The Jar (1984)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uMOUCrsYdAc/UT0PPnPPZgI/
AAAAAAAABAc/93GRnYSptxo/s1600/the+jar.jpg

Director: Bruce Toscano

Screenplay: George Bradley

Cast: Gary Wallace as Paul; Karin Sjöberg as Crystal; Robert Gerald Witt as Jack

Synopsis: A man named Paul (Gary Wallace) has a car crash, taking the old man in the other car to his appartment to recover. The old man however disappears without a trace, leaving behind a jar he was obsessed with taking along despite his severe injuries. Paul realises that, even when he himself tries to rid of the jar, the obsession and hallucinations that he is suffering through only get worse and real.

The Jar is a bizarre film, one of the more curious examples of independent genre film from the US. Information about where The Jar came from is scarce - the closest piece of origin story, a titbit of information from episode #31 of Killer POV, suggests it was a student film that got taken and made into a commercial release. This little titbit explains a lot, but even if this information could not be confirmed, you see the sense of a project where its creator crammed as many ideas as they could into the picture in spite of a very low budget, enthusiasm invading logic in favour of the inspiration.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R8MaG5w59PA/VZ6VfFJIYWI/
AAAAAAAACTE/vo8Hj-K-2VE/s640/400blows2.jpg

The jar itself at its centre is curious to say the least. Yes, it does have a ridiculous rubber monster inside it, looking like a gargoyle baby and an example of the more schlocky aspects to the material, but it cannot override what a curious thing the jar is. It is far less strange and imaginative than the jar itself, an unexplained object which causes distress for the protagonist in spite of not knowing why. Stephen Thrower in Nightmare U.S.A suggests a gay subtext of repression but the jar itself can stand in for countless anxieties and fears. The jar itself could just be a symbol of an unknown fear which feeds Paul countless nightmares. The jar inherently evokes a fear of that which is inexplicable, an object which by for whatever reason is inherently diabolical, the foetus creature straight from any other strange horror films unleashed on VHS at the time something which could have easily been removed. The jar itself is even more frightening regardless of what inside of it represents as he cannot escape merely the glass object itself, even when he gets rid of it, even when he destroys it many times. The jar creates He cannot escape the jar even when he gets rid of it, even when he destroys it many times. The jar creates violent forms transgression against his sense of reality, either hallucinations or even his world being sucked into various others legitimately.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/88hINrAJcL8/maxresdefault.jpg

From there you see The Jar as legitimately inspired and yet also a mess due to its structure. It is what one would hope to find with this type of obscurer production that, even if it can be frustrating and make no sense at points even for abstract reasons, the results are still compelling rather than predictable. The results are both those you would never get in other films but you are caught out with. You do not expect this type of internalised horror, where Paul is plagued in his apartment most of the film's length, to suddenly be dropped into a warzone near the end with soldiers without any further reference or content. Nor Paul entering an underworld in a religious, church environment where a figure burns a tarot card in front of him. A frenzied mass of inspiration is found within The Jar and in many ways this is for the better, even if nonsensical, rather than for the film to have become a predictable monster film based upon the jar's contents.

There is still a graspable trait to grab onto too. The subplot surrounding a building relationship with Paul and a neighbour named Crystal (Karin Sjöberg) does help The Jar a lot in having a solid foundation to tie onto. Even if it leads to a cheesy end where he mistakes her for another person in a gristly manner, it also helps with the potential metaphor of what the jar actually, a paranoia to his dialogue as he opens up to her about an evil force outside of himself which he is fighting against. Like a psychological fault which prevents him from being with her, it helps the film be more interesting for all its genre trappings by placing it as a psychodrama where the drama just happens to lurch into other realities. It becomes the lynchpin to at least prepare the viewer for the more heightened moments, grounding the film until eventually it become more and more seeped in the irrational, even lurching into black and white for a decrepit urban environment, even leading to Christian symbology you would expect from a heavy metal album for an utterly unexpected conclusion to the events preceding it. Even the fact the performances have an amateurish nature to them help as, whilst the attempted romance and drama is helpful to paste the scenes together, their stiltedness help as much to The Jar's eerie air. The stunted line readings are appropriate for a film that feels like a hallucination, a synth score droning underneath which sucks into its maddened nature further.

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BM
mFlN2Y3ZjMtODRkOC00MmIxLWE1NTYtZTdm
MTVjOWI5ZjU1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDUxNjc5NjY@._V1_.jpg

That the film ends with the jar attaching itself onto another person gives it an even more interest side, in the sense that in the VHS sheen of what I experienced, this could repeat and repeat all over again with more and more people becoming fixated and damned by the jar for no known reason. Horror even at this messiest is more rewarding when it plays to a more irrational side where one cannot fully define it, not a conventional monster but weird like this. Even if the poster looks cheesy and ridiculous, The Jar stands out more as an underbelly of strange American genre filmmaking which, viewed on tape or DVD or even online rip, is still compelling in a vague hallucinatory nature. Yes, this is bearing in mind that viewers could find the film irritating in its slow pace and lack of conventional plotting. And it is sloppy as hell in construction. But, like the most interesting of these oddities, they are compelling for the same reasons they confound.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic/Surreal/Weird

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

Personal Opinion:

This is the kind of film that capsulate how any work could get released on video back in the eighties and. For those who are patient,  you find artefacts like that do induce a haze on a viewer amongst the generic crude. Where someone on a very low budget crammed as many ideas into the project as much as possible. Some of it does not make any sense, but it evokes a sense of maddened creativity even if unfocused. A sign of where these curious productions succeed even against adversity in this case, or at least strange enough to appeal beyond its limitations.

From https://assets.mubi.com/images/film/112671/image-w384.jpg?1445944698