Three laughs: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

 It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #34:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (USA, 1986)
Director: Tobe Hooper

It's strange how some horror sequels can get away with a more silly tone, such as Evil Dead 2 or, to lesser extent, Phantasm II (maybe one could also argue Dawn of the Dead). Some that try out similar things are reviled, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. To be fair, Evil Dead 2 sets a gold standard in horror-comedy filmmaking and others that go that route aren't nearly as good or funny. But that's not to say they are bad movies, far from it!

Director Tobe Hooper has insisted that even the first one is a sort of black comedy. There are perhaps some chuckles to be had from the mad exploits of the Hitch-hiker or the dinner scene late in the movie. Nevertheless, the sequel goes a lot further in this aspect.  The film was made as a part of the director's deal with Cannon Group, which has brought up suspicions that it was made in order to secure funding to the more ambitious Lifeforce (1985), or perhaps earn back a little of what it lost.

The sequel sets out to skewer much more of the Americana than the previous did, with digs about the state of consumerism, media, sexual repression, dual moralism and 80's eat-or-get-eaten capitalism in general. It also dives deeper into distorted ideas of family values. Cannibalism and murder is a way of life, but the film's insane characters also revel in and enjoy it.

Basically the film's plot (such as there is one) is very similar to the one in the previous film. The lady DJ Vanita Brock, or "Stretch" (Caroline Williams) gets kidnapped by Leatherface and his family and must fight to survive in their secret lair, now close to Dallas in order to easier capture victims. Meanwhile Sheriff Lt. Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) is out to avenge the disappearance of his son in the previous film. This time, though having a "Chainsaw" massacre is not just empty talk, and power-tools buzz for a lengthy part of the movie. It's also made pretty clear on which body part these long blades are meant to be an extension of.

 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The very first scene makes clear the intentions and approach of the sequel as opposed to the first. A bunch of obnoxious yuppie teens hoot and holler, and blow people's mailboxes as they're driving to a party on their minivan. But when the night falls, they get a taste of their own medicine as a zombie geek jumps on the youngsters' car. In fact it's leatherface doing a bit of a puppet show with a corpse and soon gives them a show in the use of a massive chainsaw as well. Oingo Boingo is playing on the background for this scene.

2. The film's biggest new character, Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) is a truly slimy and obnoxious dude, out to make Stretch as uncomfortable as possible. It's almost a relief when suddenly Leatherface burtsts through the door. But the clumsy oaf can't catch Stretch as she makes good use of a fire distinguisher runs through a safety door.  Instead, he manages to injure Chop-Top's head, revealing the metal plate he got in 'Nam. But he woes more of the destruction of his terrible Sonny Bono wig.

3. Towards the end there's a touching but blackly comedic scene of Lt. Enright finding the remains of his son, which happen to be a gruesome skeleton on a wheelchair. He proceeds to destroy the entire lair with his own chainsaw. He comes to Stretch's rescue later on and declares himself "The Lord of the Harvest". But Leatherface isn't going to let the guy threaten his family, culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime duel with chainsaws. This was this franchise's high point. It was all downhill from there on.

Three laughs: Ebola Syndrome

 

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.  

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #32:  
Ebola Syndrome (Yi boh lai beng duk, Hongkong, 1996)
Director: Herman Yau

Has there been a pandemic going on long enough that we might have a bit of a black-hearted laugh about it? I recently had my Covid tested, and even that experience was enough for me to want to have a laugh at this shitty disease's expense. Or perhaps at the assholes who spread it because of no regard for public safety.

Today's film tells the story of one such individual. It is also a notoriously nasty and outrageous film, that could only have been made in liberal Hongkong in the 1990's. They used to have this CAT III rating that allowed directors to truly push boundaries, which resulted for a lot of erotica, but also some very out-there movies.

Herman Yau's Ebola Syndrome is nasty in every sense of the word. It has a kind of racist approach to the disease spreading in Africa at the time, showing natives therein being just primitive tribespeople. The film's main character Kai (Anthony Wong) is one of the nastiest bastards in all of cinema history. A brutal sociopath, misogynist, rapist and murderer, he is a Triad henchman on the run from his bosses to Africa, where he catches a disease. He returns home to become a cannibal chef at a burger joint (in a move parodying the more straight-faced The Untold Story).

The film itself pushes the viewer's buttons and provokes at every turn. The approach is something akin to Troma movies, but made with a better budget and sense of cinematic shots. Yau is not a bad director, but he approaches the sort of nihilistic edgyness that was hip in the 90's, but a bit tiresome now. Ebola Syndrome doesn't apologize for anything, it is a throughly slimy and mean-spirited movie, and proud of it. And, for certain sorts of viewer, also very funny. Viewer discretion is adviced.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The film's opening scene sees Kai having sex with his bosses' wife and getting caught in the act. The boss orders the sniveling underling under a golden shower, which shows quickly on what kind the film's sense of humour is. Nevertheless, the shlubby-looking Kai soon reveals that he is more cunning and ruthless than appears, and brutally murders everyone else in the room.

2. The film's racism could almost be seen a parody of some old-school shockers, such as Italian cannibal movies. The shocking conditions in Africa, for instance, show pig corpses intended for food being stored in broad daylight next to human corpses. Needless to say, they get churn into hamburgers anyway. Both pigs and corpses.

3. But dead people in a bun are not the most disgusting thing the film serves. Later on, we see Kai listening in on some next-door love-making while relieving himself on a piece of meat. Of course the same piece gets then thrown into a pan and served to customers. If this movie teaches something, it's taking distance and remembering at least some resemblance of hygiene.

O is For Organized Crime

I haven't really honored an alphabetical order so far with our look into Italian genre cinema anyway, so let's just jump straight into O, shall we? There's a sub-sub genre of poliziottesci movies that focuses more on the underworld and various criminal gangs than the ruthless police chasing them. It was spawned mostly by the success of The Godfather films in the early 1970's, even though Italians were making films such as these before them as well. After all, the criminal clans and the pursuit to bring them to justice were all over the society at that time.

For blogging purposes, it would stand to reason to balance the last post with a look at some of the more notable of these. 

Sicilian Clan (France/Italy, 1969)
Director: Henri Verneuil

It's interesting to watch this Franco/Italian production today, as it was made in a time before the really hard-boiled 1970's crime movies kicked off. That's why, even though the name, it's not really a realistic depiction of organized crime by any means, but rather a tale of some gentleman thieves and their criminal family.

The film's most exciting scene comes right at the beginning, as we are introduced to jewel thief Roger Sartret (Alain Delon), who manages to escape from police custody from a moving vehicle. The Sicilian mafia, lead by Vittorio (Jean Gabin) help him out as he had learned information in jail that could help them pull off a major heist. Things are complicated as Vittorio's son's wife Jeanne (Irina Demick) starts to fall for Roger, as well as the commissioner Le Goff (Lino Ventura) following hot off their tail.

Verneuil is to me an underrated director who managed to create a nice filmography of exciting genre films in the 60's and 70's. The problem often is that even though the movies have all the elements of greatness, something stops them from being stone-cold classics. Here the problem is that Verneuil doesn't manage to keep the film's style compact. As an international heist movie, it entertains, but from a film titled like this, one would expect to see a more intimate depiction of a crime family, and not shy away from the brutalities they commit.

Now it's so casual it's basically a version of The Pink Panther without jokes. The film has a great cast, though and each makes their part a memorable one.

★★★

Gang War in Milan (Milano rovente, Italy 1973)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi

French drug couriers, led by Le Capitaine (Philippe Leroy) starts ruthlessly taking over Italy, first at small towns, then moving on to major cities like Milan. The owner of a local nightclub and pimp Salvatore "Toto" Cangemi (Antonio Sabato) resists both joining or working for the cartel, which leads to the increasingly violent feaceoffs between the French gangsters and Italian small-time crooks. One can see here as well that the Italians are worried thet their delicate balance of dealing with some criminal aspects in their society are about to blow in their faces with the advent of more brutal criminals from abroad.

Lenzi was one of the most prolific Eurocrime directors, and Gang War was his first shot at the genre. It's a seedy and confusing little film which had qualities the filmmaker would improve upon later on. As such, it works well as your average Eurocrime. It has little action scenes, shitty cars and slimy moustaches, but plenty of torture, abuse of women and other nastiness that guarantees its notoriety. Lenzi always had the most despicable central characters, but the film fails to give better reasons of following them.

 ★★ 1/2

From Corleone to Brooklyn (Da Corleone a Brooklyn, Italy 1979)
Dir. Umberto Lenzi

Lenzi is on hand again, as he was one of the most central directors of the genre. This time around the film's depicting a multilayered cat-an-mouse game on the run. Mobster Michele Barresi (Mario Merola) makes a play for more power and has his main rival gunned down, but has to escape with his life to New York. The tough, uncompromizing insperctor Berni (Maurizio Merli) hatches a plan to capture the fugitive, but this makes Barresi's girlfriend and a former mob assassin Salvatore Scalia (Biagio Pelligra), out to testify in court, moving targets.

From the setting of the story to both Sicilian village of Corleone to New York, it is obvious this has been majorly influenced by The Godfather, but also several other 70's New York mob flicks, like Mean Streets. Lenzi has learned to not overindulge in violence and brutality, centering more on the plot and the paranoid athmosphere this time around. It doesn't offer anything too spectacular or best of the genre, but a very solid entry into the genre itself, with some interesting depictions of the Mafia pulling strings across continents as well.

This one was Lenzi's last foray to poliziottesci for a decade, in the 1980's Italian genre cinema basically became a lot more horror-oriented and he started to churn out Cannibal movies. He returned to the genre in the early 90's, but without Merli.

The Milieu Trilogy, 
Dir. Fernando Di Leo:

Caliber 9
(Milano Calibro 9, Italy 1972)

Di Leo specializes in making crime films that are simultaneously operaticly tragic and caricaturized like fumetti comics. He also usually starts out with a bang, and the same thing happens here. A criminal syndicate sends a money package from person to person, gets betrayed, and then Mario Adorf's Rocco Musco acts swift revenge and blows them all up with dynamite.

Mostly the film moves more slowly, with tensions rising as we wait on violence to explode again. The film has a bleak look on the Italian society that has failed to stop the most ruthless and brutal to exact on their will. The main character Ugo Piazza (Gastone Moschin) tries to play straight after being released from prison, but is soon sucked in to criminal works since he is being blamed of embezzling the money. At the same time, the police also wants his help in order to find the stash.

The film has more double-crossings as a season of soap opera. Mostly everyone plays to their own interests, and Di Leo also has a cruel irony regarding the ideas of honor among thieves and respect within the crime family. He doesn't find much good about working within truly rotten apples and getting involved in crime has plenty of tragic consequences play out. The movie also has a banger of a theme song, which has been used by Di Leo several times after this one, too.

★★★★

The Italian Connection 
(La mala ordina, Italy 1972)

On my money, this is Di Leo's finest work, and also one of the all-timers for the greatest action movies ever made. To tell exactly why would be spoiling, but suffice to say, Di Leo doesn't put his most explosive scene in the film first, this time around.

A small-time Milanese pimp (played by incresing desperation by Mario Adorf) finds out there are two American hitmen (Henry Silva and Woody Strode) sent for his head. Even though he works within the mafia, he doesn't understand why they would threaten his life. He tries to find out who has set him up for stealing a shipment of heroin, until the hits get too personal, after which he sets out on a quest for vengeance.

It appears Di Leo got a hold of bigger budgets after the success of (the rather small-scaled) Caliber 9. The film has superb action scenes, from car chases along the streets to a final showdown at a junkyard. Action direction is clear and purposeful, and daring to go as far into the ridiculousness as one can. Though Di Leo finds the life-or-death situations of involvement in the organized crime tragic, he knows he's also an entertainer. That's probably also the reason why a major action scene ends up on an abandoned circus.

★★★★ 1/2

The Boss
(Il Boss, Italy 1973)
 

The capper of his trilogy has some of the biggest scenes the director ever did, and was probably intented to be the first of two parts. The film ends on a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger, so it's a shame we never got to see what Di Leo had in store for the latter part. But what we had is explosive and mesmerizing either way.

It has another explosive opening as Henry Silva's assassin kills a bunch of mob bosses in a movie theatre with a grenade launcher that also sets the screen on fire (Tarantino was probably taking notes for Inglourious Basterds). But the pace evens out a bit, with most of the movie being criminals arguing in small rooms. As the film was released after The Godfather, there are several scenes of murder that imitate the suave montages that one had.

The film may be a bit slighter, subtext-wise, than its two predecessors, but it is still tremendous fun and everything one could want from a film like this, right down to the angry police chief. It's still a bit cynical on the situation of the society and the criminal enterprises it lives in a symbiotic relationship with.

★★★★

C is for Castellari's Crimes

 During this blog's long history, I've had the chance to talk about Enzo G. Castellari's Eurocrime movies a couple of times before. Here's the review of High Crime and here The Day of the Cobra. Castellari was always one of the more entertaining Eurocrime directors, taking note from American action of the time rather than having more emphasis on commenting the social issues and inherent corruption within the system like some of his peers.

That's not to say his films are just purely fascist mouthpieces glorifying police violence. Castellari is not a toothless director and he has a certain way of having both empathy for the criminals with their backs against the wall, as well as criticisms for the police force's excessive use of force. It may not be exactly the perfect time to revalue these now, but there are some grains of wisdom sprinkled throughout. I think at core Castellari is a lot more humane than many other, more nihilistic Italian genre directors.

Street Law (Il cittadino si ribella), 1974

The face of Eurocrime, Franco Nero himself, plays a timid engineer who gets caught in a post office during a robbery, taken hostage and then mugged as the crooks make their getaway. Afterwards, he gets angered with the police's poor handling of the case and decides to infiltrate the criminal organizations in order to get some justice. Things get more complicated as he befriends a small-time-crook, played by Giancarlo Prete.

The film has some plot elements similar to the same year's American hit film Death Wish, but instead of having a liberal character straight-up lose his humanity due to tragedy like that film, it is clear that Nero's character still has strong empathies as he's trying to protect his friend through a criminal underworld getting increasingly violent. The character is not infallible, making dumb mistakes along the way, but still miracously not getting killed. Nevertheless, the journey drags him through the mud and punches him in the gut.

Castellari first highlights standing up to the violent underworld similar as standing up to fascism in WWII, but then muddies the waters more so as not to make a clear line of right and wrong. There are some irredeemable psycopaths on the crimal side, but also people with their backs against the wall, just doing what they can to survive and to get out of a bad hand dealt to them. The film is light on shoot-outs and car chases, but makes each of them stand out and have a maximum impact. The resulting gem is among the very finest works of both Castellari's career, as well as the Eurocrime genre as a whole.

★★★★

Cold Eyes of Fear (Gli occhi freddi della paura), 1971

Since it's darker, noirish tones and strong suspense, many would categorize Cold Eyes of Fear as a giallo. However, it's visual stylizations are just something that was popular at the time it was made. The plot has more elements similar to some of the more brutal Eurocrime films and thier home invasion or kidnapping subgenre. The film concerns a young lawyer (Gianni Garko) in London picking up a girl (Giovanna Ralli) and takes her to his uncle's house, only to find out there is a gunman (Julian Matteos) hiding out in the same house. He is waiting for a backup (Frank Wolff), attempting to get their revenge on the uncle, who happens to be a judge (Fernando Ray).

The film has a superb swinging soundtrack by Ennio Morricone that can also shift gears when the scenes get more disturbing and suspenseful. The film's weak point is its bungling its cenral mysteries. First of all, its not much of a mystery of waiting to find out why the would-be assassings want to kill the judge. Secondly, the siege situation is dragged on a bit too long for its own good.

Many similar movies, like Almost Human or Hitch-hike get thrills out of big villanous characters and their nastiness, whereas here the characterizations are a bit lacking in interset and they are not properly fleshed out. Here, there's not enough development, except on Ralli's Anna on the very last moments of the film. The visual, film noirish flare of the film saves a lot for fans of giallo, but other wise it seems it is a bit middling in its qualities.

★★★

The Big Racket (Il grande racket), 1976

Towards the end of the 70's, Italian crime films started to take more note on movies like such as The French Connection and Dirty Harry. Thus, they also started to center around tough guy cops roughing things up. In the hands of more capable directors, the police brutality was also criticized and these sort of characters were more like anti-heroes, playing western outlaws at their own amusement and not for the betterment of society.

Fabio Testi's Nico Palmieri is a prime example of a character like this. Rome is taken over by ruthless gangsters, and he takes upon himself to kill just about everyone that comes in the way of his handling of the case. The police superiors are furious at this, trying to have a more bureaucratic approach, that is also ineffective. At the same time, the gangsters also up their violence and go from extorting cash in a small Italian town to torture, rape of women and borderline terrorist strikes.

The film is built like a freight train, with not a moment going by without some new action scene, more ante on the grittines or dramatic development on the case. They are also mostly stuff everyone has seen and expects out of cop movies, just taken to extremes and bigger stakes. With modern eyes, the film has a lot of questionable qualities, from the nasty rape scenes to the depiction of police brutality of a necessary evil to battle violence. But Castellari is still not happy about it. The film is more of a cry of anguish of a circle of violence beginning to engulf everything around it.

★★★ 1/2

The Heroin Busters  (La via della droga), 1977

Many of Castellari's films have some level of western in them. It is perhaps the most clear here. After a globe-trotting opening that sees Fabio Testi as a short-fused cop and David Hemmings as a cold-blooded Interpol agent take down drug lords around the world. These two must learn to co-operate to take down the head of the cartel in Italy. And this is done mostly by having car chases and fist fight around.

The film seems a lot lighter than the other fares into the genre, even the violence is mostly suitable for kids. The movie has the ingredients for something great, but seems at times to be a bit unsure of itself and just shoving out faces with big showstopping action scenes. Thet are plenty well directed, though. There's a great chase scene through a construction site, and in the finale Testi himself piloted a small plane giving chase to the main drug lord. That last scene does resemble a bit too much of an airshow, though with all the tricks possible to do with two planes being utilized.

This is more of the mindless entertainment Castellari began to give us towards the late 70's and 1980's. His earlier work had something to say, but it seems that when he upped the grittiness and the violence, he also managed to burn himself out on these. Nevertheless, his steady quality does make him one of the most notable directors of the era, and especially of the Eurocrime genre.

★★★

Three laughs: Crazy World

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart. 


Three laughs case file #25:
Crazy World (Ani Mulalu? - Crazy World), Uganda 2019
Director: Nabwana I.G.G.

Times are tough and what the world needs now is some mirth and laughter. A gathering of the world's most prestigious film festivals are currently having a streaming festival called We Are One. Most of the festival's programme doesn't exactly capture my fancy, execpt when I noticed that Toronto International Film Festival has presented us a new "supa action" movie straight outta Wakaliwood, Uganda. It was Crazy World Time!

Now, one might need a bit of background of these films. In the poor village of Wakali a group of local filmmakers have taken it to themselves to create movies with what they have. Thus these movies put on screen every villager from small kids to elders, and have some very creative solutions in terms of technics. They never take themselves too seriously, as every movie also includes a VJ, a video joker, making fun of characters and scenes as a running commentary. That's also how one doesn't feel like laughing at people living in the 3rd world, but rather, sharing a joke with some people from a totally different background. It's no wonder Wakaliwood has found fans all over the world.

I'd also like to add that the films keep also getting more inventive and have some clever in-joking as well. The 4th wall is blown up in gags so inspiring, they remind me of the ending of Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles. The first worldwide sensation was Who Killed Captain Alex?, then came Bad Black and now Crazy World. Each of these movies also touches upon more serious aspects of life in Uganda, including militarization, organized crime and kidnappings. But these ideas are more made fun of and thus also laughed at the poor image Uganda may have in western eyes. It's not hard to fall in love with Wakali with its sense of community and love for filmmaking after viewing these.

Three laughs (SPOILERS)

1. The star of this film is Isaac Newton Kizito, as noted by the VJ, the son of the director. Together with some other small kids they form Wakas Stars United! In the film's plot, they are kidnapped children plotting for their escape from the Tiger Mafia. But this plot is only needed to showcase the kids throwing kung fu kids at gun-toting adults. It is clear they are having the time of their lives.

2. There's an anti-piracy PSA in the middle of the movie. In a radar they notice that someone somewhere is pirating the film, and thus they send out the robotic Piracy Hunter to capture them. After some bloody inserts of Piracy Hunter getting rid of fans out in Canada and Paris, it turns out that the culprit is actually the film's director himself, showing his creation to his family. Piracy Hunter doesn't feel any remorse, though.

3. In one scene a gangster discovers that the big wad of money is only colored from the other side. The VJ gives a memorable one-liner to this: "See kids, adults, too, can be stupid."

Three laughs: Eega

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

Three laughs case #19:
Eega / The Fly (India, 2012)
Director: S.S. Rajamouli

A lot of western people have stereotypes about films produced in India, even though it's a huge country with multiple huge film industries producing movies for different language regions. One of particular note is the Tamil area based in Tennai. Their action movies in particular tend to be more over the top and violent than ones under harsher Bollywood restrictions.

The film discussed today is an action movie that does have its share of triangle dramas and dance sequences. But in other ways it's one of the more out there cases I've seen. Since it's part of its elevator pitch, I have to spoil stuff a little. The film's protagonist is killed 30 minutes in and reborn as a common house fly.

What follows is a good case on why Tamil cinema is often more inventive than what you would get from Hollywood. Every scene tops the previous one and there are more ideas at play here than in a season of Dexter. Everything is based around the idea on how a small fly can revenge the death of his former incarnation and kill the man responsible. The film treats its ridiculous premise fairly seriously, but at the same time it keeps its tongue firmly in cheek and gives good physical gags in vein of some classic Looney Tunes vibes. It has the qualities of a Sam Raimi or Joe Dante flick, with some nice effect work and camera trickery also used.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. As said, the first 30 minutes of the film are fairly conventional triangle drama material. It's surprisingly bleak to see Nani's main character strangled to death by the villainous Sudeep. But what emerges is a sort of scene like in superhero movies when the costume is first put on. "He's back!" chants the soundtrack. Yet he is a CGI fly. Learning the ropes of fly lifestyle, Eega has to run a gauntlet from getting stepped on to getting caught in a soap bubble and finally ending inside the villain's chai drink. Dark music notes play as he recognizes his nemesis.

2. The height of the film comes after Eega has revealed himself to his loved one Bindhu (Samantha). They begin to to plot on how to murder Sudeep. What follows is a training montage which has Eega lifting Q-tips, running on a C-cassette tape and practicing flying, while Sudeep has his goons deliver as many dead flies to him as they can. At the same time, the fly also almost kills him by disturbing a barber about to shave him, putting pesticide in his beer and lighting his bed on fire with a cigarette. Of course we also get to see the fly's dance moves during this sequence.

3. Probably the most bizarre scene in the film has the increasingly desperate Sudeep resort to black magic. The wizard bewitches two sparrows into becoming demonic hell-birds. The ensuing chase in particular utilizes the smaller scale and everyday objects in the house in a pretty inventive and interesting ways, while still keeping the pace going. And even this is topped by the film's explosive finale, which is something you should go out and see for yourself.

B is for Bava

A director whose films frequently feature festive lighting, blood, death and religious undertones is particularly suited for Easter viewing. As it happens, many of legendary horror director Mario Bava's greatest works not only follow that formula, but are also among his most influental works, and have an English title that begins with B. Previously we have taken a look at his viking pictures and one of his classic giallos, but there's plenty of more aspects to the Great Master. So, let's take a look at Mario Bava films that begin with B.


Black Sunday (La maschera del demonio, 1960)

Bava was there from the beginning of Italian horror movies, having worked as a cinematographer and 2nd unit director on films like I vampiri and Caltiki. But even if it wasn't the first, the impact his proper directorial debut is had to overestimate. Bleak and shocking, Bava certainly pushed the envelope from the very beginning, thus creating a mutitude of subgenres himself. For while Black Sunday may be indebted to British horror movies of the time, it is unquestionably of Bava's twisted mind.

A witch is executed in Medieval times, but before her death, she curses the offspring of her inquisitors. 200 years later, archeologists find the tomb and accidentally set the evil of the witch back to the world of the living. There's also romance attached to the modern descendant of the witch, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Universal Horror classic The Mummy.

Though Bava works in clichéd ancient tombs, cemetaries, gothic castle halls and fields in November, he has a sort of knack of making it all look spectacular and exciting, no matter how many movies you've seen the setting before. Bava certainly has a knack for gothicness, and I mostly prefer his historical horror to more modern endeavours. He also hads the means of using more violent visuals than his American and British counterparts dared, starting a sort of race with the bloody special effects in horror films.

The film's downside is than the actors are a bit stiff and some dialogue as spoken by them is simply atrocious, which takes away from the athmosphere of the movie. For a film as old as this, one can forgive this, but if this were in colore and on the style of later 60's movies, it would be a bigger fault. But otherwise it's a rich film that has visual delights on offer on almost every scene.

★★★★

Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura, 1963)

In most other horror directors' work, doing an anthology horror would be a middling work, a small, cheap thing to do in between some more substantial movies. But Bava did things differently, and created parobably the best and most stylish anthology horror movie ever made. He might have also given the name for the first heavy metal band, but the truth on that is not within our grasp.

Bava goes for some Russian classics by adapting stories by Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gogol (albeit quite freely). The first is quite a risque giallo story of a woman being tormented by threatening phone calls, which has a strong lesbian subtext. The second is more gothic, which sees Boris Karloff (also the narrator of the film) as a fiend who returns undead after going out to slay a mythical monster. The last movie is the most colorful and the most obvious morality take, where greed over a dead woman's ring gets a woman haunted to madness.

The three films have each a particular athmosphere to them, each highlighting a particular strength in Bava's toolbox. While the film starts out very slow, almost tv episode-like, it gets going. And it gets scarier, too. The first film creates fears out of the unknown grudges of those closest to us, the second of natural powers beyond our grasp. And the final one has perhaos the most horrifying ghoul ever to put on film, as well as colorful lights and inventive angles used to the benefit of creating paranoia.

The film is classy enough horror in that the Karloff opening and ends with their Creepshow-like cackling feel a bit much and spoil the interest one might have for the classic litereture it is based on. And it doesn't hold particularly well as adaptation as these classics as well. But Bava does better characters and directing the actors than many other times in his career. he's truly firing on all cylinders here. Too bad he never got around of making the sequel, which would have seen an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror with Christopher Lee.

★★★★

Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l'assassino, 1964)

Pioneering works of Bava were often indebted to either Hitchcock or Hammer horror films. But in the end he managed to find a subgenre totally Italian, and started the giallos with this film. A giallo as I understand one is a horror/suspense movie with a mystery with a race against time as a secret killer going around murdering people one by one. Bava usually had the victims be well-off models so he could have an excuse to have plenty of beautiful women, but also lavish interiors and colorful costumes. At the height of the suspense scene he often would pull out his favorite coloured lights.

Bava's favorite actor Cameron Mitchell plays a fashion-house owner, whose models are being offed one by one. There's foul play afoot and a plot concerning the lives of everyone in the house with a secret diary being a key piece of evidence everyone is looking for. So far, so Twin Peaks. It is both clearly a picture made in the 60's and utterly timeless, as a sense of style as strong as Bava's never goes out of fashion. The film has a musical score of jazzy easy listening which makes me think this has also been a major influence on Pedro Almódovar. 

Later giallo directors had various perks over this, such as Dario Argento having a stronger sense of inventiveness, creating a horror athmosphere and the use of architecture, Lucio Fulci had more nightmarish and surreal visuals, and Sergio Martino had better female characters and reasonable psychology in his movies. All of them upped the gore a lot from this point, which leaves Bava's pioneer work seemingly quite innocent in comparison. But it is a film anyone with a strong sense of cinema can appreciate, not just horror movie fans. Like with many of Bava's films, I would wish the characters were more interesting and less campily acted as a lot of the movie is spent on just them talking. That's the main reason why, as good as it is, it feels like a bit of a chore to sit through this.

★★★ 1/2

Bay of Blood (Ecologia del delitto, 1971)

Being ahead of the curve, Bava also managed to create one of the first films that can be classified as slashers. The film involves teenagers going out to a remote cottage to get slaughtered. But the reason why is some soap opera scheming about inheriting an estate that's not that unlike the plots of his giallo movies.

Bava's violence is a downward spiral of brutality where the cycle of violence can't be stopped once began. The scenes of kids getting brutally killed in bed with very phallic instruments has since become a cliché of the genre, but more nasty for the modern viewer might be the scenes depicting the brutal murders of the elderly characters. Some killings have obviously influenced the later works of the likes of Argento and Fulci.

The film is not visually one of the most captivating of Bava's films, even though he worked also as a cinematographer. Nevertheless, the claustrophobia of small cabins and the silent threat of the nature within is captured well enough. It's not as captivating as some of his more sophisticated movies and at times a bit boring. Nevertheless, it's a film worthy of respect due to everything new it brings to the table of the developing horror movie DNA.

★★★

Baron Blood (Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga, 1972)

The time had long since passed gothic horror when Bava gave his last knack at the genre. Two dopes are investigating a witch's curse and thus think they have resurrected the notorious Bloody Baron when people around them start to die. Bava is at his best visual tricks here, the film features more exciting scenes of a torchlit castle at night and a city under fog than a season of DuckTales.

There's a bit of a retread of ideas first presented at Black Sunday, but also rewriting and re-conseptualizing them. Nevertheless, compared to the previous film this can't help but to pale a little by comparison.

For fans of more classic horror, the film also has some cleverly graphic deaths in an iron maiden, a cool finale of a witch sabbath, and the make up on the Baron's face that surely was a precursor to Freddy Krueger. On the downsides, the script doesn't really hold together, the music is cheap and the acting is way too campy. The Bargain-store Vincent Price main villain is particularly annoying.

★★★

Three laughs: Double Down

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watvh them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.


Three laughs case #15:
Double Down (2005)
Director: Neil Breen

It's about time to get to the filmography of one Neil Breen. Double Down may not be his best movie, but it is the first, so let's begin there. Breen began as an architect and a real-estate agent, but he had aspirations for a movie career. Nowadays he is a director, actor, writer, editor and a producer with a sizable internet following.

The reason for this is because his style is so unmistakable. Breen is both akin to Tommy Wiseau in his delusions of grandeur and acting style, and somehow totally unpredictable and weird, no matter how many movies he makes. He  likes thriller movies with little suspense and big stakes that are informed to the viewer mostly through dialogue or voice-over over some stock footage. Usually, Breen is out to save the world with his hidden knowledge, superior hacking skills and/or magic powers from evil and shady military, medical or financial institutions.

While all of Breen's films have been made on a pittance, here he basically doesn't even have money to any other actors save for a few cameos. A lot of the fun of Double Down is the ingenuity of getting past this fact. Breen is a former government agent and hacker, who has ran away from his former masters because they killed his fiancée for some reason. Hiding out, he threatens the world with hidden biological weapons he has hidden in several cities and that he will kill hundreds of thousands of people if not left alone. Somehow, the film twists this premise so that he's the hero?

Logic is not big in these films, even though Breen likes to repeat lines and themes over and over again.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Breen's unenthusiastic line-reading is a thing to behold, it's like a parody of Steven Seagal done by Bob Odenkirk in a weird wig. Thus it's preposterous how he keeps finding even worse actors than himself. This film has plenty of flashbacks and so we are also treated to the scene where Breen's wife got killed in a pool. And boy, is she atrocious an actor. Even lines like YES! seem worse presented than in the cheapest porn you can find, no matter lines like "I can't wait to be your wife!" After this, she is shot by a sniper (though there's no wound on her back) and left to float on her face in the pool as Breen cries to some bloody orchids.

2. Between stock footage and Breen talking to powerful people with some dubious connections, every once in a while we have a scene with him either hacking on the laptops in his car, or killing an intruder. One of my favorites is when he announces, playground-style, that his desert base is protected by an invisible barrier. We then see a soldier walk awkwardly with an assault rifle. He suddenly falls down dead with blood in his ears.

3. There's a lengthy scene of Breen climbing a rock formation on the desert. The camera pans to show four AK-47's resting to a rock. Breen blurts out "Sorry to interrupt your lunch" and blasts away with his handgun with arcade machine sound effects and with blood sputtering to his face. It seems the scene means he managed to catch four mercenaries out to get him off-guard, yet without ever having one image of any of the would-be attackers. Avantgarde!

Bloody Vikings

Vikings has very rarely gotten their due in cinema history, which I find it a bit odd. Even though a complex Nordic culture with interesting gods and a drive for both exploration and pillaging in early Medieval settings might seem like prone for exciting historical adventure movies, more often than not, something goes awry with these. Anyway, let's take a look at several of the more interesting ones.

Erik the Viking (UK/Sweden 1989)
Dir. Terry Jones

Freed from obligations from Monty Python, director Jones was free to do whatever he wanted. His interests in medieval history, comedy and children's books met with an adaptation of his own book. He should have aimed the film more obviously for children. As it is now, the film has problems with its tone, as there are parts where there's too few jokes to be a comedy, and parts where the adventure doesn't advance at all. As a visualist or a mythic world-builder, Jones is clearly secondary to Terry Gilliam and doesn't quite get how to work his more fantastic ideas into the story properly.

The worst thing about it is that the comedy itself is often lacking. The movie opens with some rape humor which certainly hasn't aged well. Jones seemed to have made the same mistake as Graham Chapman with Yellowbeard thinking that rape is a good source of laughs. It does introduce us to the timid lead character, but it is a bit of a cheap way to get sympathy when he has performance issues during a pillaging event, and have him turn on some of the more rapey vikings.

Tim Robbins does do a good job, and there are some actual good laughs to be had from Tim McInnery's childish viking complaining about sitting arrangements to John Cleese's cheery sociopath order people getting flayed. The contrast between the awfulness of the violence and people might have worked better today as a kind of parody of Game of Thrones -like sadist entertainment. Jones himself pops as a clueless leader of a lost continent. I admit I have a soft spot for the film and have seen it a lot more times than its actual qualities would warrant.

★★1/2

Erik the Conqueror (Gli invasori, Italy/France 1961)
Dir. Mario Bava

Bava's historically inaccurate film sees Vikings clash against the Brits in the 8th century. This is contrasted by having one of orphaned twin boys being raised by the Brits and the other by Vikings. A fate of countries laying on the schism between siblings of course has been seen used from the Book of Moses to New Gods by Jack Kirby. It is a reasonably epic, if not terribly original way of presenting conflict.

As is often the case in the director's works, visually it is purely stunning, with elaborate color lights and psychedelia. There are many Technicolor epics with a lot bigger budgets that never were this inventive in their visuals. The film was mostly shot in a studio, but several battles are also shot on location with natural light and the landscapes a Medieval Nordic adventure warrants. These scenes bring a little contrast, but are just as good-looking, with merciless natural powers highligting the brutality of the warriors fighting on the same canvas.

But Cameron Mitchell is not a very interesting leading man, and in the film his voice is in fact dubbed. I like him better on 80's trash movies phoning it in while visibly drunk.


★★★ 1/2

Knives of the Avenger (I coltelli del vendicatore, Italy 1966)
Dir. Mario Bava



Bava did another viking picture, with his star Cameron Mitchell also attached. As the audience's tastes have swithed from large epics to smaller, more spaghetti western -like character studies, this one is more akin a western set in the viking era. The obvious comparison is 1953's Shane from which the movie's plot is pilfered. A disgraced viking warrior becomes a protector of a woman and her child when a group of more violent warriors come calling for his past mistakes. If the previous film was about brotherhood, this one circles again around family, with its themes finding redemption in adopted fatherhood.

The film's look is decidedly more down-to-earth in tones and settings than his previous viking film. Nevertheless the gloomy athmosphere is strong and Bava has a knack for keeping things interesting with some wild camera angles and a nice sense of misé-en-scene. A lot of the action is set on limited sets, darkly-lit farmhouses, taverns and even caves. The pacing is quite slow and one does get a bit bored in the meantime, whereas Erik moved along quite swiftly.

I feel Mitchell has a better role here, having him act more of a stone-faced loner with undelying guilt and growing warmth, is more suited to his talents, as he manages to give his character an air of mystery. In action scenes, though Bava can still play gritty and dirty even if its not quite the blood bath that would warrant such a title in my opinion.

★★★

Viking (Russia, 2016)
Dir. Andrei Kravchuk



With several popular tv series set on either the viking era (Vikings) or a mythical age quite similar to it (Game of Thrones), there has been several small-budget films that have tried to capture that same audience. Some of them are laughable (like 2014's Northmen - a Viking Saga), and many of them have a similar boring gray scale, predictably boring plots and nothing interesting to say. From modern viking films I remember Nicolas Wingding Refn's Valhalla Rising to at least try a little as compared to most of them.

I feel the Russian Viking is a case in point. I would have wanted to like this a lot more since it took seven years to make, and expected more of a Russian flavour to the story, as opposed to just do the same thing everyone else is. It sells itself for being historically accurate, which is itself a very dubious claim, and doesn't really do the boring story any favours. In many parts it is confusing and goes off in rails when compromised would have at least made the plotline somewhat understandable. Plus, it's nearly 2,5 hours long so there's an extra hour of suffering through this when compared to most other films on this post.

The title in and of itself is false marketing. While it takes place roughly in the Viking era, it is more concerned with the goings-on in Russian Novgorod in Prince Vladimir's reign, his brother, the warlord Kievan Rus and the Slavonic wars during that era. The virtues of the film are firstly to generate interest in Russian history, and secondly of its (very expensive-looking) battle scenes, which are in parts very impressive looking. If you really want to see the movie, read up on history before viewing, so the logic between characters making decisions and the context of many actions are more easily understood.

★★

The Raven Flies (Hrafninn flýgur, Iceland/Sweden 1984)
Dir. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson

My favorite Viking film comes from Iceland, which I feel is the best-suited country in the world to tackle the history, since most of the country's occupants are descendants anyway. I wouldn't call this any truer to history, though, even if more care than usual is made to the Medieval costumes and armors. The film is basically a spaghetti western revenge story, with tiny ponies instead of horses, and I love the film for it.

The film captures the dark and gloomy nature of Nordic countries in a way a film like Knives of the Avenger attempted, but didn't quite feel genuine. Life is hard, cheap, brutal and over in an instant. Blood feuds reign from generation to generation. Yet the film concerns ways of trying to break a never-ending cycle of violence. It sees a Celtic underdog prevail by using his wits and knowledge of viking's superstitions against his enemies. With plenty of close-up shots and ugly glances.

The genuinety from the actual settings makes this feel a lot more down-to-earth and less exoticized than most viking movies. It pays a lot to show the real Icelandic shore line and the right kind of houses so it doesn't feel like a general Hollywood epic. One can practically feel the cold wind and the dread of the upcoming winter.

The film spawned a number of sequels, none of which I have sadly seen.

★★★★