Axe (1974)

 

aka. Lisa, Lisa or California Axe Massacre

Director: Frederick R. Friedel

Screenplay: Frederick R. Friedel

Cast: Leslie Lee as Lisa; Jack Canon as Steele; Ray Green as Lomax; Frederick R. Friedel as Billy; Douglas Powers as the Grandfather

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It is incredibly obvious why, when I first saw Axe, I could not appreciate this film as it was and once viewed it as one of the worst I had seen. As someone who grew up in Britain, naturally the Video Nasties was a concept I had learnt of as a teenager and gained a fascination for early on. Thankfully, this was also in the 2000s and the DVD era, when I was able to start watching these types of films and you could actually see them. One of the official members of the list, and among those which were actually prosecuted, I expected balls to the walls luridness, only to get this slow burn tale about a young woman named Lisa (Leslie Lee), living with her disabled grandfather in the middle of nowhere, terrorised by a gang of three member. It was a film I once found even at 66 minutes slow and dull to a painful extreme. Nowadays, I rightly see many of its virtues, the Video Nasties list a curious and at times motley crew of titles defining a lot of fascinating areas of genre cinema at the time, such as the Golden era of Italian genre cinema to this, among the regional American titles which flourished between the sixties and eighties.

With its more infamous title the one I prefer - it is snappy, yet fits the tone as well as befits the southern Gothic vibes the production has - it is interesting as a film not quite in the horror genre but in many at once. It begins as a crime drama, following a group of criminals - one the ruthless and cold leader, the second the sadist, and the last played by the director-writer himself as the one with morals, becoming more uncomfortable with that his colleagues are capable of. They are the kind of men, the two with a desire to harm, to put a cigar out in a man's mouth and dismiss accidentally killing him in his room whilst he was with his boyfriend. Even on the run, they terrorise a woman working by herself in a small store, tormenting her and even playing William Tell with a gun. Beyond this, due to the length of the film, and its succinct plot, there is not a lot to add to the premise, barring that it becomes obvious Lisa herself has mental health issues, with hallucinations and even contemplating suicide at one point, living by herself on a farm with a paralysed grandfather with only the chickens she tends to (and kill for food) there for her. She also, defying what they expect of her as a merely casual figure they can manipulate, someone more than capable with intelligence to get rid of their threat out of the house.

This is what one would think of a small regional production, made with a low budget, if you wished to have an example of this era of regional genre cinema, and with a premise which you could easily adapt into a short story or a radio drama. That is to its advantage as that does not mean the film has no personality. I could not help but think of a film which tried to recreate this era of seventies genre cinema but felt lacking for me personally. Ti West's X (2022), which attempted to be a seventies throwback by being set in the time period, in which a porn shoot at a farm ends up with the elderly owners finding out and starting to get violent, spring to mind and a lot of the reason why I felt it did not work was that it felt more like a horror film in terms of a series of shocks and gore moments than what Axe is, a drama which just happens to live in the skin of a horror film. A lot of modern horror films feel, for me, more inclined to a well worn series of sudden shocks rather than nestling in its mood, even if the point as with Axe originally, it felt like it dragged significantly with its dialogue scenes and lack of constant pervading threat in scenes until things escalate.

It does become horrifying, whilst in a way which makes the British prosecutors who viewed it as potentially harmful to British society ridiculous. Whilst not seeing many films like this would naturally cause one to feel shock for how intense this eventually gets, the Southern Gothic reference I made befits. Barring some extensive use of fake bright red gore, the gruesomeness is standard in horror films even from the Hammer horror films eventually when they had to catch up with their competition, or it is implied in an appropriately horrifying way. Blood on a pure white kitchen sink, which comes from a decapitated chicken, and the implicit idea of axe dismemberment, than explicitly show a fake mannequin being chopped up as Herschell Gordon Lewis would have in the sixties, is how Frederick R. Friedel depicts the violence. The most gore image onscreen is a simple prosthetic on the back of an actor's neck and a lot of fake gore, so it comes really apparent the notoriety this got on the Video Nasty list is a mass paranoia of what it suggests, evoking images of more gruesome dismemberment onscreen (like a few of the films which did get on the list) when it is merely perceived. There is even an ominous use of Campbell Tomato Soup which, whilst absurd out of context, fits for the scene in its shock.

The use of a tool which can be found in any D.I.Y. store was also clearly an additional fear at the time for being possible to have as a weapon in reality, not able to be separated from said reality. The idea of this being the film which got the name "Axe", like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise getting chainsaws and fellow Video Nasty The Driller Killer (1979) for drills, befits as here, the axe feels like something, in a true crime tale spun out in stories in the modern day, as here someone would end up using if not to murder someone but to at least dispose of the body, the gruesomeness felt with a weapon you have in the shed as a viewer, which could happen with greater ease in real life and not just in a movie. Additionally, the film has an ill-ease provided by its droning electronic score, composed between George Newman Shaw and John Willhelm, which helped emphasised a woozy atmosphere which helped the film immensely. Axe among some notorious films in the Video Nasty collection was one of the quieter members, befittingly like its lead Lisa in that the film seems out of place among the unruly and more controversial of that list like the cannibal films, but it has its own strength which has to be admired, alongside the knowledge this was really a project made by Frederick R. Friedel where he wanted to make a film even if from his own resources.

Alien 2: On Earth (1980)

 

Director: Ciro Ippolito (and Biagio Proietti)

Screenplay: Ciro Ippolito

Cast: Belinda Mayne as Thelma Joyce; Mark Bodin as Roy; Benedetta Fantoli as Maureen; Michele Soavi as Burt; Valeria Perilli as Jill; Danilo Micheli as Bill

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It took seven years to get from Alien (1979) to Aliens (1986). Italy got there with an unofficial sequel a year later and likely with mind the Ridley Scott film would still be in cinemas around the world and people would believe this was an actual sequel, they could follow it with this without anything but pure carnival hucksterism. This is funnier as, with the actual Alien franchise, we never got Xenomorphs on Earth until Aliens vs. Predator in 2001 but this got there one year later too.

Set around astronauts on a space mission, we follow a group of cave explorers predating The Descent (2005), exploring a cave to their peril in the midst of an abrupt alien invasion. Immediately you see that the production wanted to make caving the exciting new thing, helped by the fact as the predominant set location for this lower budget film, actual caves, are impressive locations regardless of price of filming, legitimately beautiful locations and perfect for a horror film. More idiosyncratic is the obsession with bowling, which is Italian producers trying to figure out what is hip to American audiences and that they had access to a bowling alley too. Joking aside, it's a simple monster film, where Thelma (Belinda Mayne) as our lead is among this caving group, who also just happens to be psychic and has grim concerns about what is happening in general around her. That is a plot detail which is abrupt but means she is the one person with a bad feeling as, likely due to the astronauts' mission, there are festering alien blobs on the beach among the sand castles let alone in the caves.

Obviously, like Luigi Cozzi's Contamination (1980), these Italian films wanted to have the face huggers from Alien, one of its most iconic images from the pulsating eggs let alone the horrifying critters inside, but could not for copyright reasons. The iconic eggs even if their biology is weird, meant to be the selling point for both but having to figure out something new even if unconventional, here blue rocks which pulsate and become face eating entities. They do one better than the face huggers, whose children burst out of chests, by gestating and bursting directly out the face of their victims, but it is one of the touches you see where this was made to follow a major film globally. Like Contamination's, which were more biological bombs which made everyone explode, there is no logic like the Xenomorphs to how these alien "eggs" work, only the fear of unknown objects being played to in a film like this which, in content, cause gory results or leads here to mostly vague rubber entities which have red Twiglet tendrils.

This film has a style, even if it is as much an Italian production shooting in America trying to be American, even if it unfortunately leads to a dubbing of one black cast member, a bowling alley staff member, which director Eli Roth once bluntly called "Amos & Andy" dubbing, clearly an Italian man in a voice over he openly admits crosses a line into being racist¹. It is a languid film in fact, taking half an hour to get to the caves themselves, soaking in the American locations, and as a monster film pacing itself quietly with its cast, it is a distinct change of pace even from other genre films from Italy at the time even if might put some off expecting the purely over-the-top and lurid nature of others from this era. The music is one of the strongest aspects, composer Oliver Onions, alongside the memorable name, also happens to be a pseudonym for Guido De Angelis and Maurizio De Angelis, the legendary composers behind films like Street Law (1974), acclaimed in the Italian genre field and earning their pay check for a great score here.

For the moments you can pick holes in this film, I have seen it enough times now they even have a charm. It makes no sense to see future director Michele Soavi, before directing Cemetery Man (1994), writing on a typewriter in a cave using lit candles, a habit his character has despite the newly elected Pope in Italy meaning the candles have become more expensive to buy, but it is a cool (and funny) image) alongside moments which work intentionally. One, in a prolonged camera pan after a victim against complete black, exemplifying the moment their face explodes from a recent host, is actually good enough to have become an iconic moment in a more acclaimed film. In terms of whether this is actually scary or good horror, that is entirely subjective. Honestly the more interesting thing about this era of Alien rip offs, which are different to even the ones for Aliens  which took a different tone as an official sequel, is how they reflect tropes from a popular film in their own way for better and for worse, like Peter Walker's Inseminoid (1981) for one closer to this Englishman's home. They are reflections of the industry of cinema, where everyone is eyeing everyone's success and sometimes blatantly cashing in on what worked, which can be ironic for entertainment for some viewers, but still counts as entertaining. This one at least, to the film's credit, has the creepy idea of being inspired by tape worms in terms of the alien tendrils, even if I made a joke about them earlier in the review, taking inspiration from something which is real and can be found in a human being's guts, which is creepy. The egg symbology from Alien as mentioned is scrambled, a pretence to sell the film, but when this is about cavern walls with tendrils coming out of them, and the aliens themselves being vague entities we never truly see the full sight of, even if to cover the practicalities of the effects, it is still effective.

Also this commits to an appropriately nihilistic ending, taking advantage of when you can shoot at the right time, and you can depict a metropolis in carefully chosen shots completely without people, offering a gut punch that makes up for this lower budget with an obsession for bowling. Ciro Ippolito, the credited director, is an outlier as none of his other films fit the template of genre cinema at the time, more of a producer/writer for titles like the romantic film Vanilla and Chocolate (2004). This is the same for the un-credited co-director Biagio Proietti, though he has a co-writer credit on Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (1981). A lot of the history of Italian genre cinema factors in key figures, not just directors but also screenwriters and producers, who continued even if into other genres within this now-cult sphere of genre filmmaking. This makes these two fascinating alongside the film as a one-and-done in that said history. Literally they came to take advantage of the popularity of Alien, did not get sued or have their films pulled as infamously others did, like Enzo G. Castellari for the Jaws inspired Great White (1981). Whilst Alien 2: On Earth was once an obscure title, likely because it did not have a known or infamous name in the director's chair, it was salvaged and rediscovered, allowing its mischief with a known franchise, and that it managed to get away with it, to sparkle with ghoulishness.  

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1) Taken from the featurette Franchised Terrorist: An Interview with Eli Roth, as was available on the British Blu Ray release by 88 Films.

Abby (1974)

Director: William Girdler

Screenplay: G. Cornell Layne

Cast: William Marshall as Bishop Garret Williams, Terry Carter as Reverend Emmett Williams, Austin Stoker as Detective Cass Potter, Carol Speed as Abby Williams, Juanita Moore as Miranda "Momma" Potter, Charles Kissinger as Dr. Hennings, Elliott Moffitt as Russell Lang, Nathan Cook as Tafa Hassan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

We have William Marshall of Blacula (1972) in a lead role here, so we are good from the get-go, an actor who I wished could have had the huger filmography, one to match Christopher Lee's, as they both have the commanding voices, the gravitas and the sense no matter how ridiculous the film around them is, as with Abby here, they stood proudly within them. When I saw a retrospective screening of Blacula, as much as it was the cape that made him alluring, a younger woman in the patrons afterwards admitted to a male friend she found Marshall irresistible, one of those overheard anecdotes that make one glad to go to the cinema. Shame this is a role for him in a film viewed through an old sock depending on the version you can find, as this is a mostly all-black cast reinterpretation of The Exorcist (1973) which was sued off the screens. Warner Brothers may have forgotten to retract the suit, hence why it is difficult to see, alongside actually film prints. It's director William Girdler had no shame in following trends, with his most known film Grizzly (1976) if Jaws was replaced with a bear on land, but in the world of far more blatant Exorcist copies, especially the likes of the Turkish film Şeytan (1974), it feels cruel this idiosyncratic take, shot on barely a budget, was the one that got blocked from released, preserved through bootlegs or theatrical screenings of old prints.

Girdler himself is a distinct figure in American independent cinema, tragically dying in a helicopter accident whilst scouting for locations for a film. He was at only the age of thirty in 1978 when this happened, but he managed from 1972 to 1978 to make nine films. He is a regional filmmaker/producer who shot in various states - Abby shot in Louisville, Kentucky - and alongside how impressive that run is, to image what he could have do when the shot-to-video eighties era came in would have been tantalising in mind to a film like Abby, made in mind to a huge hit undeniably but having its own energetic spin to the material.  

Abby itself, alongside being a riff on the Exorcist, was also riding the wave Blacula was part of when "Blaxploitation" cinema grew in the early seventies, making films about predominantly black casts, and started touching into horror. I credit Girdler, a white filmmaker, just entirely devote himself even if in mind to the market to a mostly all-black cast driven film here, even if you do have to accept that the film might be seen as crass in its premise. I am not the right person to speak of whether the film can be defendable or not, but I could have seen something far more problematic in this premise, rather than what is over-the-top and not subtle in the slightest. Our Father Merrin stand-in, William Marshall, whilst doing humanity work in Nigeria goes on to research a site of Eshu, a trickster deity from the Yoruba religion, originating from south-western Nigeria. This is the one thing really that has not aged well, as you have an actual worshipped God of the past turned into an ancient evil that possesses his daughter-in-law Abby (Carol Speed), a young churchgoing woman with a priest husband who takes on the Regan place but somewhat differently. The deity is turned into a libidinous sex demon, which is broadly painting a figure of ancient worship as you could get and would be frowned on in the modern day, which is ironic because you could have even in a pulp film with this one's tone explored this idea of repressed sexuality and Christian faith much more.

It ultimately becomes an issue in that the film really has less interest in this figure of Eshu than to have the idea of a figure who will cause Abby to fall into being a figure who literally loves someone to death, literally steaming the car up to the point it erupts in smoke and burns up the person she was necking inside. It is more of an issue of you have the calm and saintly Abby contrasted by a demonic figure that is lascivious and has a demonic male voice which is broad in his comments. What really neutralising this, and makes the film more ridiculous than anything, is how absurd this goes. There is some unintentional humour, the demon coming up with memorable one liners, Abby tormenting an old woman to the point of a heart attack by slapping her around, or her offering sexual advice as a marriage advisor by offering to sleep with the husband. What is potentially problematic is crushed in its own alien take on The Exorcist, becoming its own take where there is no knock off Tubular Bells, but funk and monotone drones instead.

It is still, undeniable, with an eye on a huge hit, but this strips out most of the iconic aspects of The Exorcist, such as there being no Father Karras and his crisis of faith. It is as much budgetary reasons clearly we do not get some of the more elaborate scenes recreated, though we get someone floating by the end. It nonetheless is fun to witness, working with the bare essentials to its own quirks, such as the exorcism itself taking place in a nightclub and involves one destroyed disco ball. For a film in the context it was made in too, all the potential issues I have described do not thankfully have anything to them in regards to demeaning its cast, all barring one detective and minor figures an all-black cast, working actors who if you dig into their careers have films and television work which stick out. Our titular lead Carol Speed's career was sadly mostly within the seventies only, with films like The Mack (1973), but it took me by surprise to realise that, playing her mother, is Juanita Moore, famous especially for her key part in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959), an incredible film, whilst you have Austin Stoker from Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) too among others.

In terms of whether the film is actually "good" in terms of portrayals of these characters, rather than avoiding problematic stereotypes, one has to be blunt. It is in mind to whether you find Abby's foul mouthed, sex obsessed demon form against the saintly Christian archetype she begins as problematic or just ridiculous. It is, at its heart, openly cashing in on The Exorcist, and with the choice to spin it the way the film did, everything feels ridiculous instead. Everything feels unintentional in its mistakes than deliberately problematic stereotypes. It even attempts to bring in aspects of the Yoruba religion which, whilst not dealt with well, least gives us one good moment, with William Marshall mocking the demon, in a variety of languages between them, for pretending to be the real Eshu, and even moving into using non-Christian African religious rites to perform the exorcism. It is the scene that stands out as distinct even if one also wishes for a film which elaborated on this sequence more than here. If anything, it just makes me appreciate William Marshall more, who actually was not a fan of the film he was making¹, but still committed a powerhouse performance. I wish he was as well known as other cult horror actors as, with one of the better scenes in what is a silly film made on a very low budget in that example, the comparison to Christopher Lee is perfect. He was someone who could have been incredible in so many films if he had the wider length of filmography as the later did. As with the rest of the cast, and Girdler himself as producer-director, I wish this had not been stuck in this lawsuit situation, as alongside the pointlessness of this when most of these films are clearly not like the big hit, which feels like a power game in committing to the lawsuit, Abby within the light of day cannot be taken seriously. It becomes instead a fascinating item from the past with figures involved within it who shine in spite of criticisms of the film itself.

 

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1) Abby (1974): A Unique Blaxploitation Horror or Nothing More Than an Exorcist Rip-Off?, written by Neil Gray for Horror Obsessive and published 29th September 2022.

À l'aventure (2008)

 

Director: Jean-Claude Brisseau

Screenplay: Jean-Claude Brisseau

Cast: Carole Brana as Sandrine, Arnaud Binard as Greg, Étienne Chicot as the Taxi Driver, Jocelyn Quivrin as Fred, Lise Bellynck as Sophie, Nadia Chibani as Mina, Estelle Galarme as Françoise, Frédéric Aspisi as Jérôme

An Abstract Candidate

 

Sadrine (Carole Brana) begins with a friend on a bench where an older man sat near them on the same public furniture starts talking about their complacency as a species to act like sheep, starting her journey in self doubt which in context to how the film goes, could easily become a pretentious smut film. If my choice of words seem scathing, this will be a kinder review of À l'aventure, though viewing it as a flawed production which still is worthy of examining over and over. It is not a condemnation of erotica as a potential for art, or smut as inherently a bad thing, but in mind that this is a film by Jean-Claude Brisseau. The late French filmmaker presents a film which is doomed in nature, a film by an older cis male director making an erotic film with a female lead, which is common in the history of cinema, and made more complicated due to Brisseau's controversial real life history. A filmmaker since the seventies, I watched a film like Noce Blanche (1989) which still has erotic elements, but is a drama which focused on its characters complexities. Many will probably know him from Secret Things (2002), which was promoted in the early 2000s as a sexually explicit thriller and also begins the contentious aspect of his career. In 2005, he was found guilty in French courts for sexually harassing actresses in the auditions for that film, two actresses asked to perform explicit sexual acts during the audition process which included them being filmed, leading to him being fined and a one-year suspended jail sentence¹. This does not help scrutinise his career afterwards, especially when with The Exterminating Angels (2006), Brisseau had the gall if you condemn the man to depict his own criminal event in a speculative dissection of the incident which is sexually explicit as well. À l'aventure presents, however, something which feels drenched in ennui, presented as an erotic film where sensuality is still there, but the initial premise of Sadrine looking for the perfect orgasm, a premise from any softcore erotica, given way as a Trojan horse to existential dread. This review will not defend the man at all, but it fascinates as if the results of that criminal charge bled into this production completely.

It feels too obvious, before even watching the film and digesting it after, to just damn the production, more as even if its director presents a concern, now he marked himself for sins away from the film camera, films still present complicated psychological readings. The challenge for a man to write a woman's voice, and the perils of them doing it in a way which is potentially embarrassing, does however not ignore how intentionally (or unintentionally) write their own psychological state into any character they touch. With Jean-Claude Brisseau, this is even more of an issue, but Sadrine's lack of satisfaction with her boyfriend and routine starts as a set up for so many erotic works, sleeping with the stereotypically handsome male psychoanalysis, but feels like the work of a man drained in what he made. Even if going through the motions of erotic, it feels instead like Sadrine's sense of dissatisfaction is more than arousal, and this is also Brisseau's own, more poignant when his fascination of female sexual desire rightly got him criminated.

Whether the film itself actually succeeds is subjective, but in this case for this viewer, it is a failure from trying to be a profound about the meaning of life, as it falls into clichés, but becomes far more interesting and more rewarding as the struggle for meaning, and that pervading sense of distance a director-writer who pigeonholed himself into the stereotype of erotic cinema ended up in here. Brisseau has a type, let us be honest, of the slim intellectually beautiful woman who is bisexual in the ideal of certain cis male views, but even the male lead is an erotic ideal for him as a cis male, the ideal erotic man in Greg (Arnaud Binard), handsome and intelligent, embodying the desirable figure for this ideal woman. It is to the point he is named after actor Gregory Peck for a cineaste reference, a figure who believes in confronting conventional morality. The irony is knowing he will be skewered as a false love interest for Sadrine, and that feels on purpose, whilst Brisseau's own stand in is the older male taxi driver, who has no interest in Sadrine physically but like each other as figures wanting to talk about their place in the world. It is an erotic film which however falls back onto Brisseau's static camera takes, from cinematographer Wilfrid Sempé, of talking and Sadrine finding more insight with the aforementioned taxi driver, played by Étienne Chicot, who began her self doubts and shows more interest for her as a fully thinking figure.

It would almost be self parody in some of the scenarios here, as she encounters a submissive mistress to an open minded heterosexual couple, that indulge in cinematic light BDSM, but the idea of a restless middle class who need to escape routine is felt too, following sexual fantasies whether they can help or not. This comes with the issue of gender bias, beautiful women in the conventional idea who are intelligent on a surface level and open to all sexual scenarios as here. It becomes an issue with the figure who made this film who fell into the trap of thinking this ideal would be forced onto women, rather than how much more complex people are, and rightly got a criminal prosecution for this and thus marking all his art work with a stain we need to always point at even if we stay open minded to watching the films still. I would even accept being called a hypocrite for even watching this film or even taking some surface pleasure from it, but it comes with many details that dissect itself, becoming more than the stereotypical film of a bad filmmaker, bad in the true sense for badness as a man and not for something arbitrary as whether the dialogue makes sense, or if the film is well made. Figures, all women, are figuring themselves out existentially, be it from trauma of losing a child, or boredom and stifled sense of their purpose in life, and the mess of this take on the subject is still compelling even from a deeply failed production.

Even if objectifying a figure of desire, if figures speak at all of concerns or pains, even for humour, that can be a writer revealing more of themselves then they may realise. À l'aventure, set in the urban France of so many French films about anxiety and relationship tensions, where tellingly enlightenment comes from fleeing to the countryside, is filtered through divorces, the issue of the ideal marriage of heterosexual couples being hollow, and of how many of these characters here talk of themselves as wives or female figures being bored. The friend meant to say Sadrine's decision to ditch her job and work, drifting along in her sexual journey, is deluding herself ends up running off with an arms dealer in a romance and disappears from the film entirely, an absurd touch in the context but apt for the film. Even if the film ultimately feels like it is grasping at straws sexually and philosophically, that touches on a feeling of conventional reality being unstable from aimlessness that is one of the film's better aspects.

The fantasy the film is set up in is an issue unless you accept the inherent flaw of this particular piece of erotic trying to be serious, instead revealing itself as softcore punching above its weight but with the failed boxing blows still revealing so much more. You cannot work unless you are on the dole, or a true outsider, and there is more to even a naive writer like myself about the notion of a polyamorous relationship that, even for unrepentant and proud smut, you could work with beyond this, whilst this feels tame and falls into the problems of really hollow sexual fantasies shot for cinema that have women as the eroticised figures. But the fantasy still starts as a perfect template because of the fact it collapses, and the fantasy instead exaggerates the fixations that are uncomfortably real. Even when it looks like it is getting into a fantasy scenario that would be considered problematic and requires a lot more concern, even if transgressive to consider, about the place the willing submissive enjoys and controls the scenario as much as the dominant, the film throws the least expected curveball.

That scenario is when Greg is convinced to hypnotise the three female leads by the women themselves, which can make a viewer uncomfortable especially as erotica has the fantasy of mind control and hypnosis, frankly with the issues right to consider about whether it is a healthy scenario to imagine depending on the context. À l'aventure however completely undercuts this. Even if these turns in this type of world cinema I got into from DVD can be the moments which lose viewers as ridiculous, I am always happy when I get what I was not expecting from such films. It is set up that one figure Mina (Nadia Chibani) is susceptible to hypnosis, to the point a coin on her arm when told is hot does leave a real burn, leading into the supernatural crushing this fantasy as she starts to bring up past memories and past lives into what was meant to just be softcore. What was a set up to the sexual fantasy involving all three women turns into a work of figures trying to figure themselves out, accidentally prodding a hole in reality, and Greg making an ill advised attempt to explore this hole that just causes damage. All because he was not prepared to not go into the experiment and went in cluelessly, especially when people start to levitate off the floor in a real miracle.

The philosophical ideas of our repetition and sense of infinite are not original and of depth here, which would become an albatross if a viewer took this film to be a take on existentialism in a really detailed form, but even this abrupt turn in a plot is a surprise, including the one nod to a very contentious subject in French culture when Mima remembers an incident from Algeria in the past, talking of a horrible tragedy she caught the results of when too young to process it. Even the idea, if caught in the issues of Brisseau himself as a compromised artist, of the sexual ecstasy being linked fully to the spiritual is a compelling theory to think of, even if it ends here instead in disaster, those not prepared for the real force beyond their process, and Sadrine realising her ideal erotic man in Greg is not the person she can ever feel fullness as a person from. Ultimately the sex becomes unrewarding, more of a choreographed scenario by the end of this, which is pretty damning for a film that would have been sold on sex, leaving on a beautiful countryside field and discussing how people live in such little time of reality for what has been a millennia plus of the Earth's existence. Eroticism still plays a part in Brisseau's work, but it feels as if it is slowly ebbing away here, burnt by his own controversies of his career but also feeling like it confined him, none of which is a defence of the man in the damndest, but with the sense here the struggle came to the screen in a compelling way.

Abstract Spectrum: Introspective

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

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1) French Director Found Guilty Of Sexual Harassment, written for Movie Mail and published December 20th 2005. Archived for the Web Archive on April 26th 2014.

Alabama’s Ghost (1973)

 

Director: Fredric Hobbs

Screenplay: Fredric Hobbs

Cast: Christopher Brooks as Alabama - King Of The Cosmos; Peggy Browne as Zoerae; E. Kerrigan Prescott as Carter's Ghost; Steven Kent Browne as Otto Max; Grantham as Granny / Moxie / Gault; Karen Ingenthron as Dr. Caligula; Ann Weldon as Mama-bama; Ann Wagner Ward as Marilyn Midnight; Joel Nobel as Doc

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I'm not afraid of no white racist ghost!

The narrative exposition out of the gate of Alabama's Ghost befits its charm, like a parody of a genre film or a fever dream - Nazis attempted to get a substance, made using a form of hashish, from the magician Carter the Great (E. Kerrigan Prescott), one that can turn people into drones when introduced into the body. Carter seemingly died in the past taking this secret with him. It is however befitting this wonderfully eccentric film made entirely by Fredric Hobbs. Serving in the military as an Air Force officer from 1953 to 1955¹, Hobbs became also an artist, pioneering the "Parade Sculpture", where he transformed automobiles into travelling ritualistic artworks he could drive around the United States², one of which makes a prominent appearance in Alabama's Ghost, among the four films he had a hand in directing and writing. Contrasting his legacy with his art sculptures and other media, even having his work in permanent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco¹, emphasising a legacy of great legitimacy by his 2018 passing, there is delightfully however as well his psychotronic genre cult films which make up his career.

The most famous of his tetralogy, least the most well known, will likely be Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973), which got a Something Weird Video release. It befits as a sibling of Alabama's Ghost; alongside the titular Godmonster being a lovably sad creature I legitimately wish you could get a plastic action figure of like horror icons of bigger franchises. These two films, Roseland (1971) and Troika (1969) sadly much more obscure, part of a huge trend of American independent genre films made by people with their own resources, where the idea of a sculptural artist getting involved in the filmmaking medium makes sense among the many who came to the medium and only managed to make one genre film in their time next to Hobbs' four. His decision to make genre films though, unlike more overtly experimental cinema, is something distinct, and the results of deliciously idiosyncratic, Alabama's Ghost the oddest of the most easily available pair.

Letting his imagination run wild, he takes tropes and genre ideas into his own idiosyncrasies, cutting from the exposition of this film's start to the Turk Murphy Jazz Band to introduce the film proper with an out-of-time jazz swing song. Alabama (Christopher Brooks) himself is a bar staff member at this opening location, who wishing to become a musician, will become an acclaimed magician instead when he drives a forklift by accident through a wall whilst cleaning up, finding Carter's real tomb or at least his possessions and secrets. Contacting his elderly sister - who is actually a male leader of evil vampires that wants to use Alabama - our hero will inherit and be trained in the skills to be a huge draw, if in the danger he is to be the tool in the vampires' plans. Alabama found the hashish Carter had found too, which the leader of the vampires wishes to use for mass brainwashing of the world through a television broadcast of Alabama making an elephant disappear and reveal the secret to the trick. Written, produced and directed by Fredric Hobbs, this is a hangover of the sixties, where the manager who takes him, with an English accent, is a throwback to the late Sixties hippy movement, part of the aesthetic tropes now knee deep in the seventies and surreal due to the juxtaposition. Sixties psych rock now is now performed at one of Alabama's performances, which evoke seventies variety shows, and if there is artistic concepts behind this from the artist directing and writing it, I cannot help but see a cynicism explicitly there with a figure of a business being a legitimately evil vampire who wants to control people. It is obvious, but like Godmonster of Indian Flats having a corrupt mayor as its antagonist, framing visitors and conning the townspeople for his own gains, natural suspicion of authority in some form is here even as a pair of wacky genre flicks.

It is both an insanely languid film, drifting through its plot like many independent genre films from the US at the time, and also delirious like many from then too. The dinosaur bone car alone is a personal touch never explained, one of the creator's Parade Sculptures, but becomes also one of the more conventional aspects than a plot which lunges sincerely into its strange turns. It is technically a horror film, but also its own strange thing, barely factoring this in barring moments of supernatural images, such as the scene where the horrors of these Nazis vampires, whose evil female scientist is even called Dr. Caligula for emphasis, is fully shown when they have a blood gathering conveyor belt. Nothing is more sinister when vampires bite hippies moved along as they pass like the conveyor belts at a sushi restaurant.

Strengthen by Christopher Brooks as Alabama, a figure so full of charisma it is annoying he is not someone I know of beyond the Fredric Hobbs' films he was in - sadly an actor with a small filmography baring with Hobbs, the Sun Ra project Space is the Place (1974), and playing Jesus Christ in The Mack (1973) - Alabama's Ghost is a film of its time for the better for me. The plotting and tone is entirely filtered through its own desires and whims, and this does produce some results that are unexpected, such as the fact, whilst still exaggerated, this is a rare case of a positive depiction of voodoo. The priest here is to help Alabama when he is spooked by the people he is with and finds himself literally cowering in his mother's arms, needing an exorcism and still there in the finale to save the day with Alabama's mother. Even if with mechanical doppelgangers of Alabama inspired by Disney World's Abraham Lincoln automaton is involved in the plot, which might distract from this one character and passage of the plot. Just having this figure is a positive in showing a depiction of the religion that unfortunately has not been done in many films at all, let alone in horror, very well or in a progressive way.

The ending is undeniably bombastic, Fredric Hobbs choreographing together a mass concert involving a sea of hippies at an open end festival, a real elephant, whose species clearly hate vampires, and like Godmonster of the Indian Flats, a taste for endings where everyone goes mad, run about and chaos transpires. The film will not be everyone, and it would be hilarious to know what fans of Hobbs the artist would have thought of this, but this shows just how rich and peculiar that independent era of genre cinema was in its own distinct way from examples in the later decades.

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1) In Memory of Fredric Hobbs, an obituary from Ever Loved.com.

2) From the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Alabama’s Ghost, written by Pat Padua for Spectrum Culture, published January 12th 2022.

Alien Beach Party Massacre (1996)

 

Director: Andy Gizzarelli

Screenplay: Andy Gizzarelli

Cast: John Eineigl as Dr. Bateman; Mark Fite as Jeff; Stacey Havener as Babs; Kourtney Kaye as Robin; Perry Martin as Bud; George Willis as Nagillig; Eric Zumbrunnen as Glue

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Linda, don’t worry, we know where your arm is.

Surf rock opens up on the opening credits, hurdling into outer space, and it is best for context to explain how a film like this would have come to be. Contextually, the nineties are what I have always viewed as the decade where its pop culture ate its own tail, apt as it was just before the Millennium, a new century, with both the angst of the new era coming and clearly a lot of reflection taking place in popular culture and retro trends. A lot of decades where repeated in just one, where swing revival music met against pulp comic and radio characters being adapted into films, where bands like Combustible Edison brought back lounge music, and there were some obscure remakes of old b-movies, such as Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman (1959) getting a 1995 television remake. Here, where old b-movies and sci-fi were finding themselves in the likes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and surf rock became prominent in the Pulp Fiction soundtrack or new bands like Man or Astro-Man?, this particular film, an entry in the slasher genre with some odd genre mixing and a lot of ironic comedy, makes sense in mind to this. Honestly, the biggest issue with Alien Beach Party Massacre comes from the fact that it does not fully embrace its premise, staying in an abandoned spooky house for the slasher section, even if this has a bit to it to admire, and is a parody with its tongue firmly in its cheek.

Humanoid aliens are in our solar system, having stolen from another evil species (space pig humanoids) a weapon called the “Deathsphere”, a super weapon of horrifying destructive power which they find themselves unable to flee with. Attacked and the ship forced to burn up in Earth’s ozone layer, luck and a hole in said ozone layer leaves one surviving member of the crew, the bumbling cleaner, to protect the Deathsphere. Unfortunately it is confused for a beach ball and brought to a human beach party he is also invited too, everyone believing he is a cousin of a party guest from New Jersey, with one of the pig aliens planning to slaughter anyone in their way to get the death ball back.

There are broad stereotypes at the party: the Bill and Ted surfer dudes (who are also stoners); the obnoxious college jock who presumes beer can be used as a mouthwash and gargled to clean your breath with; his suffering girlfriend; a nerdier girl, an alien obsessed scientist, and other stereotypes. It is jokey, not taking itself seriously, and some of the jokes have not aged well, usually with the women being called “bimbos” etc., but considering this has someone impaled on a surf board, for every joke which does not land and the film feeling stretched at times, a lot has aged well as openly goofy. The biggest disappointment is most of this set-up ending up in a house, when the main cast split off from the party as an excuse to get high, a shame as it means most of this does not actually transpire on a beach. You expect from this title a piss take on the early sixties beach part genre, a niche to parody in itself, only to sadly never get that.

That in truth is the real slight to the film, where a better and weirder film was left on the table un-done, with what we have. Some of the film lurches into more edgier content – there a gag, which I have seen in another horror film called Neon Maniacs (1986), which bluntly involves an act of oral sex being interrupted decapitation and a morbid joke about what happens afterwards, which is the kind of moment which may come off as poor taste than really twisted humour. Most of this is more comfortable, and more rewarding, where it is goofier even with the gore. Losing a limb, as for one character that loses multiple, is something to suffer through with the issue more the inability to drive gear stick in a car than fatal blood loss, the tone better in these types of moments.  It is a one-off from its director-writer Andy Gizzarelli, whose career in cinema is to be found in other production departments, leaving this curiosity from the irony tinged edge of horror and cult cinema which vanished into obscurity. Feeling like the chance for someone to bring what they wished to see in a film to the screen, it shows the indulgences that would result from this, both the things which did not succeed and the sections which did prove rewarding even if the entire film is a flawed mess.

The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo (1987)

 

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto

Screenplay: Shinya Tsukamoto

Cast: Nariaki Senba as Denchu Kozo; Nobu Kanaoka as Sariba Sensei; Kei Fujiwara as Future Eve; Shinya Tsukamoto as Kondo; Tomorô Taguchi as Hijikata; Mitsuru Saga as Okita; Kenji Nasa as Ryoma Sakamoto

Canon Fodder

 

Before Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), Shinji Tsukamoto was part of Kaijyu Theatre, the future film production company of his originally a tent where Tsukamoto, wanting to act more, performed plays of his and collaborators in what looked like a sex monster as a tent, hence “kaijyu” after the Japanese for “sea monster”. The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo, or The Adventures of Electric Rod Boy, was one of the first micro-features as a director Tsukamoto helmed based on plays of theirs, following the aforementioned teen boy born with a giant electrical pylon growing out of his back. Bullied, he is however protected by Momoko, a female friend who out of gratitude he offers a homemade time machine to her only to be sucked into a time wormhole himself.

This takes him into a future where vampires have turned civilization into a post-apocalypse where they rule the world, showing the ingenuity which would be found throughout Tetsuo here already. It is, for a forty minute plot, a delirious production in itself, where the vampires created “Adam Junior”, which allowed them to envelop the sky in darkness twenty five years from where our lead was taken from. Now they need to develop Adam Special for more power, before the sunlight returns, and it allows collaborator Kei Fujiwara to act as the virginal "Future Eve", reaching puberty, part of Adam Special who they are waiting to mature and allow her to become an encompassing and powerful force on their side. A female teacher there will help Denchu-Kozo, as well as another time travelling rod boy, in what is a delirious work which is proudly over-the-top in tone. I think how there is a child choir at one point, like a Japanese animated series from the seventies, emphasizes the more playful tone to this to later Tsukamoto films which is its own virtue, still with its foot in a type of storytelling that would not really be found in his later work. Humour can still be found, but he became serious in a great way, leaving this a rare work with a more absurd tone.

Even more a low budget indie production next to Tetstuo, with a young Tsukamoto looking like a Visual Kei band member alongside regular lead actor Tomorô Taguchi, this however presents already the fascinating creativity in terms of visuals and sounds he explored. The use of manipulating the screen, where actors are “moved” in stop motion outside to show rapid speed, is used here for the chase sequences, whilst the home made quality of the props is found, especially with Adam Special as a strange melding of sexuality and body horror which feels like a prototype to later Tsukamoto. This, absolutely, has tonal choices which left his filmography, but are admirable in the vast contrast to before, such as the abrupt use of Japanese punk music, or how the end credits is animated illustration of electric rod people which feels like a weird experimental anime made by one person in its presence.

It also still tells a story, which a dramatic conclusion with pathos, which does feel closer to his later work, including the surprising changes that came where drama became more important to Tsukamoto as well as the prominence of female characters as important (and even central) figures in his work, already present here. It is an early work,  in the sense that his style would become more refined even in the later film, less likely to have the eccentricities here such as having the vampires living in an apartment (for budgetary reasons) covered on the walls in softcore erotic photos. It does however like the best early work, even the best ultra low budget work, have the creativity and unpredictability I have to admire immensely even if I did not appreciate the director already.

Address Unknown (2001)

 

Director: Kim Ki-duk

Screenplay: Kim Ki-duk

Cast: Dong-kun Yang as Chang-Guk; Young-min Kim as Ji-Hum; Ban Min-Jung as Eun-Ok; Jae Hyun Cho as Dog-Eye; Pang Eun-Jin as Chang-Guk's Mother; Myung Kye-Nam as Ji-Hum's Father

Ephemeral Waves

 

Rotting corpses are supposed to add flavour.

[For obvious reasons, due to the figure who directed-wrote this film, some readers may be best served to skip this review, effectively an entire Trigger Warning for a self published blog review. This will be completely understandable.]

An ill advised creation of a pop gun made from wood and elastic, but with a small explosive the equivalent of a bullet, alongside an even more ill advised game of William Tell leaves the female lead since childhood with damage to one eye, and thus begins this film from a South Korean filmmaker who is now a contentious one. Kim Ki-duk, whose passing in 2020 due to COVID-19 went by with barely a whimper in most press, was marked in 2018 when allegations of rape and sexual molestation were raised. Considering this involved PD Notebook, the South Korean investigative news show, broadcasting an episode with anonymous testimonials from women who made claims of being victims whilst working with him¹ poses a real problem for me if confirmed fully. The lawsuit and allegations against him were part of a momentous #MeToo shake up in South Korean filmmaking², and confirmation of any of them would present an uncomfortable image as someone who came at the right time to his films. For all their potential concerns with their extremity in the literalisation of the emotions, I found something within them of worth. It undercuts them with the painful reminder even if the art can be profound the human artist behind them can be beneath them and fail the art, hence why we cancel these people.

Address Unknown, one of the earlier films distributed in the United Kingdom, is set by 1970s, a considerable time after the Korean War which divided the country into North and South, in a rural community where a US military base is nearby. Among those central to the story are three leads: one Chang-Guk (Dong-kun Yang) is mixed race, his father one of the US soldiers who came over, Eun-Ok (Ban Min-Jung) the girl whose eye was damaged by her older brother as a child, and Ji-Hum (Young-min Kim), an introverted figure whose crush on Eun-Ok, working with an artist who specialises in portraits and photos of the US soldiers with their Korean wives, is contrasted by a voyeuristic nature, not helped because he does spy on her changing at her house, nor his bullying by two other young men which will force him to drastic measures for revenge. To say bleak for Address Unknown is an understatement, one of the issues with Kim Ki-Duk, even for this one of his more subdued works, being an obsession with internal angst externalised, masochism and sadism, and a nihilistic worldview for the most part. Post Korean War here, for him, is literally the dog eat dog metaphor taken to the point heavy handed is absurd to suggest. Dogs are literally being killed and sold as a food source by Dog-Eye (Jae Hyun Cho), a "dog catcher" who is dating Chang-Guk's mother (Pang Eun-Jin), and having him work with him; even if the idea of eating a domesticated dog, depending on your country of origin, is not as perverse as others may think and a naturally accepted food source, Dog-Eye's method of hanging a dog and beating it up with a baseball bat is naturally quite nasty.

It is quite obvious what Ki-duk though of the Korean War, this aftermath where those left, trying to get on and especially the children of those who served in the war, wander off adrift in their own obsessions, with the weight of another country in the United States on them. Even the Americans over in the country, as represented by one soldier (Mitch Malem), are struggling with the angst of being stuck in a place away from home themselves, his trajectory starting with wanting to court Eun-Ok as a "comfort" girlfriend, even with the bargaining of being able to fix her eye. The leads' families are spectres of this war:  Eun-Ok's family is reliant on the pension for a father who has never returned and was presumed to be a war hero, changed when the government suggest he willingly fled to North Korea; Chang-Guk's mother, bordering into psychologically unstable, pines for his father, the "Address Unknown" from letters she has sent out to try to find him returning, whilst he has the pressures of racism against his heritage; and Ji-Hum's father (Myung Kye-Nam), proud of killing three soldiers, pines for his proclaimed right to be a hero, all a folly with his complete disregard for people over status and the delight he had in having killed with a gun. Literally, as they find a corpse of a North Korean soldier under his house, the bones left, the photo of their family ignored, and the bones quietly thrown in a river without the consequences of the human life lost. There is no virtue in a war, never seen onscreen, which not only left North and South Korea permanently divided, but is depicted at the time of this film as having left this rural community in such a impoverished state that, with the selling of dog meat, that will include family pets if people need the money. Men are still missing this late on, after the war ended in 1953, dead on old battlefields, and the world has changed as the veterans are practicing the ancient art of archery, reminiscing of this past, some with false legs, whilst even a looked down upon seller of dog meat is allowed to stand on the archery field with them.

Ki-duk's filmmaking, even before his ultra-low budget films of the later era, were grounded, their moments of unnaturalness (like the unfortunate death of someone here falling head first from a motorcycle into a muddy field up to their waist) part of the heightened tone of his work, like the violence, exaggerated on purpose. Hindsight, with the controversies around him, do make me wary now, but Address Unknown without subtlety required does paint a pretty blunt view on what a community would be like after something as drastic as the Korean War. It does almost have the mentality to its depiction as Shōhei Imamura depicted Japan post-World War II, those in the gutter and those who have survived, though Ki-duk's transgressive streak is that even the least expected person, the one innocent here, does however encourage their dog to perform sexual acts on them to try and find pleasure in the world that is entirely dysfunctional.

The only thing which undercuts the tone of the film at all is that the American performances in English are awkward, which is an issue as the soldier Eun-Ok is dating, which her mother eventually approves, is a dysfunctional figure of importance. There is clearly a negative view of the United States, but also awareness with his character, coping high on LSD and obsessed with Eun-Ok eventually to cruel ways, is like other Ki-duk characters. Only that he is the English speaking equivalent of many others from the director's career, a drifter whose desperation reaches breaking point as he finds his place outside his homeland, is different, the endless military drills eventually becoming unbearable until he snaps. Dogs among them are a heavy handed but apt metaphor for the whole film, everyone be they owned or wandering the countryside on the rural tracks. They befit the world's rundown nature and even the eroticism, when an awakening for one person is from seeing a pair copulating in serenity, perverse as it befits sexuality throughout the director's career at times.

The hindsight of Kim Ki-duk, if his career is now confirmed to be tainted by his crimes, does cause problems with all his films, still left after him and not something you can just make invisible. They are now stuck, like paintings and songs of those who have been alleged or confirmed to have committed horrible crimes, left with the questions of how much they were influence by their creators' sins and that they exist connected to the men even after their deaths. Address Unknown is still a film which, even without this, might not be the type of film to easily win people over, due to its bleakness and complete disregard to defend itself. There are also scenes involving rape and violence which are now going to have uncomfortable connections to the allegations of the director-writer even if you can separate them in your mind as a piece of art. Another factor I would suggest is that, even if Ki-duk was not this figure now tainted with the likelihood of what he has committed, he even with winning the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival for Pietà (2012) among his many rewards was never going to change his films, and that his style even when it won awards could lead to films which would alienate people and cause a period of obscurity, especially as in his case ultra-low budget films, as by the end of his career, was something which he continually returned too, the type of films which are viewed as easily "sellable". His career could be too volatile in making a film too violence, too strange and liable to alienate people, but in his case, accusations of legitimate crimes undercut him, rightly if proven true.

He was never a Park Chan-wook who, for the violence in his films, his eventually became acceptable and he stretched his filmmaking from the initial "vengeance" trilogy of films which introduced him to the West and the idea violence was commonplace in his work. Ki-duk's reputation comes in the United Kingdom because Tartan Films released his films at the time they pushed forwards an "Asian Extreme" sub label. To their credit, whilst the title suggests a certain type of release, they are to be thanked for helping Takashi Miike and South Korean cinema in general, such as Park Chan-wok, gain credible footholds in Britain, and clearly Kim Ki-duk was held by a prominent member of the company, or had some name recognition, for Tartan Films to constantly bring out his films from between the 2001 to 2005 era of his career. His films after their closure were entirely dependent on whether they would be of interest for an international market, and even with his successes, he was though an acquired taste. In reality, with a posthumous final film Call of God (2022) premiered at the Venice Film Festival with further controversy and outcry³, real life has made this no longer a concern as now a more important issue casts its shadow on even accessing his films. His films will be difficult to come back to, and re-releasing them in itself is going to be an issue as in South Korea, his reputation is entirely tarnished by these deeply serious claims, as it will be for even fans of his films. I find myself in that same place too, Address Unknown still to be admired, but the man behind the film now to be scrutinised any time I watch these works of his.

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1) South Korean Filmmaker Kim Ki-duk Accused of Rape, written by Lee Hyo-Won, published by the Hollywood Reporter on March 6th 2018.

2) Berlin: How South Korea Is Embracing the #MeToo Movement, written by Lee Hyo-Won and published for the Hollywood Reporter on February 18th 2018.

3) Korean Film Figures Condemn Venice for Honoring Kim Ki-duk Despite Sexual Abuse Allegations, written by Soomee Park and Patrick Brzeski, and published by the Hollywood Reporter on August 29th 2022.