Halloween 31 For 31: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

From http://www.wildculture.com/sites/default/
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Dir. Rouben Mamoulian

From Dracula to Jekyll and Hyde, one literary creation to another. The humane doctor Jekyll (played here by Fredric March) creates of elixir that inexplicably backfires and brings out Mr. Hyde, all of his evil and base desires personified in a repulsive beast man (also played by March). It's less about duality than the notion of evil and/or animalistic tendencies existing in all people, even the good, the undesirable of one's self unavoidable. Explicit to this film is that, set in Victorian England, though the main actors speak in Hollywood American, the views of chastity and modesty are heavily restricting, Jekyll waiting in agony to marry his fiancée Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart) but prevented by her father's code, the result pushing him as well to becoming Hyde repeatedly until it cannot be controlled. From there, there's romance, pathos and horror, well acted with some levels of heightened melodrama, rare these days, later on when tragedy is closing in.

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What immediately caught me is how bold this film is cinematically, as the first few minutes or so of the film are entirely in first person from Jekyll's eyes, the camera seeing through the main character's perception. Drastically bold camera and editing tricks continue throughout the film. More first person shots, tracking along like the beginning one or single frames facing a character directly as they talk straight at the viewer. Dissolves to new scenes linger on so more of the original scene plays out on top of the next, two spaces existing in one time, and another form of transition, an angular screen wipe, does the same, almost always stopping in the middle so an unconventional form of split screen, between two different environments, takes place. It is exceptional filmmaking, and it's more significant in context of the use of sound at this point. This is only a few years after The Jazz Singer (1927), which famously included a few scenes of sound, though mostly a silent film, thus helping to push cinema into a sound medium as well as a visual one; it was still a problematic issue in the early thirties to have cinematic grammar as bold as the silent films because the sound technology could restrict what people could do. Here, there are so many elaborate stylistic moments in this adaptation of the Robert Lewis Stevenson's novel that it's amazing to see. And it's as much to the talent of the director Rouben Mamoulian as it would've been the film crew; while I need to rewatch it, an earlier film Applause (1929) by Mamoulian - which was a film that had to adapt to include sound while there were still silent films being made or having sound added afterwards - was immensely accomplished considering the situation with this new technology whilst being cinematic. It adds to the story, never becoming mere style but adding a grandeur. Just for the first transformation of Jekyll to Hyde, a lengthy build up, agonising knowing what'll happen, then the transformation itself in first person from Jekyll's eyes with a delirious spinning camera and silent film levels of superimposition of flashbacks, hazy greys and swirling light effects, this level of elaborate cinematic grammar is a godsend to the material. Even the more conventional grammar, a panning camera from one side of a location to the other side, has a sense of a whole toolkit being made available again when a film like Dracula (1931) was frozen into static scenes because of the technology.

From http://kinomusorka.ru/views/data/images/bd9f346ad762cb4d31ab28acd33568e8.jpg

Also with this adaptation, it's a Pre-Hays Code film. The Hays Code, which would severely restrict the content of Hollywood films unless the creators found ways to hide material in their films skilfully, had been created around this time but there were a few years, before the rules were fully enforced, where the films got away with harsher content. The film is pretty chaste, despite some bold sexuality, and "tame" by modern standards, but its frankness is surprising. It's major subplot, which connects to the main and lines it with a dark message, with the character Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins) being trapped by Hyde as his pet, is still shocking now in theme, dealing with domestic abuse in a blunt way without being explicit. Against the pantomime hysterics of Hyde or the horror of the rest of the film, this still a brutal and nasty story arch to have, especially as a viewer will have it in the back of their mind when it gets to Jekyll having this in the back of his mind too. In general, whilst the film tries to get moralistic at points, Jekyll proclaiming to God and planning to sacrifice his love Miriam for punishment for his sins, the film doesn't try to cover up the dark material even if it doesn't repeat on about it through the narrative. The bluntness is refreshing, without being childishly nihilistic, and for being in a Hollywood film this old when, after the Hays Code, you do find some films kneecapped and prevented from being this thorough in the morality at play. The film itself shows its hand in a poignant way, halfway through, to Jekyll and to the viewer, as the doctor had intended, through his compound drink, to remove the evil and leave a good demigod in himself and others - a bird singing beautifully in a tree, with Jekyll admires, repeating an affirmative mantra, only for a black cat to appear in the tree and, off-screen, kill and probably eat the bird. As a horror film, first and foremost, it can still have some thoughts of interest as a morality play that, thankfully, didn't cop out and try to soften this message.

From http://www.sensesofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/images/directors/07/42/jekyll.jpg

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

It doesn't qualify for the list, but it does contain cinematic grammar that, by itself, is abstract and worth briefly talking about. The first person sequences are inherently abstract in context of the camera usually being a third person onlooker to scenes, the position within a person's head, through their eyes, disorientating space for what viewers seeing through another's perceptions, (Lady In The Lake (1947), the film noir almost all in first person, will inevitably crop up for this reason if covered on the site). The use of dissolves, screen wipes and the entirety of the first Hyde transformation manipulates the form of this narrative in fascinating ways. The whole film is not abstract, too normal altogether to qualify, but it's as entertaining, especially in the context of a horror film, to see such unconventional tricks being used for added impact. That it won and was nominated for Oscars proves that once the Academy also had a sense of taste to appreciate good filmmaking like this.

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A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Probably not, but as the previous paragraph, and the film itself, can attest to, a mainstream horror adaptation can be aesthetically bold, have the ability to explore serious content and still be a good film to just enjoy. With countless, countless adaptations of this story in existence in cinema, there's more than enough interpretations to dissect and compare to this one, which will be a difficult film to top in terms of an adaptation. That is enough to make something like this particular one appropriate for the blog.

Halloween 31 For 31: King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962)

From http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/
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Dir. Ishirō Honda

After seeing him climb the Empire State Building in King Kong (1933) for this season, I can see the great ape in a position drastically different, a result of the original film's success, getting into a fist fight with the legendary Japanese kaiju Godzilla as depicted through TohoScope and full colour. First thing to mention is that the version I viewed is the American release which has a drastically different tone, including scenes of an American news reporter and his correspondents. The result actually added to the film, though I want to see the original Japanese release, furthering the paracinema nature of the viewing experience with a reassuring American voice informing the viewer within a room you'd might have found in Willy Wonka's bachelor pad. The film's title is its plot. Godzilla suddenly appears out of an iceberg and goes to Japan for a rampage. Kong, now the god of an island populated by Japanese extras painted up as African tribesmen, making the tribe on the original Skull island, including a couple blacked face white actors, modern in comparison, ends up being acquired by a Japanese advertisement company. (All with the help of giving cigarettes to the natives, even the kids, and the effect of a berry also from the island with a narcotic quality to get the ape high.) Kong eventually gets to Japan and sizes up Godzilla, leading to a fist fight between both monsters as the humans hope Kong wins.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtrD5Qdsf2x5X3_BY2iwH0mA9SNVfZMlS2cg3FVHW9YsxHwCXvsUmWTDEd-PfJ7mcvDLpe-xoL7HKYRGbsnyGyMmVGwyBkezegmZcZ8cg2jTbatXjk5XyN-CCMjA8qbPtabIrGczkgDfk/s1600/King+Kong+vs+Godzilla+1962+movie+pic1.jpg

Out of the films of Ishirō Honda I've seen, becoming a favourite director, this is admittedly the schlockiest of them all, the film compared to the others that, for all their kitsch, are highly artistic and spell bounding in their imagination, while this one is a lot more silly and obviously absurd. It doesn't help that Godzilla has googly eyes or Kong looks more like a yeti than an ape, evoking Tony Schiavone commentating over the fight between the two*. A lot of the more fantastical aspects of these Honda productions feel more childish and amusing, as a result, in a great way here - the models representing military vehicles, the gaudy bright colours, the pan international tone despite being a Japanese film dubbed or otherwise. The drastic changes made for the American version - added footage, use of pre-existing footage and music from other films and how it juggles the added material with the original content - does give it a campier tone. The other Honda films I've seen were in their uncut Japanese versions, which for all their kitschy aspects have a serious, rollicking tone to them, thus leading me to consider that American sci-fi films from this time, and their reedits of other countries' sci-fi, is far and away more dated and ridiculous in tone to the Japanese ones. Still great and entertaining, but possibly more ridiculous than even the content in the Asian films in terms of tone.

From http://www.fantastique-arts.com/photos/6647.jpg

Actually describing the film in more detail is difficult because it is all a wait for the dramatic fight, which if you watch expecting a colossal, fight-to-end-all-fights, or one from a modern day blockbuster, you'll be disappointed. The film waits it's time with diversions. Comedy in the two people sent by the Japanese advertisement company to the Kong island who, with a translator, play up a shtick that involves exaggerated facial features and bumbling about. Their boss is a complete buffoon for more comedy. There is a slight drama involving a romantic couple and their friends in the midst of this monster rampage, briefly evoking Kong's continuing obsession with grabbing women and scaling buildings with them. Outside the titular two's various interactions, there is a giant squid attack, mostly done with real squid on model sets that, despite the effects looking utterly ropey today, is entertaining just to see a real squid (or four) being plonked on a model shamelessly. (More so knowing three were released back into the wild, and the fourth went into the stomach of  special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya afterwards). And the fight between Godzilla and King Kong? They interact on numerous occasions beforehand, which usually consists of Kong throwing a boulder at Godzilla, Godzilla using his fire breath, and Kong, always checking if his fur has been singed, trundles off. The actual fight is two men in suits crashing into each other, which is fun, not the greatest fight that could've happened, but considering the film still enjoyable. The film has a goofy, childish tone, and it's not a coincidence, after this film did well financially, the franchise called Godzilla started fully afterwards, growing into its own style drastically different from Honda's original 1954 film in favour of a gaudier style and rubber suit fights.

From http://m.cdn.blog.hu/me/mediaviagra/image/1962_king_kong_vs_godzilla_2.jpg

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

Japanese kaiju/sci-fi/horror from this era, as I view more of it, could get an entry on the Abstract list, the mix of the aesthetic style and the fantastical content potent enough to be trippy to modern eyes. Honda has a likely candidate, in fact, with Mantango: Attack of the Mushroom People (1963), but that's a literal mushroom trip for another time. As for King Kong Vs. Godzilla, it has nothing that really qualifies as weird or unconventional.

From http://www.notcoming.com/images/reviews/l/kingkongvsgodzilla.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Now having seen the original King Kong, there are numerous continuations of the character for me to see, becoming a fan of the ape. This isn't the last time Japan, or Ishirō Honda, took interest in Kong either. (If Frankenstein's monster can become a kaiju, nothing's off limits). And fittingly, as one monster was brought to Japan, the country's own would grow in strides to be a pop culture icon himself, as passing of the touch unintentionally happening here regardless of who won the fight. The film itself is a silly diversion, the drastic retooling for US release having as much a peculiar effect on the content too. Far from the best Japanese sci-fi films of this era for me, far from Honda's or Godzilla's best, but utterly entertaining. It's the kind of flamboyant pulp that is just entertaining and that's all I'd wished for from it.

(*Forgive the obscure wrestling references, but if you know what the reference is, I couldn't resist.)

Halloween 31 For 31: Dracula (2012)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_MIFXZic2wI/Uc7yVGqt5KI
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Dir. Dario Argento

So where to start with this? By saying I disagree with the opinion of fellow Dario Argento fans that he's tarnished his reputation. It's only with this film, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, that I worry a little about his as a creator of films I like. With a few exceptions, I've seen almost all of his films from his groundbreaking giallo debut The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970) to the films of the last decade that have caused fans to say he has "lost it". But baring a couple, including Mother of Tears (2007), I've seen most of the films of this decade or so and they aren't as bad as their reputations suggest. Sleepless (2001) has flaws, but as a film many saw as a return to form, it is growing as an underrated films in his filmography for me. The Card Player (2004) is ludicrous narratively, and the decision with uber talented cinematographer Benoît Debie to give the gritty influence of a film like Lars Von Trier's The Idiots (1998) to a crime thriller may have not be that successful an idea, but it's still solid in terms of what it is. I need to rewatch his first entry for the Masters of Horror series Jennifer (2005), but bear in mind that, like all the directors in that series, it was as effected by the producers of it and their expectations despite the lack of restrictions said to be given to those involved, something that'll be of importance for my thoughts on Dracula. And then there's Giallo (2009). Not a good film, and Adrian Brody's performance (or performances) are absurd, but the film has become strangely memorable and, contrary to many, its controversial twist ending for me saved it, an inspired trick on the audience that Argento has done the exact same of in his older films and showed he still had a spark in his filmmaking. With Dracula where my concerns have finally been raised, the problem is that, referencing Masters of Horror, the issue of how genre and horror films are made in today's film industries have had a profuse effect on the quality of them, especially for old guard from the seventies and eighties, like Argento and everyone who worked on Masters of Horror. Argento is an older director now, and in an industry where producers want young upstarts, he is stuck in a competitive industry that is mainly about product. This is no longer the era, like the seventies, where you can play six degrees of separation and link Federico Fellini with one of Argento's films through a scriptwriter or an actor. The films before Dracula, even Giallo, never felt like the worse had happened, and as a growing fan of his, the failures are as fascinating as the great movies. Dracula is going to be hard to adjust to not because its diabolical, but because it's something worse than bad: it's mediocre.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqSrXBsxssVgaDBiK08ES1KhPG1Tc2GiW5K4loO2RqpQKdqyzQ5s3ehMBYH0U7MD71OReSQYmjD8GryY7ED7rVOVAwP_FK4NB5dGzXByPqdqKbuDqFxvEaOrius91sRmnJCoKXqSYCUsE/s1600/Dracula+3D+Dario+Argento+2012+movie+pic1.jpg

As an adaptation of the story of Dracula - Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde) visits Transylvania as part of his work for the Count Dracula (Thomas Kretschmann), who turns out to be a vampire with intentions for his wife Mina (Marta Gastini) - I can't help but compare it to the others I've seen. There's F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), unofficial but the first (a great film growing in quality more and more I think about it); Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) (desperately in need of a rewatch); Werner Herzog's 1979 reimagining/tribute to Murnau's film (one of Herzog's best films and one of the best horror films of the seventies); Francis Ford Coppola's delirious 1992 adaptation (baroque, madder than a box of frogs, and so underrated that I even love Keanu Reeves's butchering my country's dialect); and Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary (2002) (disappointing for me, as of yet, in comparison to what he could've done, due to my apathy for how dance and ballet is shot in films like his). Argento's take is pretty similar to the others, though there are changes, everything set in its European location without any mention of England, and tiny changes to Dracula and Jonathan Harker that are interesting. It is unfortunately a bland, almost lifeless take on the material on a first viewing. The problem is that it doesn't feel like a film made by Dario Argento, career slump or not, which even Giallo felt like. The symbolic nature of the film's problem is how I finally caught around to seeing a film that has been delayed for a year or so for Britain - a straight-to-DVD release in my nearest Sainsbury's supermarket, packed and finally released to tie into a Hollywood Dracula film coming out soon, from an obscure company hoping to take advantage of the tie-in, far from something for me to object to, (in fact I praise them for being opportunistic), but with a horrible taste in my mouth of what the film feels like compared to all the other straight-to-video films around it on the racks. These films that may star people like Danny Trejo, or as he's in this film as Van Helsing, Rutger Hauer, that are not the films which have a buzz around them on cult film sites, or some interest, but suddenly appear in supermarkets one weekday inexplicably.

From http://www.spetteguless.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/
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There are virtues to Dracula. The look of the film at times, through its lighting, is beautiful, not surprising since cinematographer Luciano Tovoli worked on Argento's Suspiria (1977). On the opposite end of the spectrum, the few cheesy moments, not enough as one's wishes if the film isn't going to be that great, are rewarding for their amusement. The few truly awful moments aren't bad because, inherently, their enjoyment makes them good things in the reaction they caused in me. How Asia Argento's Lucy, when she is turned into a vampire, makes odd facial expression with her fangs exposed that are supposed to be frightening but feel like she's wondering if she's left the kettle on. Hauer's also somnambulistic take on Van Helsing which, if intentional, is actually great in its completely lack of hysterics, taking everything as garden variety vampire infestation that is a pain in the backside rather than life-threatening. The softcore erotica that quickly vanishes after the first quarter unfortunately, but is fun while it lasts*. The excess of this softcore tone, Russ Meyer tinged, around actress Miriam Giovanelli, as Dracula's bitten servant, whose first screen appearance is an extreme close-up of her cleavage, and in one seduction scene later, seems to have a spring loaded nightgown which can just spring off leaving her naked. There is also the praying mantis... part of this film's background includes a marketing trailer, showing the entire narrative including the ending, that was leaked onto the internet and people, like myself, went out of their way to see, the giant praying mantis already infamous then. In context of the narrative, including a shadow on the wall, it's a hysterical site.

From http://concentricocelotparty.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/argentosdracula1.jpg

But for the most part however Dracula is a characterless, perplexing creation that doesn't feel like an Argento film. Argento is not known for such a pedestrian tone even with Giallo. Nor softcore titillation. It's a Euro-pudding co-production so at odds with anything made before, possibly campy on purpose but with that suggestion, not an attempt by an Argento fan to defend this film, there is the issue of whether there is a joke behind all this in the first place. It's a film that spends so much time explaining things - about Dracula, about vampires - that pop culture has educated us as viewers in, regardless of language barriers, which means this film, written by Argento and three other people, feel like it's from an antiquated, alien world which has only discovered this folk law. (With Murnau's Nosferatu and the segments explaining the vampire, the film, bearing in mind it's from the twenties, uses more esoteric descriptions  that make it far more poetic and interesting than explaining the obvious as a 2012 film in Dracula does). The films looks great, but there is none of the cinematic gymnastics that made Argento's reputation amongst many other things, rigid and statically shot scenes that feel like a stage play where characters enter shots and speak their dialogue. Shot in 3D it just means that the special effects, including Dracula's many transformations in creatures like wolves, are plastic and weightless as they were obvious meant to come out at the viewer in the cinema.  Claudio Simonetti, of the prog rock band Goblin, who worked with Argento and created exceptional music, doesn't create a memorable score here as he would based on prog rock and electronic music, but instead an uninspired and dull classical score. That's before the awful symphonic metal song he wrote for the end credits that, with its female vocals, was clearly meant to capitalise on the success of this music in Europe - through bands like Nightwish, Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Epica etc. - and ends up showing it at its blandest and horrifically average.

From http://www.filmmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/dracula3D.jpg

The song itself raises alarm bells for me that complicates viewing Dracula. Argento is guilty of creating this film, but I have to wonder, as what has happened to other directors of his era, that the notion that he's lost his touch is not necessarily the truth. Even on Giallo, a member of Argento's family produced the film, and up until the eighties, his films for the most part written by himself only. I put up with Simonetti's awful end credit song, looking at the credits, seeing as a co-production how many groups have their fingers in this cinematic pie, including a sentence on how the entire cast drank a specific type of drink, an advertisement of all things in the end credits of an Argento movie. The producers of this film go past double digits. The film continues on as a generic take on the Dracula story, leading to a final anti-climatic conflict. Yet there is still an additional, abruptly added, twist which is supposed to make you sympathise for Thomas Kretschmann's Dracula, a trait in modern cinema to humanise the monsters, and as much as it has naked breasts and blood, it's very safe as a horror movie. It reminds me as well of Bathory: Countess of Blood (2008), another of Euro-production that suddenly appeared for me and, for its great aspects including the visual look, was a bland film straight-jacketed by the requirements of following a dull script, worse in that, knowing that director, Juraj Jakubisko, has significant acclaimed but as yet never seeing any other films, having my first experience of him slightly tainted.  I am considering putting all this together that as much may be blamed on those who produced this movie. This thought feels more rational and more of a legitimised hypothesis because, if Argento had truly lost it, he would've made his equivalent of A Cat In The Brain (1990), Lucio Fulci's film from near the end of his credit that is debatable in terms of quality, but in its frantic, difficult tone still retains a unique personality. Or he's make Bruno Mattei's Cruel Jaws (1995) if he wanted to go further down in quality, to the bottom of the barrel, but still make a memorable film for its inanity. Or, like the late Ken Russell, he would've made films in garage that are for only the hardcore fans, or done a John Carpenter or a Wes Craven and only appear occasionally to make a film and just enjoy life. This is a technically competent work that feels like anyone could have helmed it, it's blandness a more frightening proposition then if Argento made terrible films from now on because, if this is a sign of anything, it'll lead to a bland, stale later filmography then something memorable, good or bad. At least with a Giallo its memorable, not forgettable.

From http://s1.dmcdn.net/QRrK/1280x720-8TC.jpg

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

Nothing, none, nada.

From http://www.ukhorrorscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ad4.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

This is everything that I have no interest in covering, and the only reason I did here, and take interest in this one, is because it's a Dario Argento movie. It's only real hope in improving for me is if it grows into a peculiarity in the auteur's filmography, able to be appreciated for its failure and a giant praying mantis inexplicably appearing in it. In fact, hilariously, writing this review has caused the film to be of more interest despite my problems with it and the crushing disappointment of neither getting a good or memorably bad movie. But it's this kind of conventional, uninteresting straight-to-DVD film that I never consider watching, only picking up the cases out of curiosity in the supermarket then putting down soon after. The only thing that hurts me is that, with it being the only Argento film to be available in a British supermarket, people are going to equate this as his style, since the DVD company who released it had the bright idea of saying it was by a master director over his least interesting work. That's far more of a concern, along with the fact that he may end up having to make more films like this, than if he suddenly lost his mind and technical abilities as a film director.

(* No, I don't include the nude scene Asia Argento has in the film in this, which some may view as creepy because her father is the director, as the context of the scene is not erotic. Frankly as well, if a film causes one to think about when an actress is a blood relative of the director but also an actor wanting to perform in the film regardless of the relationship, The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) brings up more tricky questions in its content.)

Halloween 31 For 31: Axe (1977)

From http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI3OTIyMzE4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFt
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Dir. Frederick R. Friedel

Somehow this Halloween season has become a Video Nasties series by accident. Covering Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) was just a coincidence, the others a result of how the choices for films to cover has panned out. So far, my belief from one of the reviews of the nasties I've done, that they have a higher quality to them then their reputation suggests they have, have been true. Maybe I defended something like Frozen Scream (1975) too much, but in comparison to what a Video Nasties list would look like if it was collected films from now onto it, the real list has a lot more variability and quality for all the films on it that are poor. Call it dismissive of today's horror and cult cinema, but it's also baring in mind that the ability now for anyone to make a film, a great thing, comes with a bad side that the technology and distribution allows anyone to make a film. With the older films that populated the video nasties list, only the determined seemed to be willing to make a movie because of the resources and time needed. Axe is one such example, a low American exploitation film which for the most part is the one film that feels inappropriate to have covered for this season. Three criminals, (Jack Canon, Ray Green and director Frederick R. Friedel himself), run from the law, two of them committing brutality for fun against anyone they encounter. They eventually get to a house in the country where the quiet, introverted Lisa (Leslie Lee) lives with her disabled grandfather (Douglas Powers). As they become more forceful, she eventually snaps, leading to incidents that do make Axe appropriate for the season in its gruesomeness.

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YCh4JuTyHYc/S9Ax53KCq8I/
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Like Whispering Corridors (1998), these two drastically different films, of different themes and countries of origins, are nonetheless genre films that are drama heavy, with emphasis on the dialogue and the acting rather than horror, and like the other film, Axe is a lot more compelling than most award worthy dramas because there is no pretence to the material. The dialogue at times is rudimentary, and the story to its end is slight, but there is enough detail and texture to both to make the drama interesting. It's an incredibly short feature film, only sixty six minutes long, and to its benefit, with vibe comparable to fellow Nasty The Last House on the Left (1972), it's many scenes of drama before the titular axe comes into play never become tiresome, and the film is unable to have an flab to it, so everything onscreen and heard is of importance for the drama or the plot. For the most part, the film is a sombre, slower paced work that is very realistic and downbeat in tone. When it gets closer to the breaking point for Lisa, the transition to the final act, the film uses a few moments of unreal imagery, such as an edit showing a bathroom mirror broken with blood, to represent the psychological effect the events are having on the Lisa character. As a film with a minimal cast, and in one environment after the first quarter with the criminals, including a pretty nasty sequence in a grocery store with a female employee, it works as an entertaining, grimy feature that feels like a chamber piece. It never drags its feet along, procrastinating, yet neither does it become paper thin to the point its vacuous. There is enough in each character that they stand out, including one of the criminals being sympathetic, stuck with the others, adding to the conflict as the film reaches its conclusion.

From http://stigmatophiliablog.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/axe-mirror.jpg

As a nasty it's not shocking in terms of an offensive work. It is pretty grim though instead. The opening scene in a hotel as the criminals terrorise someone, the reasons why never explained, merely establishes their characters as reprehensible killers that sets up the character dynamics. As is the grocery store sequence which is probably the most horrifying moment, still shocking today, as it involves humiliation and an improvised game of William Tell. The actual axe brutalisation is slight, as the film is much more casual and moody in tone, removing any potential bad taste from the material. It takes itself seriously, so the violent never becomes lurid, instead effective when required. That doesn't stop it from being creepy, but through tension, as some inexplicable drops of red are seen on the stairs in a lengthy dramatic moment. The closest to full blown horror is in the final scene, involving dinner and a fireplace, which does have an impact and really freaked me as a viewer, despite the obvious of it but because the concept evoked so much in little actually seen. Altogether Axe works as a subtle, quiet work; a lot of the films on the nasties list, along with the ultraviolent schlock, were surprisingly subtle like Axe when you see many of them, suggesting that horror and genre cinema was as capable between the eras covered in the list, the sixties to early eighties, of subtlety as they were shock and revulsion. I confess that the last time I saw Axe, the first time many years ago, I found it unbelievably dull, but that was in response to a slow, muted style to the work - little gore, emphasis more on the drama, low budget and raw around the edges - that I was not capable of "getting" into from a diet of more lavish or ultraviolent films I was on as a younger adult. I was not able to appreciate films like it through their original contexts, but if seeing these video nasties again here, or the first time, has taught me anything in this season, they have developed characters which shine out, virtues that have been ignored when even covering the nasties decades later when most were unbanned and available.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YCh4JuTyHYc/S9Ax6x-Ya-I/
AAAAAAAAAyo/SskSUQIzPgE/s1600/axegangsters.png

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

Axe has moments that take advantage of feeling nightmarish, or part of Lisa's mental collapse, but the whole film is more of a rough toned, slightly mean spirited genre film with more realism and heavy drama.

From http://residualechoes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-23.png

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Instead it belongs in the camp of fascinating American films that shifted the line between genres and tone from the seventies, those that could be incredibly idiosyncratic in their styles and unique. Axe is a film for the blog, though stuff like this that never intended to be surreal or peculiar would be better served if discussed in another way. Something which might be worth looking into for myself.

Halloween 31 For 31: King Kong (1933)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
commons/f/f3/Kingkongposter.jpg

Dirs. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

Finally, since an unknown period where I first saw an image of the legendary ape, as a child like most of us when we dig into books about horror films, I've seen King Kong. The original version, not one of the many remakes or spin-offs. Here's a slight tangent - why do we take so long to see established classics, leading to many of us having a list each of films we're ashamed of never seeing? Probably because we know - the films in question almost always available, usually preserved for future prosperity or in heavy rotation for new formats or special edition releases by studios - the film can be prioritised in favour of lesser known ones and those in danger of being left on the wayside, even if it's ten or more years later you finally get round to the well known film. This is neither helped by the way the DVD and Blu-Ray industry works - my most feared and despised phrases are "limited edition", "out-of-print" or "bankrupt or out-of-business DVD company" - and while they are yet, thankfully, less common for me then I'd worry about them to be, there is a bad habit of mine to worry about this and completely neglect all the well known films that deserve to be seen. Thankfully King Kong is no longer an issue.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fTAuUQ8dmHY/UiAX08n_vVI/
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Back to the film itself, it's well known and entrenched in pop culture - parodied many times, remade twice, the latter by Peter Jackson. In complete contrast to its 2005 remake, with its longer length and added dramatics, the original version in comparison to the mega-blockbuster version feels like a b-movie, which could've transitioned to a cheaper work with far less spectacular effects in the fifties. The lack of pretence is surprising, but it's also refreshing, as it certainly has the gloss behind it with its elaborate crowd scenes and sets. It's just that it never troubles itself with pretence, closer to those monster b-flicks of decades later. A group of people, lead by risk taking, adventurous film director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong)  go to Skull Island, hoping the legend of a god called 'Kong' is true. The down-on-her-luck Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), after found by Denham trying to shoplift an apple from a grocery stand, is given a moment of wondrous luck, not only given a paying job to help her off her feet but also one as a lead actress in his planned film. In a funny anecdote by Denham, the reason he had to have an actress, choosing her, is because the critics demanded his films have romance in them, impossible in not evoking the hoops Hollywood films have to go through to appeal to everyone now. Also for her favour is that one of the crew of the ship, John Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), is attracted to her and she starts to like him too. Unfortunately there is the issue of the tribe on Skull Island and Kong. Cue a giant stop motion ape. Kong himself marks a flag in the rise of stop motion as an art form, the work of Willis H. O'Brien on him stunning for me to see, but added to knowing the individuals who learnt from his techniques. Personally the most interesting thing as a viewer is that, while the central character here too, he is simply a brutish beast, the monster of a b-movie to threaten the human characters. He has too much charisma, through O'Brien's talents, to be merely a plot device, but he's still a giant, violent gorilla who wrecks anything in his path even though he doesn't have concepts of good and evil in his simian head. Admittedly the circumstances, though you're entirely on the side of the human characters, or are supposed to, are probably why he has become such an iconic, sympathetic even as a beast. That, and for me, how much the poor bugger has to put up with, especially as whilst still on Skull Island, he has to protect poor Ann Darrow three times from the dinosaurs and other beasts living around him one-after-one without a break, not leaving him along and with the human interfering with his business. The only thing that may put you against Kong is that, in an eyebrow raising moment where he peels Darrow's clothing, he is more than likely a perverted monkey, but I don't want to go any further in that directions.

From http://walshscifi.pbworks.com/f/1329345312/king-kong-1933-1.jpeg

There is a danger that next to the ape, pervert or not, the human characters will become uninteresting. Thankfully this film is entrenched in the rules of pulp storytelling found in short stories and adventure comics - make sure the characters have enough to like, enough charisma, even in the Chinese chef on the ship's crew who gets a line or two to make him memorable, but not waste time with fluff like "drama" or "psychology" that'll get in the way of a romp and a giant ape fighting a dinosaur. Even Wray, who is a proto-scream queen here, continually in high pitch or fainting, never becomes a flimsy damsel in distress. (Interestingly, she does remind me physically of Naomi Watts, who would play Darrow in Peter Jackson's version). The spectacle itself around them is entertaining because of the pulpy nature. The practical effects look fake now, but the stop motion and superimposition of said effects with real actors (not their stop motion doubles) has a magic to them that's still exists, shining more in fact knowing how painstakingly hard it must have been for those involved to have to, frame-by-frame, move Kong and the other beasts to make up a single minute of footage, let alone a whole feature's worth of effects. Their artificiality also adds to their virtue, the weight still there but the fantastical nature of the effects, because they are obvious,  equal. Case in point is Kong himself, moments of fluid, tremendously detailed expression and gesture in the model through O'Brien's work, but also there is a spasmodic twitch to all examples of the art form I've seen, here and in films now that use stop motion in a reflective quality, where to fit the fact the ape is given life through constant movement, even his fur, possibly by accident, is in constant flux and as alive. By the end, the skill to give Kong life helps immensely, as powerful now seeing the iconic Empire State Building sequence as it might've been back in the thirties, only now the casual lack of pretence makes the scene more worthwhile for me to see finally in its original context. Especially in vast contrast to Peter Jackson's take, seen once all the way through, seen in fragments on holiday this year, including the Empire State Building scene, which is so overtly dramatic, emotionally arch that it's terrible kitsch, not even the good kitsch with reflection and reward to it.

From http://www.filmforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Copertina1.jpg

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

There is a strangeness to stop motion because of its artificiality mixed with the skill in its creation. But aside from that, there wasn't any chance of this qualifying for the list.

From http://www.soundonsight.org/wp-content/uploads/
2014/06/900-8_king_kong_blu-ray_.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Is King Kong appropriate for a Halloween season? Well it involves a giant ape, monster movies appropriate for the season, as with giant dinosaurs terrorising people. There is the infamous spider pit scene, deemed too gruesome and lost, that sounds like it went into the horror abruptly in an adventure romp. As much as I have no interest in Jackson's remake, his remaking of the lost scene sounds interesting to see, having been made available and done inbetween making his own adaptation of the entire movie. The original film itself is also worth taking a slot in this just for me being able to see it. Knowing the influence this film has had on popular culture and that a lot of films have replicated the plot of this over and over again, be they a- to z-grade movies, and that this has had influence in everything from stop motion effects in other movies to Kong having a major role in a Godzilla film as a titular opponent in Japan. While the planes and beauty both caused his end, Kong is still a beloved and immortalised creation, and the links to this film make it necessary to have in the blog.  

Halloween 31 For 31: Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)

Had to use the poster iconic to Brits like me
(http://grandguignolexperience.com/zombi2/zombieflesheatersuk.jpg)

(Aka. Zombi 2)

Dir. Lucio Fulci

The "Godfather of Gore" tag that Lucio Fulci has had over him, which has yet stuck him in the back as Dario Argento or Mario Bava were acclaimed, has never been the thing that led me to view his films. Irritating circumstances mean that a huge amount of his filmography is not available or limited in availability - comedies, westerns, giallos and even a few of his horror films from after his famous period between 1979 and 1982. Three years in a career that started in 1959 is tiny in a filmography that, even if the consistency was variable, might have well been made available in some fashion so a fuller picture of the man was possible. The irony is that Fulci is viewed highly for his horror films, a genre he wasn't that fond of, much more proud of material like his giallos. Yet to scratch through their characters, I've yet seen how vast and more varying the careers of the Italian genre directors of the golden period between the sixties and eighties were. From Sergio Martino to Enzo G. Castellari, Umberto Lenzi to Fulci himself, most of them were proliferate, with the only real exception in Argento, working directors who jumped through genres like studio system directors-for-hire. Far from an insulting term, a director-for-hire as long as they gave the producers what they wanted could sneak or blatantly put in their obsessions and interests into their work. With the Italian cult directors too, they were as obsessed with the spectacle of shooting action sequences or being craftsmen. With Fulci, the gore is part of his trademarks, but not the drawing card contrary to his reputation for me like it would for teenagers and splatter fans. Instead it has always been the atmosphere and mood of his work which transferred over any genre from the movies I've seen of his. Even in a "special" film like A Cat In The Brain (1990).

From http://monsterminions.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/fat-boat-zombie1.jpg

Many people will know of Zombie Flesh Eaters. Originally called Zombi 2 to cash-in on George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) in Italy, called Zombie Flesh Eaters in the UK where it would become a video nasty, with a prolonged history of just being able to get an uncut release. A woman looking for her father (Tisa Farrow) and a reporter (Ian McCulloch) follow the lead of her father's disappearance after a freak incident with an abandoned boat in the New York harbour. Their lead goes to a tropical island in the Caribbean, Matul Island, the potential zombie apocalypse about to take place, a doctor (Richard Johnson) trying to explain the cause scientifically but finding himself with a potentially supernatural phenomenon as the zombies spread on the island. Without spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it, there are many things from the film that have become part of cult cinema history. The music, especially the melancholic and languid main theme, from Giorgio Cascio and Fabio Frizzi. The infamous eye trauma sequence involving a door. A zombie fighting a shark, which really doesn't prepare you for actually seeing the sequence, which everyone should have on their cinematic bucket list to see. Even the gore, though I found it uninteresting on its own, because of how it's used in context with everything else. The film is one of the most well known of the Italian horror films, spawning a tiny boom of Italian zombie films for a year or so, and being financially successful internationally. It's a film that can reach so far in cult pop culture that, while most people in my town may not know of, there is a t-shirt based on the film in a music store there amongst those for bands and Adventure Times, managing to puncture into the mainstream if just through a few quotable images.

From http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/437/2975/1600/5.jpg

Zombies are everywhere. In films. Comic books and manga. Board games. TV. Maybe a breakfast cereal. Definitely zombie erotica, but I've yet to dare explore that area. They are the most peculiar of pop culture fads in that they involve a fandom over a type of monster of folklore, but unlike vampires became popular when the original folklore was abandoned in favour of that created in films. Fulci, who would kick-start his most known period of ultraviolent horror films by how well Zombie Flesh Eaters did, actually crosses the original folklore of Voodoo and almost somnambulist drones with the zombies brought through George Romero's films. The obsession with death, the decay and excessive headshots to zombies is here, but it's through Fulci's trademark of the fluctuation of the body common throughout his films. Even the obvious rubber prosthetic effects add to this mutability of the body he concerned himself over - from life to death, and how the flesh can be remade and moulded through destruction or rot. His take on zombies is vastly different from what zombie films are seen as: fast paced, ADD, getting a shotgun or chainsaw and carving up the living dead on mass to a heavy metal soundtrack. Fulci's film is deliberately paced, an eerie work that, for its gore, is as much about mood. Wide expansive shots of a deserted tropical village, of the New York harbour, images of rotten corpses of conquistadors slowly rising from the grave. It is a film that takes it's time, is not necessarily narrative driven and even the violence is depicted in a sombre mood.

From http://monsterminions.files.wordpress.com/2011
/11/eye-trauma.jpg?w=450&h=193

Rather than the adrenaline many zombie based works now, of a genre for a young audience despite the violent content of much of the pop culture, Zombie Flesh Eaters comes from a director whose work is viewed through a nihilistic, misanthropic view of the world. An underrated director of composition and creating mood, it is a film I am becoming more admiring of not from the perspective of the violence, which many become interested in his work for, but for this atmosphere and the illogical tone of his films that caught my interest watching his films for the first time. There are films I hold up as superior to this - The Beyond (1981) which is also one of his most well regarded films, City of the Living Dead (1980) which is my personal favourite, even a film as maligned as Manhattan Baby (1982). But Zombie Flesh Eaters gets stronger as I view it more. Most of the film, once it gets to the island, is of the characters wandering it until they are trapped by the hordes of the dead, as minimalistic as you could get as a narrative, Fulci not someone, though he has made story heavy works, who is concerned with plot as he is with tone. Even in a weak film, his attitude to an unpredictable, free flowing style of narrative is compelling. Here, what eventually makes it a great film, when it reaches the survivors trapped in a church surrounded by zombies, or the final image, breathlessly memorable, back in New York, is that you have a great director taking the material seriously with a tone that lingers in the mind.

From http://www.dvdactive.com/images/editorial/screenshot/2006/7/zombi4.jpg

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

There will be a Lucio Fulci film that will get on the list, maybe a few. This is one of the more conventional films in his filmography so it doesn't fit the requirements.

From http://whatisthiszombieapocalypse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/41-586x236.jpg

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Personally it's a film that I'm appreciating far more when I see it repeatedly. As for the appropriate film from the director? There's City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, even A Cat In The Brain and plenty of others to cover. The lack of availability of the other genre related works is problematic, knowing full well they might not be as marketable, just for the fact that we miss out the chance to see how Fulci eventually got to the position of a cult horror director many see him as. The chance as well to see how he became as interested in the abstract that would make the films I have seen utterly memorable. 

Halloween 31 For 31: Mark of the Devil (1970)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/68/Mark-of-the-devil-poster.jpg

Dir. Michael Armstrong

Befitting a film that got high age certificates for violence, Mark of the Devil is incredibly nasty even now. One is reminded of Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General (1968), it itself a grimmer, more violence film reflecting the growing desire to depict more explicit content. Is either film actually in the horror genre? As depictions of witch hunts of the past, where innocent people are tortured to confess to Satanic practices and witchcraft, they qualify as 'horror' in the revulsion of scapegoating, corruption and the horrible torture methods depicted. Unfortunately, WItchfinder General, starring Vincent Price as the figure Matthew Hopkins, was drastically censored, the only surviving footage of what was cut, for the restoration, less than average in quality, and Mark of the Devil has only gotten released in Britain uncut this year, this month in fact. Mark of the Devil is a curious blend - it feels like a British period horror film, only it was filmed in Europe with European actors dubbed, including Udo Kier in a lead role as Count Christian von Meruh, the understudy of a witch hunter who questions the morality of trying and burning people for witchcraft, as his mentor Lord Cumberland (Herbert Lom) shows a hypocrisy in his position no different from Albino (Reggie Nalder), the local witchfinder in a town that is open in his corruption, complicated by Christian's growing romance for barmaid Vanessa Benedikt (Olivera Katarina), who is arrest as a witch. It has far and away more violence than many of the British films of this period, and while it is a very serious, eventually downbeat movie, it has streaks of luridness that adds to its reputation.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ersVUyKKljk/Tn_B9StcuqI/
AAAAAAAAay8/iTt9EYP9-dA/s1600/PDVD_032.BMP

But it's not the violence, the blood split, that makes this film still nasty for me. The violence itself is no longer shocking in my eyes for a visceral level, fake blood and prosthetics that are very ghoulish, but when you can buy a rubber severed foot at Tescos, Mark of the Devil as a splatter film feels quaint. One of the things that got the film still cut in the UK for a long time, the sexual edge, including one scene of a topless woman on a torture rack, is also for me tame, far from offensive when far more explicit works depicting bondage and S&M are available to buy in a British bookstore. It makes little sense, in terms of this violence, why the film still gets an eighteen certificate when I've seen worse content in films suitable for fifteen year olds. The only potential reason, and what retains the nasty streak for the film instead, is its tone. Baring a final act with something good happening, until that becomes soured, there is a bleak view depicted in the film. Exactly as in Witchfinder General, anyone can be accused as a witch, and the procedures to get a confession were as sadistic as the punishment, Michael Armstrong using real examples of the devices used as props. While the tongue pulled out of a woman's mouth, an infamous poster image, is a piece of meat or rubber, a party trick for the macabre, it's the bluntness of how the procedure takes place, still strong, that is affecting. As for the story around this content, it is simple - a man of the faith, hunting witches, becomes disillusioned, the villains corrupt and little in the way of sympathy for them, a film that is completely black and white in its viewpoint. This simplicity works with the nasty streak to give you a real emotional investment with the material.

From http://www.horrordvds.com/reviews/a-m/motd/motd_shot4l.jpg

The film, if read to mirror contemporary society, has a potential message of distrust in authority, unintentional and thought of when the film was made. The film may seem ludicrous to the modern viewer when someone is tried for throwing a crucifix into a manure pile or create impotency curses, examples from inside the movie, but unfortunately this was once a real and common issue in the Western world. As anyone who has seen Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922) can attest to, a dramatic documentary on the same subject matter, the history of witchcraft has a vast mythology, including that of the hysteria and pettiness created amongst people, the slander and paranoia that must've be felt, when angels and devils were fully believed to be real, and such torture devices as thumbscrews were being used under the belief of justice for the Christian God. And while said thumbscrews are no longer used, the mentality of moral crusades still exist today and are still vicious, and neither is it just a problem with right wing, religious groups and moral campaigners, but also with the left wing and people with humanitarian ideals, which is why the term "witchhunt" is still in common use. Christianity and witchcraft aren't really the subject of Mark of the Devil, more the concepts that the villains merely hide behind, tainting the Christian gospel with their corrupt ideas, from forcing sexual favours from accused female witches to a subplot about a son of a late lord being tried as being possessed so his land and wealth is given to the Church. And Albino, played by the menacing, granite faced Nalder, is completely open to checking for marks of Satan on people with his dagger just out of vindictiveness. In a cohesive, traditional narrative, these ideas come ahead, a dark and disturbing horror film now because of this rather than its lurid gore.

From http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/
08/Mark_Of_The_Devil_1970-movie-1.png

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

Nothing unconventional. More what would happen if a British horror film was allowed to go further at that time in content, produced through West Germany, and more open in terms of look, real outdoor locations used instead of artificial sets and stylised use of film grammar. It's director was allowed to make what he wanted, and rather than a surreal film, he made one which, when it ends with the villains mostly surviving and a gut punch to the viewer in what happens to one good character, is more about the bleakness instead. Considering the troubled production history for the film, when you learn of it, it is successful as well for being completely cohesive and solid in its presentation.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IUf18iMSh6Q/Tn_BvSd0F_I/
AAAAAAAAay0/KR2MUxQ1cEI/s1600/PDVD_006.BMP

A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Mark of the Devil is a film I've known of for many years, but I pushed it to the back in favour of films I was more interested in. It neither helped that we're only getting an uncut version of this now in the UK, after forty four years of its existence. It's very much of its era despite its infamy for the torture and gore, more vicious and different aesthetically from Hammer films of the time, but comparable to the likes of Witchfinder General. But it is a great film; I wished I had prioritised it years before to see, but regardless I've see it finally and it was worth it. It is a glorious thing, too, for British cult film fans, unless they got the American release, to finally have the uncut version of this just in time for Halloween. Its director Michael Anderson made an immensely serious film from a subject matter that causes you to think about how "witchhunts", in one way or another, have been a failure of human society at the same time as admire the film for its lurid, but well made content.