer to her as they keep meeting and a possible connection is to be found between them. Footprints On The Moon takes the premise of a great short story, though it was novel by co-director Mario Fanelli if the IMDB information is accurate, a small mystery that is more concerned with the effect of the answer behind it all rather than the answer itself. That's the side to the film that can be clearly connected to the giallos, at least the good ones, in that they may be ridiculous at times but they are all about throwing you off your step in what you'd presume would happen, Footprints On The Moon taking it to a more sedate and emotionally prickly tone.

From https://cigaretteburnscinema.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/footprints1.jpg

Footprints... does come with a price in that, for the British DVD release by Shameless, to create the fullest restoration possible that company had to use less than stellar materials. Unfortunately passages look like they are from videotape, the film clearly shortened for international release in its day, and the far greater issues with preserving videotape to celluloid means I pray to the cinema god a print of good quality exists or survives over the next few decades. There is also a peculiar side-effect to the shortening of the film for international release as scenes excised suddenly have Bolkan speaking in Italian with subtitles even in the dubbed version. This bygone relic of how films used to be handled is a weird viewing experience, especially for Shameless DVD releases, the most dynamic example seeing the whole Italian cut of Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975) in its English language dub, witnessing British actor David Hemmings speaking fluent Italian with Daria Nicolodi in one of the screwball comedy scenes removed that would've lost the film charm when viewed in the shorter version. For Footprints On The Moon however this hindsight mishap adds an additional later of unconscious alienation for the viewer. You cannot redub these scenes, as I can't help but imagine the result would always be an inconsistent disaster to the ears, and for Italian genre fans this feels like a rite of passage, not a problem like VHS versions of scenes, and in cases like this a film like Footprints On The Moon is given a blessing in disguise that adds to its mysterious air.  

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

On paper, baring the entire Moon subplot, the film is not unconventional if you think of how the plot goes forward. It means that two obvious factors have to be considered:

1) The plots for this sort of story - dualities, memory loss, mistaken identity - have an inherently abstract nature to them. Anything in a plot that is meant to disrupt normalcy or complacency for a character is clearly abstract in nature because it disrupts conventional reality. What could neuter this effect is how it is depicted from story to the next, meaning that -

2) The importance of the production around a film could've meant this was a generic giallo-lite mystery or the gem it actually is. The importance shown in creating this film through the director(s), through Vittorio Storaro's cinematography, the music by Nicola Piovani, the crew, and especially through the performance by Florinda Bolkan and her prescience to add the needed conviction. One cannot create a film with this tone well unless you succeed with creating it with the materials you have. Obvious yes, but there's plenty of failures in Italian genre cinema, made for money and/or art, that I can point to for how not following the rule wasn't common enough. The result here means the film has to be on the Abstract List.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A_gkA3Q4IT0/UMEkfJkiXCI/AAAAAAAACV8
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Personal Opinion:

I think the repeated use of "gem" in this review sums up my opinion of Footprints On The Moon. The way I came about seeing it was the kind of perfect situation most film fans would want, only in the context of buying the DVD version with no idea what to expect and baring witness to the film that it turned out to be. I sadly could not see it when it first was released, but in context of it being rescued from obscurity, even if scarred by VHS quality footage, adds to the joy I had seeing the movie.

City of the Living Dead (1980)

Fromhttp://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/wp-content/
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Dir. Lucio Fulci

Italian genre films, especially the horror genre, have always had a streak of the nonsensical to them. There is one thing that must be drilled into any of my viewer's head, not intentionally making a pun about a gruesome incident that takes place in this film, if they do not know it, and that it is not necessarily a good thing if a film is rational and makes sense, whilst it is not necessarily a bad thing for a film to be nonsensical and not make complete sense. In fact the nonsensical I am thinking of is that which, rather than mere gibberish, has a form of connection between the events that take place, that can be accepted and understood to the viewer, but the content throws them off repeatedly or uneases them with its lack of logic. The Italians, deliberately or by lack of budget in some cases, like Europe in the exploitation film boom era, had the golden touch for this. Regular readers may already know that nonsense is likely a good thing to have, and anyone who found this blog looking into weird movies must have some taste in this type of thing anyway, but far from patronising, it feels necessary to point this out. When the regular template for a film is that everything has to be explained, or even over-explained, it can become ingrained that anything that is not rational is inherently a flaw. I was like this once when I first watched these films, dismissing many of them outright, and it took a lot of realisation to see my folly. It feels tedious now to have everything explained and with horror especially this tendency is tiresome.

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It doesn't match what horror as a storytelling form is at its best at. Edgar Allen Poe was concerned for mood and emotional dread. The best horror films are usually those that don't give away their secrets, which is why many hate sequels or remakes that think the secrets should be let out. H.P. Lovecraft from what I've read so far is not in the least bit interested in solving everything and is deliberately using the lack of knowledge as the main crux of his horrors. The Lovecraft reference is deliberate, as in Dunwich, a tiny American town part of this film is set in, a priest hangs himself in his own church and opens the gates that keep the dead from re-entering the living world. A psychic Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl) is directly linked to the incident, witnessing it, in a séance in New York, starting a countdown to close the gates of the dead as chaos erupts in Dunwich. People vanish or are found dead, the dead randomly teleporting around and increasing their fold, the people are becoming more paranoid, and suspicions are throw towards Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), a troubled migrant being blamed for the deaths. Eventually the walls of bars are cracking and people are being rained on by maggot storms.

From https://barparblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/04
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Lucio Fulci was, when I got to his films, in a period of immense re-evaluation since the late nineties, between being finally recognised and being still dismissed as a hack who only shot pointless gore scenes and padded them together. Unlike Dario Argento, Fulci was much more a working director who dabbled in various genres since the late fifties, and ironically, wasn't that fond of horror films, the area he is most well known for. Many of his films were still censored in the UK until the mid-2000s for home release, and films varied in reactions given to them. The New York Ripper (1982) added to the fires of misogyny accusations, films like Conquest (1982) baffled, and after the mid 80s to his death in the mid 90s, if A Cat In The Brain (1990) is anything to go by, his later films of that period are not seen in a good light at all baring the most hardcore of admirers. The films that are viewed as his best though, from A Lizard In A Woman's Skin (1971) to The Beyond (1981), have finally pushed him up as one of the best Italian genre directors of his period, one that could be scattershot at points, but even with a film like Conquest, what side of the fence you are with its qualities, shows an atmosphere and style to it rarely found in others films of the genres he worked in. City of the Living Dead is a very well made film returning to it again. Everything that can be contentious, barring the use of monkey howls in the soundtrack which I personally think adds a peculiar unease when used against an American setting with no zoos in the vicinity, is to do with its plotting, part of a traditional of Fulci's to stray off script with the many horror films of his. Everything visual or in craft is exceptional in a deliberate way.

From http://www.filmlinc.com/page/-/CityLiving.jpg

The illogical tone itself adds a sudden dread. Split between two groups of characters for a large portion - between Woodhouse and journalist Peter Bell (Christopher George) and the residents of Dunwich including psychologist Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) - the series of escalating events and building numbers of deaths work more as mood building to create a palpable sense of dread. The style pronounced and contributes greatly to the quality, from Fulci's obsession with fog machines that went through many of his films to a slow, considered tone that creates the appropriate level of tension. Fabio Frizzi's score, including reuse of the ethereal main theme from Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), contributes tenfold to adding this tension to the film. City of the Living Dead qualifies as part of a loose trilogy. Out of them, only The House By The Cemetery (1981) feels awkward as part of them, not to dismiss it, as while it matches the other two's abstract tones, its slasher-like tone in the first half does feel jarring on the first viewings. The other two films, City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, feel indebted to the tones of horror fiction that the likes of Lovecraft and his ilk drew from, in which the greatest concern is showing the escalation and chaos rather than a conventional narrative which explains what is causing the horrors unfolding. While The Beyond is the better known film, City of the Living Dead is notorious for scenes such as a person puking out their guts, literally, and a still-to-this-day incredible practical effect involving a drill, though the sight is not for the squeamish and will even make a diehard horror fan cringe. But with this film too, its slower, methodical tone even when depicting this violence feels less sickly and instead of an instant jolt, the content in general is pervasive and lingers, the more abstract content such as teleporting zombies and the general air of death having a longer impact.

From http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/wp-content/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Revisiting City of the Living Dead, the reputation Lucio Fulci has for his gore is divisive for me personally. He has filmed some nasty, over-the-top scenes so it cannot be denied. But out of all the films I've managed to see so far, they've been far more interesting for all that is around them, including how the gore connects to the tone and mood. Even the more straightforward films like Zombie Flesh Eaters are far more interesting for the tangents they take. City of the Living Dead is continually distant from rational plotting, never becoming a traditional zombie movie, even anything remotely like Zombie Flesh Eaters for that matter, the greater concern with a corporal phantasmagoria that is displayed which is more gothic and dreamlike in tone.

From https://ttltrash.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ctyfthlvngdd.jpg

It's a little funny, but considering Fulci really hated making horror films, he is not only more known for them but he was able to create films drenching in atmosphere, that no obvious prosthetic effect or inappropriate English dub voice could detract from. City of the Living Dead's best sequence is in a cemetery in the day with no violence at all, a prolonged and agonisingly well done sequence contain a horrible event you'd expect to find in 17th or 18th century literature. While not as abstract as it could've been, still retaining a semblance of a narrative, the result is nonetheless adjacent to a conventional tone rather than sticking to one completely.

From http://bloodygoodhorror.com/bgh/files/promos/
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Personal Opinion:

Somewhat controversially, this is my favourite Lucio Fulci film. Even though it is not seen as highly as The Beyond, and the final scene, with its abrupt and vague plot twist, has been divisive for many, it had an impact on me on the first viewing where I was blown over by its craft. Honestly, it was films like this that cemented my love for these Italian genre films, a gore film but one that has an exceptional artistry and odd tone that you feel no shame in calling a "gore film" because of its visual impact on you.