Touch of Death (1988)

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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

[Warning: Spoilers Throughout]

Synopsis: Older bachelor and gambler Lester Parson (Brett Halsey), constantly having to pay off debts for an illegal horse racing group, has a novel way of acquiring the funds needed. Dating wealthy women from the Lonely Hearts adverts in newspapers, wooing them so they take out all their money in a form easy for him to horde, and then kill them. Things are not what they originally seem for Lester, however, when a copycat killer is reported on TV claiming his victims and implicating him with each news report.

I didn't expect to be covering Touch of Death, one of the later Lucio Fulci films from after 1985 until the end of his career which were once more obscure. There are strange entries at this point in his filmography - Aenigma (1987) springs to mind, 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 (1990). Touch of Death itself, 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, is a strange movie to my surprise. A perplexing mix of comedy, nasty splatter and his reoccurring obsession with reality slowly ebbing out of grasp as the film continues on.

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The tonal shifts are 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. Most of the film is also, in spite of the stereotypical Fulci gore that became synonymous to his work at this point, played as a black humoured farce. John Waters springs to mind, even if a failed comparison, for playing up bad taste deliberately. A strange quasi American environment, meant to be Florida but entirely in a netherrealm of Italian cinema's interpretation of it, one where Lester is an unapologetic sociopath but his female victims are exaggerations or even a glamorous actress like Zora Kerova having pronounced prosthetic disfigurements like a mere birth defect on the top lip or a vague moustache to undercut their appearance. 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 American actor Brett 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 a man unable to keep hold of money and about to slip off the deep end.

He also gets realistic advice from the voice, similar to his, on the radio. That moment was enough to push Touch of Death into the abstract before it went further. It's 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 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. The illegal horse gambling group, ran by an older Caucasian man and a still older Asian man, who exist in their own world wary of the police. Horse racing commentary is constantly in the soundtrack, at first presumed to be on the radio constantly for Lester, but becomes apparent in being part of his psychosis at it continues.

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That it's 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. One is legitimately a great moment, his attempt to add a Mickey Finn to a potential victim's drink only for it to continually, but even that scene is violently contrasted against the violent gore that happens afterwards, more glaringly fake compared to his early work and with such exaggeration, that victim losing an eye but still standing, that 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 doesn't 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, able to wrong foot the viewer even if it breaks the logic of before, is prevalent here too. 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. The kind of twist you'd want from Italian genre cinema.

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Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Quirky/Weird

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

Personal Opinion:

A dark horse just in terms of Lucio Fulci's stranger films. Does Touch of Death actually work though? That depends on the viewer, the content and presentation erratic and likely to get varying reactions. For me, there's a lot to like. Fulci is at least going with the premise to its extreme and its memorable as a result.

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Evil Dead Trap II (1992)

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Director: Izô Hashimoto

Screenplay: Izô Hashimoto, Chiaki J. Konaka

Cast: Utako Nakajima as Aki Ôtani; Rie Kondoh as Emi Kageyama; Shirô Sano as Kurahashi; Shôta Enomoto as Hideki; Shino Ikenami as Kan-nadzuki Chiyo; Sei Hiraizumi as Muraki; Kazue Tsunogae as Noda

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #125

Synopsis: Aki (Utako Nakajima) is a projectionist at a cinema who kills random women she crosses at night. Her friend Emi (Rie Kondoh) is a reporter of a morally dubious late night news show who're not above lurid reports on murders, including those committed by Aki. When a married man, Kurahashi (Shirô Sano), enters their lives, a romantic triangle is created. Kurahashi however is connected to something deeply unnatural, personified by a little boy named Hideki that randomly appears on TV or in rooms.

Evil Dead Trap II is not an actual sequel to the original 1988 film of the same name. Instead, the original director left, returning to the series for part 3, and was replaced by Izô Hashimoto, most well known for co-writing the legendary 1988 anime adaptation of Akira. His co-writer is someone whose name immediately pricked up my ears when I first heard of the film, Chiaki J. Konaka, a man who almost completely switched to animation after the mid-nineties onwards, becoming the man known for extremely esoteric storytelling. (Alongside scripts for the 2000-2 Digimon series, probably because the anime industry is one where everyone works in every genre). Evil Dead Trap 2 couldn't be so dramatically opposite from the prequel, even an entirely different cinematic species from the splatter/slasher hybrid the first was.

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Whilst its prequel was a mess in tone and pace, for most of its length the immediate sequel is a drama with an incredibly glacial pace, one which just happens to involve one of the women in the romantic triangle in the centre being a killer who commits random murders of other women at night. A larger weighted woman, Aki is immediately intrigued the moment a man named Kurahashi is seemingly attracted to her, the relationship complicated by the fact that he's involved with her friend Emi, or that he has a wife who is seemingly traumatised by the loss of their son, one she believes is still there and acts as if he does in their family home. The film takes it time with this drama, stretching over forty minutes or more with a lingering, creepy atmosphere being built up over time. Most of the film is set at night or in darkened rooms, the early to mid-nineties tone of many Japanese genre films from the period having a sordidness even in neon light lit urban areas, a sense of strange and gristly things taking place just beyond a back alley. It's a tone which somehow allows one to imagine Ryū Murakami's erotic adaptation of his own novel Tokyo Decadence (1992) to co-exist with a full on horror film like this, a post-bubble urban Japan which feels grotty and claustrophobic as these films characters drift through their ordinary lives. It explains why I've collected all these various genres of Japanese cinema - pinku erotica, anime, crime, horror, even sci-fi - into one glorious mass as many of the best and/or most interesting emphasise the most diverse and character filled environments in the country, both its urbanscape and the rural areas. (Something which also can be seen in the period set films too). Even the scenes which are set in the day or the light have a bleakness to them, the most colour and vibrancy to be found when Aki joins a religious cult, one not taken seriously but whose elder female head immediately realises someone is lurking inside Aki the moment she joins them.

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At some point, Evil Dead Trap II reaches a crescendo and completely detaches itself from a clear narrative, becoming entirely subjective and weird. The genre starts to shift to the supernatural and horror when Kurahashi is shown to be more sinister than a potential romantic interest for either woman, a being whose calm manner and politeness starts to shift as his actual being becomes entirely subjective. At this point, any sense of logic breaks and a viewer caught off guard (like I was) enters a irrational dream logic. This is something particularly common with co-writer Konaka, as notorious for this completely subjective tone for the endings of his scripts as it led to acclaimed work like the animated series Serial Experiments Lain (1998).  

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The experience of entering a Konaka story when it reaches this expressionist end stage, where chronology is fixed but the world is entirely subject, within the space of internal emotions and, as in this case, with characters being teleported to a multilayered warehouse environment out of time is always startling. Also prone to alienating some viewers, which is why Konaka has always been a divisive screenwriter, but a unique trait of his. Here, alongside with how its presented, the switch is with our anti-heroines ending up trying to stab each other with knives and kill each other, one whcih is sent up in plot points before the ending sequences but still disorientating. This entire ending is also when the build up and lingering pace of Evil Dead Trap II before makes the wait worth it, a delirious finale where the warehouse exists as a entity out of existence. One with a flooded subterranean level that goes underground and the sense, as the prequel did, of being in an actual nightmare realm, one here whose cold concrete and industry look is more disarming than having vibrant colour. That's before the body horror, specifically one elaborate prosthetic effect in a film that's mainly been gory than surreal, takes the symbolism to an extreme for a powerful punch line. When the first Evil Dead Trap was a disappointment for me, this disconnected sequel stood out considerably.

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Mindbender/Psychotronic/Weird

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

From http://www.horror-extreme.com/Content/images/
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Another Heaven (2000)

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Director: Jôji Iida

Screenplay: Jôji Iida

Based on a novel by Jôji Iida

Cast: Yôsuke Eguchi as Manabu Hayase; Miwako Ichikawa as Asako; Takashi Kashiwabara aka. Atsushi Kimura; Yukiko Okamoto as Chizuru Kashiwagi; Haruhiko Katô as Yuuji Makuta; Naomasa Musaka as Sakamoto-keibu; Kunihiro Ida as Ryoukado-keibu

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #119

First of all, Jôji Iida (or George Iida) has had a long career in horror fiction in general. A director/author, his career includes two different productions based on the work of Ringu author Koji Suzuki, penning the screenplay for the first Ringu adaptation for television, Ringu: Kanzenban (1995), and The Spiral (1998), an adaptation of the Ringu sequel novel released the same year as Hideo Nakata's legendary take on the first Ringu story. Iida also directed Battle Heater (1989) near the beginning of his career. I admit to hating the film back in the early days of my cult film viewing, finding weird obscure released on LoveFilm, but has stayed with me still, in which the traditional piece of Japanese furniture known as a kotatsu (a Japanese table with a futon or blanket skirting the sides and a heater underneath) develops a mind like a tsukumogami but also the craving for human flesh. The film also was a comedy horror, emphasising absurdity first.

Iida certainly changed directions with his adaptation of his own novel in 2000 with Another Heaven, forging a chance encounter between a police procedural with grotesque horror. It's a good idea. There's a reward how the conventional cop story, seen so many times in which cops are our stand-in for an investigation that leads the viewer to an unconventional sight, being smashed into horror like it is here. Now the policemen are forced to use deductive thinking that is meant to rationalise the unknown against something inherently unnatural and unexplainable even if a rational is produced. It's an appropriately surreal concept, the marriage of the rational and the irrational when the police in the first scene go to an apartment where a person is dead, only to find their brains are missing from the back of their head, only to find that said brains are part of a sick joke used as a recipe for the serial killer equivalent of Jamie Oliver. Admittedly, most cop show/murder mystery plots are utterly illogical in the first place, but let's not get pedantic, as here said cops after discovering this find themselves encountering more bizarre, gross murders. A stereotypically dashing, young police man (Yôsuke Eguchi) merely a placeholder to experience various ways to cook brains and deliberately absurd, complicated murder scenes created by a force of pure evil. This hero alongside the other burly cops are here for us to experience, over 130 minutes, a film which mixes sci-fi, horror and melodrama in a curious series of ebbs and flows.

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The result's with flaws as much as virtues. You have stereotypically burly policemen who usually arrest people in this world before actually finding out if they're guilty, figures in crimes stories who are usually the least interesting aspect of said stories unless they have distinct personalities. Eguchi as the lead is a handsome matinee idol figure who, barring some angst, is there to be our stand-in, far less interest than other characters, especially Miwako Ichikawa as Asako, an ex-con who keeps herself in his life in spite of the controversy the possible romance between a cop and a criminal might be. The film however misses the point of the cops being merely our stand-ins for the plot when Iida makes an error in presuming they're of more concern than a narrative which becomes a body snatcher horror tale. The film grazes potentially rewarding beats constantly only for the result to be a mere scratch. Three men thinking they can take sexual advantage of a sole woman only to all be emotionally castrated by a woman who's sexually dominating and able to break a man's neck with superhuman strength. How a male host evokes gay longings for the hero, the parasite developing an obsession with him when they encounter each other, setting up various murders to taunt him in hope of eventually possessing him, a genderless parasite that in male or female form brings about the suggestion of a union between forms with a sexual connotation. Even how, whilst against the romance professionally, the hero is frankly useless without Asako, almost psychic in knowing the right advice to help his case. All of which is far more interesting than Iida believing any of these cops are emotionally complex.

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These cop characters are also morally grey, both for humour but also meant to be entirely heroic, something which is increasingly problematic without it being challenged. It jars as well with the premise of a parasite form which possesses human hosts until their bodies degenerate beyond use. The film sidesteps the potential of paranoia of a person you know now being the killer but also leads to issues with what's depicted. Deeply problematic acts for characters meant to be clean cut heroes are committed, from threatening to shoot a colleague until he confesses to being the killer to our hero assaulting a female doctor physically without her showing signs of being actually the killer. The later is problematic in entirely larger spectrums, but it's worse as alongside getting away with our hero hitting a woman, it misses the opportunity for an actual dynamic change in his character which gives him actually depth, a man having accidentally committed a horrifying act whose reasoning would be dismissed as insane by his seniors, forced by a taunting killer out of this reality to have to redeem himself by being willing to sacrifice himself to end this force. Instead this problematic scene's sidestepped, as mentioned, and the film eventually leads to saccharine drama with Asako.  The evil is confused as well. If it was a body jumping alien who loved to kill in elaborate ways it would be fine. If it was an update of Japanese folklore of evil spirits using sci-fi symbolism, the possession now with a victim being taken over and the mind eventually deteriorating with tumours until the body is useless, than it would be fine too. Instead the abrupt ending explanation, including the explanation of the film's title, is utterly hazy in credibility and garbled in meaning. What should be simple in reason, allowing the irrational of this literally liquid evil to exist, is failed.

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So what is there to appreciate in Another Heaven? The concoction of action, police drama and horror is rewarding to watch. For all the multitude of problems the film has, it's still far more rewarding than more conventional takes on this type of narrative. Where you can suddenly switch to a car chase with one of the people involved on a bicycle with a basket on the front. Drips of the unconventional against the conventional that director-writer-author Iida was clearly more interested in. It's the type of tone that would've been fascinating to see as actual television - not surprising as Another Heaven would later have a TV spin-off later on - the gender concoction not something to squander. And the horror is that obsession in the Japanese version of it of the beautifully grotesque and even absurd. As its disconnected from the reality of death in its true awfulness, depictions of murder in fiction can be exaggerated and even found to have a sick beauty to them, something ero-guro to Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's "Bloody Prints". When the openly surreal is included, than the types of deaths that would be impossible in happening in real life are also found. Moments of this are occassional, but from the culinary perversities to general weirdness, moments in Another Heaven evoke MPD Psycho, known for me through the Takashi Miike TV adaptation, including even a mirroring shot of a flower sticking out of corpse's exposed brains. Another Heaven could've been a much better film than what you get, especially as its got over two hours rather than ninety to work with, but at least for all the seams you could pick at something of reward as horror is still found. 

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gRWMZ-x-wV0/STB8_Ejk7XI/
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Masters of Horror Season 2 Part 2

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Pro-Life (2006)

Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan

Cast: Caitlin Wachs as Angelique; Ron Perlman as Dwayne; Emmanuelle Vaugier as Kim; Mark Feuerstein as Alex O'Shea; Biski Gugushe as Kiernan

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #19

Openly Pro-Life is superior to Cigarette Burns (2005) from the previous season. A contrary statement but whilst the Season 1  episode from John Carpenter reduced a great idea for me to dull didactic series of exposition, Pro-Life takes an idea (the moral quandary of abortion), and through adding Satan to the proceedings, creates a story that doesn't need to be paused constantly but climbs in event fully to the ending. I will openly admit that, from Carpenter, it's still not as good as it should've been, and in terms of a story tackling abortion, barely gets out of the gate in terms of tackling it with any depth. Probably the best thing about Pro-Life however is that, whilst Cigarette Burns felt like any other person could direct it, the tone of Pro-Life evokes the more nihilistic entries that formed Carpenter's series of "apocalyptic" films; even if it's not up to the quality of even Prince of Darkness (1987), that same streak of grit missing from Cigarette Burns is appreciated and gives this episode a closer bond to the director's career.

It's a broad film in tone, in which the daughter of an anti-abortionist preacher named Angelique (Caitlin Wachs) enters one such clinic with a conscious desire to terminate her unborn child only for said father (Ron Perlman) to follow with her brothers and firearms in tow. It's a pretty liberal leaning film in its politics on the subject although the real issue is entirely the lack of subtlety without all the teeth being in its mouth to make a nasty bite. Lack of subtlety, as with films in the director's filmography like They Live (1988), doesn't detract from their worth in the ideas still sting. It tries - a father of another young girl in the clinic is utterly loathsome and the head doctor of the clinic immediately snaps when threatened, going immediately to his own firearm cabinet - but this proves to be the less interesting aspect of the episode. It does thankfully have Ron Perlman as the anti-abortionist preacher which softens how blatantly sociopathic the character becomes. Even a viewer like myself pro-choice will appreciate Perlman's ability to give the character's arguments some weight even if he's a stereotype. The slithers of moral greyness are far more interesting, despite being jettisoned early, when it comes to the fact the daughter's unborn child is likely Satanic in origins but the father has voices in his head he believes are heavenly and asking him to protect it, leading to all manner of existential devastation even for his character is a one note figure.

It's also interesting to see how it also evokes Carpenter's filmography in general. The action director in its scenes of gunfire which are solidly handled. And of course the apocalyptic tone within the main clinic setting as the deaths start to pile up. It gets more gruesome than even Carpenter's previous episode, with Ron Perlman experimenting with some of the equipment in the clinic, but there's also a more tragic and severer tone which benefits Pro-Life. Whilst Cigarette Burns felt like it was trying too hard to surf on its trendy cine-literate plot without fully fleshing it out, Pro-Life is entirely within a morally complex subject that strays outside of cinema into real life, and even if it could've done so much more, it stands out more inherently for this for the better. Even if it leads to at least one ridiculous full body costume I appreciate what starts off with a tantalising start and leads to a fully successful conclusion of what would likely happen if this type of event ever took place. Where the ending is technically happy but with a terrible emotional aftermath that you never see as, like in a classic Carpenter film, he's cuts immediately beforehand and deprives you of a comfortable denouement.

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Family (2006)

Director: John Landis

Screenplay: Brent Hanley

Cast: George Wendt as Harold Thompson; Meredith Monroe as Celia Fuller; Matt Keeslar as David Fuller; Haley Guiel as Sarah; Kerry Sandomirsky as Jane; John B. Scot as Grandpa; Nancy Whyte as Grandma

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #20

John Landis, as of seeing Deer Woman (2005) from the first season and Family now in Season 2, is two for two for great segments in Masters of Horror. Again, like with Deer Woman, it's surprising that whilst he is known for An American Werewolf in London (1981) his career is mainly been outside of horror, and yet within the series named Masters of Horror he's been the figure the most consistent out of the old guard. It may however be that discrepancy which has helped with these episodes of his. Deer Woman was a comedy first within the horror genre, likely sneaking in more serious material within the farce, but still a comedy. Family is a grim, nasty little tale but there's still a streak of gallows humour presiding it, and with at least a cast member from Cheers helping him out in the lead.

Structurally, from screenwriter Brent Hanley (most well known for the script of the late Bill Paxton's Frailty (2001)), the story's a simple and low key tale with an easy to understand set up. A middle aged, single man Harold (George Wendt) lives in peaceful Americana suburbia, only for it to be immediately revealed that he's been kidnapping people, murdering them and with the help of a bathtub of acid building up his own perfect family from their bones and clothes they were taken in. His world is idealised - wife, daughter, even grandparents - with the episode cleverly depicting this through having actors in the roles for his delusions but also intercutting the prop skeletons in the same costumes during these conversation scenes. Very simple, easy to accomplish things which should be obvious for a good story, which even a layman like me who doesn't work in the film and television industry would know would help lead to a good production. The flashiest things about the entire episode is just how Landis decided to be more flamboyant in visual style, with swooping cameras, and in terms of music with the curious (but rewarding) choice of old, beautiful gospel songs chosen in a rather sacrilegious ways. The rest of Family is deceptively simple in presentation.

And that's actually why it's one of the best episodes of both seasons so far, as this basic and well thought out plotting succeeds as expected. Harold takes interest in a younger couple (Meredith Monroe and Matt Keeslar) who have moved in across the street, having interest in the wife much to his skeleton wife's chagrin. This obviously leads to a sting in the tail, but everything fleshed up around this (pun not intended) is done well. The most important factor is how George Wendt excels in the lead. This is not his first time in the horror genre - he was in House (1985) in a major role [a review is available HERE], but most of his career is outside of said genre. But it feels as if this helps allow him to really flesh out the character from a career that includes playing Santa Claus in a TV movie the same year as this, giving him the ability to depict a character who comes off as actually lovable were it not for the fact of how horrifying his behaviour is outside his warm, family valued hallucinations. There's been a little disappointment in how, in spite of Season 2 being far more consistent and better in terms of the quality of the episodes, the stand out character performances haven't been as noticeable yet, but out of both seasons Wendt is going to be amongst the best particularly in the lead.

His delusions talking back to him, even as far as potential victims speaking directly to him (and to us) from afar in one sequence all simplistic and yet credible way to depict this. And also, considering where the story goes, there's definitely moments where the viewer would question on a rewatch what was within Harold's head and what was actually said, having some clever whit to the material from Brent Hanley. Between him and Landis, the story never overcomplicates itself with subplots and plays its tone as both humorous and dark before the ending. Said ending, which I won't spoil, is as twisted as you can get, and even if you guessed it before the end, it still has that aforementioned sting because of the quality of everything built from beforehand. In general Family will rank amongst one of the best of the series and its simplicity is the reason.

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Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 7

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Pick Me Up (2006)

Director: Larry Cohen

Screenplay: David J. Schow

Based on a short story by David J. Schow

Cast: Fairuza Balk as Stacia; Michael Moriarty as Jim Wheeler; Warren Kole as Walker

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #15

My knowledge of Larry Cohen is (surprisingly) lacking. Cohen nonetheless has a legendary reputation just in terms of independent genre filmmaking, beyond merely the horror films he made but other areas like in Blaxploitation. His reputation with New York City alone, producing movies regardless of the fact he was banned from filming there legally, is the stuff of legends. Pick Me Up feels like a production in confident hands, from someone who knows what he's doing and had one of the more rewarding scripts to work with in terms of a carefully laid out plot structure. The premise is the culmination of a certain group of horror film clichés being put together, an innately American fear of isolated country roads, where the hitchhiker one picks up could slaughter you or how dangerous it is to hitchhike yourself. Here the killer hitchhiker (played by Warren Kole) accidentally meets a killer who picks up and kills hitchhikers (played by Cohen regular Michael Moriarty) whilst circling around the same tour bus that gets stuck in the middle of nowhere. One member of that bus who wisely hiked to the nearest motel by herself, Stacia (played by Fairuza Balk), finds herself the bait between two killers jostling for territory.

It's a high concept premise which wisely is used as a three actor chamber piece. Balk, who I've always liked, sadly does take the backseat a little in this story but so  does Kole, as the younger and cockier hitchhiking killer, as Pick Me Up if effectively the Michael Moriarty show the moment he appears onscreen. The one reward even in weak episodes throughout the season has been character actors who've worked in genre cinema stealing their scenes, be they main or side roles, and Moriarty does the same here. With a visible sense of enjoyment to his role as the older, wiser man who would be lovable if he wasn't a murderous sociopath, Moriarty actively commands the screen. Thankfully, the best thing about Pick Me Up, is that it feels closer to the traditional short form horror tale with a ghoulish sense of fun to it, meaning not only does it have a three act structure that's properly set out and works, but it means that whilst Moriarty is the brightest star in the trio, Balk and Kole thankfully have as much to do. Even if they are behind Moriarty, the actors in question are just as good for their own roles. The final twist, whilst obvious, still smacks of a gleeful nastiness that's been missing from other episodes in the series, the tone revealed to be closer to the traditional, lurid scare tales of yesteryear updated to the then-modern 2000s. The tone that Pick Me Up wisely plays as much as dark comedy and drama, managing to gain as much humour and tension in a scene where everything actually stops, becoming quiet as characters literally wait for a snake to cross the road, as it does the suspense scenes. As a result, because many hadn't succeeded in the series in doing this, Larry Cohen's episode is actually one of the best as a result.

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Fair-Haired Child (2006)

Director: William Malone

Screenplay: Matt Greenberg

Cast: Lori Petty as Judith; William Samples as Anton; Lindsay Pulsipher as Tara; Jesse Haddock as Johnny

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #16

[Warning - Contains major spoilers]

William Malone would've been a controversial choice to include in this series as a "Master" director, even above executive producer Mick Garris picking himself for one of them. A lot of the issue will be that, whilst an old guard, with a great deal of history in the industry, and common commentator on horror cinema in general, his directorial filmography is surprisingly tiny. His most well known film is a divisive little remake from 1999 called House on Haunted Hill, which would immediately put him at odds with other "Masters" for the series, even Lucky McKee, whose most well known films are either viewed as canonical horror films or cult hits, not a film which has its fans but also detractors within a filmography that's not that large either to back it up. Personally, whilst dated to its time period with its Marilyn Manson song on the soundtrack and a grungy aesthetic, I like House on Haunted Hill 1999 in spite of its problems as it was one of the only films from that period, growing up, that had any sense of actual luridness and style to it without leaving a bad taste in the mouth. Not nastiness for the sake of nastiness like later torture porn films, or neutered like many late nineties American horror films, but a ghoulish nastiness with great production and art design to it.

Malone's entry for Masters of Horror, whether he deserved the status or not of directing the episode or not, is not great anyway sadly, negating that question. Fair-Haired Child does briefly suggest the style I liked in House on Haunted Hill in a dream sequence, but the tale of a teenage girl (Lindsay Pulsipher) being kidnapped by an older couple (Lori Petty and William Samples) and dropped into their basement for the titular creature is pretty obvious in where its plot twist will be and that it's not as interesting as it could've been anyway. Finding a boy in the cellar with the heroine, one puts one plus one together and realises what will happen, and the narrative of the parents resurrecting their dead son and having to make sacrifices to it manages not to stretch out enough of the one hour length nor feel elaborated enough on to be fully intriguing. It's somewhat depressing that the review of Fair-Haired Child is going to be as short as it will be, even next to other reviews, because this episode does emphasis that the experiment called Masters of Horror was effected badly by the quality of the stories, needing those that provided some meat even if they are spooky stories for the sense of fun. In this case the story's paper thin and yet is spread over fifty five or so minutes, really not having a lot to go through and thus forcing me to finish this miniscule review here.

From https://earlymorninghorrorreviews.files.wordpress.com/2016/
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Halloween 31 For 31: Maniac (2012)

From http://theslaughteredbird.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/68107.jpg

Director: Franck Khalfoun

Screenplay: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur and C.A. Rosenberg

Cast: Elijah Wood (as Frank Zito); Nora Arnezeder (as Anna D'Antoni); Jan Broberg (as Rita); Liane Balaban (as Judy); America Olivo (as Angela Zito)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #50

With no personal connection to the original Maniac (1980)¹, I come to Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja's remake as an entirely different film. Elijah Wood is Frank Zito, the son of a late mannequin restorator who suffers from deep psychological problems, an impulse to kill women and scalp them, the collected pieces of hair stapled onto mannequins with the victims' clothes at the time of the murder and becoming part of his fantasy world of interacting with them. It's a creepy, disturbing premise, and whilst the original film by William Lustig and Joe Spinell is known for being depressing and scuzzy, the 2012 version is still an uncomfortable experience in spite of being glossy with retro-techno music by musician ROB.

This is especially so as the main conceit to Maniac 2012 is that, like the first quarter of Enter the Void (2009) before it enters its esoteric spirit travels, it's entirely depicted in first person from Frank Zito's perspective, Elijah Wood only seen in reflections or an occasional out-of-body experience. The result could easily be an uncomfortable proposition for some viewers, entirely in Zito's head as he not only kills women but stalks them beforehand, even a voyeuristic sequence where he watches a woman change clothes from the wardrobe. However the result actually forces you to confront this potential morally problematic concept in that the viewer is forced into the mind of a psychologically damaged serial killer and forced to see everything he commits from his eyes rather from a safe distance from another camera off in the distance. The theory of the "male gaze" which has been a thorny moral debate with films especially in the horror genre, of a mostly male view of films leering over women, is turned on its head with this gaze being the only camera one sees the film through. Being forced to witness the murders committed from the eyes of the killer committing them turns out, at least for sane and intelligent horror fans, is actually a horrifying experience to sit through and through how carefully the film deals with the issue, not hiding from the extreme discomfort it causes.

As a result, especially with its very violent and gory content, you feel incredibly uncomfortable and ill at points in Maniac. Adding to this is how Zito is a damaged person, forcing the audience to suffer from his migraines, where everything becomes blurred and distorted, and hallucinations which plague his mind and visualise in front of us as much as him, of the mannequins turning into the real victim he killed or replaying his late mother and his younger self from the past. If there's only one issue with Maniac, it's not being forced to see through a killer's eyes, which instead forces us the viewer to be complicit in chasing and killing terrified women and feel awful because of it, but whether the back story of Zito's mother from the flashbacks, having sex with many men and taking drugs, is a bad cliché to detail Zito's later behaviour. Is it a tasteless and lazy cliché, merely an eye rolling cliché, or is having to be in the mind entirely of a man whose subjective reality is up to debate, with constant hallucinations, able to compensate for it in wondering if his view of his mother is entirely up to question and possibly fictionalised? Aside from this, the tone of the film is perfectly done, the only real area of question with a film that, while a nasty chiller, manages to avoid how poorly tasted it could've been in the wrong hands and actually effects you greatly in ways this type of serial killer genre film doesn't usually, actually having a real emotional effect.

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This is particularly enclosed and made important in the ultimately tragic nature of Maniac where Zito meets a young woman Anna (Nora Arnezeder), the aspect of the film where it succeeds the most. Anna, who does art installations with mannequins and bonds with him, is a really significant emotional core for the film to have, bringing Maniac higher in quality than a lot of horror at the time of its ilk in forcing you to see Zito as a tragic figure, damaged, who will sadly destroy his only salvation whilst also being forced to suffer it through his eyes. Not only is how the first person perspective an incredible technical accomplishment but, despite only a few shots of him in the flesh, Elijah Wood gives an exceptional performance hinting at vulnerability, shy charm and a disturbing menace that, with only his voice for most of the film carrying this character dynamic on his shoulders, succeeds. Helped by Arnezeder and other actresses in their scenes², Wood is able to command both revulsion but a sickly sympathy even through the extremity of the violent scenes.

Khalfoun's film is exceptionally well made, glistening with colourful night time sheen which is also nonetheless grimy and rundown. ROB's music, evoking the same audio aesthetics of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011) in choice of cues, does command a great deal of the mood, not only its shiny pop but also in the appropriately dread-inducing synth drones, evoking the old eighties films of yore where the droning noises of pioneering (or antiquated) electronics was apt for ghost stories with their haunting themes or down-to-earth serial killer films because of their grainy, dank sounds.

From https://rarehorror.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/maniaccity.jpg

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¹ Have yet to see the original Maniac at the time of this review. Only a long out-of-print, old and censored DVD release of it exists in the United Kingdom and I felt put off trying to acquire an antiquated copy of such a film when it deserved better treatment whether my opinion of it ultimately is.

² Of topic, I'm still wondering why actress Megan Duffy's feisty redhead, on a date with Frank Zito in her scenes, has so many keyboards in her apartment. A moment of brevity in spite of the grim nature of the entire film.

Halloween 31 For 31: The Bat (1959)

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Director: Crane Wilbur

Screenplay: Crane Wilbur

Cast: Agnes Moorehead (as Cornelia van Gorder); Vincent Price (as Dr. Malcolm Wells); Gavin Gordon (as Lt. Andy Anderson); John Sutton (as Warner); Lenita Lane (as Lizzie Allen)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #38

The Bat emphasises the blurry nature of the "Suspense" genre, not used as commonly now next to thrillers, but one of a more classical period which straddles the line between the thriller and horror. Murder mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead) rents out a home which has been plagued by deaths caused by the notorious killer the Bat, a masked figure in a suit who murdered with clawed gloves. When the owner of a bank in the town mysteriously dies, money has been embezzled from his company and an employee is taking the blame for the later, Cornelia suspects the money is within the house itself. However it appears the Bat has returned, terrorising the people in the house, the result part of a long series of adaptations that have mutated from a 1908 novel to a theatre adaptation co-written by the original author; steeped in many influences from the decades reaching this film, its appropriately macabre with the added menace helped by Vincent Price as Dr. Malcolm Wells, a man with questionable morals despite his charm, immediately a possible suspect for a tendency to fondle bats for experiments in his lab.

The result is prime pulp, a b-movie with its foot firmly between genres. The bat himself, sending an actual bat into someone's bedroom and leaving corpses in secret compartment cupboards amongst his foul deeds, is closer to the more melodramatic villains of comic books or European literature like Fantômas, dressed like a film noir villain in his suit but a cartoonish villain who in the context of a monochrome film manages to have a great ominous nature to them in spite of the simplicity of their real motives and identity, certainly above all else a distinct visual appearance especially with their faceless appearance and the talons on the gloves, lurking by windows behind people for great effect. The rest of the film surrounding this figure is the same, one that's more arch with a possible self reflective nature to it, at least having a sense of humour with Cornelia's cowardly older maid Lizzie (Lenita Lane) and her ignorance and paranoia being played for comedic effect. Moorhead's own performance, while serious, does also contains moments of her character reacting, after the fact, with the grandeur of a novelist trying to assess the absurdity of the events that took place adding to this.

Surprisingly though, while its sanitised and bloodless, there's still a bit of menace and nastiness to the movie alongside this. The sense of a romp is apparent throughout its narrative, particularly its obsession with secret rooms and levers that's a reoccurring trend in the plot, and the red herrings that have an absurdity to them, such as Cornelia's chauffer/butler being immediately suspects by the police lieutenant on the case, but there's still a lot of nefarious and downright violent material as a suspense film too. Gruesome backstabbing immediately takes place to set up the narrative arch, by way of a confrontation in a forest hut, and alongside at least two cases of things being set on fire, there's deaths that while only a handful are dealt with suddenly and abruptly.

From http://rarefilm.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-Bat-1959-3.jpg

The Bat is mostly a good, solid film in production, even when the version most will find is a muddy public domain version. Mainly restricted to a limited number of sets, evoking the theatrical origins of this version of the story's source, it thankfully doesn't descend into the issue of insipid amounts (and badly written) exposition despite its heavy amounts of dialogue. An interesting, if ultimately not radical change to the storytelling, but worth mentioning is how it depicts its finale in retrospect, within the bookends of after the events that tie up the film, a different way to tell the story which doesn't drastically change things but is interesting to note.

A large portion why the film is of worth to readers of the blog is Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead who raise The Bat a notch higher in quality. Price, in only a small role, is appropriately sinister and charismatic as he always is, even if most of his character's appearances are just to enter a scene to check on someone who's been killed. Moorehead more so stands out in the centre; interestingly, while the other characters are frankly to make up numbers, the film is surprising in how many women in the story there are, its source materials (the novel and play) written by women but also evoking a proto-giallo/thriller moment of later decades when four women are in the house at night, suspecting the Bat is in there with them trying to acquire something. Moorehead herself does show the talent she showed in major films in his career, a step above even Price in honesty in just how serious she takes the role. This in itself is more than enough to give The Bat some meat to its bones of enjoyment.

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Halloween 31 For 31: The Cell (2000)

From http://www.impawards.com/2000/posters/cell_ver5.jpg

Director: Tarsem Singh

Screenplay: Mark Protosevich

Cast: Jennifer Lopez (as Dr. Catherine Deane); Vincent D'Onofrio (as Carl Rudolph Stargher); Vince Vaughn (as Special Agent Peter Novak); Jake Weber (as Special Agent Gordon Ramsey); Dylan Baker (as Henry West); Marianne Jean-Baptiste (as Dr. Miriam Kent)

Synopsis: In the future, a research facility has developed the ability for therapists to enter their patients' sub consciousness, useful especially to communicate to coma patients. The FBI request their facility to enter the head of recently captured and comatose serial killer Carl Rudolph Stargher (D'Onofrio), to find where his next victim is before she dies. Therapist Dr. Catherine Deane (Lopez) selects herself to enter his nightmarish psyche as FBI agent Peter Novak (Vaughn) watches on.

I unfairly dismissed Tarsem Singh once as proving when elaborate images aren't enough in cinema, without any sense of connection to make them work as a whole, but here with The Cell, this is not necessarily the case. Even as a person obsessed with style, I find myself only enamoured with movies that have an inbuilt sense of the environments being fleshed out with a distinct personality to them. Revisiting The Cell, it's a case that Singh is betrayed by the scripts more than any problems with his directorial skills, and I say this with an admiration for The Cell despite its flaws.  The story about a scientific technique that allows one to enter dreams/the subconscious is immediately going to interest me, and it still stands out strongly despite the crippling flaw that prevents the film from being more then fascinating, that it's the clichéd serial killer crime movie at the end of the day. The film struggles between its premise and this, swathed in the post-Seven (1995) influence in its grubby, dark tone. The performances are also varying. Lopez is okay in the lead only, and Vaughn is dangerously close to the gruff cop stereotype, having Gil Grissom 's stubble pre-CSI,  and its only when The Cell takes risk that they are able to try a little harder.

From http://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/The-Cell/images/The-Cell-482.jpg

The plot does throw up one inspired, if very controversial idea, as a crime thriller that forces you to think of real life for once. Boldly, though it may put off many viewers, it suggests that even if Stargher is a killer of women who bleaches their corpses, and then dangles himself over them on hooks masturbating, he is still the product of cruelty and sadism, Deane finding his inner child and the various torments replayed in front of her as she travels further into his mind. Many will find this offensive, under the belief a serial killer would be welcomed on the nearest electric chair instead, but forcing the viewer to ask if environmental influence or the psyche of a person could make them into a Jeffrey Dahmer is something few horror films manage to do. Some of the content is exceptionally heavy handed, such as the reference to an Christian baptism in a lake that isn't necessarily anti-religious but an attempt to link an obsession with drowning and water Stargher has.

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Most of it, even if exaggerated, is a sincere attempt to try to make the villain a much more complex entity. The film makes the issue more palatable because the premise means Stargher is split into two people, the child he was and who he is now, portrayed in his own head as a deranged king who presides over his own kingdom. It also provides the backbone of the film as it becomes the more interesting dramatic conflict than the woman who is in peril because of Stargher, the cliché that's obviously going to be resolved by the end as you'd expect it to be in a crime thriller.

The few tantalising details the plot's crux has are what I like the most in the film, even if it's incredibly brief, enough context and layers to how the technology work and the laws to it to suggest a great deal of implications. While it never reaches the levels of the animated film Paprika (2006) in depicting the subconscious/dreams, it still envisions unique, phantasmagoric interpretations of the individuals' psyches, far more so as Singh does understand the tones of dreams and uses it to his advantage for atmosphere.

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Technical Detail:

It would be perfunctious to call aspects of The Cell's visuals music video-like, as Singh directed videos like R.E.M's Losing My Religion and is as indebted by them as much as other sources for the film. Instead, alongside the imagination, it's the areas of inspiration which really stand out with him, from Damien Hurst with a scene with a bisected horse to René Laloux's Fantastic Planet (1973) playing in the background of one scene.

A strong visual palette is here that out-trumps other horror/thriller films, conveying the subconscious scenes with immense boldness. The serenity of a child's mind is depicted with an actual desert dune almost from a Persian desert, whilst Stargher's hellish mind is saturated with gothic, fairy tale like images as well as stuff, for good or bad, straight from a Marilyn Manson album. Even the technology that allows the therapists to enter others' mind has a graceful, vaguely Cronenbergian vibe to it, suits like human muscle and the participants literally hung from cables as if in a levitating act.

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Not only is it worth praising the production team for the film's technical quality, but it would be criminal not to mention the late Eiko Ishioka, an art director, costume and graphic designer whose boldest work for cinema was for Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Dracula.  Her work, contributing to Singh's first four films before her passing, is exceptional, worn pieces of art which could only exist in fantasy but are a marvel showing the importance of costume design in films and what they can contribute to a movie's atmosphere. Her work especially helps create a balance between the grotesque gore and nastiness of the film, especially in the dreams, and a glamour and spectacle also inherent in them, making it perfectly logical for Stargher to go from a serial killer to a strange pale faced King decked out in his own royal colours.

The film's only danger in terms of visuals is to make all of this connect together, but for every moment where it dangerously veers to commercialised gothic, the level of craftsmanship to the film is what keeps it all consistent rather than a collection of random moments. It goes as far as contribute a lion's share of hard work in making The Cell more than a middling film, providing it with virtues that I can hold on to with praise. Even dated computer effects, especially the coloured shapes and images seen when people enter the subconscious, are actually accentuated by their obsoleteness, a materialistic sheen from their obvious artificiality. That the dreams are never attempting to be realistic, and many have theatre-like qualities, helps immensely.

From http://theyshootzombies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/thecell2000.png

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Mind Bender

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

In terms of the visuals and the content on an abstract level, I cannot put it on the List however. Smart moments of recognition between reality and dreams, and how they can influence each other, do stand out, but the film is a mainstream crime thriller at the end of the day. The images are beautiful and startling, but never fully symbolic or possessing an unknowable air of there being more to what is taking place. That doesn't detract from the virtues but I cannot give it a rating just because of how it looks either.

Personal Opinion:

I'll openly say that Tarsem Singh may not really be a favourite director of mine, but at least with The Cell I can see his talent. An okay film in consistency altogether, but an inspired one nonetheless.