Next of Kin (1982)

 

Director: Tony Williams

Screenplay: Michael Heath and Tony Williams

Cast: Jacki Kerin as Linda Stevens; John Jarratt as Barney; Alex Scott as Dr. Barton; Gerda Nicolson as Connie; Charles McCallum as Lance; Bernadette Gibson as Mrs. Ryan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #254

 

In Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), a documentary whose existence is arguably why the term "Ozploitation" even exists, Next of Kin even among all the films being loved in the documentary, and the variety of Australian genre films from decades before brought to light, was talked of as something different. Even among interviewees like Quentin Tarantino, this Tony Williams film was viewed as something alien to the others, a psychological thriller that was unreal and a bar in its own area of special.

The documentary was a little deceptive. I come to Next of Kin having had the anticipation of the scenes shown in the film ingrained on my memory. It is still an incredible film, but without spoiling too much, I came to this film believing this was a supernatural horror film. It is something else - a psychological horror film which, in its final twists, even gets as over-the-top as an Italian giallo. Upon the death of her mother, Linda (Jacki Kerin) inherits a working residential home that has elderly occupants and staff, and not only does the grief of losing her mother play on her mind, but Linda has weird dreams and fragments of memories returning to her the longer she is there. Something or someone is also trying to gaslight her, whether just playing with her by moving objects around or leaving bathtubs and sinks to overflow, or for more sinister purposes as she sees figures in the distances around. Neither does it help one of the residents is found drowned in a full bathtub, where even cause of death is suspicious.

The Ozploitation films covered in Not Quite Hollywood were all celebrated. Even the sillier entries were loved, and have gained cult audiences, so this review will be cautious in saying how different this film is, as I do not want to dismiss the others from that documentary, just express how unique this way. Next of Kin, not to be confused with the 1989 Next of Kin with Patrick Swayze, was sadly the last film made by Tony Williams, a New Zealand filmmaker who before and afterwards focused on television and documentaries. This is an absolute shame as it is not just the final twists which feel indebted to European genre cinema, but as an Australian set production, it feels it has swallowed the visual deliriums and tricks of European horror films too. It is a fascinating film in context, especially as a large portion of the film contrasts this with grounded ordinary Australia, which was a huge factor in the celebration of these types of Ozploitation films in the first place.

This is of a world that is not actually set in a gothic or supernatural tone¹. It as much adds to the edge of Next of Kin too, that large portions of this film are entirely set in a wholesome world, of likable and eccentric elderly residents, of an ordinary world, and a love interest that Linda can depend on to trust her when she believes something is wrong. But people are hiding secrets, an aunt of hers has presumably "died", and this wholesome world does not stop her from having weird dreams mixed with memories of herself as a girl bouncing a scarlet red ball. Even in reality, the weirdest thing about the film is not all the striking uses of distortion of corridors, but that for the bus trip out for the residents, there is inexplicably a ventriloquist hired to join them, not even a good one as he still has to move his lips to speak for the doll.

When the film starts to enter inside Linda's head, the film will introduce visual moments which are incredible, the moments which I first saw in Not Quite Hollywood, an incredible cinematic language. One of the most striking images, of a man underwater tapping a window from outside, is still incredible in context even as a dream sequence. In context in fact, such scenes gain more power as they follow Linda's psychological state including techniques such as distorting corridors with camera lenses or slow motion. The film burns with a palpable mood as a result which, even if the plot is more conventionally structure than I presumed over the years, amplifies it.

This does not even take into consideration the score by Klaus Schulze, a musician with his own prolific career but also known as the original drummer of Tangerine Dream. The prolific German electronic musician's work was not even the intended score, but the temporary soundtrack built from his pre-existing work², but they work together as a mesmerising score. Sadly, his work in cinema is limited, barring at this same period of note the Austrian film Angst (1983), which is a shame as here alone, you have music which adds to the film's grandeur.

The film's tone takes very conventional material, including what the ultimate plot twists are, and brings it up to a level of haunting virtue. This is done visually and audibly, but also in terms of the narrative motifs; water is the obsession of this film for example, making it a maleficent entity though never coming a real part of the true threat. The giallo comparison is apt as, whilst the tone feels supernatural, this is a mystery, which ends up in horror when violence does appear and is gristly.

Being able to consider Next of Kin beyond the weight of years of wanting to see the film, it has been a virtue to finally see this film, see it as a fan of Australian genre cinema, part of its heritage and a strangely unique entity even among them, but a moment to pause to think about it carefully. I also now lament its director never made films after this, but at the same time, Tony Williams pretty much puts an exclamation mark; as documented in the Not Quite Hollywood documentary, even a botched explosion set piece with a building turned, by pure accident, into a much more evocative shot. When even a mistake became part of Next of Kin's incredible virtues, we are dealing with a special horror film.  

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1) I have to love the cafe in this film, which becomes a common location, with an arcade machine and a pinball table. Even if the cheesecake nude model photos on the wall are of the time, it shows a place lost to time, with the annual books for kids and raffle prizes, which you wish still exists in the modern day.

2) As referenced in this film review.

Body Melt (1993)

 

Director: Philip Brophy

Screenplay: Philip Brophy and Rod Bishop

Cast: Gerard Kennedy as Det. Sam Phillips; Andrew Daddo as Johnno; Ian Smith as Dr. Carrera; Regina Gaigalas as Shaan; Vincent Gil as Pud; Neil Foley as Bab; Anthea Davis as Slab; Matthew Newton as Bronto; Lesley Baker as Mack

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #180

 

Fuck off, wiener-dick!

During my young adulthood, I was at the right and impressionable age for a resurgence of interest in Australian genre cinema, transpiring due to Mark Hartley's documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), retroactively creating the "Ozploitation" genre. These films, mind, did in some cases have availability beforehand. Some were also outliers as that documentary, focusing on the seventies and eighties, with the end covering the resurgence in the 2000s, does not mention a film like Body Melt from the nineties.

In terms of its creator, Philip Brody if you research him is fascinating. He only made two films and short films, but he originally was a musician, co-writing this script with a fellow member of the experimental band → ↑ →. Looking at his career to the current day, he has composed scores including the drum n bass and techno soundtrack for Body Melt¹, and wrote texts for the British Film Institution and Film Comment, making him a fascinating figure, to the point that this barely covers the work he has done in graphic design or academic work.

Body Melt itself is a piece of pure gross out horror which is with a knowing sense of humour. Set in Australian suburbia, a corrupt health company, housed behind a health centre for families to stay at, is involved with texts with members of the public at Pebbles Court, a suburban place chosen without reason, just test subjects for their new chemical experiments. Adapting his own short stories to the screen together, the sense of Body Melt feeling like an anthology film with one central narrative connecting them together makes sense in hindsight. One involves a health conscious family, (or maybe just the father in his bright coloured running clothes) that will eventually be involved in the grand finale. One is of two young guys who, trying to get to the health centre, get lost and meet a deformed and sadistic family running a petrol station and diner. One is a young couple, the wife pregnant and the test subject, and the last is a single man who tries new health protein powers posted in the mail by the company, proving to be an ill advised choice.

The "body melt" of the title is that, experimenting with a new drug that can evolve human perception and consciousness, there are some very unfortunate side effects. Hallucinations, such as the single man seeing a woman in the airport who is horribly disfigured, then again as a beautiful seductress who collects men's rib bones by massaging them out of their tummies. Then glandular effects, as Body Melt is not averse to gross humour including a bogey moving by its own will in a sink. Then melting, this part in a sub-sub-category of body horror cinema called "melt movies". It is not a big sub-genre in the slightest, really coming from a series of films from the late eighties and the nineties. Effectively for the best example of this, if Street Trash (1987), a New Jersey production, had in among its plots a toxic bottle of cheap booze that, when drunk, caused people to melt into a rainbow spectrum of colours, then Body Melt whilst with more body horror imagery too, has a lot of grotesque and inherently ridiculous content including melted forms.

And it is played with humour. Inherently any Australian production is distinct because Australia is a unique country even in the trees you see in the background. But with this film as well there is a lot of dark humour too and open silliness, like a cockatoo bird put in a little t-shirt saying "Sexy" or that the body builders at the health centre, huge muscle men, are over-the-top in their body mass for deliberate visual effect. What could be distasteful at times, from a kid accidentally killing himself on a skating half pipe or a placenta falling out and becoming alive, is contrasted in the intentionally bright coloured world of the film with a twisted sense of humour. Even the family at the petrol station, probably the one detail that has not aged well as it plays to irrational fears of non-urban folk in the outskirts, like the rural South in American films, is at least contrasted in their patriarch having a key role in the main narrative. That and they are over the top - Gran watching porn; kangaroos killed with a single rock for their adrenaline gland; a home covered head and toe in bric-a-brac, similar to the villains' lair in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), even with a Gene Simmons KISS mask and a Doraemon one too in the background among other content in the production value.

The exaggeration is compiled by it, yes, being quite gross. Whilst that bar had been raised over the years, and Street Trash among its many icky details even has a penis being ripped off and thrown about like an American football, this still has one implode off-screen from sexual arousal. Knowing that his previous work was a micro-length experimental film Salt, Saliva, Sperm and Sweat (1988), clearly the director-co-writer has a fascination with the human body in all its details, alongside the fact that, in the early nineties, the satirical edge of this being around health consciousness, post-aerobics craze and Jane Fonda exercise videos, he is not mocking this lifestyle but taking it as a step in his obsession with the human body with absurd extreme.

The other fact is that it is Australian, which bears repeating again. This is not just the geographical landscape, or a bias as I have family living in the country and a greater sense of connection to the country, but that in context, it has its own air of additional perversity as a melt movie, involving lots of goo and one person being choked to death on their own tongue, shot in Melbourne at a time where, if you follow the narrative of Not Quite Hollywood, the genre industry had died out for the most part. The sunny, warm environment, even with the motorways and suburbia, are remotely alien to where most known body horror exists from - dank seventies and eighties New York City, dark American metropolises, New Jersey, or the north in Canada - that adds a huge contrast on the mood of the production.

This oddness can even be found in one single casting choice, emphasising how as an Australian made film of this type, cultural differences can add a huge level of personality as well as peculiarity too for the better. That being the casting of Ian Smith. Growing up, my parents used to watch an Australian soap opera Neighbours (1985-), a very popular series which showed on the BBC at lunch times and afternoons, which I saw a bit of in my youth. It has a cultural importance, regardless of whether its legacy can last or not, because singer Kylie Minogue, early in her career, made her break on the show and even in terms of her musical success. Aptly here - as there is in hindsight something always sinister in the show's bright and cheery theme tune, about "everybody needing good neighbours", when like most soaps it had a lot of melodrama and tragedy - you have Smith, who played the jovial and lovable Harold Bishop, an older man when I saw the show loved by all, playing in vast contrast a corrupt doctor who cusses, waves a handgun around, and is involved in the shady activities in between the various plot strands. Like witnessing a beloved celebrity star in a horror film, or how British genre cinema (even our art films) populated over the decades by stars of beloved television shows, these casting choices add their own distinct cultural flourishes to any production.

It evokes what an odd creation Body Melt is in context. Genre films, according to Not Quite Hollywood, were not seen with good regard, that documentary's secret theme (and why it was great) tackling the subject of a country's cultural image, where for a long time the desire was to express their heritage in high art cinema. Yet Body Melt, feeling like what would happen if a melt movie was made in Australia, as it would likely lose much of the humour and tone if set in a different country, is odder in context knowing as you can see in the end credits all the official funding from Australian film bodies it had to create the movie. When said film, with a twist, ends with most of its cast melted and a mass of green good vomited out in a police station, it stands out with this knowledge. That it was not mentioned in Not Quite Hollywood either, part of the nineties period which the documentary said was a slumbering time of decline, this oddity I have always admired stands out more because, somehow, Philip Brophy managed to get the film made at that time.

 

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1) The music is of note and worthy of this passage to comment of it. It is of its era, but this was the time of house and techno music standing out; Philip Brophy within context of his music background nonetheless created a unique soundtrack for a horror film. Even compared to synth scores of before, the techno here is idiosyncratic and memorable, adding to its personality.

Halloween 31 For 31: Long Weekend (1978)

From http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/
9tAjaxi1Jpfe62bRNiWSKKPJkvf.jpg

Dir. Colin Eggleston

A couple Peter (John Hargreaves) and Marcia (Briony Behets) go to a beach to spend the time together. Their relationship is fraught, a tension due to a recent event causing divide between them. Tearing at each other emotionally, there is a far greater concern the longer they spend the time at the beach. Something is amiss with the wildlife. Something is wrong about the environment. The animals are vicious and hostile baring Peter's own dog Cricket. Is nature itself at war with the pair, trampling and destroying anything in their hostilities to each other, ignorance and open destructiveness, closing in on them? We can thank filmmaker Mark Hartley for what he did for his country's genre cinema; with Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), he brought attention to Australia's lineage of genre films and created a new retrospective genre name within the last ten years called "Ozploitation", some of the films already known internationally but many brought to light or reappreciated. Long Weekend was one of the films mentioned, with an extensive segment, in the documentary, and amongst strong films this was one that was placed as one of the true pieces of art amongst a good bunch. It fits into a kind of cinema I love the most, difficult to create a sub-genre name for because it tends to flirt with countless tropes and fluxuates between genres depending on the film. Movies, either blatant or subtle, where perception and what is real is suspect, the environment and situation always changing when the protagonist(s) thinks they have cleared the fog away from the route ahead. So I've gotten into David Lynch. So Takashi Miike's Audition (1999) hit me perfectly as one of his first films I saw, and Shinya Tsukamoto beyond Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) was enriching. So I could jump from Bela Tarr's Hungarian art films to a genre film like The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976). If it was possible to tie it all together as a genre, it would be my favourite.

From http://www.cultreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/lwgun-500x281.jpg

As Long Weekend plays out, it is trying to balance between the idea that nature is striking out against the couple and that it's all a coincidence, a result of their paranoia and heightened emotions. It becomes obvious as a viewer it's the former taking place, becoming far too fantastical at points in its menacing dread to be a psychological drama, but the film still retains a question of what exactly is nature's revenge and what is merely a trick on their minds. Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) comes to mind, as the ecological horror is completely connected to the frayed relationship of the couple, beautiful performed by Hargreaves and Behets. The film is entirely balanced on their shoulders as well as on the film making behind it, and it's a complicated, rich relationship between the characters that makes it more compelling. While not necessarily part of my wide genre of perception distorting films, some of the best have been about human emotions, the land around them, even if independent to their behaviour, keeping up to their discordant emotional states. Of course, this is the perfect moment in this review to praise the director Colin Eggleston and everyone making the film behind the camera, be it camera operators to animal wrangles. From a foreign perspective, yet to set foot in Australia, it's still obvious how, along with the urban communities, the wildlife is explicably close to it, making the clash of suburbanites here, with their conflict straight from a theatrical drama, with nature more suitable to be depicted there. Stunning yet claustrophobic natural woodland and a beach which is separate from the rest of mankind. The trees may literally be moving around as the couple drive in circles at points and, whether it's fully an attack of Mother Nature on human beings or not, the isolation especially as the more surreal and blatant incidences take place stands out more. There's as much to say this is not even a real environment or separated from reality, as the only other people we see don't even really know of the beach the couple are going to or say it's been abandoned, abandoned to the trees and animals as their own. An exact plot vanishes, like many of my psycho dramatic films become, more of series of connecting events, dreamlike, which are structured on the emotions and the final outburst of them then an exact conflict by way of an A-B-C plotting.

From http://theladysrevenge.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/LongWeekend.jpg

It looks beautiful as a film, but creeps under the skin with its quiet, planned out tone. It's a film that makes possums scary, a silly sentence on paper, but to make the apparently "cute" and innocent of nature capable of violence, like Hitckcock's birds, is a virtue of the film. Mentioning directors, Werner Herzog's obsession with nature being destructive and dangerous would make this one of his favourite films, but kidding aside, with a film like this or Ted Kotcheff's Wake In Fright (1971), you see how the landmass called Australia, where the middle is not populated at all, and it's wilderness is completely removed from the cuddly view of nature most have. Even fairytales obsess over how nature can be dangerous as well as magical. The use of an eco-horror tone for what is more about the crippling anxiety of its two characters is apt, the land's revenge for truly deplorable acts of vandalism reflecting the base and raw emotions that get revelled in the last quarter between the couple. Sufferance to say, it gets nasty how the film ends, one which didn't go down as a box office hit when it was first released in cinemas.

From http://www.cultreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/lwharpoon-500x281.jpg

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

This is a tricky one, because I would place a film with the same tone like The Birds in the Medium rank above it. Probably why this gets a Low is that it is creepy and unnerving, not delirious or evoking startling questions about what you've just witnessed. It's a character drama cum nature horror film first, psychodrama making up pace behind. But that doesn't stop it getting on the list. It does as well help define where the bridge between getting on the list or not is set - trying to be weird or wacky purposely is empty and becomes normal, while a character drama which takes a psychological or metaphorical spin is capable of pulsating with a greater sense of unreality even if grounded in tone. Emotional tenor is capable of creating a heightened mood, not surface wackiness.

From http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i33/shannymaldonado/STILLS/LNGWKD16.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

I regret not having as diverse a selection of films internationally, especially compared to last year on my old blog, for this year in hindsight, but after viewing Long Weekend again, this doesn't matter when the film is this good. As many more films from around the world will be covered on this blog, this one marks a great start for Australia.