Touch of Death (1988)

 

Director: Lucio Fulci

Screenplay: Lucio Fulci

Cast: Brett Halsey as Lester Parson; Ria De Simone as Alice Shogun; Al Cliver as Randy; Sacha Darwin as Margie MacDonald; Zora Kerova as Virginia Field; Marco Di Stefano as the Tramp

A Night of a Thousand Horror Movies / An Abstract Candidate

[Warning: Spoilers Throughout]

The set-up to Touch of Death would win anyone over as long as they had a strong stomach, or cause him or her to turn the film off if they did not. An older man is shown, when not killing women, cooking pieces of her flesh for TV dinner, then disposing the corpse gorily with a chainsaw. This sounds like the worst nightmare for a moral campaigner, but my first introduction to Touch of Death was weirder, that it is one of the films of Lucio Fulci's own, with those of others, re-contextualised in A Cat in the Brain (1990), his deeply weird meta-commentary on his own work where he was the central character. The chainsaw and subsequent meat grinder dismemberment definitely raises the bar in feeling ill with Fulci gore, even if you know its fake. In itself it already sets off that we are if getting into the absurdity, reminding me in particular of when British band Carcass got to their album Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious (1991), which stills plays to the grotesque morbidness of the type of music they helped contribute to, but by that point even in imagining someone turning a victim into glue to huff, you are seeing them parodying the idea of gruesome horror imagery to offend and traumatise audiences. Touch of Death itself, starting from that initial scene, sets itself quickly as a sick hearted comedy with a deeply unconventional trajectory, in which older bachelor and gambler Lester Parson (Brett Halsey) constantly has to pay off debts for an illegal horse racing group, having found a novel way of acquiring the funds needed by skimming the lonely hearts pages for wealthy women. Where things get weird is that, seemingly, Lester has a copycat killer reported on TV claiming his victims and implicating him with each news report. Considering his radio is talking back to him in his own voice, it is not really a spoiler to know he is not a conventional state of mind, but the film takes it in an odder direction.

In general, there are strange entries at this point in Fulci's filmography by the mid eighties even for a director who invested into the nightmarish and dreamlike with his horror films – Conquest (1983) is a border line, the least conventional fantasy film you could ever watch, and Aenigma (1987) springs to mind too – whilst Touch of Death was one of the many films either directed by Fulci or had his brand naming upon it recycled as clips for his truly bizarre, quasi-autobiographical oddity A Cat in the Brain. Made the same year as the infamous Zombi 3 (1988) production where he only finished a large portion of it due to illness, and the team of Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei finished the final film, Touch of Death itself is a strange movie to my surprise in its own way. A perplexing mix of comedy, nasty splatter and his reoccurring obsession with reality slowly ebbing out of grasp as the film continues on, this does stick out among the films before and after. The premise has a dark reality, in that you have the likes of the Honeymoon Killers, couple Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck who targeted real women for money and killed them, but here as played by Brett Halsey, Lester is a foil who, despite getting away with a few murders, also gets a speeding ticket at one point when disposing of a corpse. Halsey is among many actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood and of fifties television productions who, as he got older, started appearing in Italian productions such as their spaghetti westerns, finding himself in his later career in a string of late eighties Fulci films at this time. Even in mind that Italian productions are post-dubbed, his character just in presence here. Whilst looking creepily like a real serial killer would in his conventional dress sense, he also has an absurd aura of a man constantly under strain, far from control. His cat Reginald, even if using human corpses, has better luck just from least having good meals.

The character being a putz really adds something here, the tonal shifts themselves effecting. Most of the narrative, until it builds to Lester's increasing paranoia and his fate being sealed, is the character interacting with a string of various female victims, and in spite of the stereotypical Fulci gore that became synonymous to his work at this point, it is played as a black humoured farce. John Waters springs to mind, for playing up bad taste deliberately. A strange quasi American environment, meant to be Florida but entirely in a nether realm of Italian cinema's interpretation of it, is where we find ourselves, one where Lester is an unapologetic sociopath but in a world which makes him look ridiculous. The illegal horse gambling organisation, ran by an older Caucasian man and a still older Asian man assisting him, who exist in their own world wary of the police, seem like a budget restriction expected from a micro budget horror film, in that they have no fixed office; in context however it adds a weird edge that, having to keep an ear for police helicopters, their lack of fixed location is ridiculous on purpose. Lester's female victims are exaggerations, and even a glamorous actress like Zora Kerova is given pronounced prosthetic disfigurements like a mere birth defect on the top lip or a vague moustache to undercut their appearance. It is not flattering in the slightest, and can be seen as sexist, but in general the film's tone is a peculiar ode to the tasteless in a weird way. The exaggeration of the women for broad comedic effect, the most extreme an opera singer with masochistic streak, is balanced out by Halsey playing a strange, pathetic man himself. Charming enough to woo these women, and played by Halsey with charisma even with the ghostliness of him having to dub himself, but slowly finding that he is even having to run over homeless men trying to blackmail him. Considering he is a man unable to keep hold of money, because he is actually terrible at gambling, it is clear he is about to slip off the deep end.

The realistic advice from the voice, similar to his, on the radio is a clear sign early on not all is what is expected, very early in the film and already showing its hand. That moment was enough to push Touch of Death into the abstract before it went further, becoming more unconventional with how this plays out with a streak of melancholia from this. It is clear the film is entirely from inside the mind of a man losing what sanity he had, the copycat himself in some form, but the dreamlike lack of clarity famous from Fulci taking this to an extreme. One where it can be as argued Lester is already dead or a literal doppelganger situation is actually involved. Everything is unexplained, the grotesque broadness of the female caricatures or the depopulated world of a low budget Italian genre flick, alongside the stranger details. Horse racing commentary constantly in the soundtrack is one of those many unique touches to this film I have not seen many "weird films" do, but it works, at first presumed to be on the radio constantly for Lester, but becomes apparent in being part of his psychosis at it continues.

That it is played for comedy is a surprise too. Fulci had made comedies early in his career, (fans proclaim that one, The Eroticist (1972), is actually a hidden gem from his filmography), but he was known at this point and still as a serious, nasty director of gore. Unintentional camp which appeared in the late eighties films was one thing, but deliberate humour catches you off guard. Obvious jokes stretched out at length such as Lester struggling to get a body in the boot of his car, due to rigor mortis, stand out when one has seen him direct some of the most gothic and notorious films from the eighties Italian cycle of cinema. One is legitimately a great moment, his attempt to add a Mickey Finn to a potential victim's drink only for it to continually switch which glass belongs to who, but even that scene is violently contrasted against the violent gore that happens afterwards, which adds a punch to this. The gore’s over-the-top actually fits in a sick way for this type of film too, more glaringly fake compared to his early work and with such exaggeration, as even when Fulci has someone hit in the head with a stick, an eye has to pop out. It becomes a heightened wreck of conflicting reactions as a viewer. That Fulci is credited as the sole screenwriter adds a fascinating touch to this film, that this is his interests unedited and leading to this concoction. 

Fulci, bless him, even when background material states the film was undercut by its low budget still managed to make a memorable film in Touch of Death. Its obscurity is not surprising as, compared to the stereotype of his career of lurid horror films, even the gore found here does not off-set that most of it is a melodrama black comedy of a sociopath. The film eventually gains more meat, whilst fascinating before, when you suspect the rug is going to be pulled from under Lester's feet at any moment, helped because Fulci's history of the unexpected always happening in his work adds to this, able to wrong foot the viewer even if it breaks the logic of before. Even the music, which is chintzy, works for the strange humour because it sounds like cartoon music. The tone eventually leads to an ending that can be interpreted in different ways, which is applaudable, Zora Kerova's femme fatale (who yet has that distinct lip disfigurement) a warning of Lester meeting his matched, followed by an emotional conversation with his own shadow for a very unique ending scene. It is kind of twist you would want from Italian genre cinema, and absolutely distinct from Lucio Fulci's filmography as its own quirky surprise.

Abstract Spectrum: Weird/Grotesque/Quirky

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

Inferno (1980)

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento

Cast: Irene Miracle as Rose Elliott; Leigh McCloskey as Mark Elliott; Eleonora Giorgi as Sara; Daria Nicolodi as Elise Stallone Van Adler; Sacha Pitoëff as Kazanian

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Re-Review

 

Continuing on from Suspiria (1977), Inferno builds up the mythology of the Three Mothers, three powerful witches who control the world: Mater Lachrymarum (The Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (The Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (The Lady of Darkness). Mater Suspiriorum, who occupied Germany, was central to Suspiria, whilst Mater Lachrymarum, who appears briefly in this film, occupies Rome and is central to the 2007 Argento film Mother of Tears. Mater Tenebrarum, who rules New York, is central to Inferno, which follows a very simple plot mechanic that a diary from an architect and occultist about the mothers is being suppressed violently through bloody murders to acquire all the published copies of it. One such case in this film leads to music student Mark Elliot (McCloskey) travelling to the USA after learning of the distress of his sister Rose Elliot (Miracle) upon discovering the knowledge of the Three Mothers herself, and finds himself on route to meeting Mater Tenebrarum herself.

Inferno overcomes probably one of the biggest issues with a genre film in structure. A narratively driven film can fall foul of being merely dragged along by the plot exposition and having to cover the narrative beats far too much, and as much as I have come to love many for this flaw, their desire to explain everything rather than let you drift through the film by your own intuition is a scourge for a lot of horror films if you want to appreciate them not for a humoured charm. Inferno's solution could be bluntly described as dream logic, but it is different from this. A very simple, concise plot unfolds but both enough is explained to the viewer whilst plenty is not, letting in moments which do not make sense in logic but do in the nightmarish form transpire, and leaving one to travel through the events with enough knowledge to grasp it but a lot more being discovered alongside the characters. Splitting the film up into situations following different characters has a pronounced effect. Everything connects together but the segments unfold as their own narratives, usually leading to gruesome death. While Mark becomes the lynchpin to keep it all together, events can unfold without him, having a drastic effect on how the film is watched. Every character introduced not only stands out but many get central focus for many minutes, and as a result, you get plenty of incredibly memorable sequences but also an unpredictable tone, all whilst they find themselves interconnecting into each other's lives or uncovering strange pockets into their world.

There are plenty of moments in Inferno that stand out, all of which interconnect under this loose plot completely seamlessly. You begin the film with a standout and elaborate underwater sequence in a submerged room and it gets better from there, beginning the movie with an appropriate sense of anything being possible. Since this is a Dario Argento film the murder sequences are extremely stylish and heightened, but since Suspiria was a supernatural horror film, its sequel follows in the unconventional and fantastical mixed with symbolism from his down-to-earth giallo thrillers. Not only do you have the Grand Guignol of the more conventional murder sequences, brutal and unsettling, but also you have sequences like people being savaged by cats or eaten to death by rats, all of which manages to be both beautiful but utterly foul and horrific, only with the issue that, whilst not showing actual animal cruelty, these scenes especially with the cats need to be warned about for certain viewers. Unlike other Italian genre films which come off as cheesy, even if adored by myself, Argento's from this era still sting when it comes to depicting the deaths, and the morbid nature around his films in general has retained potency from this.

With Inferno, you have the same heightened tone that is shared with Suspiria, very artificial set around an elaborate apartment complex where the evil is centred yet fully immersive at the same time. Genre filmmaking should effortlessly flow. It should use its narrative to lead the viewer through a journey, especially if the film is entertainment first, having the virtue of effecting a viewer's emotions directly if done well. I have changed my mind and contradicted this only because this statement can be challenged as subjective, and because the films that fail I have grown to appreciate and find their own logic with, but with those striving for the best of genre tropes, this is an ideal worth trying to achieve even if you fail. One of the best virtues of the Italian genre films in their heyday was their dreamy tones which allowed one to accept the irrational, thus avoiding distractions of logic in semblance to the real world that break the visage. Cinema is inherently an unrealistic medium, and unless one attempts to be as realistic as possible, it should negate the stumbles and falters as much as possible that take place when exposition and plotting block the steady flow of time. Inferno does not attempt to fully explain what is going on but this is for the better, as a quick witted viewer can build up enough from what they see onscreen and instead worry about the labyrinth of turns and abrupt ends that takes place for the characters, as much a film about travelling through various layers as one finds out the apartment complex has secret pipes and entrances within itself. Various strands from petty greed to the Three Mothers mythos interlink tentatively, and as various memorable casting choices like Nicolodi and Alida Valli pass onscreen, the film is able to work as a tense, eerily aired horror movie whilst ditching anything that would drag the film down into a mere plod.

Suspiria itself was an exceptional film just for how its use of colour and lighting took the viewer into a supernatural world, which left a huge task in attempting to match it, but Inferno's aesthetic manages to go even further in some ways by becoming even more coloured and bold in its look. This would one of the last things the great director Mario Bava worked on before his death, behind the optical and visual effects, and in many ways, as a tip of the hat from Argento to the innovator who helped build the Italian genre industry, this film reflects the bold colours of his work like Blood and Black Lace (1964) incredibly. Like Suspiria, terror is not just to be found in the darkness but in colour itself, at their brightest and lurid during the most unsettling incidents. With Argento's work during his golden period, the colour saturation (or lack of colour as in Tenebrae (1981) fully envelops and becomes one with the haunted moods of his films.

Instead of Goblin, the music changed for this film, with Keith Emerson from the prog band Emerson, Lake and Palmer as composer. That band is an acquired taste, but Emerson's film scoring career is a cult following still waiting to happen - alongside Inferno you have the notorious anime blockbuster Harmagedon (1983), Nighthawks (1981) with Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer, and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) amongst other films. While many of these films are not available in the UK, it is not surprising that prog rock fans can buy a compilation of Emerson's scores, the one for Inferno a great addition to Argento's musical canon by itself. Far more hysterical and on the cusp of absurdity with its choral chanting than the Goblin score for Suspiria, it helps push the irrationality of the film further with its alarmed, drastic tone, whilst allowing this to have its own personality in contrast to its predecessor.

Head to head with Suspiria, Inferno is Argento's most unconventional film, Inferno especially rejecting the plot heavy narratives that his giallos tend to have completely, and even Suspiria had for its phantasmagoric content. It follows a logic of its own that drifts between various characters and never gives priority over any specific one, Mark Elliot merely a grounded figure for the events happening to circle around. It is a filmic world where one can go to a library in Rome and, going downstairs, find oneself in an alchemist's laboratory fully of boiling paste for book binding. It is a film where events such as a total eclipse suddenly happens only to disappear, or the fact that there is a hot dog vendor out near a sewage pipe in the middle of the night, making only any sense in that they are as inclined to kill potential patrons as they are likely not getting many customers in their chosen spot; I do not complain about this sudden inclusion and abrupt end to such sights because the canvas of the film allows the moment to soak in regardless. So much more terrifying in films for me, like in Suspiria, is irrationality, where deaths can happen abruptly or events happen without being signposted, and as this desired template stands, Inferno is one of the strongest examples.

Inferno is one of my favourite films. I accept that it is one where the plot can be seen full of holes, but you have a scene where someone is terrorised as the lights keep going on and off in their apartment, a classic piece on the vinyl player stopping and starting to the power cuts, and the sense of absolute dread it can produce, and you see the skill that came into Argento's work. The mythos built here helps give the film a greater atmosphere, building up a background that fills in what is not dealt with, and also never becomes the main crux of the production, something which has plagued storytelling in various genres when needing to elaborate on it more and more per sequel. There is the contentious issue of Mother of Tears, which is a film I wish to return to as its own creation, part of the completely contentious issue in its own right of Argento's films post 2000s in general. It cannot ruin the two films which came before regardless of what I come view it as, but just emphasises how they both were exceptional productions, Inferno an experience where, unlike a rollercoaster, everything presented onscreen is felt.

Every death is painful, every jolt is startling, but the moments of quietness are just as effective. The scene with the ants crawling in an apartment is a clue but feel like a nod of iconography from surrealist art even if by accident, and absurd scenes like death by rats have a phantasmagoric ickiness to them that is still effecting. Rather than coming away from Inferno as another horror film padded out with attempts to rationalise everything, the completely lack of this adds to its mystique, leaving it at the end with the same level of intensity felt as with Suspiria. Together the duo is an incredible example of Italian horror cinema. Debating for myself which is the better film is a painful thing to consider, especially as Inferno really became a film I adored even beyond Dario Argento as a filmmaker.

Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Psychotronic

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

Vertigo (1958)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Spoiler ends]

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

 

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist / Mind Bender/ Weird

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

 

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

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

Cosmos (2015)

 

Director: Andrzej Żuławski

Screenplay: Andrzej Żuławski

Cast: Jean-François Balmer as Leon; Sabine Azéma as Madame Woytis; Jonathan Genet as Witold; Johan Libéreau as Fuchs; Victória Guerra as Lena; Clémentine Pons as Catherette / Ginette

An Abstract Candidate

 

Fuckallismus!

Taking residence in a family run country guesthouse, Witold (Jonathan Genet), an aspiring novelist and law student who has to retake his exams, and his friend Fuchs (Johan Libéreau) believe themselves to be in the midst of a mystery when Witold finds a dead bird hung by its neck on a branch. Witold, visibly in emotional turmoil from the start, is nonetheless convinced of this mystery as further strange sights disrupt his reality - the maid Catherette's (Clémentine Pons) lip disfigurement, a tea kettle in a tree, strange images marked on the wall - as everyone around him in the family is as eccentric and in the midst of their own emotional angst. One such figure, the married daughter Lena (Victória Guerra), becomes a singular obsession for him. From the get-go, the idea that legendary Polish director Andrzej Żuławski's last film is seemingly a comedy of manners is itself a great conclusion for him to have done. Taking a novel by legendary Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, whose namesake fittingly travels through this modernised parody of a mystery, he makes a tale of purpose or coincidence, the seemingly strange choice for a director who was both acclaimed and infamous for his filmmaking style, its hyperbolic emotion, a great joke from the get-go before you get to the story itself. Why the bird is tied to a string like a noose is just the beginning of the questions which may be real, as even before the sparrow hanging, dialogue emphasises this has been happening beforehand the students arrived, with a plucked chicken left in the street a week before to dumbfound people.

Żuławski's unpredictability is his forte; like the best and true definers of auteur theory, they are never predictable in the types of genre they blend and tackle, and the bias of Possession (1981) as the key film of his career, and the only film of his most had been able see, does have a drastic effect on your attitude of his filmography as a whole, which has a vast spectrum of genres he tackled. Cosmos stands in fittingly among them; the only difference is that whilst the likes of Diabel (1971) have characters constantly screaming about death and misery, this is a farce where a family and their paying guests constantly scream about how each other not understanding them or how they have unrequited feelings for another whilst they are trying to collect all the peas dropped on the kitchen floor. Witold in particular, in his attraction to Lena, fits the template of the director-writer's male leads of films before in their obsessions, becoming more on edge than he was before, a neurotic who over thinks, is over enlightened and will eventually set off the catalyst for all this pressure in the guesthouse at the halfway point.

The film is exceptionally dense just in the literary and cinematic references alone, the dialogue and the story needing multi watches to fully digest, but the significant idea behind Cosmos is this pressure cooker farce, between love being a destructive and compelling force, which has been a common theme between the director's films, to that farcical nature, be it the childish older patriarch Leon (Jean-François Balmer), the idiosyncratic turns of phrase and punning, and the piss take of the notion of a mystery. The extremes, the hysterics, were for the psychology of Zulawski's films. This seemingly quaint film, tonally like many middle class French dramas, is exaggerated by hang ups and strange obsessions, when odd details appear or are presumed to be. It becomes slapstick in its own way, hormonal angst found seeing sensuous calves being bend and flexed, or the stain on the dining room wall which may be more of a stain, but could also be Witold's obsessions consuming him. That he is missing things, like the more explicit looking stain on a wall when he sees a rake, adds to this parody, especially as the clues and suspicious are curious, like the aforementioned tea kettle, as much as they can be morbid.

In the end none of the strange circumstances Witold encounters are anything else but odd coincidences or a result of someone's angst, even he going as far as contributing to the events with the most severe of the acts, an incident involving the pet cat that, in any other film, would damn him as a villain, but in the world of Zulawski emphasises the madness of the emotions. Tailed by his trusting friend Fuchs, smartly dressed but appearing in each scene with new bloody noses and bruises each morning from constantly disastrous cruising nights, they have to wrap their heads around the guesthouse owners and their quirks, which are just as irrational to our world as viewers. The matriarch Madame Woytis (Sabine Azéma) can get so overwhelmed, she actually freezes in the spot for a period of time like a malfunctioning machine. Leon, whose dialogue at first is witty and henpecked by his wife, but starts to take on childish plays on words and more swearing as he goes along. Their maid Catherette, who is baring a small lip disfigurement, is the sanest person in the house, but with someone in the family who is also played by Clémentine Pons later on in the film, continuing an obsession the director-writer has had with doppelgangers. And Lena, the object of Witold's overwhelming obsession, who is introduced lying on a bed without the mattress on the springs, does not react to severe events as the viewer would presume her to, and whose husband is more disconnected to her than he wishes to be. Then there is the other character who eventually dresses as Tintin, which in itself is just as strange in context as outside of it.

As the mystery is ultimately a farce, you are instead turning your attention to the world and its little details; a "metaphysical noir thriller" according to its late director, the title Cosmos is apt in how ultimately the mystery Witold is obsessed with is insignificant to the literal cosmos of human behaviour, able to see a rake etched in water stain in the corner of the wall but completely blind to the significantly bigger sexual symbolism in the same spot in the lounge. A pressurised farce, where the performances break into maniac expressions and dialogue as Zulawski trademarked as his own, the anxiety that is normally found in these type of French dramas, even when their scenarios are as absurdist in the plotting, is here acted out literally. Even in terms of the plot, this is the same, as the strange acts are part of someone's plan just to keep the people around them shocked alert. Sometimes as well, Zulawski even breaks into the completely unnatural when, at a dynamic moment, suddenly one man unzips his trousers and bees are projected from them, seemingly the most irrational and unexplained moment but in context a sudden break in the tensions.

As Witold reacts violently to each odd event which bursts his personal bubble, even beating his chest like a deranged gorilla at the dinner table at one point, everyone's internal emotions are literalised as part of Żuławski's trademark, slapstick for him kinetic and as exhausting for the characters themselves as it will be for some viewers. All Witold is able to find is absurdities with little connection, instead the real mystery to be found in dealing with his emotions for Lena, her emotions for him back and how her husband, a likable guy himself, reacts badly when he pegs what is taking place between them as they all decide to go to a summer cottage to escape the stress of the hostel. Żuławski's style is entirely artificial but for the sake of his own form of realism, hence why his most well known trademark, the hyper stylised and extreme acting style, is what it is, the idea mentioned before of literalising his characters' external concerns as much as the events they are negotiating around. Restraining his use of prowling camera movements for his final film, it makes his prescience known instead by gliding through the guesthouse corridor and tracking characters along through their monologues, the irony of his hyper dynamic style tackling a genre which would seem safe and dialogue heavy perfect as the final film in the shift in tone. It is fitting for such an openly brazen and intelligence person to conclude on for his filmmaking career this production, able to get away with actor Jonathan Genet doing one scene directly to the camera, in extreme close-up, in a Donald Duck voice and it making perfect sense in context.

The dialogue in particular, in testament to translator and Żuławski documenter Daniel Bird for creating English subtitles for a film this quickly paced and dense, is a huge chunk of Cosmos' style. Restraining himself in terms of the more extreme moments of his career - from a man who had Isabelle Adjani writhing around in white milky liquid in the subway to On the Silver Globe (1988) and its mass anal impaling crucifixion - or in the use of constantly moving camera, the dialogue is still rapid fire and breath taking to follow, each character having individualistic quirks to them seen in their dialogue which, even if you were to struggle with at times, still paints their character in the poetic flourishes they use. That Żuławski has no qualms with referencing anything from himself to even Star Wars means the dialogue is exceptionally flexible and inventive, a reflection of how imaginative he was as a screenwriter. The acting as well is also exceptional as to be expected from Żuławski's films, able to convey just in exaggerated body language what their emotions are before they even speak. As a result, Cosmos feels like entering an alien environment, yet one relatively close to reality within a guesthouse full of arguments, constantly delicious culinary dishes and nature constantly appearing within the middle class environment, a slug literally letting nature be known sitting on the butter for the croissant. When the extreme emotions of the occupants of the house are shown, and reach their peak however, things drastically change, having to keep pace with Cosmos and see the literal "cosmos" of title in how dynamic and unconventional human behaviour is at its fullest.

As a result of this, the experience of Cosmos is an ever increasing series of stranger events taking place. As the realisation Lena is as interested in Witold is eventually known, the deliberately maniac energy is actually more pronounced in a film like this than in one like Possession as, while the later is more extreme in content and tone, the stereotype of what this type of slice of life drama with possible mystery content is belies the surprise of what actually takes place, having greater impact. Sadly, Żuławski would pass in 2016, just after this film, but with his final production Cosmos he was still as uncompromising as his reputation suggests, delightfully wild with intelligence and actively encouraging people to rewatch it over and over again to catch more details and moments of gleeful humour. Even ending the film, on the end credits, by breaking the forth wall and showing the film itself being produced is the sort of subversion befitting him, aptly ending the film and his life with waking up the audience too.

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Weird

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

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

 

Director: Jeff Burr

Screenplay: David J. Schow

Cast: Kate Hodge as Michelle; Ken Foree as Benny; R.A. Mihailoff as Leatherface 'Junior' Sawyer; William Butler as Ryan; Viggo Mortensen as Eddie 'Tex' Sawyer; Joe Unger as Tinker Sawyer; Tom Everett as Alfredo Sawyer; Miriam Byrd-Nethery as Mama Sawyer

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review

 

The relationship I have had with Leatherface has been not a great one. I think finally that is changing, taking this film as its own work, without the baggage of Tobe Hooper's first two, as a huge fan of the second as much as the first, and aware that the films after, not The Next Generation (1995) but those after, were not spectacular and make the original four together far more appreciated in their quirks. Neither did it help that director Jeff Burr's later film Devil's Den (2006) did not win me over as many of a straight to DVD horror film from a time before I softened on them, which in a previous review of Leatherface I wrote wanting to throw a show at him for.

Leatherface is trying, after the satire and eighties new wave music of the second film, to be grim and serious without over-egging it, as came to be with the reboot cycle. Gore ended up being removed infamously, and then added back in for the DVD release, an alternative ending being directed. This also suffers from what all horror films which gained a franchise did, trying to continue when the premise of the first film back in 1974 which makes sense for a one-off film only. Tobe Hooper wisely, miraculously, figured out a sequel by making its of its time and a black comedy, and with mind there was a 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake I had never even heard of until writing this review, the problem with trying to recreate the film first was never its simple premise - that being chased with a cannibal with a chainsaw will always terrify a person - but that it was a nightmare cacophony of images and sound from an independent film production where the director and crew were stuck in the middle of nowhere, in hellish heat with the smell of real rotting animal meat driving them to their limits as they were filming it.

This had the additional problem, proudly riding in with a Lȧȧz Rockit thrash metal song of the title name, of coming into the world on the cusp of the 1990s. It feels stuck as a franchise film at a time when horror cinema was slowly changing, one with great odd one-offs but where many franchises were slowly dying, and without Tobe Hooper in the driver's seat, it was unfortunately a "franchise film", not taking risks. Only now, I appreciate what it is, as a thrill ride of a morbid kind, but this is "conventional" for the genre, even if this is gristly and has a wonderfully morbid sense of humour midway within it. And it is weird to say this is conventional for the franchise, considering Leatherface is caked in grim and unmentionable liquids, one of the most openly provocative of the first four films in tone and dialogue especially. Whilst not as intense as the first or second, it is just deliberately unpleasant in tone as the plot involves sexually perverse and racist cannibals, but there is still a safe film secretly in its heart that, unlike the second film, you do not get into twisted parodies of Ronald Regan politics or the chainsaw literally being suggested as a phallic metaphor. As the 2003 remake will attest to, that for all the gore and nastiness you can put into a movie, you can still have something staying within the confines of a mainstream horror movie.

Thankfully, there was something to appreciate now in its own icky thrill ride way. The story is basic - a heterosexual couple of Michelle (Kate Hodge) and her obnoxious boyfriend Ryan (William Butler) find themselves stuck in a trap with the Sawyer family of chainsaw cannibals, and there is not a lot to say beyond this barring that. This new version of the Sawyer family has new family members, and there is the delightful sight of Ken Foree, as a survivalist named Benny, who adds a factor as the competent guy who, even if he cannot catch a break, least adds someone with combat skills in this scenario.It has a credible, menacing atmosphere of isolated desert highways and swampy woodland that is befitting the material, where everything feels rusted, old or crusty without it coming off as ridiculously glamorous in a sick way. Some of the grimness, admittedly, can be heavy handed but I have come to admire things I had looked down on upon. One great example of this is Tom Everett's misogynistic, peeping tom gas station owner and sociopath, all in mind that he is having to work against the fact Bill Moseley as Chop Top from the second film is the best the franchise ever got for strange Sawyer siblings in humour and as a character.

The sense of danger is appropriate everywhere else for a film which is to entertain primarily, even over its plot, but made with a desire to not pull its punches. Jeff Burr is someone I wish to return to with a greater openness to the career of a director, as with many in this region of genre cinema, whose career is fascinating just for the tangents - between having a late era Vincent Price in one of his earlier films, From a Whisper to a Scream (1987), to being involved with American Hero (1995), a full motion video game originally meant for the Jaguar CD, a now-rare add-on to the doomed Atari Jaguar videogame console, which never got a release until 2021 as a fully finished curiosity for gamers and people like me. He clearly came to this realising, in mind to the legacy of the first Chainsaw film, he wanted to keep the intensity of the film's reputation, as a film which paradoxically has little onscreen gore but was a cacophonous nightmare, by upping to the intensity in what we get in Leatherface. It blurs the line between entertainment, a New Line Cinema production, and an extreme horror film right down to recreating the ran over armadillo from the first film, replacing the immaculate (but somewhat absurd) taxidermy creation to a realistic animatronics one that, in a really curious touch, is played with pathos as Michelle and Ryan accidentally run over and have to put out of its misery.  

At first, it can make the strange mix of different types of film work. The sense of horror and underground culture is starting to bubble up to the surface, the gore loving horror film fan and music genres like death metal having grown up at the time of the second film or so, found here even if with thrash metal and still having a censored theatrical version as a compromise. The gore is still strong, even when there is cutaways, alongside its intensity in general mood. Helping this is that again, the Leatherface family is still as interesting as before, one of the best points of this franchise. Tobe Hooper realised with the sequel's curious tone to humour how they are centre to the tale, both as credible threats but that their personalities are over-the-top and sickly funny. By this point, like marking out the timeline for Highlander sequels, the family tree for this clan is not worth trying to map out, whilst Leatherface was thankfully at a time before Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) where the timeline was entirely mauled trying to reboot the franchise. Each version in each of the first four films as different entities that the scripts all wisely allow to stretch their legs and express themselves as different groups. Particularly as the leads, excluding the great presence of Ken Foree, are really one dimensional, this is a film where its expectations of stalk-and-chase scenes and the horror moments meant to sell it are far less interesting than the dark humour and the eccentricities when we get to be with the family.

This is a matriarchal clan, a squabbling yet close one who's nicely decorated home comes from an older Americana only with more dead animal parts and a homemade skull crushing machine in the kitchen, a disturbing concept at play too with a little girl amongst them as a born sociopath with a knife hidden in her dolly. Some would have found scenes in this still, if they hated Texas Chainsaw Massacre II's broad comedy, "betrayed" the original, such as Leatherface trying to learn from a speak and spell machine only to always type "FOOD" on the screen, one of those bizarre and fun character pieces this franchise early into itself found only to sadly lose in the films after the Millennium. Then of course you have Viggo Mortensen as Tex, first the handsome cowboy who you would understand completely wooing Michelle from an obnoxiously written boyfriend, but is also as great as a gangly, weird loon later on. The same year as Philip Ridley's The Reflection Skin (1990) where he had a main role, these offer a picture that he would become a hugely reliable and talented figure, with less of the potential embarrassment with Matthew McConaughey in the fourth one by vividly showing how good and varied an actor he is just from this simple horror role.

All of my issues with Leatherface before were that it was a fool's errand after the first two sequels that three and four could be able to recreate their structures and scenes from the first film without the comparisons being made. Here when Leatherface chases a woman through the woods with a chainsaw it becomes one of the scenes where the film does feel its weaknesses, merely the fate outside its own hands that it cannot match the first. Moments appear throughout the film, like the subplot of a previous female survivor still rooming the area in a near catatonic state, trying to add more to the same plot remade here from before, but its plotting as a horror film, as much as its action beats of fighting and setting people on fire, are far less interesting than being allowed to spend time with the Sawyer family at the dinner table. This is one of the issues with these films where the protagonists we are meant to be in the shoes off are bland ciphers, when here the Sawyers are more interesting being perversely wholesome for a bunch of homicidal psychopaths. Yes, there are parts of them which are still deliberately evil, such as the violence or the marks of racism in their dialogue, which does further another flaw of the film that, with these figures more interesting to watch, the attempt to be extreme at the same time does jar considerably.

The clash between being a greasy, cruel movie - where the heroine has to have her hands nailed to chair arms rather than tied on and dialogue at one point with gruesome implications of sexual violence - and a mainstream horror sequel is still there, a film which was lucky enough to be able to have its tone because this franchise could be sold, but it comes with all the compromises of being a film for the mainstream in that it cannot take the risks the second film did. This film had a trailer parodying Excalibur (1981) and Arthurian legend by having the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend, who gave King Arthur the legendary Excalibur sword, thrust out the lake a chainsaw for Leatherface, and for all the good things I now appreciate about this third film now, that trailer does connect to its clear flaws as well. The film that would have been the best from this time, but would not have been allowed to be made, would have continued the sick sense of humour of before fully, pure gorgonzola in a good way rather than just a film I just appreciate with a fondness for how far a lurid film can be appreciated.

Suddenly in the Dark (1981)

 

Director: Young Nam Ko

Screenplay: Sam-yuk Yoon

Cast: Kim Young-ae as Seon-hee; Lee Ki-seon as Mi-ok; Yun Il-bong as Yu-jin

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

 

After a photo of a Sharman shrine doll inexplicably appears in the butterfly slides of Professor Yu-jin (Yun Il-bong), his wife Seon-hee (Kim Young-ae) becomes increasingly paranoid when he returns home from a trip with a nineteen year old young woman named Mi-ok (Lee Ki-seon). Brought into their lives as a live-in maid, with no surviving family, Seon-hee becomes wary of a potential affair between her husband and Mi-ok that she starts to believe is transpiring. It is real, it is a psychological breakdown or of the supernatural, especially as Mi-ok's only possession is a shrine doll exactly like the one in the slides? This story, in its various storytelling parts, is one heard of many times before and after, though for its director Young Nam Ko, a studio director, this story was the only horror film he ever made.

He has over a hundred films in his filmography, a number only matched by the likes of Takashi Miike and Jesus Franco in the length of his career. Melodrama, comedy, action and yet only one horror film exists he desired to make, completed and never got another chance at repeating, making Suddenly in the Dark a curiosity. Peel the layers of this one entry into the horror genre from him, one which at first may be (understandably) questioned for its plot logic and gender politics, and it has a lot more going on as well as becoming a more macabre melodrama as a result, far more progressive even if entirely with unintentional hindsight to the ideas it wished to play with as a pure genre story. It is a Repulsion-like tale in which nothing, even when it is openly supernatural by the end, is spelt out for viewers as actually happening or not. The world of middle class South Korea is seen here, all lavish chairs and wooden furniture, modern supermarkets for the seventies, yet the paranoia is timeless, that Seon-hee is a woman in her late twenties, viewed as a married woman, as her female friend remarks, to be no different to old women in the world, least enforced onto their views as middle class women and housewives.

Already with a young daughter, this film is of its own country, but I cannot help but think of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, a famous feminist non-fiction work where, documenting the obsession with the idealised housewife in fifties Americana, the grim onslaught of teaching women to want to be housewives and have kids very early from that time in the culture, still in their teens, had a variety of detrimental effects psychologically, as much for men but for women especially, including the need to want to be sexually appealing to the husband, with all the potential neurosis from this ideal being contrived, and the endless monotony of their lives once they got their dream told to them to have. Seon-hee, whose romantic life with her husband Yu-jin is ordinary, is clearly having a breakdown which is not helped when a youthful woman is brought into the house, her youth as much the feared attraction as her physical beauty, someone dismissed by her female friend as not being attractive in the face but vibrant physically. Aptly, whilst an adult actress, Lee Ki-seon's Mi-ok uncomfortable evokes a teenage nymphet in appearance and manner, her naïveté and scenes of nudity a more pointed issue for Seon-hee to be anxious about.

Never was there a film about the perils of domestic life, if the various times Kim Ki-young remade his seminal The Housemaid (1960) over the years attested to just from South Korean cinema, Mi-ok becoming the maid to their home and a perceived threat to Seon-hee just to connect to the two films in this concept of the live-in maid having a neurosis to it as well. In the slew of various films about the supernatural invading homes, this one stands out with the sense that, even if there is an outside influence that eventually takes violent action, it is revealed to be vengeance for the transgressions a person does, all tangled in this theme which feels more striking now for me to see in the film. Within itself is that such actions that happen, between reality and the imagined, comes from material that is very real, which is heavy handed in depiction, a little green light of jealousy at points, but in itself is far more complex and making things more interesting.

The layer of patriarchal sexism, or the sense of Seon-hee's fears being ingrained from her environment adds a great depth, the fear a woman nearing her thirties is viewed as practically sixty, a streak throughout of confinement of these women in their middleclass lives. Whilst aesthetically, there is something pleasurable about the later seventies decor crossing into the eighties, there is also a sense of suffocation felt for Seon-hee in its immaculateness. A sense, like the really interesting psychodramas (i.e. most if not all of them), the modernity of their settings is as much complicit in the events, and that the reoccurring choice of female leads, even if it could be seen as sexist stereotyping and almost all of them directed by men, is subconsciously an awareness that these modern lives are life draining even if pleasant to look at.

Without giving away too much, Seon-hee will commit a crime believing in the old cliché of an evil force, Mi-ok the daughter of a shaman, has invaded her home and threatens her nuclear family, [Spoiler Warning] committing deliberate manslaughter presuming to fight this evil [Spoilers End], all in the presumption she is defending her home but filtered in a questionable sense, alongside the slippery form of her worldview, of whether this middle class world of hers was worth defending. That the "other" is shamanism, Korean's old customs, is pretty much without need for an elaborate reasoning on it, as this old culture of the past against the stifled modernity, where Professor Yu-jin's attempts to rationalise his wife's psychological state backfires poorly, does not need to be seen as a metaphor but  meaning in itself. The daughter of a female shaman versus as housewife needing to take tranquilizers to fell at ease, who does not even do the housework as the maid is there for this, itself is a comparison loaded in symbolism itself.

Like any good psychodrama, it is entirely about being placed in the protagonist's state of reality as everything around our lead is suspect. This includes as much its characters behaviour, as likely to be reflecting Seon-hee's distortions of her reality as there is the potential danger of heavy-handedness in the material. It also does so by a lot of visual trickery to depict this. Never subtle, including segmenting the screen into fragments as if through a kaleidoscope, or what appears to be the camera shooting through the bottom of a beer glass, to depict her mental state. Heavy handed but it is effective in its crudeness; in another film it would not work at all, but here the context and general energy elevates the flourishes. Especially when simple things, like where exactly her husband is in the house, or not, raise her suspicions and paranoia, adds to these flourishes being worthy as creative choices, as they are aptly visual tricks which distort her vision as for us.

Also of interest is to see a Korean horror film from before the late nineties, in general a rare sight for a Western viewing to see a Korean production from their studio system era. Many will be aware of the South Korean New Wave that came in the 2000s, films like Oldboy (2003) and The Host (2006) and their directors, which has grown over the decades to even Best Picture Oscars being won, and arguably with a horror film, Whispering Corridors (1998), was one of the first to make their prescience in a variety of genres known, meaning horror whilst not as prolific as for Hong Kong and Japan is still with importance in South Korea. Sadly, growing up with this wave, the older era films were never taken into considering by the likes of Tartan Video's Tartan Extreme sub label, the rush for the new shining gems of South Korean cinema never fully leading to their older films getting proper retrospection. Were it not for the Korean Film Archive's hard labour and admirable zeal to preserve their country's cinema, including restoring Suddenly in the Dark itself, these films would still not be known outside the nation barring cineastes on website forums, as with the likes of Mondo Macabro, who brought the film to the West from this restoration in the late 2010s.

So to see Suddenly in the Dark is interesting, a production which shows the efficiency of a film crew that has worked over many films, even if this was a one-off genre hop for its director. Like Japan, they gladly made a lot of horror films, even in the case of Suddenly in the Dark if they had their eyes off to the side during South Korea's political climate, and whether censorship was relaxing by the point of this production or not. Like 1965's A Devilish Murder, or Whispering Corridors and its themed sequels, it is interesting to note how their horror cinema (whilst not suggesting all films made within the country are alike) was nonetheless filled with psychological tales where the ghosts haunt people with already troubling neurosis and ordinary human anxieties. Your appreciation of Suddenly in the Dark is as much for a fresh take on the material. That it does have a distinct artistic style is fascinating, as is how Korean shamanism plays a part, even if is not elaborated greatly upon, an aspect of South Korean culture not depicted at least for the West outside of films like this or The Wailing (2016) having a meaning here in the subtexts and blatant texts here. It also depends on whether you find the central anxieties of the protagonist too over-the-top or not, whether it comes off as crass or if you can appreciate its melodramatic streak as I did. Melodrama feels appropriate as, whilst not a perfect, Suddenly in the Dark does intrigue for tackling the themes it does this way as a psychodrama, one whose finale at least does live up to the horror genre by becoming gothic, even more over-the-top, and leading to an entire house being wrecked, thus being a film which will win people over for its great virtues, and a great horror film just that finale and its finale punch of a last shot.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychodrama/Psychotronic

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