Scream (1996)

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PK7A7gdXIR0/VAE459EWDOI/AAAAAAAADN8/
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Dir. Wes Craven

No, it's not a flashback to the Halloween 31 For 31 series of the last month, but I did see Scream on the 31st October of this year in a cinema screening at my local community art centre. The screening itself? Due to a mishap with the projector or the disc being played, the film's colour palette was saturated with red. With the actors faces as bright as tomatoes, it wasn't off-putting but inexplicably evoked Italian genre films like Suspiria (1977). It was proof why screenings need to be planned so the viewer can get the closest to what the original form of the film was in terms of image and audio, but as a one-off, with blood red morning skies, pink high school walls and especially the crimson added to the opening set piece, of a young woman (Drew Barrymore) being terrorised by a killer at her home, this technical botch actually added an incredible stylistic tone. The real disappointment is that, including myself, there were only eight of us in the cinema. Yes there was an event on nearby, but one would wish for a screening to have more people. I want to experience a hollering and wild crowd once before I die with a horror film. I wanted more than one person as Ghost Face from the Scream franchise, though I'm grateful for the guy in this screening who did. I'm disappointed by the lack of horror enthusiasm in my small town community. In fact the film finished around ten at night and the town was entirely dead already, on a Friday night, causing one to wonder what's going on with the community when you could drop a pin on a street corner.

From https://khfilm.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/4ed79-scream4-costume_dvd1.jpg

Scream as a film? The film that brought back an entire subgenre from the wilderness of obscurity, the slasher film, back into the mainstream when other pop culture fads of the eighties like glam metal is now nostalgia or a niche audience. It's entirely responsible for the type of young adult horror movies I grew up with in the late nineties and early 2000s, so revisiting Scream means stepping back into my adolescence slowly starting with the origin of it all. This is also significant because, as last month showed, I am curious where Scream's director Wes Craven stands for me as a horror director, and also because slasher films were once one of my least favourite genre of cinema, just above biopics, only for this to slowly change within the last year to the potential for a few gems to appear. Revisiting Scream is tackling the type of slasher films I grew up with, and honestly, were why my teenager self first hated slasher films, which I wonder is going to be the same revisiting these movies. A series of murders befalls a small town. Sydney (Neve Campbell) is in the centre of this, targeted by the killer, especially as there may be a connection to the murder of her mother a year earlier, an event she still is having difficulty coping with. Her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich), their relationship fraught already, may be suspicious, and the killer is making fine work massacring numerous people. From there it's your typical slasher film - masked killer murders victims one after another in gory death scenes unless someone finds out who the culprit is. The big difference with Scream from what was before, at least in the mainstream, was that with its script by Kevin Williamson it was a self reflective slasher film, which commentated on its own sub-genre, in the grain of Quentin Tarantino in the early part of the same decade. Characters - especially Randy (Jamie Kennedy), a slasher film nerd who claims the police should've watched Prom Night (1980) to learn how to find the culprit - who know what a slasher film and talk about the clichés and tropes within them.

From http://www.beyondhollywood.com/posterx/scream_3.jpg

The script was what I found a huge weakness in viewings before, viewing it as being too snarky in tone. I took issue to the perceived thought that it mocked clichés of the sub genre but still repeated them, the scene that I always thought of being an example when a female character criticises how female characters in the films are usually running up stairs to escape killers rather than out the door, only for this cliché to take place. This is a non-existent issue on this viewing, no know-it-all mentality visible in Williamson's script. In fact he's intelligent in his writing, and such as the example mentioned above, the cliché happens for logical reasons, subtle details or is part of the joke without looking down on the viewer. In fact now, able to appreciate the slasher films more, the clichés are fun because his script and Wes Craven's direction have macabre fun with them. The characters are clichés but interesting, fleshed out individuals. Campbell as the sympathetic Final Girl, with more depth to her then those she's inspired by. Ulrich as the potentially dangerous Billy. Rose McGowan, utterly charismatic, as the peppy friend. Matthew Lillard  showing how to chew scenery properly as the wise cracking joker character, and Kennedy saying why being a virgin protects you from serial killers in slasher film logic. Add to this as well the characters of Detective Dewey, played by former WCW World Champion David Arquette, and Courteney Cox as reporter Gale Weathers, the later an interesting complicated character as the film goes on, the two of them together having a sweet romantic comedic side to the movie furthered by the obvious chemistry that lead the actors to marry in real life. The story has the right beats and great moments throughout, fun and funny whilst able to be unbelievably dark in tone.

From http://imagescine.critictoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Scream10.jpg

That's not to say the script isn't flawed. That which is the most celebrated in the film by critics, the meta references, are the least interesting aspect of the entirety of Scream. For one, it makes sense and is funny when its Randy or someone whose painted with a nugget of knowledge on slasher films that references them, or the context and characterisation is right, but a character you don't expect to or someone relating their romance abruptly to American film censorship ratings comes off as forced. I hate film references and references to film making and culture in films for the most part because it comes off as egocentric or suddenly entering a tiny club's mindset whose language wouldn't be said by most people on the street. Quentin Tarantino may come to mind but he's actually far from the worse person to do this, especially when he's at his best, using pop culture references, like the "Like The Virgin" speech in Reservoir Dogs (1992) to show the characters' personalities, and has as much interest in having characters just after that particular scene debate about the virtues of tipping waitresses or not. Bad examples just make the references without there being any real context to do so. In Scream, for the references, like the Prom Night one, that do work, there's many that don't, and the meta content is just cute, not deep or profound at all. Any sense of cleverness to it is to be found in what a self awareness gives the basic slasher template in terms of tone. That characters in a film have at least seen one Friday The 13th film, which is realistic and, if there has to be a meta referential side, its better when it's how the killer asks victims about scary movies and torments them with it, character building, rather than out of nowhere from an individual's mouth. That it adds to the film's dark, nasty streak in that the characters reflect on whether killers actually need motivations, the real serial killers in reality which couldn't be ignored eventually. When a motivation is behind the killings in Scream, it adds to the dark nature of the story because in lovingly referencing the older slashers, it still has a seriousness to it that is bleaker despite the humour.

From http://img.rp.vhd.me/2162570_l5.jpg

The Kevin Williamson script conveys a significantly vicious story than I thought it had without losing the humour and becoming grim. Adult themes were even depicted in the likes of Friday The 13th (1980), but there a slashers that have thin bare plots that are merely window dressing, while Williamson here wrote proper story to orchestrate through his interest in the sub-genre. Most of the darker content of the film, the mature emotional content, is through dialogue and back story, but it has a significant effect on the material onscreen because it is the reason for all that happens. Scream is also, as a slasher, incredibly violent despite being partly comedic. Wes Craven as a director depicts violence in his films with much more nastiness, such as a opening scene with Drew Barrymore that, while a perfect opening jolt to get you on the edge of your seat, is unbelievably nasty in how it ends. This was a film that had to be censored for American release, and Craven managed to take his depiction on violence from his rougher seventies films to more mainstream movies like Scream. He's also a very good director. Admittedly, the viewing experience for Scream this time wasn't necessarily the best for judging the cinematic qualities of the film, but the style is effecting and is someone on top of his game.

From http://www.hotflick.net/flicks/1996_Scream/fhd996SCR_Neve_Campbell_010.jpg

Whether the film succeeds from there as much about your liking of slasher films. Strangely, my potential issue with the sub-genre now is that the clichés I once hated in the films are now enticing, but the films don't actually live up to them. They might not be gory or cheesy enough despite what fans say, and unless they are unique or incredibly well made, the slasher films may be still of disinterest because this viewpoint. With Scream, its structurally perfect, the content entertaining and has the right ending, but something feels missing for it to be a great horror film. It ends without a big enough impact. Maybe this is one of those cases where the cliché where the killer appears at the end to show a sequel will happen was needed.

From http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb412/cinemania285/357qa8p.png

Cinema of the Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Not a sausage. Though the slasher genre may reveal an appropriate film or two for the list. The Slayer (1982) for one immediately comes to mind, but like said example, the potential candidates are likely not the well known films like Scream.

From https://janeaustenrunsmylife.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/
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Personal Opinion:

Honestly, I much prefer I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), another Kevin Williamson scripted film I once hated but liked immensely revisiting this year, a serious and entertaining slasher. Going through these films from my youth is bound to have some complete reversals of opinion from what I originally thought, though it'll be an odd experience to revisit them, especially as their era was a peculiar pop culture in hindsight. Scream isn't bad though, and has a lot to love. As for Wes Craven, time will tell still, as it's as much about the entire picture of his work that says how good he is or not. 

Halloween 31 For 31: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

From http://www.steve-calvert.co.uk/pub-dom/imgs/
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Dir. Robert Wiene

The last review for the Halloween season...and with this I'm stepping further than Wild Zero (1999) into something I first saw, on a college campus, which has had a subconscious effect on me. I was studying this film in fact in my Film Studies class alongside Nosferatu (1922), a immense pair to see, amongst other films, if there ever was one. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari has a weight to it that is utterly profound. One of the first horror films, and such a drastic influence on what was to come. The brilliance of it as a film is that, yet, the movie still feels drastically unique compared to all that came after it in the same genre. In a story within a story, Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) arrives at a town with his carnival attraction, a somnambulist named Caesar (Conrad Veidt). As murders are taking place it's not long before the friend of the one of the victims Francis (Friedrich Feher) suspects that the two are involved somehow, a threat to the love of his life Jane Olsen (Lil Dagover) significant. Immediately the film stands out, for what is under the umbrella of German Expressionism, an artistic style of multiple mediums that wanted to depicted the internal, subconscious reality of the mind instead of realism. This was the context that the film was being taught to us in Film Studies, so at the same time I was being introduced to German Expressionism as well. Using hand made sets, the world of Caligari's is an irregular, distorted place, of angular, disturbed buildings, heavy use of blacks even for a monochrome film, and claustrophobic interiors and urban streets where the buildings seem to be leaning to each other. It's a depiction of a nightmare, and what'll be more interesting for me to write of is what it was like to see this for the first time in college. I was taken aback by it, fascinated by its singular look, seeing the sense of the distorted portrayed fully. Even back then, not able to appreciate films that alarmed and forced viewers into unconventional and uncomfortable positions, Caligari was still able to succeed because its style translated all the menace and unease required for its story to me, and would be able to for any normal film goer, despite its age and potential technical limitations, possessing a fully formed world.

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You can see the debt directors like Tim Burton have to this, but the film is still radically different, viewing it again, from many films. Even against the couple German Expressionist films I have seen its drastically different and goes further. There is still something unnerving about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in mood because of its aesthetic and tone. A warped frame of mind befitting the fact that the story-within-a-story is possibly up for question, whose obvious artificiality makes it impossible for the film to be absorbed and loosened of its effect. It's too menacing and dark still to be digestible, to be the fun spookiness of Tim Burton or as far as being defanged like a lot of older horror films. So much so that, on a big screen, the little details are what build up the world being depicted the most, even to how impractical the furniture looks to sit on for characters, remoulded a person if they were to use them. Everything has a connection to the aesthetic being used and, of course, being physically real, the weight is felt. Unlike a Burton as well, the small scale of the film gives them a better ability to draw you as a viewer to the atmosphere.

From http://www.silveremulsion.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/cabinetofdrcaligari_1.jpg

A person like me viewing this film is going to be pulled in by how unconventional it is, and being a silent film adds to this factor. With there being no onscreen dialogue at all, only inter titles, there is an additional sense of the film taking place in a different reality. It actually took me a long time, within the last few years in fact, to be able to fully appreciate silent cinema, but back at college this film and Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1925), being taught in the same subject on Germany's and the Soviet Union's radically different cinematic innovations in the twenties,  immediately caught me because of their elaborate and distinct use of the visuals. Caligari is not a radically advanced film in terms of technique - the camera is static each shot, editing basic, none of the complicated technique of D.W. Griffith that would become mainstream or that of Soviet filmmakers whose editing is even more avant garde now - but aesthetically its advanced. In its use of background and production design, lighting, a scene where text appears in shot overlaid on the images and generally pushing the look of cinema to express its nightmarish story of murder and secrets. A film depicting less than a rational world, while it would influence many films to come, and has a conventional mystery plot for the most part in its core, it's style yet is completely at odds still with most cinema. Acting and how actors are made up is also a factor in this, as German Expressionism went for intentionally unrealistic and choreographed acting, characters depicted with heavy makeup and acting more broadly than was already arch in silent cinema to register meanings without access for sound.

From http://www.black-and-white-movies.com/images/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari-jail.jpg

Encountering a film like this, with an elaborate style, was an eye opening experience. Famously, it's twist ending is just as immortalised, a hackneyed plot twist in modern movies but here still an unsettling sting for how old the film is, one of the first to do this, and for how in lieu of its tone it works perfectly for the mood. I wouldn't be surprised if this film is what got me hooked onto darker, more abstract films I have been covering for this season and watch in general. Certainly watching it again, its captivating still, an immense power to the content and images. The rawness of being an early film in cinema's history with the sophistication of the content making it still incredibly rewarding to watch.

From http://ufa-filmnaechte.de/fileadmin/user_upload/caligari_big_2.jpg

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

It would've been insane not to give this the highest rating. Not only does it deserve it for being one of the first films to do many of the things that make up this type of cinema - locations designed to match the protagonist's state of mind, unconventional acting, the abnormal plot content including madness and psychiatry, the twist ending - but it's still a very unconventional film to this day. Its age in fact has added to this, a creation from another era of cinema lost to us because of advancing technology but, made with hand painted sets and a group of actors, its closed-in world is uniquely its own, graspable as filming sets and a world familiar to us, but more disconnected from reality at the same time.

From https://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0unetj4751qzdvhio1_500.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Pretty safe to say that this was one of the films that built this blog and my entire interest in this sort of cinema in the first place, leaving an imprint that has fed my imagination, which is immensely obvious now revisiting the film. It's a representative, the best, for what this blog is meant to be, the poster film above many others for what "Cinema of the Abstract" is meant to mean. Films that you leave feeling you've stepped into another world, which in this case was, fittingly, one of the films that did it first and better than most of its offspring.

Halloween 31 For 31: Wild Zero (1999)

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Dir. Tetsuro Takeuchi

Returning to this means returning back to about, say, eighteen or so, at college and discovering cult cinema in between study. I'm not nostalgic for the period. I can't remember exactly what the viewing experiences were like because, honestly except the films that stuck with me, positively and negatively, I was more concerned with the discover of films rather then how, and with getting my A-levels done. I was also a miserable sod in hindsight who hated a lot of films that I now love, and a few of the films I saw on old DVD released have never been re-released, now out-of-print and not easy to even rent. Wild Zero is in fact a film I've never returned to until now, and I appreciate second hand stores more so than any nostalgia for viewing experiences because barring those which had importance, the films themselves are of greater concern then where I acquired a copy from and what the mood was like viewing them. When Blockbusters could have some decent gems hidden in their second hand bins. When Blockbusters actually existed...anyway, a meteorite hits Japan, or what is perceived to be a meteorite as its established for viewers to be a UFO. Around the crash site in a tiny Japanese town in the countryside are pulled in various individuals, all of which regret being there when the UFO has led to a zombie outbreak taking place. Amongst the individuals is protagonist Ace (Masashi Endô), a huge fan of the (real life) band Guitar Wolf who, after a prologue scene, is given a whistle to call upon them if things turn bad for him. There's Tobio (Kwancharu Shitichai), a potential love interest with more to her then meets the eyes, a trio who regret wanting to see the "meteorite" crash site, a female arms dealer and the criminals who wanted to purchase equipment from her, and a man in golden hotpants called Captain (Makoto Inamiya), a sleazy music manager who wants the heads of former employees Guitar Wolf. Guitar Wolf themselves - the titular Guitar Wolf on vocals and lead guitar, and Bass and Drum Wolf, march in to help deal with the zombie threat when beckoned and look cool. Unfortunately I've never seen KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park (1978), so I can't really make a joke about it in comparison to this. That and the fact that along with American greasers, I suspect The Ramones may have been an inspiration for the Japanese rock band instead.

From http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/ojrVPeTonELLNjCuyi3kNvlZxZo.jpg

Of importance for me viewing this film again is this belongs to the small but pronounced sub-genre of Japanese zombie films. The Japanese cremate their dead, so the concept of the zombie would be difficult to do in terms of logic unless aliens, curses or bio weaponry is involved, which places the films into a hive of self referencing other films by proxy unless a very different take was done on the concept. They've only become common within the Millennium or so, over live action and anime, and it wouldn't be coincidence that the obsession with them grew as zombies became a pop culture phenomenon in the West too, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1985) and his zombie films in general leading to this massive fad of everything brain eating and decayed. As is the case with manga and anime High School of the Dead (2010), it doesn't jar against titillation either for the Japanese entries. The Japanese films I've seen since this nearly started as a fad have had a distinct personality to them, although it's now apparent, revisiting this one, that a lot of Japanese pop culture what've I've encountered from the Millennium, or at least the late 2000s, has been created by individuals who are film geeks like in the West and also possess the concept of irony. A lot of the films I've seen are by people who have been directly referencing films like Romero's or The Evil Dead (1981) in some way or form, which Wild Zero does at one point too. In a peculiar circumstance this film seems to predict what would happen in Japanese cult cinema over the next ten years or more, made in 1999, the Sushi Typhoon movies evoked watching this that seem to have ran with what this one had in mind in terms of tone and presentation. The ironic films of such studio seemed to replaced the working directors of before, and Wild Zero is a predecessor of this movement, becoming the cult films for English speaking countries from Nippon.

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It's difficult to elaborate on the plot of Wild Zero because it's an incredible mess. There are moments and a plot thread or two that exist - Ace needing to overcome the zombies and hang-ups around Tobio's secret through the virtue of rock 'n' roll, Captain wanting revenge on Guitar Wolf for missing fingers and a wounded pride after a prologue shootout - but mostly its inconsistent and rambles on. This is the sort of film that teaches me that complete randomness is not actually surreal or unconventional - one cannot create a weird sensation through being deliberately trying to be weird. It's not just because its irritating instead, but also the paradox of surrealism as an idea - it suggests complete automatic randomness, but to actually work it needs a controlled logic. It's got to make sense to be senseless, which is why a truly weird film has a meaning to allow the weirdness to exist, or is bouncing off the rubber walls and creating a meaning from the gibberish that has an external logic to it. No idea is too random in a perfect weird film because someone has done it on purpose or, if it was an accident, they've let it be absorbed into the content or been forced to only have one take or stuck with a producer's son whose wooden acting. Wild Zero is aiming for the later clearly but is being deliberate, trying to catch lightning in a bottle, and doesn't have the logic or the madness to work. It's not trying to be deliberately bad, thank God, but its trying to be intentionally dumb returning to it, cool but also being laughably silly at itself. It's a film, as a result, that does things just because, not for a payoff that it'll milk for humour, cool scenes or something memorable, but just because in an inconsistent way. The zombies are just there, which is an immediate symbol of this fatal flaw, barring to chew down on characters who aren't given a real reason to be of interest. The aliens are there to explain the zombies but don't play an important part as the villains of the piece, just cheap CGI. Zombies just chew up a female characters clothes while she's having a shower just for the sake of her wearing a tartan one piece costume for the rest of the film, but the film never really uses the sexy tough female character its introduced at all or isn't actually interest in sex and nudity of any kind either after that scene. There is a difference between self indulgence and empty indulgence when the later means a ridiculous event may happens but is never registered and ran with.

From http://www.mortado.com/mortado/movies/wild_zero/zero-02.jpg

The jokey tone makes the film suffer more, not taking itself seriously to the point that you don't care about any of it at all. The result is actors mucking around, which would've fun while filming it, but without context of that fun, the merriment in context of being on the film set, makes the film hollow. Wild Zero, in its speedy tone, could've worked if you were able to savour the contents. The goofy nature of the characters against the situation taking place. The music by itself, not in terms of a score. The fact, the thing I remembered the most from the film, that an incredibly progressive love story exists in the centre of it just for the hell of it with an irrelevance, Guitar Wolf appearing as Ace's conscious to belittle him for not following the path of true rock 'n' roll, and not make a maudlin, patronising song and dance about it. But the film doesn't stretch and take advantage of these virtues and best aspects. Instead its ADD, hyperactive filmmaking all about quirkiness, incredibly loud and all over the place visually. Audibly too, the songs in the score good by themselves but not with the images; as a heavy metal fan, it's the same problem with heavy metal in most films in that the music is too fast to properly synch with even a quick paced sequence in a film fully, creative an audio-visual sludge expect for the rare cases a film maker has managed to get the synch of image and music right. The entirety of it baring bright spots - the fake CGI headshots, the screaming characters, the abrupt plot additions - is in fact a sludge, never synching up into something consistent either, without a clear concise tone to it to be entertainingly ridiculous. Instead its tiring, the climactic battle abrupt with no payoff or amusement. You don't get satisfaction with the film like you might've if a Takashi Miike of the 1999-2000 period was directing it.

From https://scumcinema.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/wild-zero-2.jpg

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

Wild Zero would qualify as a weird film for others. For me, it's not. There is nothing unconventional about any of the content in this in the truest sense. It may be strange when you first encounter it, but to be truly unconventional is not just stick things together that look intentionally "weird" but the subtle, minor details that catch you off guard. It's a further problem because of the whole issue surrounding the "weird Japan" mentality a lot of fans of Japanese pop culture, including myself, are in danger of encouraging. For everything that is legitimately bizarre that has come from Japan, even having never stepped onto the country's soil, we should take a pinch of salt and realise that there is normalacy, people going to work every day like in the West, and country villages and small towns with populations that mostly don't care about such strange material, nor even know of the existence of low budget zombie films like Wild Zero. The film never feels like it would baffle those who've encountered the truly strange in cinema either. This film, and I could so easily get into snobbery with this statement, is surface level weirdness which isn't any deeper, defined by surreal by someone who hasn't read what surrealism actually means.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kKF0Vxzm5KE/TfO8yUWMCII
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A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

No, because disappointingly, it's turned out to be the stereotype of the film that I am bored with - cult films all about laughing at their own silliness and without any meat to them. If you get used to a lot of odd, weird films, watching a lot as I have, not a professional expert on this subject, not someone who claims to be better and know more than anyone, but having watched so many and read up on appropriate subjects connected to this topic, this isn't remotely going to be on the list. Sadly films ran further with this in Japanese cult cinema, not just Sushi Typhoon, and I've been there watching movies that I have not found any real entertainment in baring an occasional chuckle.  

Halloween 31 For 31: Devil Story (1985)

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UK7Y7SEv_lc/UJ_N9_qAJNI/
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Director: Bernard Launois
Screenplay: Bernard Launois
Cast: Véronique Renaud, Marcel Portier, Catherine Day, Nicole Desailly, Christian Paumelle, Pascal Simon

[April 2016 Update]: Due to the unfortunate end of the website Videotape Swapshop, I'll have to replace certain links that I had to reviews for the site with the whole article, unedited but possibly with footnotes if need be. For these reviews, which were written differently, I'll have to create a Frankenstein-like hybrid that will be structurally ugly but is the only way to get the whole of the necessary content together in one page.]

After viewing Devil Story, it'll be possible for a staunch hater of Jean Rollin to appreciate his work. Even Zombie Lake (1981). That's not to dismiss Devil Story - I can no longer say horrible things about films, including those I hate, for their literal existence, knowing more of how difficult it is to make films, and Devil Story was a complete and utterly baffling hoot in hindsight. But you're going to scratch your head wondering what the hell is going on upon viewing it. It's impossible to create a cohesive narrative outline, so instead I'll give you all a sketch of events that take place. A malformed man - who strangely looks like American comedian Steve Wright after a bad day and inexplicably in a Nazi uniform jacket - is killing people and being hostile to camping tents, but after ten minutes or so, this is pushed to the side, the man a side character in a different plot with his mother. A couple end up stuck in a countryside mansion where things are amiss. You know things are amiss because Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach plays whenever something sinister is afoot; an instantly recognisable piece, it's also modest in telling you that things are going to get spooky.

The man of the house suggests the sinister happenings are to blame on a black horse, standing in a field and trying to blow it's head off with a shotgun, with unlimited shells and standing out there all night to turn it to glue. The woman of the couple wanders off in the night, meeting Steve Wright's unfortunate doppelganger, evoking Zombie Lake for me in his uniform jacket and Devil Story being a French film, striking fear in others for these reason that remind them of Zombie Lake. He tries to kill her along with his mother as they are in the middle of shenanigans in a graveyard with their late sister/daughter. A mummy appears. A back-story of a shipwrecked boat and lost treasure is brought up earlier in the running time. The mummy brings the Steve Wright lookalike's dead sister back from the grave, played by the same actress who plays the main female character, but in a bed sheet and giant oversized wig. The man of the mansion keeps missing the horse, which we see through various rapidly edited shots galloping around in multiple directions. The mummy walks slowly to an unknown destination - evoking John Landis in the TV documentary The Perfect Scary Movie (2005)¹ wanting a character in a mummy film to shout "Walk away! Walk away!" whenever one is in danger of the Egyptian dead. Apparently the mummy is the bringer of pure evil, for unknown reasons, but the man is far more concerned with lining the horse with shotgun lead, which we don't see an onscreen conclusion of. The shipwrecked boat suddenly appears, thus signalling a tentative final act to a film with borders onto a narrative rather than actually have one. The film is seventy two minutes long, a very obscure genre film from the continent that is a series of un-connecting content. It certainly has the material within it for a film of interest - killers, a mummy, a creepy mansion, a graveyard, a fight between a horse and the Steve Wright lookalike where the horse lands blows Riki-Oh would be proud of - but the combination is so intangential altogether that it's amazing Devil Story actually exists in its form. Even as a film from the eighties, it's far more vague in its content than arty horror films, and far from dismissing the film, liking it actually, it's still something I scrutinise with my brow raised high in puzzlement.

How does one review hammy dubbing acting? How does the same minimalist style of Jean Rollin, about mood, become this odd, vague mass of mere scenes? Why isn't the bonus materials for a French DVD - as even an obscurity like this that will divide many gets a cult around it, logically in its home of origin - translated and made available so I can find out how the film came to be and what the content means? It's clearly in the tone of dream logic horror film, but it doesn't have the sense and mood of a dream, rather the sense instead of floating through various events that merely happen. Bernard Launois prolongs inconsequential moments for other films for lengthy minutes. You will see a lot of long moments of characters groaning in pain and losing blood, even when they're already dead, the film cutting back and forth to the groaning and bleeding as another moment takes place around it. The gore is really a centre piece, though it feels closer to the Herschell Gordon Lewis school of organs plopping out or pieces dangling off. Around it are these lengthy scenes of time passing and off juxtapositions taking place that create a misshapen combination between the two sides of the film's personality. Openly, I wonder what the heck I've seen, and see that this will a very unexpected film for many to sit through, including people who watch films of this ilk.

Devil Story has an ending that repeats to the beginning, a Möbius strip, and it's not a spoiler because it will baffle many further. Large parts of Devil Story are repetitious. Or characters fumbling around or trying to attack each other. Or realising they've used all the spare gasoline to touch someone ablaze. There is a lot of memorable moments in the film's favour. Also the entire perplexing nature of the film is memorable in itself. And I ask myself, viewing a film like this, just how further and obscurer I can get into European horror cinema. France's horror output is more prolifically known for within the last decade, and through Jean Rollin and Jess Franco's occasional co-productions. There's a great film called Baby Blood (1990) too. But there was little I knew of aside from these originally when I was getting into European cult cinema, and now knowing of Devil Story's existence and various films scattered throughout the country's cinema sporadically, I wonder what low budget oddities of a French type are hidden online or on a multi region DVD player somewhere else. I can only look at Devil Story, writing about it here, with perplexity and admiration for the director and everyone involved for doing something I never expected to see.

From http://media.paperblog.fr/i/588/5885433/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Just because a film is random and has no plot doesn't mean it would get on this list.  They could be tiresome instead. This is really an issue with films that try to be deliberately atonal and don't care about a logic to any of its content, thus leading to many films that, as I view them, I want to gouge my eyes out with a pencil. This is different for how compelling random it is with an internal logic of its own, a series of events that just happen and never becomes tedious but more compelling in its ridiculous lack of meaning to me. It's speaking in some form but I cannot understand what it's saying It's Jean Rollin if he lost his mind, which is amazing to think exists.

From http://www.spoutnik.info/uploads/1382803290_devil-story--3--copie-5.jpg

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¹ A Channel 4 documentary I grew up with that, even if it was pretty glib in tone, did do a nice job in trying to catalogue horror cinema over the decades from Dracula (1931) to Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Its effect on me having recorded it off TV and rewatching it multiple times in terms of being a horror fan cannot be ignored. 

Halloween 31 For 31: Dracula in İstanbul (1953)

From http://horrorpediadotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/
03/drakula-istanbulda.jpg?w=696&h=1024

(aka. Drakula Istanbul'da)

Dir. Mehmet Muhtar

Noticing a gap in the decades covered, all there was left were two. The 1910s and early cinema since its existence, which is a vast area that does need to be uncovered for myself, knowing well how much of it has unfortunately vanished never to be seen again, and how much is not available from what has survived. The other is the 1950s. Giant creatures, aliens, the Kaiju growing as a genre or commie scare stories. Not a lot of it looks like its unconventional, but at least be quirky. A potentially rich era are for me more for gazing at the flying saucers on screen then discuss unconventional editing techniques. So let's cover a Turkish Dracula film instead. One story, three reviews for this season - Dario Argento's, a camp and now fascinating misfire; Francis Ford Coppola's, how you adapt it as a film; now for Mehmet Muhtar's. The Jonathan Harker figure, as in the previous two covered, goes to the castle of the Count for the purpose of negotiating a deal on estate, Dracula taking inclination for the female population where Hawker has come from and their blood, especially his fiancée Guzin, the Mina character.

From http://www.spookyisles.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/drakula-istanbul-da-main.jpg

It's the same Dracula plot but set in Turkey. Technically, it's an adaptation of a novel by Ali Riza Seyfi from 1928, though what exactly is different from Dracula the story is up to debate. Mina, as Guzin, is now a dancer and performer, there is no Van Helsing but an old male doctor instead, no Renfield, and only one female vampire briefly in Dracula's castle like with Argento's adaptation. From here Dracula prays off the Lucy stand-in and eventually takes interest in Guzin. I unfortunately have to cut to the chase, hoping for an entertaining Turkploitation film when I started watching it, and say that this was a tedious viewing experience. Some of the film has amusement. Admittedly the subtitles were a part of this, but considering how battered the film looked in the version I viewed, maybe too obscure to have a DVD release, I can appreciate any type of subtitle that at least let's me understand what's going on. I can appreciate Dracula's male servant at the castle, with a giant, bushy moustache and going against his master's wishes by purposely helping Hawker to protect his neck. The few moments of supernatural powers of Dracula are depicted including crawling down a wall are watchable. And anyone can appreciate a fake bat transformation. But a lot of the film is tedious for one very simple reason - the pointless, unnecessary interest in dialogue. Here, with Dracula In Istanbul, I have proof that, unless it's to do with the subtitles and language barrier, that no one should attempt lengthy dialogue scenes unless they are good at them, and stick to action and events happening instead. So many genre films are clearly created by people who think it's better to have lengthy dialogue sequences which add no character development when you actually stop and think about them. The word, the monologue, conversation, is seen as immensely important in cinema, and for every example where it proves to be true, the rest of the time it's a holdover from theatre and a little bit from literature, though we only realise with the latter when you read a novel that dialogue is not necessarily the backbone of them compared to visual world building. Dialogue is only good when its good or hilarious.

From http://bocadoinferno.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Dracula-in-Istanbul-1953-4.jpg

Characters talk in Dracula In Istanbul talk. They talk a lot. Of their relationships and about Dracula, and none of it is needed. Most of it isn't funny intentionally or not, or interesting baring an occasional line. Some amusement is found in it, some interesting, one case where even in Turkish Dracula you have the famous "Children of the night" quote. But most of it is white noise, comparable to the many, swarming scratches and scars on the film on the version I saw, but at least the damage visually was registered, while at times I suddenly fell out of physical awareness of what was going on when characters started talking I admit parts of the film are blank in memory while I was watching it in real time. Only moments directly related to its supernatural story woke me up, connecting tangentially - those from the original tale or whenever Dracula is involved, like canoodling with a female victim by the sea in full sunlight (?!). This led to the film being a cut-up of sequences which I drifted through, registering only as vaguely interesting bits. This should be interesting for me, who references surrealism in these reviews and dream logic, realising in a film a vague connection of sequences thought-up in a haze, but here I felt the long drags even if it was in a stupor where the images didn't register.

From http://images.yuku.com.s3.amazonaws.com/image/png/
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Viewing this film forces me to realise that a big percentage of cult cinema - the space between appreciating a film for its flaws and "so bag its good" - is mostly worthless to me. Dare I say it, I'm growing up and realising that I cannot stand sitting through shonky overlong dialogue no matter what nationality it was originally written for. The first film covered for this season Things (1989) qualifies in this category of cinema, but movies like it are an exception because its beyond the merely incompetent on the technical level that most "bad" films are, which is why I like that film. I immediately think of the film that really does need the tag "Turksploitation" on it, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam aka. Turkish Star Wars (1982), one of the most technically incompetent films I've seen but it's not just another movie with risible production. Most bad films, like Dracula In Istanbul on this viewing, are bloated, over wordy, don't actually deliver anything of interest. Turkish Star Wars is, in a perverse way, the more technically accomplished film in terms of incompetence for its haphazard editing, its music, its content and set design, and most importantly not for scenes of actors mostly talking but actually giving you the goods in terms of memorable scenes. It becomes a good movie because of its memorable content and energy regardless of its technical imperfections.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIxsLg5TH7qVmkvXaxD8iVa9sXPeR1eBCgi11WfFNJvJhtTTfTV-yzBpb2nnkysFwGTH2_EHxDIvjmVGBy1iVrL51Z7oS1BB2y0DhbLzDYp8K2SiZKM-KxpHCclYAACEAF-TVpa-21Bmo/
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Dracula In Istanbul, despite the battered version I saw, was clearly a respectable film. It seems bad in fact to have used "Turksploitation" in context to it because barring the fact it's Dracula, it's the kind of mainstream horror movie for a big audience in tone, with romance, an opening quarter in a gothic castle, scares and even dance numbers. But its lifeless, with people sitting around or standing, talking, rather than events of interest taking place. Even the horror content, when you get to it, has no power to it. No fright, no tension. Dracula is not menacing or seductive here because he's not allowed to be. He's allowed a funny moment glaring at someone whilst  laying in his coffin because they've smacked him in the head with a shovel, but this isn't a role where the titular being really gets to terrify Istanbul at all. Baring the fact that a minature Koran, rather than a cross, is used to ward off Dracula, there's little in terms of interesting cultural additions with this, more surprising when Dracula's real life inspiration, Vlad the Impaler, was an enemy of Turkey, which should've lead to fascinating additions along with the religious and cultural differences from other Dracula adaptations. At the end there isn't even a climatic duel. It involves suddenly going into a graveyard, borrowing a blade and getting out after before someone is arrested, which is an exact part of the dialogue in the scene after. The remaining characters talk about life getting back to normal, completely casual and nonplussed, barring the fact one never wants to see garlic again. There is no jubilation, just as if a mosquito has just been swatted. Nothing has a weight and the result is dreary.

From http://images.yuku.com.s3.amazonaws.com/image/png/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Don't expect anything remotely unconventional here. A dance sequence gets ghoulish, keys on a piano moving on their own fruition, but that's it.

From http://bocadoinferno.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Dracula-in-Istanbul-1953-9.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Inherently, a Turkish Dracula is, because Turkish genre cinema is not really talked about. Turkish art cinema is talked about more  for obvious reasons, genre films looked down upon especially when they borrow music by John Williams. Only blogs and websites that really dig deep cover Turkish genre cinema, and I know that as a fact as, shameless plug, I write for a site called Videotape Swapshop that has many an entertaining Turksploitation review from my colleagues. This one I've covered would probably test a lot though, and I speak as a Turkish Star Wars fan. In tone and actual content, it's not a film for the site, a pedestrian and utterly dull movie that really shouldn't be here. I realise with a film like this that I need to put away my toys and act like an adult, to use the phrase, because this material was and never will be of interest for me. The closest to this that I love are films that are bizarre even placed next to similar films, and they are rare exceptions when the delight many get in these films is the overlong dialogue and bad fashion, which is not of interest for me. Only the curious should view this, and it's amazing now Dario Argento's Dracula (2012) is a peek above this in terms of quality even if it shares similar flaws.

Halloween 31 For 31: Long Weekend (1978)

From http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/
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Dir. Colin Eggleston

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

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

Halloween 31 For 31: Videodrome (1983)

From http://professormortis.files.wordpress.com
/2011/04/videodrome.jpg

Dir. David Cronenberg

So much couldn't have been predicted thirty years later from the first images we and sleazy cable-TV programmer Max Renn (James Woods) see when one of his techs comes across a mysterious signal, possible from a Malaysian satellite, of Videodrome, a static camera in a red room as women are brutalised and tortured by masked individuals. The obvious comparison to now is there, that the internet has gone further than anything television could do, beyond Renn's softcore sex and hardcore violence to the worst of humanity, especially when I had in mind the recent moral campaigns in my country of Britain over such content and internet regulation over the likes of "Revenge Porn". The way I see it, the motto of Brian O'Blivion (Jack Creley), a being who only exists on television who Renn needs to meet to figure out what Videodrome is, has to be modified, paraphrased, as 'the [visual] screen is the retina of the mind's eye'. Now the computer screen and the iPhone are conduits of the mind's eye, and it's significant that the idea in the centre of David Cronenberg's film, of mankind inexplicably linked to technology and the potential for it to effect their sense of reality, is less the evil of the technology or the content, but goes back to the whole issue of the human subconscious. As much as I support the morals of the campaigners that want to protect the world from the worst online, I heavily suspect they haven't the courage to think about the fact that all of this stems from the human mind itself. As Videodrome makes explicit, in what is effectively Cronenberg's paranoid conspiracy thriller by the way of sci-fi and body horror, the television is merely a conduit for the hallucinations Renn experiences that completely distort his sense of reality. Without spoiling the film for those who've yet to see it, which I heartily recommend, Videodrome is revealed to not need the torture show Renn gets addicted to work, possible to hide in a test screen, and it didn't materialise by itself but through human creation.

From http://www.revistacodigo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/videodrome-1.png

What I've now added to the film from my perspective is that recent issues with censorship and moral campaigns around the internet have pierced reality completely. The Dangerous Cartoons Act passed in Britain, which means illustrations or a mere drawing can quality as child pornography, in particular has completely questioned the notion of reality as, not only is there a dangerous of art being censored, but has also meant that people have been taken to court for thoughts rather than real acts. It's a truly Cronenbergian concept, one straight from this film, where a mere idea has more reality than a real crime itself, breaking the barrier between the real body and the mind. What makes this more distorting is the place the mind has in the middle of this, the centre of any thought, obscene or not. Later on in the film, someone tells Renn that no sane person, as he legitimately wanted to schedule Videodrome on his channel believing it was faked, would want to watch torture. Now that is up to debate with how some people clearly would watch this, adding troubling questions of human society, but it also means that the real problem in obscenity and crimes like this, that no moral campaigner I've read of wants to dare tackle, is the human mind and its desire for this sort of thing regardless of any censorship imposed.

From http://media.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/titles/
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Pretty heavy stuff to begin with, but David Cronenberg has always been a filmmaker where it is impossible to not think of the content in such complex thoughts. He managed, in films that could be seen as schlocky and enjoyed for their body horror, to pull from his scripts and ideas implications of such issues of obscenity, the mind and the subconscious that are difficult to merely digest. This is a film that is as much about televisions pulsating with flesh and vaginail stomach slits but the hardest, most striking horror within it is how the ideas are even stronger now even if the technology shown is obsolete. It makes the situation where Cronenberg is now more disappointing to me, apathetic to almost all his recent work. I had a chance to see his latest, Maps To The Stars (2014), at a cinema but decided against it with disinterest, more than happy to see it on DVD even if it was years later. Cosmopolis (2012), infecting itself in my mind like one of his many parasites in his films, has an enticement to be back to his best work on a rewatch, a ghost-like alien that may be able to connect the director's decision to make dramas with the heady ideas of the previous films of his. He has made dramas since The Dead Zone (1983), but they were never inherently dramas in the conventional sense up to Eastern Promises (2007), which is where I started to feel disinterested in him as a current director. The nature of drama as a genre is that it's probably the least able to give directors artistic creativity and the ability to ask real questions - it's a bourgeoisies, middle class thing of art films that feel immensely bland and not forcing you to think about their content. Crash (1996) or Dead Ringers (1988) are so far removed from what drama is now as a cinema genre. Even his depiction of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method (2011), which should've been a true excursion of the human mind, came off as merely okay, bland drama with no real questions and memorable thoughts in its skull. In hindsight, it's the least respectable, dirty little horror films that have more to say, Videodrome reproaching it after so many years causing me to think of all the issues with obscenity and the underside of the internet, from extreme porn to the disconnect from reality said of it, throughout watching the film.  It causes me to wish alongside his underrated sequel-of-sorts eXistenz (1999) that the third film in the trilogy about the web was to exist to complete the chain of thoughts. I can be thankful that the short film, The Nest (2014), that was made available to see on YouTube, gives the potential for him to return back to his roots without necessarily compromising what he wants to do now as a director, but anything could happen.

From http://altscreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Videodrome-1.jpg

I'm admittedly hesitant to try and review this film because, so well known, it's been written about by professional critics in greater thought and much more time than I have in this season to compose thoughts. The film itself is still great returning to it, a film I saw as I got into paracinema that I loved immediately back then, when a lot of films I would love later would divide me, and now has greater power now I can appreciate films that don't follow conventions. It's surprising though how small this film is on scale - in terms of actual locations the narrative takes place in, the small cast of characters, how quickly events happen - especially when I've learnt of how small the production was and of how much content from the original script and Cronenberg's ideas were excised from the final film. He's been viewed as a cold filmmaker, but that's far from the truth. When he does depict emotional content, he creates some of his best work; no one would dare call him a cold director is they watched a film like Dead Ringers. The thing is that his subjects are alienating for many. Characters in this film can openly talk about television being the third eye for mankind without any hesitance to their voice. The urban environments, especially in his Canadian productions, are claustrophobic modern works of architecture that become science fiction landscapes of the mind decades later, more part of the characters' psyches than real places. The film is very simple narratively, James Woods in a great performance as a man who is sucked into becoming a tool for a sinister group, or caught between two groups depending on your attitude to Brian O'Blivion's daughter Bianca O'Blivion (Sonja Smits). I wasn't kidding in saying it was Cronenberg's take on a political thriller, becoming it fully in the final act, but it's through the idea of what would happen if television could corrupt you, not through the programming itself but through the interaction of the human mind through a conduit. There is enough content here for two films. A sadomasochistic romance with radio broadcaster Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry of the band Blondie). Technology that can induce and even record hallucinations. The possibility to existing after death through Betamax. Psychological freak outs where reality is subjective and body horror gristly depicted through Rick Baker and the practical and special effects team who worked on the film. I could go further talking about the performances, Howard Shore's menacing score, the practical effects or the production design, but honestly it's all the ideas that the film generates that turns it into the great work it is.  

From http://s.mcstatic.com/thumb/8382352/22321712/4/
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As a film which depicts the dark side of human desire, it also depicts it as a transgressive progression. His feature debut Shivers (1975) showed the line between conservative and transgressive mentality that has been carefully balanced between in Cronenberg's work. It means I can start a review talking about the sombre ideas at the beginning, but can also see in Videodrome a fetishishtic film too. Of Renn and Brand becoming a couple where she likes burning herself with cigarettes, letting him pierce her ears with a needle for orgasmic pleasure, Videodrome's torture and electrocution on in the background as a turn-on for both of them. As worse as human desire can be seen to be, there is a confusion by moral campaigners too where they are looking outside through the window pane of how complicated it also is, frightening to them but between consenting adults, particularly with bondage and fetishes. That doesn't mean the film doesn't question this too, brought to mind when Brand, on a TV interview show where she meets Renn, talks about human beings being over stimulated in their lives. Crash (1996) would push these questions even further, while not necessarily damning the actions of the characters, which is why the film was briefly banned by Westminster in England. For David Cronenberg, the issue of desire and fantasy are more complicated than morality would want it to be, sometimes for the better, but also with a concern about it as well, a judged view that is never heavy handed. This is of course the director who found beauty in disease, in cancerous sores and body mutilation, viruses and parasites. The deformations here, through the practical effects, have a lingering delight in them as well as being repulsive, not to mention scenes like James Woods probing his stomach vagina with the phallic nozzle of his gun, something which doesn't hide its metaphors at all. The films after A History of Violence (2005), the last film to stand out on first viewing, unless Cosmopolis grows in quality, have little of this sense of complex layers, contradictions and prying into sides unexpected in such themes. Far from childish nihilism, it feels matter-of-fact, informed by the director's atheism and view of science, which accepts death and decay and tries to see it as liberating as life is. Videodrome was a premonition for the underside of mediums like the internet, but it doesn't just come off as a condemnation, accepting the complexity of these issues through a cultish horror film. Rarely can you be this detailed with horror films that flirt with said ideas.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EQtHBj-z3KM/TKQFQ9SV2yI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/
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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

As with a film like Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965), the films are very conventional but reveal their abstract natures if one stops to think about the implications of what happened. The basic structure of Videodrome, for all its hallucinations and weird imagery, is not strange inherently. Icky, perverse, indeed weird on a surface view, but not strange as a movie existing against conventions of structure or tone. It's the ideas if you think of them, and place the thoughts you have onto the film again, adding what you've considered, that makes it unconventional. It's not seeing a character kissing giant lips on as pulsating, aroused television that is unconventional, but someone offering in this scene the notion that sexuality exists in the technology itself as well as the content, more so now as concepts as Skype that didn't exist back in the eighties are common for us, and have the potential for such "perverse" sexuality in them in ways the film never even thought of.

From http://alphabeticalfilm.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/videodrome12.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

David Cronenberg is not only one of my favourite directors, still despite my apathy with the current films, but it's pretty obvious he'll be talked about here, many times from a large list of potential reviews, many of them possibly getting on the Abstract list. The thing is now, revisiting Videodrome, that it's not necessarily the content itself but the tone and implications of the content which will make the films much more interesting to cover for this blog, and be the influence on where they place, if they place, onto said list.