Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

 

Director: Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond

Screenplay: Herbert Tevos

Cast: Jackie Coogan as Doctor Aranya; Richard Travis as Dan Mulcahey; Allan Nixon as "Doc" Tucker; Mary Hill as Doreen; Robert Knapp as Grant Phillips; Chris Pin Martin as Pepe; Harmon Stevens as Masterson; Nico Lek as Van Croft; Samuel Wu as Wu; John Martin as Frank; Tandra Quinn as Tarantella

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Of course, I was not a fan of this sort of film when I was younger - cheesy b-movies back in the day would be something I would view from merely their surface in terms of their "badness". As a result, returning to Mesa of Lost Women, the flamenco guitar over the beginning, I was more at home to appreciate it, especially when the opening overblown narration, mocking humanity's constant struggle against insects, was already enough to hook me.

An oil surveyor encounters a distressed man and woman in the Muerto Desert, the book end for this couple to tell a tale about giant spiders and an evil doctor, specifically one named Doctor Aranya (Jackie Coogan) who is experimenting on the pituitary gland and hormones in humans, exchanging them with hexapoda and vice versa with a specific tarantula breed. The problem with Mesa of Lost Women, with any film like this, is entirely that they fail to deliver even for unintentional pleasures; their bizarre expedition in genre plotting are not undermined by the wooden performances or lower budgets but, as this comes to sadly, a string of bland dialogue scenes. The premise is strange enough to not need these, as Aranya's experiments have lead to human spiders - only the males are all cast with dwarf actors, as to reflect the size of the male spiders to the female, and the spider women are cast with beautiful models. One doctor's psychically controlled harem (with one actual giant spider) is contrasted by the obvious metaphoric fear of women from men that is impossible to not ignore, the paradoxical idea of women who films like this want men to fantasise about, but see as a threat in themselves for the same virtues they are fantasised about. It comes obvious as the film was sold on Tandra Quinn as Tarantella, a model and starlet whose career was sadly very short with this her most prominent production, a shame as, one of the virtues in a dialogueless role, the film for its many flaws is distinct for the likes of her character, its personification of a femme fatale. The real set piece of the production is her "spider dance" in the middle, a performance meant to be erotic but show something if off with her figure, as the spider women are dangerous and are immense to even gunshot wounds. You can view it as sexist (even misogynistic) alongside other genre films about inhuman tribes of women, but alongside the tameness of the film, its quirks undercut this instead making tropes like this fascinating to encounter in realms of pulp storytelling, reoccurring trends of men's own libidos as much their undoing as the female figures themselves, a neurosis patterned onscreen unintentionally for how many times it was raised in these genre films.

It is an absolute shame Mesa of Lost Women is sluggish eventually, its real crime as eventually every main character brought into this is stuck in a woodland to pad out the hour plus running time. Say what you want of a Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), even if a bad film to many, but before even the Tim Burton film on Ed Wood, we could see how idiosyncratic that film was, never feeling padded and always memorable, being one of its monologues or a wobbling tombstone. It is a shame as, for pure cheese, you have so much to run with in the premise of Mesa of the Lost Women. There is enough to salve the flaws, though he cannot heal them entirely, in Harmon Stevens playing Mr. Masterson, the scientist Aranya tries to convince to help him, stealing the film as he got the idea to be the Renfield of the scenario. The man tuned insane by immortal spider women, his line reactions alone alongside the dialogue itself, with disassociated detachment and innocence despite being gun crazy, won me over as the best part of the film, what the film should have been entirely in tone even if others may mock his performance as being comically broad by accident. You have possible melodrama to work with too, a younger woman on her wedding night with a vain (and unreliable) older man who falls for the male pilot, who is also more adapt to surviving their plight when Masterson hijacks the wedding plan and forces it to land near Aranya's mountain. Even Wu (Samuel Wu, his only role), a stereotype of the man servant who is docile and quotes philosophical platitudes, the dogsbody who eventually betrays everyone, is memorable as one of the only other people you could envision surviving in the jungle in this scenario, showing his bravery enough for a crazed man to even hand him his firearm out of respect.

Mesa of the Lost Women is not Plan 9, nor Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), lacking that spice of being truly unique in this realm of weirdo public domain films, even if they all have Mystery Science Theater 3000 runs written all over them. It is a shame that this is not as memorable as it is, and among the cheap DVD I saw it on originally, alongside a William Beaudine film The Ape Man (1943), a poverty row Bela Lugosi film, I am not surprised I was not a fan back in the day as it is eventually a sluggish production. Far more interesting nowadays too, whilst I had fun with this, is in one of its creators Ron Osmond. Osmond proliferated in low budget westerns in the forties, and exploitation cinema from the fifties, until an airplane accident in the late sixties devastated him and brought him to Christianity. This did not stop his film career, merely brought him to working with Mississippi evangelist Estus Pirkle on an infamous trilogy of religious films. Preserved by filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn through his NWR label, those films - The Believer's Heaven (1977), The Burning Hell (1974), and especially If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971), the latter Pirkle's anti-communist tale where lawnmower death threatens Americans if the Soviets invaded - make Mesa of Lost Women quaint in comparison. The older film is still fun, not too long to draw itself out, but clearly was a title that could have been better even as a cheesy production, Ron Osmond by himself far more wonderfully psychotronic than the film itself.

La Poison (1951)

Director: Sacha Guitry

Screenplay: Sacha Guitry

Cast: Michel Simon as Paul Louis Victor Braconnier, Germaine Reuver as Blandine Braconnier, Jean Debucourt as Maître Aubanel, Louis de Funès as André Chevillard, Marcelle Arnold as Germaine Chevillard, Georges Bever as Mr Gaillard

Ephemeral Waves

 

He has something of a chimera and of a clown.

A twee French comedy...about wanting to bump your spouse off their mortal coil. Even the opening credits have a whimsical politeness to them in contrast to this central premise, and that does not include the sweet natured tribute to the production team and lead actor Michel Simon from director-writer Sacha Guitry himself, letting everyone on staff out of character and job say hello to the audience before turning it into an admiration for Simon's talents. This is all in context of an incredibly misanthropic premise which makes this pleasant opening more striking with hindsight. This is pre-French New Wave cinema, a quietly spoken work from a time when the directors would be lambasted by this incoming wave as antiquated, or in the case of Guitry, gaining admiration by the likes of Francois Truffaut in his work and in his position as a director-writer with his own voice. The quaintness from the get-go is perfect for the premise, where in a quiet French village a man named Paul Braconnier (Simon) cannot stand his wife, and at fifty three, is contemplating murdering her, even consoling the local vicar on his hatred for her.

Telling the small town chemist's is busy with selling aspirin, products to help customers who cannot sleep, and seventy percent of the locals being constipated, presenting a bleak view of "harmonic" community life, especially as Blandine Braconnier (Germaine Reuver), the wife, is not an innocent either, wanting to buy rat poison in consideration to murder him too. Not a good look at "wholesomeness" in the slightest, and in context, when Guitry would pass in 1957, this belies the idea of how a director as they got older is stigmatised for getting "softer" in their attitudes and themes. Moving away from adapting his plays as he was in the early part of his career, and branching out into modern set works between historical pieces, the plays its content with a light grace, but you find yourself at a deeply miserable dinner between the central couple contrasted ironically by a love song on the radio making comparisons to being pigeons mating together despite the absurd contrast it has in the scene.

The film itself is quiet, clear filmmaking with no elaborate editing or camera set-ups. Documented is how Guitry, who admired Michel Simon, went out of his way to explicitly request the crew on the production were as efficient as possible, to only to one takes for scenes is possible, making this a short shot¹. Clear and precise in filmmaking, it is itself still loaded, its light hearted presentation bringing a barb like a beautiful spring flower which turns out to have thorns within it, like a scene where the shopkeepers, believing that having a spectacular event like someone giving birth to quadruplets would bring attention to a town from curious tourists and more customers, ask the vicar to his horror if he can perform a miracle on the spot if they bring someone's daughter to be healed by him. This constant undercutting of the tone is still, in context to a film plus fifty years old, incredible in its gleeful subversion.

The plot itself concerns when Paul, contemplating his plan, learns of a lawyer through his radio with an idiosyncratic take on murder and searches him out, even lying about having already murdered his wife to plan one which can be defended in the defendant box at court, a twisted idea of being able to reconstruct a fake murder to be innocent of self-defence. Here there is a historical context which likely influenced the content, where Sacha Guitry was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and imprisoned, which more than likely emphasised contempt for the French law system. A prolific stage actor and playwright as well, Guitry was still able to perform in the German occupation of France during World War II and, with his reputation as an artist even of interest to German soldiers, he was seen as a collaborator despite friends of his being imprisoned by the Nazis and one scenario, taking advantage of an officer's admiration of his work, to get prisoners of wars releases¹. Even without this personal context, there is a legitimate contempt, witnessed in the final scenes when even the kids ask and try to rationalise what murder and justice is, playing mock murders and trials with even a homemade guillotine stand-in built.

It is still transgressive in the modern day, and it reflects in its own way the contradictory and inadequate problems one could have with crimes being deal with legally. Trials are meant to rationalise and stick to logistical facts, something I can attest to having done jury service at least once in my life like so many readers of this potentially have, but when it comes to thinking about the reason why people would commit a crime, law as a concept has to struggle against the existentialism, alongside the fact you can bend and distort the way a trial works to win your case as this deals with. Even if in this case the justifications by Paul eventually are all extreme, not meant to be justifiable to let him get scot free but in context of a fabricated story, meant to fantasise about this taboo subject safely, let one cheer him on as he thumbs his nose at the institution. The only thing which has not aged well, or is going to be understandably challenged, is that his wife is an alcoholic shrew stereotype playing off to wife jokes. Not to defend the interpretation of the character here, but also factoring in how this broad stereotype found itself through pop culture for a long time, not just in one French film, so many are to be challenged for these stereotypes, it is also clearly part of the misanthropic edge to this entire work.

Sacha Guitry here does present how, with older films, you find works whose style and production do feel of an entirely different time in attitude, but where their content regardless of age remind one how these films were written as far as they could, as now, to shock and strike against what they felt needed mocking. The term "don't judge a book by its cover" is a cliché that is beneath the auteur, but I did come to La Poison with a sense of it being a film playfully whimsy with the subject of murder, but was not expecting how its gentle nature has a very wicked grin I also shared by its end credits.

 

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1) From On Life on Screen: Miseries and Splendor of a Monarch, a documentary by Dominique Maillet focusing on the film and its director-writer's life in connection to it which was included in the Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray release for La Poison.

Vertigo (1958)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor

Based on the novel D'entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac

Cast: James Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson; Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster; Tom Helmore as Gavin Elster; Barbara Bel Geddes as Marjorie "Midge" Wood

 

Vertigo was once a critically maligned film from Alfred Hitchcock only to grow into one of his most critically lauded, so much so it knocked off Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) from the top spot of the Sight & Sound magazine poll for greatest film ever made in 2012. That was not exactly an easy achievement to have completed when Citizen Kane was number one before it for five plus decade, and the fact Vertigo has gained this stature is both an achievement but also strange for me when viewing the film. Vertigo is a true one-off deserving to have done this, but it is a difficult film to digest, one which is possible to criticise for being too languid, too obvious and at times too stripped of Hitchcock's precise, expert filmmaking, even having something the director himself considered a plot flaw in how reliant the protagonist’s acrophobia would be for the plot the succeed¹. It is also justifiable to champion, even if it involves digging into his own psyche at the same time as a filmmaker, for how alien, disquieting and hypnotic as a film it is. The premise is one perfect for a Hitchcock thriller: when he develops acrophobia and vertigo at heights, San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart) is forced to retire from his career, but is asked by an old friend to follow his wife Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) under the belief she has been possessed by one of her late ancestors. The results of taking this job lead to Scotty becoming detached from reality chasing after a woman he falls in love with, one who might not be all she seems. This however leads to a very different result, an unnerving melodrama with vaguely Gothic tinges.

You have to accept a lot of poetic license. That Scotty's vertigo is a MacGuffin. That a major plot twist is shown earlier than it would in any other film, and very obvious if you are attuned to these types of plots, turning the rest of the movie into a type of psycho-dramatic character piece that roots itself into a direction detached from the rational. If you "get" Vertigo's tone and appreciate its crafted elegance, however, it is an unnerving film about psychological breakdown and neurosis, the plot crux more to do with the emotions of two characters, Scottie and Madeleine, who become more emotionally disconnected from reality and pull the rest of the film with them into their heightened worlds. For the moments of lightness that take place, screwball comedy with Scottie's friend and ex-fiancée Midge Wood (Barbara Bel Geddes), who still loves him, most of the film is connected to Scottie almost entirely, onscreen for most of the film in the centre during his descent into dark obsession.  When the film shifts to its second half, the already mentioned plot twist which would usually happen at the end of another thriller is suddenly revealed halfway through with half the film left, leaving Vertigo in uncharted waters where one is disturbed by Scottie's increasingly erratic behaviour after he is briefly hospitalised.

Passages of Hitchcock's career have this film's tone, an odd supernatural or psychological murkiness. Rebecca (1940) is an obvious cornerstone of supernatural melodrama, even Under Capricorn (1949) expressing his interest into slow burn dramas based on hidden neurosis. However even the dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) is safeguarded by the fact, despite being designed by Salvador Dali, that it is a dream whilst Vertigo, despite also having a dream sequence, is entirely in the vague and mysterious. In Vertigo the characters are drawn along narratively by emotions and unseen forces, not elaborate plots of other Hitchcock films, locations such as flower shops, woodlands and a mission called Mission San Juan Bautista all becoming imbued with ghosts of many forms, literally in an image at the ending in the bell tower of the mission. The use of striking colour especially adds to this. Made in the height of Hollywood's Technicolor era, the film is striking in its aesthetic and use of San Francisco locations, but it is especially when you get to the interiors this stands out. Those scenes emphasises the ghostly air from the red walls of a restaurant that is repeatedly entered by the characters and the reoccurrence of the colour green in the second half which purges the world into a sickly obsessive form. It is a deeply perverse film in its themes, carefully dictated by Stewart and Novak, between them managing to keep the film's tone in the right groove, despite the visible age difference, Stewart able to switch himself from the stereotypically jovial and charming man he is seen as in cinema to someone almost shell shocked or a walking comatose, while Novak also has to juggle a complicated role when the film pans out in the end.

Shot in said lush Technicolor by director of photography Robert Burks, a regular collaborator with Hitchcock into the early sixties, Vertigo is as much able to work because the aesthetic of classic Hollywood that the story is depicted through, especially when this takes the studio system style of Hollywood, always evoking for me the sense of the elaborate and stylish, literally the "Dream Factory" creating dreamy films even when shot on location, and undercut it with this tale of obsession. The rear-screen projection for actors driving cars to the colour palettes now become unintentional tools for creating heightened dreams, here becoming more and more unsettling as this narrative of a love for a construct continues. The San Francisco locations, especially the gorgeous panoramas of the sprawling metropolis, add a sense of scale, keeping a Gothic tone for the plot but setting it in a modernist urban environment. Another big contribution to the film is Bernard Hermann's orchestral score, the drama contained in it solidifying the characters' emotions as a lush but far-from-generic score, adding further to the mysterious air surrounding all Scottie encounters and does. That it can switch from the legitimately romantic to the disturbed, and you can pick up the difference in the orchestral instruments and the notes they play, is evidence of its success as a score.

The most openly unconventional aspects of Vertigo are specially created animated sequences. The first is the opening credits by Saul Bass, the title emerging from a woman's eye in extreme close-up, the very modern design of Bass' work for Hitchcock still to this day incredible for their craft but also unique compared to modern title designs still, the use of colour and shape. They become almost avant-garde especially as the credits do not portray anything that takes place in the movie but sets up an unnerving mood it has. The other is the mid-film dream sequence designed by abstract artist John Ferren that takes the same route, flower petals spiralling outward and a figure falling into the void, one of the most iconic images of Hitchcock's career being James Steward's disembodied head staring straight at the viewer which comes from this sequence. It is an iconic image as he is sucked into a mental abyss of his own psyche that he is chained to for the rest of the narrative. It aptly sets up the emotional shock, in the series of events that set up the second half, which will turn Scottie drastically.

Barring its style, including the innovative depiction of Scottie's vertigo, a distortion of our perception as well as his as it is always in first person, cinematic space growing in size without any seemingly actual movement, the rest of the film's unconventional tone is internal. Alfred Hitchcock was a Hollywood director who made commercial films, his auteurism coming from how clear and involved in their craft he was from the get-go of each production, but Vertigo does reach its tendrils into the expressionistic, with its languid pace, in that it is all induced and affected by its characters' minds. When it gets to the second half as Scottie meets another woman similar to Madeleine, the ghosts of the first half change from historical ones to psychological baggage of sexual and gender issues. About a man's memory and view of others becoming distorted and affected as he tries to control and groom this second woman to be Madeleine, Hitchcock was completely blunt about the sexual meaning of this in his interviews with Francois Truffaut, even going as far as say that Scottie was “indulging in a form of necrophilia”², but there is as well the notion of idealism and how it can become poisoned is noticeable. It also cannot be denied that, to an uncomfortable degree after this with his problematic history with Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock himself had blatantly obvious fixations on the idealised woman, and whether he can be defended as an artist for this or not, Vertigo becomes a text unintentionally, but with greater weight, in seeing obsession as a concept for the perfect woman be dissected by its plot.

[Spoiler warning. Skip italicized text if you do not want the film to be spoilt for you]

Adding to this is knowing the woman Scottie is obsessed with is a mere image, a fake stand-in for his friend's real wife in a twist Italian giallo filmmakers would have ran with. The woman he loves manages to die twice in fact, his love only existing for the form of Madeleine, wearing a certain flower, a certain way to their blonde hair style tied up in the back, a certain grey suit dress designed for the film by Edith Head, and an image created based on the real wife, the individual Kim Novak's character actually is and Carlotta Valdes, the ancestor Madeleine is said to be possessed by, amalgamated together. The image of femininity he adored is a mere picture, while the stand-in who promises to love him is rejected for admitting how she is not the Madeleine he wanted and that she was used to trick him into a murder scheme. The "abstract" I am obsessed with in cinema, how I use the word, is as much about the questioning of subjective reality, and the theme of Vertigo of an idealised image, a beautiful woman, being both impossible to be reach and not even existing is a good example of this type of questioning, when the symbols of femininity for Scottie not the woman herself is what he desires. As an entertainment film, this makes the film a cautious tale of this obsession, and that the film is as languid as it is befits this.

[Spoiler ends]

Whilst there would be a film later on which is stranger than this in tone - The Birds (1963) even as a monster film is more stranger and chilling in the baggage it evokes - Vertigo is haunting as an entertainment feature, and as art, because its conceit is about the image one has overtaking reality as Scotty is chasing after a phantom in many a sense. This comes with mind as I have had to gradually warm to Vertigo over the times I have seen it. It does meander significantly halfway through, noticeably slower in pace to other Hitchcock films, and that makes it a film whose acclaim is fascinating in that it shows visible flaws in plotting and pacing that cannot be denied. It possesses something which overcomes this, even if it is unnerving, even before the Sight & Sound polls, back when the film was not readily available to see, causing someone like Brian De Palma to openly riff on the same theme of perception in Obsession (1976), the title spelling out the themes openly. Film critics dug into this film when it was more readily available to see, and what virtues the film has - its performances, the music, the aesthetic style - make what would be a hammy melodrama at points in another's hands enticing as it is disconcerting.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist / Mind Bender/ Weird

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

 

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1) Truffaut, François (1985). Hitchcock/Truffant, Revised Edition. First Touchstone Book Edition. Pg. 247.

2) Truffaut, François (1985). Hitchcock/Truffant, Revised Edition. First Touchstone Book Edition. Pg. 244.

Where To? (1957)

 

Director: Georges Nasser

Screenplay: Youssef Habchi Achkar, Halim Fares and Georges Nasser

Cast: Laura Azar as The Mother; Tannous Dik as The Doctor; Shakib Khouri as The Brother; Mounir Nader as The Notary; Raouf Rawi as Farid

Ephemeral Waves

 

But our cow is happier than I am.

This is one of the few films I have seen from Lebanon; for me, experiencing the world through its cinematic history is vital, for their virtues as films and the stories their existence tell, their cultural contexts and what they show onscreen (or if a genre film how its told) adding even greater layers. With Where To, the story begins with its director/co-writer Georges Nasser. Born in Tripoli, Lebanon in 1927, Nasser was one of the first Arab filmmakers to study cinema in the United States¹, obtaining a degree from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) before returning to Lebanon in the mid-50s. His first film was Where To, which would become the first Lebanese picture to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 1957¹.

The film's main narrative is also significant as it reflects real history, where the patriarch of a farming family, leaving his wife and two sons, migrates to Brazil for wealth alongside many men. This was commonplace, with Brazil's population includes an extensive number of Lebanese Brazilians stemming from this influx of migration from one side to the world to the other. From 1860 to 1914, between a third and a half of the population of Mount Lebanon, a mountain range is the country, is believed to have emigrated, ninety percent of all emigrants from the Lebanese territory thought to have been Christian². Over the century, including Muslin Lebanese migration, more would emigrate at various time periods such as during World War II, and the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90 among others. Even as late as Israel's 1982–2000 occupation of southern Lebanon, and the war surrounding this, led to more to migrate, especially with individuals from the Shia population moving for economic reasons². These many times show, yes, Lebanese migration to Brazil has been a common historical connection between the two countries.

The history is significant to the point, with the first examples from 1860 to 1914, it even ties in with Brazil's last emperor Dom Pedro II, whose trips to the Middle East in the 1870s included an extensive tour of Lebanon. Gaining a reputation in Lebanon, seen as man of virtue and enlightenment, legends of this tour included stopping at the side of a road, to the ruins of Baalbeck, a city in Lebanon, and talking to peasants, suggesting to them to abandon their current lot to migrate to Latin America². The reality is likely more complicated than this over the centuries on, especially as Lebanese migrants had to find their way in their new homeland, living as "mascates" (peddlers) once they actually reached Brazil if need be until they could find a foothold economically to live in their adopted homeland. Nonetheless, a sizable population of Lebanese-Brazilian culture exists as a result of these migrations, where "the Lebanese community is now highly mixed into society, intermarriage is incredibly common, while few speak even the basics of Arabic." if a 2014 Executive Magazine web article on this history, "How the Lebanese conquered Brazil", is completely accurate². The story of Where To however offers the other side of the picture, of those left home in Lebanon, the world of the families left abandoned.

The father joins those migrating to Brazil, the fictional form of the many who attempted to find their luck and success in a country. \w\here ultimately many would migrate and successfully integrate within their new land, Where To's patriarch however is the tragic side of this, as his is a tale of the failure and the emotional wreckage as a result of this decision many took. The film is naturalistic, in context to fifties cinema I have seen as it takes its place among the many influenced by this direction, famous from Italian neo-realism. That of also casting non-actors but still with a sense of glamour to tone of the film which is unlike what realism in modern cinema looks like, stripping more back over time in how we make "realistic" films now. For its time, this is stripped back in how having non-actors presents a lack of visages to obscure the emotions, to obscure its subject in unnecessary artifice to the material. The contemplative tone to its drama, whilst arguably melodrama in places and in the use of the score for heightened dramatic effect, is still strong and still in mind to the era (and now) radically different in tackling this type of material.

Thus, when the father leaves, the wife has to work harder by herself, to maintain their land alongside raising their sons. But, in a perfectly executed time slip, by way of a circle of the cattle driven plough, the boys start to grow up, as kids still having to help on the land too, and the pair changing in their desires as they grow up. The oldest eventually wishes to stay the farmer, to help his mother, also because as a child the first blossom of romance with a neighbourhood girl were there, a girl he was already friends with which begins to become more as they mature. The youngest, boosting of wanting vast numbers of cattle, shepherds and landmass as a kid, gets a knack of farm management but also becomes restless, also becomes one of the many men, trying to find work in then-modern Lebanon and cannot, who wants to get a passport and go to Brazil. It is an obvious story, but a compelling one, and history even beyond Lebanon's of migration of its population is resonant in how many in other countries have done for the same reasons characters within this film do. Where To documents those who wished for a better life and moved regardless of their actual nationality.

The drama is simple, the melodrama subtler but there, the mother getting sick from overwork, but melodrama heightens what is still unfortunately relevant too still. As the older son becomes the farmer to care for his mother, the youngest gains an education but cannot find work. Here as well though, without letting comments trivialise this film's concerns which at a national scale, this is also set within a family who scrape past from poverty, as workers on the land, trying their best to survive in an entirely different economic and practical context, one for director Georges Nasser telling this story for his fellow countrymen and women. He is aware of drama's use for this, as twenty years later, the father will eventually return a broken man, and his remorse as his life was not successful as other (real) Lebanese migrants comes as if he is now a ghost, a hollow man, floating in to his old world again. His one way to help his family in remorse for the sins he feels he has, not even able to say who he is to them, is by an act of kindness after an accident of melodrama, a car hitting someone, but this in itself is as unexpected an event to transpire as it would if it happened in real life.

For the outsider, this film from a country whose cinema is not commonly accessible means a great deal. Lebanese customs are show including sword dancing, and dance with shields, at a wedding reception. Thus too you see life of a family - one son who has found everything staying where he is, the other showing the frustrations of all those who finally emigrated out of their homeland - that in itself a cultural aspect in how these universal issues any can have are dealt with in this context, in time and location. This means so much more knowing how difficult the film actually was for Nasser to make, commenting decades later that he did not even have access to technicians let alone actors¹, making this a hard fought for debut to produce with those with him. Sadder is in knowledge this was not a success at all when it was first released. His career onwards was a struggle. His next film Le Petit Étranger (1962), a French language coming of age story, was both a critical and commercial failure. Even more intriguing, but taking twelve years to be created and his last film, would be Matloob Ragol Wahed (Only One Man Wanted, 1974), a Palestinian allegorical tale that, a Syrian production, combines its themes with a b-western template with garish primary colour and female nudity, a kitsch cultural political work that I never heard of until writing this review tragically, but in its little knowledge of sounds like Nasser throwing caution to the wind even in a lurider genre context for the themes¹. Only a year later, the Lebanese Civil War begins, lasting between 1975 to 1990, sounding as cataclysmic for how long and bloody that time passing sounds, and Nasser went on, with no success, to create a Lebanese film syndicate, before becoming a teacher at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts¹.

It is with happiness that, decades later at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, a 91 year old Nasser was able to return with a world premier of his debut's restored version. As with these films, sadly were it not for the likes of MUBI, they are difficult to see, and unless physical media is available, even MUBI can only have temporary access to a film which, in movie markets, is tragically not going to be picked up. Unless you get the cineastes to take the chance and get the film more readily available, cinema really has a danger of forgetting cinema is a time capsule, only better than other mediums of expression because the cineastes fought tooth and nail to make sure films like this were preserved and accessible even briefly. A film like this does deserve more attention; I normally write of cult and "unconventional" cinema, but the same reasons I am drawn to those films applies to cinema from countries like Lebanon barely accessible even still. I will be honest in saying it is a form of tourism, but my interest within deep diving into "world cinema" in the truest sense is noble where it leads to films like this. Where To is as much the underdog, still subversive in offering an alternative eye in how, casting his glance in a story based on history in his country, Georges Nasser does not even need over eighty minutes, under that running time by a couple, to fully flesh out so much meaning in pondering the desires and strains of a man (of many) migrating in hope of finding more, and the consequences. The calmness and how elegant the film is, beautiful in its restored monochrome as the camera will linger for a minute or so up at clouds in the sky, is timeless. That of the era, its distinct music scoring of older films, has not aged, merely is a tool of before which touches the heart strings. A film like this you would hope, through cineastes, will eventually get a higher spot in recognition because it deserves it.

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1) Taken from the Middle East Eye web article Georges Nasser: The return of Lebanon’s first great film luminary, published on Wednesday January 24th 2018 and written by Joseph Fahim.

2) Take from the Executive Magazine web article How the Lebanese conquered Brazil, published on July 3, 2014 and written by Joe Dyke.

The Violent Years (1956)

 

Director: William Morgan

Screenplay: Ed Wood Jr.

Cast: Jean Moorhead as Paula Parkins; Barbara Weeks as Jane Parkins; Arthur Millan as Carl Parkins; Theresa Hancock as Georgia; Glen Corbett as Barney Stetson; Joanne Cangi as Geraldine; Gloria Farr as Phyllis; Lee Constant as Sheila; I. Stanford Jolley as Judge Clara; Timothy Farrell as Lt. Holmes

Ephemeral Waves

 

Something from a different era - when teenagers were a new concept, drive-in films exploited trends like this, and or an entire sub-genre based on juvenile delinquency existed. In this particular example, from this point, you have Ed Wood Jr., the notorious director/writer of Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957), with his own take on the JD genre, but he is not the director. That would be William Morgan, a veteran of the likes of westerns and crime films though predominantly an editor in his career. As a result, whilst the resulting film is a lot of dialogue in static shots, not only are the flourishes of its screenwriter still there, but this is instead a pulpy story told by a director which strips away some of the touches Wood was notorious for as a director, his improvisations and on-screen mistakes, providing an interesting result. Its lack of Wood's more over-the-top flourishes is not to be complained about when the film is still this entertaining combining Wood and Morgan, with the added touch your lead Jean Moorhead was an early era Playboy centerfold.

More so as this is interesting is that, not tackling male teen delinquency as was common in this genre, even by Hollywood itself as an influence with Marlon Brando and The Wild One (1953), this is about young hoodlum women. Their stylish hairdos and skirts belay how dangerous they are as, led by thrill seeker Paula Parkins (Moorhead), the girl gang will gladly dress as men to rob a petrol (gas) station and nearly kill the gas attendant with a harsh thump to the head with a pistol barrel. Whilst the film does not have a lot of time to work with, it is rewarding in how, as a film recovered by Something Weird Video, this is as entertainment but a short, sharp shock to take in, as very much an artefact of its era, but an interesting one as a Ed Wood film not quite an Ed Wood film.

It is obvious, but well addressing, that this is from the type of exploitation film which sold themselves as moral tales to inform the audience, but was sell the lurid content at the same time. Here, the film in a book end structure in a court room in the aftermath of the narrative, you get a long monologue for a need for more family values, returning to the Church in belief, and taking kids to the woodshed more often, i.e. the punishments banned over the decades after as child cruelty. This is ironic knowing who the screenwriter was, Ed Wood Jr. an outsider let alone in mind to his pleasure in dressing in women's clothing contrasting the fifties values this film ends on a sermon of. Exploitation films themselves as a premise, especially this older type, were as much with morals to avoid getting into trouble for their salacious content, which this could be the case of too.

Here especially, there is something subversive about three female teens being degenerates, even with their perfect fashion and cars of the era, more so as whilst the film condemns teenage hedonism, it really hates bad and neglectful parenting. Lead Paula is frankly sympathetic, despite the film and her behaviour, the daughter of a male newspaper man and a socialite mother whose parents will not even clear their schedules for her birthday. The weird thing with Ed Wood is that, goofy as he was with his dialogue, he did try to be serious, and sometimes it hit in poignant ways as here. With one scene at a "sleepover" with men, he gets one of his best pulpy moments just with Paula admitting she is a person with everything, always a new car on her birthday, but lonely and attention seeking in a destructive way as a result.

At unless an hour, it cuts the fat off everything, but it is in itself full of idiosyncrasies, such as the plan for cash that leads to the gang's downfall, to trash their school, being hinted at as being anti-Americans or likely communists having contrasted them through another. And even today, there is the guttural shock, in spite of admitting sympathy for the lead gang leader, that this has a scene explicitly hinting at them deciding to rape a man off-camera. As they hold up a heterosexual couple, and tie the girlfriend in the car, stealing her fleece whilst they are at it, it is unexpectedly dark for this type of film to have that implied, as it a lot of the content still being about delinquents nearly killing gas station attendants or them even getting into a shoot out near the end with cops. More so as women as, even decades later, perceived gender biases of this era make this image of these women being aggressive and armed more striking. It is both the sort of film John Waters should have remade in terms of its inherently transgressive camp, but also, even in terms of moments like Paula getting intelligence on the police from a father all too willing to dish out confidential info, is the kind of film of its era of pulp, exploitation and Woodian curiosities. It is a movie which even as an okay film in terms of a narrative movie, but with unexpected levels of contextual baggage to consider.

Even how bleak the ending is, where life and death are literally exchanged but with no one redeemed in the eyes of the law, is something easy to forget for a film from this era. This is in mind of being one of many exploitation films like this, based on old tropes like the crime genre, likely made by people such as director William Morgan who worked in these genres decades before, which continued into the fifties in spite of there being other genres like sci-fi films, and still adding their fingerprints in the newer types of films which had new types of content and tones within them. Certainly, in terms of Ed Wood, this is honestly a minor work from his canon, in terms of not being the full experience of his idiosyncrasies as a director too, being restrained for him even as a script writer. In terms of being Wood being more straightforward as a result, this is however with its content something fascinating to see for a nice contrast.

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

 

Director: William Beaudine

Screenplay: Tim Ryan (with additional dialogue by Leo 'Ukie' Sherin and Edmond Seward)

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Dr. Zabor; Duke Mitchell as Duke Mitchell; Sammy Petrillo as Sammy Petrillo; Charlita as Nona; Muriel Landers as Saloma; Al Kikume as Chief Rakos; Mickey Simpson as Chula; Milton Newberger as Witch Doctor Bongo; Martin Garralaga as Pepe Bordo; Ramona, the Chimp

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #255

 

Don't mind my friend. He has a one-syllable brain.

For what was considered one of the worst films ever made, this requires having to unpack an entirely different era of pop culture few may know of to explain why this even exists. That effectively, with this premise starting Sammy Petrillo and Duke Mitchell, producer Maurice Duke  felt there was an opportunity to cash-in on the craze of films by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, a popular duo at the time, without having to hire Martin and Lewis. To contrast those figures, you have a young Duke Mitchell, who would go on infamously to self-fund two cult films in the seventies, Massacre Mafia Style (1974) and Gone With the Pope (1976/2010), whilst Sammy Petrillo was known for doing Jerry Lewis impressions and even worked with Lewis at one point. Paramount Pictures producer Hal B. Wallis, who then had Martin and Lewis under contract at the time, even sued the creators of the film, with a compromise likely to be found in burning the negative. Why that did not happen is to speculate, but it led to this film to gain the infamy it has.

The strange thing is that, even with Lugosi in the cast as a star, this is not a horror film. It really is not substantial (nor funny) enough to be a comedy. It is a complete oddity, as Mitchell and Petrillo end up introduced stranded on a Pacific Island "Kola Kola", one where the natives are (mostly) very white actors masquerading as non-white people in tribal dress. Pointing out insensitive cultural appropriation here is like pointing out the practicalities of sculpting a fire guard from chocolate. Instead, knowing the infamy of this film, the obvious point is still the most important thing to point out, that it is an awkward film. Sammy Petrillo in particular has the ignoble job, as a visibly young man in this film, of replicating Jerry Lewis, who act was an acquired taste anyway. Contrasting him, Duke Mitchell calmly coasts through with ease, about to sing very well even when his character is turned into a gorilla by Dr. Zabor, played by Bela Lugosi, for eyeing up his native assistant Nona (Charlita).

This is the type of low budget film where no one bats an eye about a gothic castle in the jungle existing, all because this is aware of what it is. It wants to play to the Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin films of a Lewis figure going for yucks, the Martin figure being suave and crooning songs, whilst playing off the reputation of Bela Lugosi even if at this time he was badly in need of work, even having a meta joke about Lugosi playing someone who looks like Dracula. This is the type of film on paper which sounds compelling to witness, but the film itself watching is surprising in how much even time seems to drag. It is strange, after all the years I have heard of this film, actually watching the film as see how a horror icon, an act meant to cash-in on a huge comedy duo, a jungle set and a barely cohesive narrative are meant to be bolted together.

It is a film where the MVP, even with Bela Lugosi in the cast, is Ramona the chimpanzee, a cute trained simian who plays a comedic foil to Petrillo. Only knowing, even if likely an infant, that this type of animal casting was stopped for a reason undermines the fun of this character, plus knowing that an adult chimpanzee is strong enough to rip appendages off human beings with ease and willing to if provoked. Even Ramona feels abruptly placed in, for a film which never finds a point to itself baring the vaguest of variety shows in filmic form. All of the obvious thoughts that, yes, this film lives up to its reputation as a bad film do not actually explain that this film also is a curious experience, felt with less pain than a strange apathy fascinating. More so as this is effectively a comedy - a comedy where none of the humour worked for me, which made it a perplexing movie.

Large portions are spent with Petrillo prating about. There is a dance sequence. There is a romance with Nona and Duke Mitchell, but he and Petrillo playing themselves, with a very educated daughter of the island's leader. Yet nothing here even turns into a slog but just exists. More so as well that the film does feel unfinished, with no ending to a narrative of one of your leads being turned into a gorilla and an evil scientist baring, to spoil this and the aforementioned film, the conclusion of the 1939 The Wizard of Oz. The director William Beaudine became infamous for films like this in his career, despite being a journeyman who worked in a variety of genres, and honestly, as a simplistically shot movie, he does not take the blame. It looks average, but even the fake stage bound jungle sets have a fascinating artificiality. Bela Lugosi, even at the time with a drug addiction where he would eventually encounter Ed Wood Jr., is charismatic here as a significantly older man, managing to wear white in the jungle without it being stained. Even Duke Mitchell when stuck in a gorilla suit, even if dubbed over, is vaguely amusing to see the weird trope of cheap gorilla suits for comedy. That is the really strange thing, in that having seen the lowest of low even next to this film in my viewing experiences, no one here is really the blame for dropping the ball. Even the cinematographer Charles Van Enger worked with Ernst Lubitsch and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

It is really the point where you have to sit and ponder its existence. Only Sammy Petrillo really stands out as egregious trying to mimic Jerry Lewis, as a younger man, with a heightened shrillness, but beyond the jokes being dumb, this is innocuous. In fact, most barely register, almost sweet in their lack of impact. The script is to blame but I do not want to really criticise the screenplay either. The rest is perversely anti-entertainment, which could sound gimmicky to say, but in the sense that, whilst a narrative film, it leads nowhere, leads to no humour or subversion for this, and is entirely a conservative film of conservative jokes with problematic cultural appropriation, yet completely innocuous in spite of this. In a way, it is admirable for a film to achieve this state of existence, of a form of nothingness, even if in truth, one would rather prefer a film that tried for this tone but with more on the table. Or a film which, with its history and content - ripping off a famous comedy duo, Bela Lugosi, men being turned into gorillas by cheap suits - was more over-the-top then this, which is just a weird film instead.

The White Reindeer (1952)

 

Director: Erik Blomberg

Screenplay: Erik Blomberg and Mirjami Kuosmanen

Cast: Mirjami Kuosmanen as Pirita and as Maarita, Pirita's mother; Kalervo Nissilä as Aslak; Arvo Lehesmaa as Tsalkku-Nilla

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #246

 

The balls of ten bull moose...

If there ever was a film that embraced traditional culture, let alone in a horror/supernatural film, it is The White Reindeer. Finnish director Erik Blomberg with Mirjami Kuosmanen as his lead, his wife and co-writer, worked on this tale, set among traditional Sami culture of semi-nomadic reindeer herders, with an ethological mindset. Shot in evocative monochrome, Mirjami Kuosmanen plays Pirita, a woman whose mother was a witch, rooming in the frozen wilderness and dying in childbirth, leaving Pirita to be raised in a community of herders to adulthood. That Pirita is feisty and talented enough to be the sole woman to participate in the local sledding races makes her the perfect wife for her future husband, theirs hopefully to be an ideal marriage.

Unfortunately, with him leaving frequently to herd said reindeer, the fear of him loving her less forces her to go to a shaman. The feisty figure is stuck at home to tend to it, in the middle of nowhere, and neglect felt leads her to an eccentric hermit who provides an incantation to become the most irresistible woman in that area. Thus, even in this film that feels of another era, something as universal and still relevant today, that a woman feels trapped when she was a free spirit, is the cause for a bad downfall no one is to blame for.

Because, alongside having to sacrifice a pet white reindeer, a cute one, to a god's altar in the middle of a reindeer graveyard, it leads to her turning into a white reindeer or a witch reindeer, frequently as well beyond her control. Inherently enticing for men to chase to catch or hunt, they find the white reindeer only to meet Pirita in her real form, enticing as much. Sadly this leads to them immediately being killed, not even for food from the tone of the scenes, but because for the sake of it. Eventually this will become a tragedy as, with the increasing body count of the men in the nearby community, it will respond with even her husband among those trying to hunt the white reindeer.

This is subjectively a "horror" film, feeling more (as mentioned) as an anthological take of a folktale. At times, this film would almost be whimsical, especially the score, were it not about a woman who turned into a witch reindeer, insanely vivid in terms of verisimilitude. Not surprisingly, director Erik Blomberg worked in non-fiction beforehand, this being his feature length debut. It is always fascinating for me to see a folktale like narrative told, but you can have a variety of ways of depicting this, here the actuality and real locations a distinct touch. It is only close to seventy minutes, an actual small folktale, but it is expressed as distinctly as its snow covered landscapes are, such as introducing Pirita's origins by sung narration.

It is also helped, with a seismic influence, by Mirjami Kuosmanen as Pirita herself. Mirjami Kuosmanen's acting with her eyes alone is such a huge virtue to the film's credibility, investing as much into the film onscreen as she clearly did off-camera. The film is slow and contemplative, more alien as the filmic style here gets older to an advantage, but she however draws one in as a viewer with a relevancy in a modern era. When she acts the evil side of Pirita, possessed by the witch reindeer, this becomes a horror film fully, seductive and menacing. Yet she evokes the tragedy still - one misguided decision, due to loneliness (and easy to read gender politics), likely felt by other women in the community, stuck her into a narrative that will as end tragically for her as it will for her husband who truly loves her.

Something like this would unfairly be put off by some younger viewers. If you want a horror film in the stereotypical sense, this is not that. It is a  folktale which is macabre, yet that truly alien mood of how even its production style, found in films around the world in the fifties when this was made, legitimately makes it a thing out of time nowadays despite being made by a filmmaker with a documentary background. That for those open minded is, as with everything that is a virtue, why The White Reindeer is a huge grower I have come to love.

X: The Unknown (1956)

 

Director: Leslie Norman (and Joseph Losey)

Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster

Cast: Dean Jagger as Dr. Adam Royston; Edward Chapman as John Elliott; Leo McKern as Insp. 'Mac' McGill; Anthony Newley as LCpl. 'Spider' Webb; Jameson Clark as Jack Harding; William Lucas as Peter Elliott; Peter Hammond as Lt. Bannerman

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #208

 

An early Hammer film, a tale of a strange radioactive entity that has spring up from a fissure in the Scottish countryside, the first thing that came to mind pronounced is how safety measures when handling radioactive material has become more severe over the decades after. Back here, almost an entirely different reality of Britain in appearance and atmosphere, it was perfectly fine to just have a lead box for radioactive metals and a see through pane to stand the other side of to experiment on it, not even full body suits.

In seriousness though, whilst that was a perturbing aspect of the film, it is significant that when the original Godzilla was made by Toho in Japan in 1954, and the Americanized version only was made in 1956, there was a film here which is blatant as a metaphor for the dangers of using radioactive energy and substances without realising their danger. Of note, adding to this, is knowing this was meant to be a sequel returning to writer Nigel Kneale's popular character  Professor Bernard Quatermass, following from The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), only for Kneale to prevent this¹. In hindsight, you could have easily seen this film as a Quatermass production, but instead we have scientist Dr. Adam Royston (Dean Jagger), an expert in radioactive materials who finds himself drawn into this scenario when, during military training of locating radioactive materials with a detector, a group of army soldiers are caught off-guard by a fissure in the earth to appear.

The location, rural Scotland in the Lochmouth region, does add a lot of weight to this film even if it is a traditional b-movie that involves a monstrous form, [Spoiler Warning] a radioactive and living mass of mud-likegoo which absorbs radioactive energy [Spoiler Ends]. This is all in mind that you have a violent contrast to a wholesome idyllic place of the past against then-modern science. Here people still go to Church, as in one scene, and when they need to flee their homes, they hide in said Church with the vicar making sure everyone is safe. There are cars and electric lights, but this is still as much a place, even if shot in England, of the World War II and even pre-WWII era, contrasted by Royston's workplace of vast laboratories and computers, even if he himself prefers working in his little shed with his own experiments.

And, in spite of its monster, rendered with models being engulfed in its form, especially in the early stages X does have a darker side because of its tackling of radioactivity. Anyone who is in presence of this being, shown from its perspective for its victims, suffers radioactive burns which can more than likely kill them eventually, even just being near the entity. Even a child, a young boy dared by another to enter spooky woods, which is very adult to have done at the time and still is today. And, still by today's standards, there are a few gruesome moments, especially with someone when attacked in an x-ray room of the hospital being melted to death beyond the skeleton in its presence, which is still icky to see decades later. More so, it is a surprise to see in British horror film from the late fifties such scenes, a reminder than Hammer, whilst a cultural institution in the modern day, were pushing boundaries in terms of what they could get away with, the irony of them become antiquated in the mid-seventies ironic when even this, one of their obscurer films, has such scenes. It also presents one scene, as a result, which does become haunting in context of its themes and time of creation. That the father of the child injured, who has just died before in the scene, berates Royston for his involvement in working on radioactive materials, which he takes the blame for in a universal sense. This ultimately cheesy film still taps into a real fear post-atomic bomb which can be found and adds a greater weight to it.

Ultimately it leads to a monster film finale, which could be seen as a lacksidasical one in hindsight to all this, though let us not ignore this was a horror film first, and that it manages to still have a weight with the themes it decided to tackle. With the Quatermass connection, it would have actually improved the film if Nigel Kneale was willing to play ball. Not least, because The Quatermass Xperiment itself, the Hammer adaptation, ends with a cheesy looking monster, but managed to make its themes still stand out regardless. The themes in the version of the film we did get are still strong in this form, and Dean Jagger is actually an interesting lead who could have been a Quatermass-like figure himself in more productions.

The film as well looks gorgeous in context - mostly set in the countryside, the film in monochrome as well has an evocative edge which helps greatly with the production, even making the monster more alarming than goofy as it is a literal mass which cannot be halted. (Thankfully cinematographer Gerald Gibbs, a veteran who had worked on films like No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) beforehand, would be hired for Quatermass II (1957)). The other intriguing thing to consider is that, with some of his footage surviving in the final production, this was originally a film to be helmed by Joseph Losey, which adds an additional strange touch. Losey, who would eventually be the auteur behind many idiosyncratic dramatic films in the sixties to the eighties, would get a Hammer film entirely to himself, The Damned (1963), which was also about the perils of radioactivity, and thus adds a nice little bow to cinematic history when few directors get enough shot with the same studio on similar material.

 

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1) Referenced HERE.