The Phantom of the Opera (1998)

 

Rewatched Monday 10th March 2025

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento, Gérard Brach (and Giorgina Caspari)

Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux

Cast: Julian Sands as The Phantom of the Opera, Asia Argento as Christine Daaé, Andrea Di Stefano as Raoul, Baron de Chagny, Nadia Rinaldi as Carlotta Altieri, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni as Honorine, István Bubik as The Rat Catcher, Lucia Guzzardi as Madame Giry

 

Somehow because of Gaston Leroux, I can connect Lon Chaney Sr., Claude Rains, Dario Argento...and Andrew Lloyd Webber together among the many who've adapted or starred as the titular Phantom, Leroux's 1910 work first creating this figure terrorising the Paris. This is in mind I forgot Julian Sands was in this now taking up the role, emphasising alongside being a very idiosyncratic casting choice for Argento that this entire project was more idiosyncratic than I remembered. With the prologue suggesting Batman Returns (1992) in the origin of the Phantom as a baby Sands being floated across the waters of a cave in wicker basket, only with rats replacing the penguins, Argento's take with co-writer Gérard Brach taking its own direction with the source material. More so as I thought that Batman Return reference as a joke to myself as I re-watched the opening, only to forget a rat drags the wicker basket to safety and an animatronic rat puppet head in close-up is depicted as their friendship as human to rodent is shown.

Considering his 1987 film Opera, it makes sense for Argento to tackle this setting again, especially as he was always apparently adamant to Leroux's novel at some point. With the Budapest Opera House in Hungary used for the shooting location, designed as a copy of the Paris Opera House central to Leroux's story, alongside scouting real caves in Italy for the underbelly the Phantom looms in, this feels like a passion project and a really ambitious film even for Argento in terms of production. I'd argue the production value is great as a result, a period horror romance tragedy which is one of the few times in his career he went back in time. This also stands out considering this was made at the same time there was sadly the declining end of the Italian genre industry. Argento, even if also filming in Hungary, clearly had some influence least enough for the production values here to depict everything from the back stage areas full of props (even a huge life-size ship stage in one shot) to the washrooms for the linen to the caves below the Paris Opera.

It focuses on the Phantom fully as a romantic anti-hero, one who brutally kills people but has his own moral code, including one most would understand in dealing with an older male creeper of young girls obsessed beyond wanting to force chocolate on them. He is not physically disfigured, which is a significant change, arguably progressive in its own way, as the scarring is psychologically for good reason in being forced to like with rats. Sands is also really appropriate for a figure that compels Asia Argento's lead Christine Daaé, an aspiring opera singer, with the chemistry that would be found between them. As the film goes, the story finds itself deviating into differences such as explicit psychic powers that force a rat catcher to put his hand into a trap of his own set up, or the sense of humour which is that and deliberate.

A gorier and more sexually explicit take is found, feeling like Argento's full blown Gothic period horror which fully embraces its dramatic weight and doesn't suffer the many issues, particularly budget, that afflicted Dracula 3D (2012). The tonal changes and production style actually move this film in Argento's career closest to a wave of films from the nineties, such as those by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro like Delicatessen (1991), of tonally shifting genre films which embraced their practical production values and weren't above very strange moments of humour. This will put some off, but Argento's cinema was already getting weirder by the eighties, where Saxon randomly blares out in the middle of Opera with their heavy metal riffs, and probably the "weirdest" of his films, Phenomenon (1985), involving Jennifer Connelly being able to psychically communicate with insects and a chimpanzee with a razor blade.

It befits that era of baroque genre films with arguably its more lurid and tonal shifting moments helping the film from becoming too dry, be it the strange early CGI effects like Julian Sands seeing a mouse trap in the full of nude men writhing in pain superimposed in the full moon, or the bombast in style even for humour like a close-up of a singer's tonsils out of artistic creativity. Some of this does feel ridiculous but more often than not it feels like for deliberate humour - like a stint in an all-welcome sex bath house with, the potential second love interest for Christine, where equal opportunity nudity of all ages and sizes is contrasted by clothed men arguing philosophy violently in the pool.

There's the potential discomfort with this film's throw-in-the-kitchen-sink tone, if you connect the dots, with the more sexually frank moments knowing Asia Argento is Dario's daughter, though she has worked with him over the later decades to a film like Dark Glasses (2022), so thankfully theirs has felt more a happier familial relationship. Even if films like The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) before had a really deliberately uncomfortable thriller dealing with sexual violence, there's a feeling of greater trust between them which thankfully makes the pair comfortable in collaborating as they have as family in such films. Also she fits here as Christine - dubbed with another's singer voice, she does to Asia Argento's credit fit the role as a period horror lead who is meant to present the pure hearted singer an outcast like Sands would fall for. Including her conflict, when she starts to question if he is trying to dominate her as much as the reality that theirs is to be as much a tragic love, she thankfully feels like an appropriate casting choice. I like Julian Sands too, someone who befits this more glamorous version of the Phantom as much as someone who would also bite a person's tongue out for trying to steal his underground treasure.

In general, the film is over-the-top in a way that might put purists of the source off. It's not enough to have the famous scene of the huge chandelier being dropped mid-performance as a warning, but shirtless Sands sledge hammering its stone support to justify his warnings, and for it to bloodily maim a baker's dozen of the theatre patrons below. The completely abrupt tangent of a rat killing proto-golf kart would not be included in other adaptations, nor so much other Argento productions, but I can't help but think it feels broad on purpose, becoming a flex in Argento's career which you rarely see and with hindsight is appreciated for the heightened delirium of this particular film. The closest thing to this in Italian genre cinema I've seen in general was the directorial work of former actor Michele Soavi from this era, his tragically short filmography for this period even when it was more explicitly serious horror like The Sect (1991) deliberately cutting to a rabbit being able to operate a television remote for a humour jolt.

The curious mix of romance, horror, style and silliness of The Phantom of the Opera feels like the culmination of Argento's more absurd touches, and one thing that has made me be won over by the film is knowledge that this is still at the time before his most divisive, lower budget films came to be. Everything after The Card Player (2004) up to Dark Glasses are his most maligned works and projects where he was having to work with lower budgets. Here, there is the budget, and its sincerity in shifting between romantic tragedy to gore to absurd comedic shifts is feels less like many compromises have come to play, but are the point. As a result, I feel the film's been unfairly maligned in Dario Argento's career and have come to appreciate it.

The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963)

 

Director: Rafael Baledón

Screenplay: Rafael Baledón and Fernando Galiana

Cast: Rosita Arenas as Amelia, Abel Salazar as Jaime, Rita Macedo as Selma, Carlos López Moctezuma as Juan, Enrique Lucero as Dr. Daniel Jaramillo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Moody atmosphere immediately introduces you to this Mexican horror film, referring to the legend of La Llorona, a vengeful ghost who mourned the children she drowned, in a rage due to her husband's infidelity, at bodies of water whilst being a symbol of death or misfortune who hear her weeping. Be it 1933's La Llorona, or The Curse of La Llorona (2019) for the US film industry, this figure has returned over and over the decades, and here in a period drama, we immediately see an alternative take on her as an evil figure. A horse drawn carriage with two men and a young woman make the ill advised decision to drive in the middle of the night in an area where murders have been credited to a beast, and in reality, it is a knife throwing older man, with throttling hands of steel, and his mistress he works under who are the real threat. They neither waste time killing the occupants and draining all the blood from their victims.

This immediately points to a huge virtue of Rafael Baledón's film. The law are naturally concerned it is a madman without real knowledge of the culprits, whilst the film does not hide from the viewers that Aunt Selma (Rita Macedo) is the same person from this prologue, awaiting her niece Amelia (Rosita Arenas) to visit her, on the eve of Amelia's birthday, that naturally plays an integral part of the narrative. A piece of pure Gothic cinema, of an old mansion and a fog shrouded dark nights, it is the worst place for our lead and her husband to be, especially obvious when the mirrors are all covered up, which should be an immediate alarm bell. It is also a delight for a film not to waste time with pointless mystery - we know from get-go the place is cursed, and the greater concern is having found yourself stuck there trying to survive as her aunt wants Amelia to help resurrect the Crying Woman.

The resulting work is a haunted house in filmic form in the best of ways, cobwebbed cellars with torture devices and ghouls on pulleys charging to the camera. Cool production design is here in swathes - corpses attached to wheels of torture, rubber bats, or the cutest rats possibly seen in a horror film in the foreground even if they are meant to represent decay.  Madame Marina, the Crying Woman, is the decayed figure on the wheel of torture here, a figure who sacrificed people for magical powers and who Selma's late husband was researching. She is not even hiding to her niece Amelia that she is taken Marina's lead for power too. Obviously, this is all a metaphor for the idea of trying to cheat death and the immortality that can come from this, to cheat death by sacrificing others. It is an obvious story trope, and honestly a conservative way of seeing things, as horror over the decades has been complicated by stories, even if comedic, which offer witches to vampires to be actually nice people and potentially immortal. A much more interesting modern reading is to interpret Selma as representing a blinded devote who is trying to convince her niece to join a cult, even if it means sacrificing others and her own empathy.

There is also a literal curse where, even with the conclusion of this, the story leaves Amelia with the sense that nothing will be the same for her, adding the more tantalizing and spooky undercurrent to the plot. The set up with Amelia being convinced by Selma to help is a ghoulish mortality tale with the additional advantage that director Rafael Baledón will bring in moments to make an already sumptuous looking period horror film have memorable scenes. Be it German expressionist touches, like the night sky suddenly becoming glaring eyes when Amelia may be turning into a Crying Woman, or the flashback to Selma's past done in reverse negative images, the film is giving an incredible style to what is a rollicking spectacle. It is the kind of production with this careful sense of being well made with a sense of fun, where in that flashback we get a random wolf man in a suit, with no further context, just to add spice to the proceedings without feeling pointlessly random.

This is also factoring in that The Curse of the Crying Woman is still a gruesome film decades after its creation, such as the man left decrepit and incarcerated in a jail cell to be continually punished, only to finally get his revenge on his captor. Or dogs sent to maul police officers even if, cutely, they were clearly shot in some images encouraged to lick a glass screen which the camera is behind to represent rabid dog attacks. It still has a sickly sense of the macabre even in the non-gruesome scenes like this to its advantage. Even on a base pleasure level, with the roof literally coming down in the finale, this older film gets far more spectacle and shock into its length than films made decades later that could have the gore and perversion, but wasted time on plot padding and a lack of style, whilst this flexes its production muscles spectacularly. Its director Rafael Baledón was a veteran of countless genres - comedy to luchador films - with the advantage he had been an actor too, which allowed him to engage with his casts. He was also a prominent figure in Mexican horror cinema, and it is clear with this film alone he had the right idea of how to treat them in productions style and without losing his audience in dull exposition.

Dark Waters (1993)

Director: Mariano Baino

Screenplay: Mariano Baino and Andrew M. Bark

Cast: Louise Salter as Elizabeth, Venera Simmons as Sarah, Maria Kapnist as Mother Superior

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A British-Italian co-production shot between Ukraine and Russia, predominantly in Ukrainian locations, this does follow on from many Italian genre films by the end of the golden era of Italian genre cinema where they were more pronounced in their international productions. Probably the most unconventional I have seen, whilst really obscure, is the action film The Ultimate Mission (1988) starring Mark Gregory, who most will know for 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982), which was shot in North Korea. Dark Waters is something very different from that example, setting itself up as an incredibly atmospheric Lovecraftian-like religious horror tale. This is even established in the prologue, even when set in the daylight, where on an island, a priest nearly drowns only to be impaled in the neck on a statue like in a Lucio Fulci film set piece. A nun sacrifices her life, seemingly pushed off a cliff or jumping off it deliberately, to destroy a demonic talisman. Unfortunately, the pieces are collected back up by the others nuns, and it will come back to haunt the entire environment.

Twenty years later, a young woman named Elizabeth (Louise Salter) goes back to the island where this all transpired, where the convent was being sent payments from her recently passed father. It should immediately set alarm bells for her when she is even about to reach the island, passing hooded monks carrying burning totems in a field at night for one of the first strong images of the production. Not in terms of this writer being anti-religious but, considering what ungodly blasphemy has transpired on that aforementioned island near them, the monks had the hindsight to have the break out the most ominous looking ritual, all to purge any influence creeping inland. To even get to the island, Elizabeth struggling to, the only person with a boat willing to take her on a rainy night is a man explicitly saying he is not afraid of death, and whose closest thing to a cabin boy is a half feral man who eats raw meat straight off the poop deck.

Dark Waters does have some cheese, some slow passages needing to set the plot up, and feels the limitations that literature or a video game could have dealt with. This film has atmosphere through the gills, but unlike those mediums, the issues of limited film budgets or production difficulties can plague cinema, and it feels like Mariano Baino's sole theatrical length work had teething issues off-camera alongside the oppressive nature of the premise. I am fully aware director Baino had a difficult production cycle making Dark Waters, at a cost of the distinct on-location sets in Ukraine which add so much production value, so as much of the issues could have come from this messy cycle. When the film is focused, cutting into Lucio Fulci's more morbidly gorgeous horror movie moments, it really crawls under the skin. The broken talisman established in the prologue, and its connection to an unknown evil of a beast, "the alpha and the omega", leads to a religious convent on the island which has slowly unravelled the longer this beast is there radiating its evil. Something like a whole group of nuns flagellating themselves in the candle lit underground caves is pure Catholic Gothicism, but even without one of the nuns being murdered when investigating the convent, there are clear signs of madness here which make of a lot of the film's best aspects and show more is hidden here for Elizabeth to accidentally find out about.

The beast apparently takes the sight of those who see it, and evoking the ending of Fulci's The Beyond (1981), Elizabeth will encounter a lot of blind individuals, including the matriarch of the nunnery, evoking this alarm. Even when the beast is rendered, if still lovingly, by a rubber monster effect, there are the disturbing sights which are far more potent, such as the image of the beach covered entire in dead fish, never explained but is the type of production detail that adds far more than explicit sights. It is the type of sight, perfectly executed here, where atheists and Christians, even the Satanists, would join forced to stop the influence causing it, and a huge virtue and the most disturbing parts of Dark Waters are the slowly creeping dread than the explicit horror. As Elizabeth slowly regains her memories of the island, having been born there, the filming locations add a great deal to the production as does the almost atonal score by Igor Clark, catching you off guard at times with its hair rising and at times unpredictable spikes in the soundtrack.

As Elizabeth realises her direct connection to the beast, even if the practical effects for once are more ridiculous for the tone, the mood is what bolsters the film fully. The sense of the peace having long been unravelled is found in the odd touches, like one of the few men on the island, alongside the weird one in a beach cabin, being a blind painter who seemingly depicts the future in his craft. Details like this adds so much to the proceedings and really made this a compelling horror story in the best of ways, even if this would be the sole production by its director/co-writer, the only other being The Trinity of Darkness (2014), a compilation of three of his older short films. This is a shame, and with what Dark Waters manages to accomplish by its final images, we could have had many potent horror films if Mariano Baino had been allowed/or wished to continue in theatrical film productions.

  

Macabre (1980)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Screenplay: Pupi Avati, Roberto Gandus, Lamberto Bava and Antonio Avati

Cast: Bernice Stegers as Jane Baker, Stanko Molnar as Robert Duval, Veronica Zinny as Lucy Baker, Roberto Posse as Fred Kellerman, Ferdinando Orlandi as Mr. Wells, Fernando Pannullo as Leslie Baker, Elisa Kadigia Bove as Mrs. Duval

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Set in the USA, specifically New Orleans with Southern accents in the dub, Macabre was the debut film for Lamberto Bava, son of the legendary Mario Bava, and it is less a horror film in conventions but a really twisted horror melodrama. The set up is a film in itself but sets up a more morbid narrative: a wife named Jane Baker (Bernice Stegers) is having an adulterous affair behind her husband's back with a man named Fred (Roberto Posse), creating suspicion in the eldest daughter Lucy (Veronica Zinny) to the point the later, in an act of psychosis, drowns her younger brother in the bathtub out of revenge for the betrayal. The drive back, panicked by the horror of losing her own son, leads Jane and Fred to crash the car, Fred losing his head in the collision with a wall.

A year later, the parents have divorced, and Jane has had mental health therapy, but this perverse melodrama with sultry jazz on the score by Ubaldo Continiello will see the repercussions of this incident for Mrs. Baker. Another figure of importance is Robert (Stanko Molnar), a blind instrument repair man who, in the prologue when his mother was still alive, let a room in the top floor for Jane and Fred for their affair, letting her take the room again by herself separated from her husband. Slow paced, I mentioned this was less a horror film in the traditional sense, and in a gruesome turn in the plot, befits its name a macabre drama in presentation. Late seventies chic of over textured and saturated coloured wallpaper and decor overwhelm the main setting, Robert's home, be it the marble wall bathroom with pure white sink to yellowish gold on everything from clothes to wall decor. Because of this, there is a sick lavishness to a sick story of love as Jane has not forgotten Fred, and someone comes to her room at night as Robert is still able to hear from the floor below.

Robert is our sympathetic figure, sweet and attractive with bold blue eyes, but they are unable to see a thing, Robert not playing a bad stereotype either of a blind man, caught blissfully unaware of Mrs. Baker ritualizing her beloved Fred, with even a portable shrine to him carried with her when she takes the room to stay in. Robert will learn the horrible truth, and even before then he is stuck knowing she pleasures herself at night seemingly on the top floor whilst he pangs in unrequited love. The story is made more complicated by Lucy herself, playing another obsessive in wanting her parents to reunite even if it means tormenting her own mother, like Lucy adding a photo of the late younger brother for her mother to find in her rented room. Wanting said parents back, in the same way Jane wants Fred back, makes up the key theme of the film, of two generations of people clinging to their past in unhealthy, destructive ways, making the film compelling as the equivalent of a radio drama extended into a ninety minute film. As I get older, this is the tone I prefer for a lot of horror, unless they can be great or fun exceptions, much more interesting to see this type of story you could tell in a thirty minute tale with audio only have its form expanded into this intriguing movie.

It admittedly has a plot twist you would have not gotten away with on an old radio show like Beyond Midnight or Inner Sanctum Mysteries. The twisted aspect is what Mrs. Baker keeps in the top of the refrigerator in the room, [Huge Spoiler] which turns out to be an act of necrophilia with Fred's head where the frozen peas should be stored. It is gross but the idea of a love so strong it turns into this obsession to even preserve what remains of him, as a talisman even if involving their actual remains, is compelling. More so as the story is actually based on a real story of a woman who kept her lover's head in a refrigerator too, Bava given a newspaper clipping of the incident by Pupi Avati, the filmmaker who also co-writer with his brother Antonio Avati¹. [Spoilers End] Even if the twist will be obvious if you have sussed up on your plot tropes, and have a sick imagination, the story is macabre literally for this sickly obsession with love in a lurid depiction.

It is helped by the lead Bernice Stegers, a British actress who was spotted through Federico Fellini's City of Women (1980)¹, made around the same time, giving a committed role as a woman lost in her own insanity. Her career is in small roles between film and television, but she would also reappear in Xtro (1982), a film which somehow managed to outdo this Italian film in terms of bizarre imagery. The perversity of the story is enough even with an even more absurd and supernatural end scene for an added jolt, because of its growing tension of everything starts to collapse. Even mother and daughter will be at war with each other in a gristly conclusion. Lamberto Bava's films after, to be honest, are not subtle in the slightest, his most iconic Demons (1985) as over-the-top as you can get, and whilst Macabre fits the director's career in the final act, when everything goes to Hell, the slow burn nature of this particular tale stands out with great reward.

 

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1) Taken from Macabre and the Golden Age of Italian Exploitation (2009), directed by Elijah Drenner.

Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (2004)

 

Director: Akiyuki Simbo

Screenplay: Mayori Sekijima

Voice Cast: Marina Inoue as Cossette d'Auvergne; Mitsuki Saiga as Eiri Kurahashi; Kumiko Yokote as Hatsumi Mataki; Megumi Toyoguchi as Shouko Mataki; Rei Igarashi as Zenshinni of Shakado; Ikumi Fujiwara as Michiru Yajiri; Isao Yamagishi as Hiroshi Hakuta; Junpei Morita as Yukata Enokido; Mamiko Noto as Yuu Saiga; Masashi Ebara as Marchello Orlando; Shinnosuke Furumoto as Michio Hisamoto; Susumu Chiba as Naoki Katou; Yukari Tamura as Kaori Nishimoto

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows)/A 1000 Anime Crossover

 

As covered in the review linked to below, view Le Portrait de Petit Cossette as an interpretation of a troupe of Gothic horror, of a figure obsessed with a figure they are romantically linked to from beyond the dead, if interpreted through a hyper stylised three-part anime from a director with a career before and especially after with an elaborate eye for stylisation. Think of this as the pulpier, more bombastic take on Rebecca (1940) with genre tropes of Japanese animation and interpreting horror through action beats.

 

For the full review, follow the link HERE.

Nude for Satan (1974)

 

Director: Luigi Batzella

Screenplay: Luigi Batzella

Cast: Rita Calderoni as Susan / Evelyn; Stelio Candelli as Dr. William / Peter; James Harris as The Devil; Renato Lupi as the Butler; Iolanda Mascitti as the Servant Girl

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Film Candidate

 

Oh darling, what is a memory?

From that title, and the first shot of the version I saw, of an actress skipping through misty dark woodlands barely wearing a lace see-through dressing gown, we know what to expect...at least we presume to. As an erotic Italian horror film Nude for Satan in its softcore version would be too weird and esoteric for the dirty mack brigade. Even in knowledge a hardcore version exists, there is a prevailing sense here that version, as here, would still be an odd duck with what exactly is on its mind.

With the music over the opening credits by Alberto Baldan Bembo a woozy, compelling series of drones, synths and what are apparently bongos, Nude for Satan is a curious one to actually watch. Let us be frank, it is a lackadaisical film with one foot between its weird esoteric dialogue (least for the English dub), its lack of a cohesive in-depth plot, and still trying to be erotica in what is a story structure whose languid leanings undercut the sensuality. A male doctor named William (Stelio Candelli) is driving his white Beetle bug car in a night storm to a patient, only to drive past a car accident with a woman named Susan (Rita Calderoni) inside unconscious. Going to a nearby location, a gothic castle, looking for help, he is immediately sucked into a phantom world outside time which Susan will join him within separately. The castle the moment you step into it is immediately out of reality, where doppelgangers of the other person, in whimsical sex obsessed forms, dressed in gothic melodrama costumes, try to seduce the other, and with an occult eroticism around the frames.

Truthfully, in respect to the fun of Nude for Satan, in a more cohesive form, with focus or even a more overtly experimental form, this premise would have the tone of avant-garde jazz in playing to scenes out of context, mood scenes for the sake of mood. Using its mix of a really cool gothic manor and being brazenly titillating to win the viewer over, there would have been a film more ambitious than what we got with more careful construction to its form. Nude for Satan is sillier than this, from the director of the infamous Video Nasty The Beast in Heat (1977), and it is none of the above, closer instead to a half sketched out Jess Franco film, which may be seen as a damning comment as, even as a fan of Franco, I am fully aware the cult Spanish film maker made films himself that felt like they were mere fragments of a premise themselves. Instead, for those who can appreciate this film as I did, it feels like a half awake fantasy. Not even an erotic one as the sexuality can be justified as being the kind of eyebrow rolling heterosexual male gaze, prurient and conservative in form, which is the most boring kind, not the kind you would get from a Jess Franco which progresses into something more interesting and subversive. What little you get feels more part of its weird fever dreams than playing to sexual freedom, and even the message would be confusing if you attempted to think about it. It does have Satan involved, and plays to the idea of sexuality being dangerous and evil, despite wanting as much female nudity onscreen as possible, thus becoming something prurient without a subversive edge to it, only with the context of anything remotely erotic here being more appropriate “off” tonally as everything else is.

I have to still credit what is a trashy film, in terms of how really unfocused it feels, for having to courage to be this weird, a phantasmagoric soft/hardcore gothic film with some production value and where the doppelgangers talk like figures in a bizarre philosophical discussion on reality. Let us be honest even further than I have gone, you would not get a film like this even in the eighties, something very of the time in how minimal this is even in terms of an exploitation film which barely has a plot at all on its shoulders. Even if someone had made a film like this later, there is something about this time where the money existed for these European genre films, where the location shooting was affordable and not shot in apartments, and the style still there even in this obscurer work to make what thin premise there is here have a compelling mood.

The plot really is not a great deal, as it is a series of scenes, where our leads find themselves entangled in a prolonged scenario in this world of strange grinning older men, seductive female servants, and male and female doppelgangers who are proudly (gloriously) camp in their proclamations of love to the opposite sex. It is a languid oddity with hindsight before you have to explain, or witness watching the moment, when the giant spider inexplicably appears. It is a very fake but thankfully homemade one which that is a cross between a raisin and a tick in form, appearing in a scene to torment the female lead in its web, never explained nor appearing again in context. The fact there are multiple cuts means that, for the softcore version I saw, it may lack a lot of its more openly lurid for exploitation content, instead becoming a far more heady haze dream. It lacks eroticism in terms of openly being sensual, more an experience between worlds where the final orgiastic scene is less sexual than performance art dancing involving a woman with the most openly revealed ribcage possible in cinema. It is a film that, to anyone not used to the way some cult films can be less about cohesion, would be easy to despise. It absolutely is not a film you could present to someone not used to these films, but to those who are firmly comfortable in exploring these curiosities, Nude for Satan is the ambient music album of gothic erotic Italian cinema, for good and for bad.

Abstract Spectrum: Hazy / Minimalist

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

The Spider Labyrinth (1988)

 

Director: Gianfranco Giagni

Screenplay: Riccardo Aragno, Tonino Cervi, Cesare Frugoni and Gianfranco Manfredi

Cast: Roland Wybenga as Professor Alan Whitmore; Paola Rinaldi as Genevieve Weiss; Margareta von Krauss as Celia Roth; Claudia Muzii as Maria

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Ragtime jazz over the opening is different for an Italian genre film, but Spider Labyrinth is an unconventional film from the era. It is an elusive film, for me a Holy Grail of the golden era of Italian horror films, one which despite being made and release in the late eighties is not pure eighties cheese in the slightest. It gets strange, lurid and bloody, but this is not the era of Bruno Mattei or cheesy hair metal music, but something else. Its director Gianfranco Giagni is not even a cult genre film director from this era, but someone who made one horror film, this as his debut, and never returned to it, which makes this fascinating if one tragically without a follow through.

This is a slow burn, in which American professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is sent to Budapest, Hungary to help with a project in Budapest, Hungary. Suspicion is felt when he is meant to meet Professor Roth, about inscriptions from 3^rd Millennium B.C. being transcribed by professors like Roth across the world, only with Roth upon being met being paranoid and talking about the titular labyrinth trapping him in its web. The black orb thrown through his window, reoccurring elsewhere, raises further concerns, and eventually Professor Roth is found dead, hung off the ceiling banisters on spider webs, which sounds the alarm bells for Whitmore.

Slow burn is apt, Spider Labyrinth taking its glacial time with a seething sense of dread to everything. Warning ahead, this is a film where the point when it gets weird also happens to reveal the secrets that the narrative builds to, hence the warning for spoilers will have to be evoked, and for some, maybe just reading this passage or so will need to be enough. Those with the patience with its slowness will be rewarded by how unexpected the twists are with it's almost Cthulian perverseness, whilst those staying on should realize this takes its sweet evil time.

For those wishing to continue with the review, our lead is sunk among a community he is separate from, and even Roth’s female assistant is a temptation for Whitmore, living over the other side from where he is staying, able to see her every night naked and undressing through the open windows. There is a building mood contrasted by an ageless and distinct atmosphere, entirely because this was shot in Budapest itself. Italy could shot their genre films in interest locations, but there were some real curiosities at this time in the later era - there is an action film called Ten Zan: Ultimate Mission (1988), for example,  shot in North Korea of all places with Mark Gregory of 1990: Bronx Warriors (1982) fame as the lead – but my mind goes to Aenigma (1987), a really lurid Lucio Fulci film from this time, tonally alien, but sharing a DNA in how being shot in Belgrade, Serbia with its drastic change in architecture and environment really adding personality.

It is among the many factors which add to this, a Gothic mood of spiral staircases and halls of white linen there for a bloody murder to stain them in the first overt horror moment. The film does eventually have gore and sex, and but this within this dread inducing environment is the slowest of burns, turning into a phantasmagorical nightmare after its sweet time, including a lengthy scene of the lead driving around Budapest which will feel long. Drip feeding the tension as a drama, most of the film is not structured as a pulp horror film for the most part, more of a psychological one. The score even starts imitating Bernard Hermann, which as this film does have people being killed in lurid ways, does show the deliberateness of this film‘s tone.

It is also at this time, a spoiler for the film has to appear again for a final time. I advise, even if the film is difficult to see, if you wish to not spoil the excitement of what happens, try to track it down with utmost recommendation from this review. It is a film which takes patience but gets very interesting, which is not even necessarily the right word to explain what happens. Those who do not mind can read on…

…the stop motion spider appears, and a film I already admired gets even more interesting as it begins to reward this patience. The horror becomes that of the “Weavers” cult being studied, which is unfortunately still existing and dangerous, and whilst it takes to develop from a mystery to this revelation, once spider people and its weirdly Lovecraftian ending transpires, it escalates. It is less cosmic tentacles, but a baby spider God with suddenly prominent practical effects and people being possessed by spiders, this jump it has been built to neither out of place nor compromised. The Spider Labyrinth goes from the same ill ease The House of Laughing Windows (1976) from Pupi Avati had, a considerable piece of praise for the film in terms of comparison, as that giallo thriller was legendary for its slow burn mood, to a level of weirdness appropriate for the late eighties Italian genre films which yet feels more disturbing for the buildup. Whether the film can work once you know the twist or not becomes subdued, thankfully, by how much mood this has and adds so much to the final production.

There is instead a further disappointment that Gianfranco Giagni went into documentaries and television work for the rest of his career, as he has a strong eye for gothic dread here just in one film. The screenwriters deserve as much praise for this film's twisted leaps in logic, with one Cesare Frugoni prolific in the likes of Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978), all of them alongside others in the film's production coming together well here. There is only the unwanted sting in wondering, with how the Italian genre film industry was to dissipate in the mid-nineties, what would have happened if Giagni had more investment to have more genre films in his career alongside what he had. The fact The Spider Labyrinth is not an easily available film is a question in itself, but this alternative world to consider is tragic too, alongside imagining everyone else outside of the director's chair, in terms of what they managed here, if horror was still a credible genre to continue into even by the Millennium.

Gumnaam (1965)

 

Director: Raja Nawathe

Screenplay: Dhruva Chatterjee

Based on And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Cast: Nanda as Asha; Manoj Kumar as Anand ; Pran as Barrister Rakesh; Helen as Kitty Kelly; Mehmood as the Butler; Dhumal as Dharamdas; Madan Puri as Dr. Acharya; Tarun Bose as Madhusudan Sharma; Manmohan as Kishan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #222

 

Here, life is gorier than death.

With its opening Gumnanm starts off well bolting out of the gates - a man orders another man to be run over, with a will being immediately passed on, only to be shot by a mysterious man dead and the film to kick into the opening credits of a city road at night with a mix of proto garage rock guitar against orchestral strings for emphasis. Even the fact it is not really a horror film, instead adapting the Agatha Christie story And Then There Were None, is compensated by the fact that you get a lot of gothic moments and even sets straight out of a horror story. The one tragic aspect is that, unfortunately, Gumanaam does have a bad ending. Following ten people and an airplane staff member who are taken to a mansion on an island where the ten chosen individuals will be murdered one by one in a revenge plot, I feel this has to come up front in the narrative, as this is a pitch perfect example of when tying up the loose ends and concluding the results to leave everyone happy can ruin all the good.

Particularly when everything beforehand is very good, in its own idiosyncratic logic as a Bollywood film made in the sixties with its own distinct structure, giving this a huge distinction separate from other films of this type of plot. Ten people are selected for a trip to a luxurious mansion. Even this prologue, to set that detail up, has its own literal song and dance. Many will know this film because its main theme played here, the rock n roll/surf guitar hybrid Jaan Pehechan Ho, was later used in the 2001 adaptation of Ghost World, but in context you have a nightclub of Western iconography and sixties colour (with purple and pink prominent throughout), with white suits on men, elegant Western night dresses for women, and Lone Ranger black masks for everyone. This immediately establishes that, as a pulp/psychotronic or just merely distinct piece of pop culture from India, this will be idiosyncratic.

One logic step you need to adapt to is that, of course, a lot of Bollywood including this one will have musical numbers even in the least expected genres. Bollywood's reinterpretation of A Nightmare on Elm Street (Mahakaal (1994)) had one, so will this. It has an odd touch in that, even when the cast learn that they will be killed off one-by-one, and even after this happens, they will still have comedy scenes, a romance between two of the cast members which includes a musical sequence in the rain, a trope in Bollywood which gets around their censorship with a very explicitly symbolism and in the lyrics, and musical numbers every least expected place in general. And yet, if you let yourself go with this, it does not prove an issue at all. In fact, whilst not three hours long like many Bollywood films, the two and a half hour length actually proves a virtue in that you get to live with these characters even if they are archetypes. The songs themselves for the cast even here add a lot more to their personalities by allowing them to stand out.

Archetypes definitely have to be on mind as there are aspects here which are not acceptable today or are part of cultural customs which would not be held high on. This film does have the duality between the chaste, good female character in Asha (Nanda), the niece of the deceased man, and Kitty Kelly (played by Helen), the later a Westernised figure who represents decadence played Helen with all the fashion iconography of the West, including the odd decision to go swimming in her normal clothes at one point, and the prolific and legendary Nanda wearing traditional dress. However, thankfully even this film undercuts this at points despite being embroiled in this stereotyping - you do actually like Kitty Kelly, even if she is complicit in the original murder, even having her own musical number despite all the deaths that have happened of just enjoying life, and there is a sequence where the two women get drunk and have a drunken musical number which is almost triumphant, all in spite of the male lead acting in a chauvinist brutal way to undercut it afterwards. There is also the butler, played by legendary comedic role veteran Mehmood, who is a character you eventually realise is played by an actor in blackface, or explicitly more faked tanned, his darker skin at one point used as detraction by Kitty Kelly in one moment her character is undercut in a terrible way.

It has not aged well, but with the actor Mehmood even at his most buffoonish, the butler also happens to be the best character of the film. Making his entrance on the levitating onto his feet on the dining table in a body bag, the Butler, despite being a nameless figure, stands out even as a broad cartoonish character for fun, a figure I immediately was won over with as the one person in the island who will not be killed, having to make sure everyone is fed and the mansion is kept running, and can act like his own Greek chorus to everyone as a result. In response to one of the most evocative touches of the film, a female voice singing through the island the cast is one a song of "someone is anonymous " that everyone and the viewer hears frequently, he has heard that cursing song so much, a "hit in the jungle", that it annoys him, and even the prop of his lilac tea set, stuck to the serving tray, becomes memorable for Mehmood waving it about. Even in mind to the problematic nature of the character being in blackface, and a ridiculous bowl cut hair style and Chaplin moustache that suggests just a cheap comedy figure, he becomes a sincerely lovable figure. He even gets a musical number, just after the one scene of racism, where he proclaims regardless of the colour of his skin he is still a great lover, which does not deal with the tastelessness of before, but offers a soothing pill as he gets to be a lothario in a nearly surreal dance number in his dreams of ancient psychotronic temple architecture, with dancing women, psychedelic colours and statues with flashing lights built into them.

It does become a chimera of emotions due to the tonal and genre shifts, justifying the gothic horror tag for its brief moments in the holy temple in the environment, and it works as much due to director Raja Nawathe making this a stylish film to match the content. The colours, the canted camera angles etc. but also completely inspired moments such as a female character playing a grand piano intertwining with the non-diagetic score at the same time, all of which makes sure this never becomes a dull or conventional piece, something which sadly one could have done with this premise. It is entirely with a shame the film has to have a conclusion, and that the one chosen was what we end up with. [Major Plot Spoilers] Between the fact that it involves a character never seen, baring in disguise, as the culprit, and a generic crime related explanation, it absolutely feels out of place even if it might have been impossible for Gumnaam to fully be satisfying, between the premise's contrivances to how to even explain the ghostly female voice we here throughout. Even how abruptly the film ends, resolving itself with an airplane acting as a deus ex machina with police on board, falters the film. [Spoilers]. It is undeniably, though, something pure in terms of a snapshot of a non-Western culture's take on cinema, and all the wild playfulness and distinction that can entail, in how genre tropes cliché in the West even at this time are turned on their head and what appealed to its nation's audience.. It has obvious issues, including problematic content, but this indefinable film in terms of genre is compelling for never, until that unfortunate ending, being predictable.

A Holy Place (1990)

 

Director: Djordje Kadijevic

Screenplay: Djordje Kadijevic

Based on a story by Nikolai Gogol

Cast: Dragan Jovanovic as Pop Toma; Branka Pujic as Katarina; Aleksandar Bercek as Zupanski; Mira Banjac as Gospodarica Zupanski; Danilo Lazovic as Doros; Maja Sabljic as Lenka; Predrag Miletic as Nikita; Rados Bajic as Spira

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #221

 

Made in the former Yugoslavia, Djordje Kadijevic's trajectory as a filmmaker before this film is fascinating. Originally making films set in World War II, his tackling of the subject matter was incredibly controversial, forcing him into television production. Far from more restrictive, Kadijevic thrived, claiming under his belt a cult hit when he transitioned to horror and folklore narrative. The She-Butterfly (1973), adapting a story by Milovan Glišić, would develop a reputation over the decades as an one long horror tale for his homeland the same way horror tales, shot for the likes of the BBC, would gain a cult reputation for people who caught them off television in the United Kingdom in the seventies. With A Holy Place, he turns his attention to the legendary author Nikolai Gogol.

Gogol is someone I have complete admiration for as an author, initially for his dark humoured satire Dead Souls (1842), where a man learns he can step up the ranks of society by collecting the deceased of lord's records, which have not been officially decreed as dead, and pass them off as his own villagers. Gogol, alongside a sudden strike of creative block which tragically fell on him at the end of his career, leading a second part of Dead Souls dealing with the redemption of the novel's lead to be left an unfinished fragment, is ironically someone who is acclaimed as a realist author yet has two adaptations to cinema based on a horror tale. This is not surprising in some ways as, in his work to depict reality juggling between a satire in play form of bureaucracy to humorous documents of peasant life, adapting his land's folklore is as much an act of recreating his home land on paper. It is only with the irony that the tale in question has been adapted twice, as both one of the only Russian horror films in existence, Viy (1967), and this Serbian (former Yugoslavian) adaptation in 1990.

In both, a young priest in training has an unfortunate encounter with an elderly woman who lets him and his friends sleep at her home in the middle of nowhere, in Viy being ridden on like a horse, in A Holy Place a much more violent case equivalent to a mugging as in both the old woman is clearly a witch. Both lead to the priest struggling back only to find a young woman in their place once he is able to escape the witch's clutches. This is immediately where Kadijevic's adaptation with his own screenplay takes a new direction, as whilst most would still be shocked, the priest is already embraced with the woman on the ground, in lust with her white garter and stocking covered legs each side of him, only for her to die.

A Holy Place openly deviates from the source, in that the priest is abruptly selected to says prayers for the young daughter of a rich man who chose him, revealed to be the woman he encountered on the previous night, forced to read prayers on three nights whilst she is far removed from life and death as a supernatural threat to his life. The original Viy whilst macabre has a very quick pace, at only less than eighty minutes, and a greater sense of farce, both in its priest character both eventually being left constantly drunk and shoved around over the three nights, and that the film, both adaptation the source material fully and with the involvement of veteran stop motion animation and fantasy film maker Aleksandr Ptushko, has more practical effects and monsters appearing as the nights continue. A Holy Place is more sombre, far darker and especially more sexual.

Surprisingly more sexual as, in one part of the review that is time stamped to a specific time, the British would finally be able to see A Holy Place legally in a limited edition bonus alongside the Russian Viy, from a distributor called Eureka under their Masters of Cinema label, which is strange as Djordje Kadijevic's film has been decreed suitable for twelve year olds to see despite being an incredible explicit film in the little it has. Namely, that, once the priest appears to the home of the young woman, it is increasingly obvious there are many sinister things going on. Originally held as a figure of grace, she is significantly more cruel and sinister as the priest hears stories from others, even witnessing her work first hand when the dog trainer on the premises is now a dumb individual barely coherent as he wanders the premises. The mother gone, the relationship with her father is even darker, including once the priest learns of the erotic painting said father commissioned of his beloved daughter only he can see.

Naturalistic, as was the case of The She-Butterfly, A Holy Place is grounded in a reality but the supernatural invades. It is ironic that the film, for that one British release in 2021, was limited edition only, with the wears and tears of preservation, as whilst Viy is the adaptation that has become legendary, A Holy Place in its deviations and expansions on the Gogol tale is actually superior in other areas to those Viy succeed in. It is not horror in the sense it is meant to scare, but its macabre narrative does entice. Moments which never appear again, like the fact the father is haunted by his late wife, whose painting will vanish from the frame, have an impact as a result.

Those which linger as even more striking. The young woman Katarina as a figure becomes significantly darker as you learn more of her. I did not expect this review to lead to the following, but she literally castrates men, by stomping on their crotches repeated, which can almost be feminist were it not for the fact, trying to seduce one of the older maids, she is a sadist in general to anyone. The ending of A Holy Place is not dissimilar to Viy's, baring that it excludes the fully monstrous in favour of a matter-of-fact bleak ending, or that this does not end with two random priests abruptly undercutting the narrative with black humour. A Holy Place, if you can see it, is definitely of reward.

Scared to Death (1947)

 

Director: Christy Cabanne

Screenplay: Walter Abbott

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Prof. Leonide; George Zucco as Dr. Joseph Van Ee; Nat Pendleton as Bill Raymond; Molly Lamont as  Laura Van Ee; Joyce Compton as Jane Cornell; Gladys Blake as Lilybeth; Roland Varno as Ward Van Ee; Douglas Fowley as Terry Lee; Angelo Rossitto as Indigo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #203

 

Metabolism. That's a good word. I wonder what it means?

You could pad out your writing just on bad horror films, which can cause a lot of grief through the act of forcing yourself to churn through a lot of disappointing work. If your expectations are to just review good ones, that in its self can be as pointless as, with horror cinema a subject covered greatly, everyone else has likely covered said films and it lacks interest for me particularly to repeat what everyone else does. Far more rewarding are the personal favourites, discoveries or those films which, whilst not great, allow you a lot to write about.

So let us be thankful for Scared to Death. It is not a great film, part of the time period, after his success with Dracula (1931), when Bela Lugosi had difficulty finding work but took anything he could get to pay the bills. Thankfully, legacy allows figures like Lugosi to shine, where even this public domain production intrigues as much as his successes. Also bless, this Golden Gate Pictures Inc. Production, from the era of independent low budget genre filmmaking, whilst a convoluted mess, also happens to be a charming one with so much to write about a swell.

For starters, the film is inspired by a real 1933 murder case involving Dr. Alice Wynekoop, a well-known and respected physician, civic leader, and lecturer who was charged for and eventually imprisoned for the murder of her 22 year old daughter-in-law¹. The film barely, frankly, re-tales the subject but merely uses it for a jumping pad for its own bizarre story. We start off in a morgue, moving to the body of Laura (Molly Lamont), which flashes back to when she was alive and tells the story up to that moment there. I have probably referenced old horror radio broadcasts from the United States in the past, but at first, this is literally one filmed in tone and attitude, worth bringing that up again.

In mind to its gristly real life tale, where Wynekoop was a very devoted mother to her son, Laura is a woman with a fragile continence, always watching behind her back for shadows, especially green masked ones, all whilst her relationship with her husband is close to separation and frayed, her father-in-law a psychiatrist possibly wanting to help his son in nefarious means. The film has no real interest in adapting the real case at all, and it can be lost within the film entirely. Instead, when Prof. Leonide (Bela Lugosi) enters their home as a guest as a mysterious figure, the premise gets more complicated and moves closer to a radio show like Suspense even in terms of the music, whilst with more constant orchestra, and using dialogue to convey the narrative rather than using the visuals.

Scared to Death is far more bloated than this comparison suggests though. Lugosi comes in with so much charisma that it is tragic, whilst he helped sell the film in its day in the advertising, he plays a secondary role to an overlarge cast. His assistant, a deaf-mute dwarf, is also Angelo Rossitto, a prolific actor most known for Tod Browing's Freaks (1932), bared used as an actor at all throughout. There is a reporter, a chauvinist and bland one, and his dim-witted if so much more sympathetic beau, a telephone operator who joins him at the house. The other character of note is Bill Raymond, the bowler hated cop wanting to woo the house staff and hoping even for "one slightly murdered body" to get back his job with the police from. A giant lummox of a man, Raymond is at first way too broad a comedy foil, until after a while winning me over.

Simple minded, wishing to be a great detective, and with a propensity for very flourished and smarter vocabulary that appears in his speech, which he does not understand the meaning of, Raymond won me over. The actor himself Nat Pendleton is another figure of interest too which helps considerably. Looking like a heavy for a crime film from the era, awkwardly here of all places, Pendleton was originally a wrestler who won the silver medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp in Belgium, before transitioning to pro wrestling. He transitioned to acting in the 1920s, one of his most prominent roles in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the 9th Academy Awards Best Picture winner. By Scared to Death, this would be his penultimate film before the end of his cinematic career and, bless him, he was memorable and helped me love this film legitimately

Examples like Pendleton are why even this production could win me over. It is a production not helped by the fact that it feels like an overstuffed stage play, shot in a way that you could with some modification actually stage it for theatre but with a lot of unnecessary plot baggage. Considering Lugosi is your main get, even in the period before his encounters with Ed Wood. Jr. in the fifties, he is lost here in the shuffle and there is so much put in for a film only an hour and seven minutes long. What you get thankfully is still compelling because of its odd quirks. Production wise, it is very conventionally shot as mentioned. Striking however is the fact this late forties low budget film is shot in "natural colour". Even this is a distinct thing of interest as it was shot in Cinecolor, a two colour process that, even in a public domain version that looks muddy, has a curious history, one of many vying for use before Technicolor took hold and left the likes of this process lost by the wayside. One touch which is just weird is the constant flashes back to Laura's head on the morgue table with her voice stating the next event in the plot whilst an eerie music cue is used. It is constant, they can last a few second, and are deeply silly, a sign of how over baked and charmingly shambolic Scared to Death is.

Particularity because of its vintage, as a forties pulp tale in its own ballpark, it is of its era, such as how much of an arse that reporter is to his girlfriend in his patronising ways, but there are plenty of odd touches to like. Working to actual violence, it has to racket up ghoulishness with a striking looking dummy's head but not a great deal of illicit content or any real threat, which is not an issue at all. In mind to the original Wynekoop case, her daughter-in-law Rheta was said to have died, by her own testimony, whilst treating her with pain with a chloroform anaesthetic, only for her heart to have stopped. [Spoiler Warning] Here, well, that title the film has surely would have given the plot twist away before you watched the whole film. [Spoiler Ends] What you do not expect is the film, partially in horror, to get a morality edge involving betrayal, hypnosis, karmic revenge, and a back-story including someone being betrayed to the Nazis and Parisian nightclub entertainment crammed into this slight length production. It is as if all the pulpy tropes which would vanish from modern horror were blended together into something compelling here. It is goofy, but with an undeniable charm.

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1) The full tale can be read of HERE.