DePalma x Hitchcock

 
Director Brian DePalma just turned 80 years old (yesterday, but I'm having trouble keeping schedules), so it's a good opportunity to take a look at three of his movies. Throughout his career, DePalma has been criticized for outright stealing scenes, set ups and camera angles from well-known directors, mainly Alfred Hitchcock. As a sort of postmodernist, both winking at people familiar with films and developing them into something new altogether, DePalma is a clear forerunner for filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino or Ben Wheatley. So in this post, I have three thriller films of DePalma's that really go all in in swiping stuff from Ol' Hitch, and see whether the steal made for a better movie or whether it's just a lukewarm version of stuff better made before.

Obsession (1976)

Pilfers from: Vertigo (1958)

While Sisters (1972) was DePalma's calling card for the world of the thrillers, this was a certain turning point in his career. For one, he managed to snatch Hitchcock's frequent collaborator, composer Bernard Herrmann to do the music. For the other, he got ire from Hitch himself, who considered the film to be a remake of his own Vertigo. Both movies are stories of an obsessed man (played by Cliff Robertson here) losing his beloved, but later finding a doppelganger who he remakes in her image. But in both cases, the "new" woman has a secret and some knowledge of the past that comes to cost the protagonist.

The original script was done by Paul Schrader, who is an expert in having troubled characters with an inner life in total turmoil. It was extensively rewritten by DePalma to better touch upon what he wanted from the film. Schrader had different ideas for the entire ending, which probably would have been considerably different from Vertigo. It would have been interesting to see another time-hop, since the 16-year skip in the beginning takes us quite by surprise.

Robertson is perhaps not the most charismatic leading man, he does sell the inner anguish, but is like a cold fish in romantic scenes. DePalma has later said he didn't really buy his performance here, also perhaps due to the actor being difficult to work with. John Lithgow as his best friend and business partner steals a lot of the intrigue, and if you're familiar with some of DePalma's later efforts, you'll know what kind of a role he's playing here as well.

The film goes into a lot more taboo subjects Hitch couldn't, including incest. They both don't really care on whether the central criminal plot makes little sense, but Hitchcock as a more mature filmmaker can better drive the focus of the film to be solely of the central character's, well obsession. Both movies are interested in trauma being played out, surfacing as PTSD in sudden bouts of madness. But the film is also perhaps too slow for its own good. Vertigo packs a huge story in a very compact running time, but here one keeps hoping the film would roll along, having mainly an interesting ending. It also seems like the ideas of the pain of lost love being mirrored in art or restauration thereof, was approached with more sophistication by Hitchcock.

DePalma also takes cues from Dial M for Murder, Rope and Marnie.

★★★

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Lifts from: Psycho (1960)

This one starts and ends with a threatening shower scene. Also one of the key scenes of this film is a heavy reference of the seduction scene from Vertigo; both of the take place in an art museum, and use very little dialogue. DePalma can and will use a lot more explicit sex scenes. Classic Hollywood star Angie Dickinson is surprisingly game, even though in nude scenes she used a body double.

The most notable steal from Hitchcock's sole horror movie comes from the structire. Both films kill off the main female character midway through, and from thereon follow her sister trying to solve her murder, played here by Karen Allen. The film also uses other similar stock characters, such as a young man hung up on his mother, a sleazy private detective and a psychiatrist trying to find the reason on theories of sexual repression (played by Michael Caine). But DePalma also enjoys a bit of misdirection, having some familiar seeming roles be entirely red herrings. 

DePalma can easily be criticized for misogynist attitudes in films, and in here too, an adulterer woman gets her comeuppance very bloodily. It's a bit of a SPOILER, but the trans community has also heavily criticized the film's portrayal of transsexual tendencies and, having the early 60's Psycho-like idea of having them act as serial killers. There really isn't anything positive the film will say about any sexuality out of your basic monogamous cis-sexuality, but at least Allen's character is a sex worker who also works as an active protagonist.

The film also has a point in pointing how Hitchcock's voyeristic tendencies are obsessive, damaging and toxic, taking their ideas to their logical counterpoint. But it also revels in these very same tendencies. DePalma also plays on his own experiences, since the infidelity that starts out the film was something that was happening in his own family as well. The film has great camerawork and a beautiful soundtrack that makes murder of women highly aestethicized and thus making the audience complicit of the filmmaker's perversions. Also the film's ending is frustratingly bad, having odd conclusions and a dumb jump scare straight out of Carrie.

★★ 1/2

Body Double (1984)

Purloins from: Rear Window (1954)

The idea of duality of an identity or dual personas is very central in DePalma's filmography which probably explains why he's so obsessed with Vertigo in particular. This one dives also deep into ideas of voyerism, prevalent also in Hitch's Rear Window and Dial M for Murder. It makes Hitch's distrust of authorities also an aspect of shame and self-hatred following from obsessive and sexual thoughts.

The film has a cold open on a B-grade horror movie which reminds of Blow Out. The main character (played by Craig Wasson) here is an actor struggling with mental illnesses such as claustrophobia. He wanders off the set and notices a woman who does erotic dances in her apartement every night. Looking at her through telescope, he becomes somewhat obsessed, but also starts to suspect her life may be in danger, giving him an excuse to stalk her in the streets. But even as he witnesses more and more evidence of brutal crimes being committed, he is not believed by the authorities because they see him just a pervert.

At the time, DePalma was seen having gone too far with his use of sex and violence in his films. It's easy to see DePalma just following on with what the Italians were doing a little prior (even if he himself strongly denies it), yet his success opened doors for plenty of Hollywood Erotic thrillers in the late 80's and 90's (most of which were a lot more moralizing). Also DePalma was very much on top of the neo noir movement, making sleek, beautiful pictures to go with gritty stories he was telling. The film even incorporates a Frankie Goes to Hollywood music video in the middle of itself. It's all highly entertaining.

One can see how DePalma is working to solve some mysteries of film entertainment and its use in the world himself. With this and Blow Out a craftsman working in the film industry finds a "true life" plot which affects his way of working. Which is of course just as outlandish and over the top as anything else in Tinseltown. Is real world violence catching up, and does it have a symbiotic relationship with thriller films as well? Do they feed each other? In this case, the lines between movie and reality really fall apart in the 4th wall-breaking finale. Was all the suspense and thrills for nothing? Is the film completed?

When he worked these ideas into his Hitchcock thriller, I think his constant steals also started to actually work for the film's own benefit.

★★★ 1/2

Docpoint 2013

Room 237. 

Not too long ago, another of Helsinki's biggest film festivals took place. As always with DocPoint, the focus was on the year's most exciting, thought-provoking documentary films from around the world. There were several interesting movies to be seen, and it's took a while, but here's a brief look into this year's crop.

The Gatekeepers (Israel/France/Germany/Belgium)
Director: Dror Moreh

Will there ever be a chance for peace in the Middle East? Impossible to say, but at least not if one doesn't study both points of view of Israelites and Palestines. While at first glance this documentary about Israeli chiefs of Security seems to be on Israel's side, it provides criticism to the endless cycle of violence as well.

The film succeeds in contrasting the personalities of all the former leaders of Shoh Bet, or Shabak, the Central Israeli Security Agency. They provide insights on how the nation viewed various threats and wars. The endless cycle of violence has made the men develop a hard shell around them, yet there are points of them reminiscing bloodshed that are quite emotional nevertheless.

The stories of these men are filled with exciting details, confidential information, intrigue and contradiction. Their stories help one to understand at least Israel's dire need to keep its face and appear threatening and all-powerful. It's one of the reasons why the two sides can't really come to terms. This is an important reminder of how a life of ordering massacres affects the human psyche, and what comes from a nation that treats each of its foreign problems by reacting with more violence.

★★★★

The Queen of Versailles (USA/UK/Netherlands/Denmark)
Director: Lauren Greenfield

Here's a story of a wealthy family that lost everything. While this story's true, it might as well be a sitcom. The main characters are self-centered, dim, greedy, oblivious to any realities in life, and, sure enough, in a constant state of Arrested Development.

Before 2008, real estate billionaire David Siegel and his trophy wife Jacqueline loved to flash around their cash. They build skyscrapers, pay to have their daughter win beauty pageants and in the most outrageous move, build a multi-billion dollar mansion in the same vein as Louis XVI's Versailles Palace in France. Yet with the economic collapse, the Siegels lose their fortune. For the most part the film features them grasping onto last remaining shreds of their wealth.

Since the Siegel's are rich sleazebags, they refuse to recognize the moral of the story - the gambling, borderline illegal actions and political horsetrade having gotten them into the mess they are in. When the shoe's on the other foot, they blame others for destroying them and attempt to bounce back by doing the same mistakes again and again. It's incredible how dumb, vain and all-around unlikeable the main couple comes off, but it just makes the movie more intriguing. They don't care the least.

This movie is a testament to this age, a story on how people overemphasize surfaces, appearances and superficial values. They delude themselves to think they are happy when they can raise envy and outrage. But underneath all that surface is but a husk of a soul, one that has a child's idea on how society works, refuses to take responsibility and is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

★★★★

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (UK/Ireland)
Director: Sophie Fiennes

Leftist philosophy superstar Slavoj Žižek delivers another video essay using film clips from old movies, self-irony and societal critique. And, as always it is highly entertaining. This time around the lovable lisping Slovak talks about how Ideology has shaped the world around us, and can be seen in various cultural product we wouldn't necessarily expect to. Case in point are movies, both old and new, obscure and blockbusters, documentaries and fantasy.

While The Pervert's Guide to Cinema had (albeit a flimsy) thread with which to follow, this time around Žižek seems to ramble on whatever comes to mind. That's not to say the film is sloppy, on the contrary the scenes replicationg various film styles are done carefully and to a good comical effect. A lot of the things discussed are quite familiar to anyone who has ever read an article by him, seen his lecture or the documentary film Žižek! I, of course am guilty of all three, but still I enjoyed immensely to hear these theories again in another, more entertaining format. Whether I agree or not is another thing, but the strength of Žižek is that he doesn't pander but provokes and speaks out his mind. Thus, it's up to the viewer to decide what to make of it.

★★★ 1/2

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present (USA)
Directors: Matthew Akers, Jeff Dupre

The conceptual performance artist Marina Abramović has had a long career of putting herself into her art since the 1970s. She has done this to such extent that without art at 63 years of age, she feels like a quite lonely, vunerable and uncertain person. The film chronicles her preparation fot the retrospective of her career at New York's MoMA. But it isn't just a case of putting art work on a gallery. Abramović also prepares to sit and stare at the museum guests all day, every day for three whole months.

Abramović's career has much been characterized by the search for boundaries of art. Not only allowing art lovers to look at art, but looking personally back at them is a concept as simple as there is. On a smaller scale, it could be done by anyone. Doing it with thousands of museum-goers day in, day out takes a lot of courage and endurability. But when does meeting another person, not saying one word, become art? Is it only when the other party is a respected artist by profession? The surrounding of a retrospective adds up plenty to the work, it puts on the emphasis that the artist is still present in all of her past work.

The film is ponderous and heartfelt, and like its focus, almost unbearably intimate. Just the sight of Abramović's stare brings some guests to the brink of tears. Documentarists Akers and Dupre explain Abramović's history extensively and understandably. The film is not qute as experimental as its subject matter, but it does feel like a real experiment, and makes ponder both the nature of art and humanity by itself. Not a small feat.

★★★★

Room 237 (USA)
Director: Rodney Ascher

The ominous, creepy atmosphere of the 1980 film The Shining, as well as the well-known perfectionism of director Stanley Kubrick, have made the movie larger than life. Since Kubrick tended to refuse to put all the pieces together, there was much left for individual interpretations. Thus, there are plenty of people obsessing over the film and coming up with several outlandish renditions of its meaning.

The documentary is illustrated almost solely with film clips, mostly from The Shining, but also from Kubrick's other films, as well as unrelated movies which deal with cinema-viewing and audience perception like Lamberto Bava's Demons. The interviewees are only present by sound and they are not recognized with texts or anything. It is a democratic approach, putting all the interpretations to the same line, whether observant or bug-out crazy.

Obsessing over the movie, some people have spotted out odd visual clues that provoke imagination, such as the unnatural geography of the Overlook Hotel. The theories surrounding the film's horrors sexual nature, or the retread of American bloodshed from history, seem kind of plausible. And then again, there are people who insist Kubrick framed the moon landings and uses the film to confess this to his wife. Danny's Apollo 11 sweater on one scene is the key proof of this cuckoo theory. Nevertheless, it is intriguing to hear both these accounts, and all in all the film both puts The Shining into a new light, all the while not taking anything from the mystical aura of the masterpiece. On the contrary, adding up to it!

★★★★

Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (UK/Italy/Germany)
Director: Laurent Bouzereau

As controversial as directors come, there's no denying Roman Polanski is a character as fascinating as his films. This documentary is an attempt by his long-time friend Laurent Bouzereau to allow the man to speak his mind himself. Polanski spills his life story while on house arrest in Switzerland, waiting whether he will be handed over to US authorities for imprisonment or not.

Predictably, the story hinges on the major three disasters of Polanski's life: Fleeing the Nazi regime as a child, the relationship with his wife Sharon Tate and her consequent brutal murder by the Manson Family, and the director's actions on Jack Nicholson's house with a drugged-up minor, as well as the travesty of a trial that followed. Polanski is a humble man who doesn't attempt to shine his own shield too much and carries his tragedies as well as his successes like his current wife and children. Yet for a film titled Film Memoir, the movie glosses over Polanski's body of work in favor of a character study. His films stem from his private life, so you can't entirely seperate them, but I for one would've been eager to hear more insights on making a large number of brilliant films that disturb and challenge to this day.

★★★

Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap (UK/USA)
Directors: Ice-T, Andy Baybutt

The rapper that brought you Cop Killer is convinced that hip hop saved his life from life on the streets. Since Ice-T owes the music a debt, he attempts to serve it by going around his peers, rap legends and super stars, asking what makes the music matter. The array of artists is quite impressive, from MC Melle Mel through Ice Cube and Chuck D all the way to superstars of the modern era like Kanye West and Eminem.

This is another one in the series of music documentaries that attempt to serve as a gateway to a world of certain genre. It attempts to serve the field as evenly as possible (yet focuses on the most commercial side), leaves out niche groups and offers little information to true aficionados of rap's history. It's always nice to see music legends talk about their work and how they create their verses, so it's an entertaining piece but far from true art mastery.

★★★

Men At Lunch (Ireland, 2012)
Director: Seán Ó Cualáin

The famous photograph about the building of New York, hanging on the walls of bars around the world, has inspired this historical documentary. The movie attempts to find out who were the men sitting on a girder on top of the Big Apple eating their lunch without any fear of falling. Thus, it is a story about labor in the time of the Great Depression, and by extent, immigration.

Unfortunately, since the film is Irish, it is very biased. It attempts to prove a confession heard in one pub to be conclusive, while newspapers and competitions have come to different solutions that are dismissed entirely. Likewise, the story is quite thin since there is little evidence on who's who in the picture. The lazy, archival storytelling style is one for sunday afternoon TV documentaries, but doesn't really work on a big canvas. This could've been an interesting detective story, now it's as bland and unjournalistic as they come.

★ 1/2

Chew: The Master

I figure enough time has passed from both me seeing the Master in 70 mm print, and all you poor schmucks who saw it premiere in Finland last week, to do another Chew on the film. Perhaps writing this even teaches myself a thing or two about the film. Chew texts gloss over plot points and such, so if you're unfamiliar with the film, I advise you to see it before reading. This also means the following will contain some Spoilers.

In short

Paul Thomas Anderson is at the top of his game, and at the point where he can do just about anything he pleases with his films. It's very rare for a major American director to create a work such as this; a visually striking, character piece that leaves out plenty of lose ends, and keeps its pace deliberately low-key. It's all well and good if your film is either compact or sprawling with ideas at every corner. As it is, however, The Master doesn't quite grab me with its content, while it does have several very good ideas at its core. The film seems to have plenty of fat in its near three-hour running time.

The most unexpected thing happened on this Anderson film: the characters don't grow on you. While Phoenix and Hoffman do superb work acting and fleshing out the characters with tiny nuances, they don't really seem that interesting to be worth following almost three hours. It might be due to Anderson's refusal to have any major climaxes, with the films ups and downs being very minor bumps in the way. After peeling away most of their cover, at core the main characters are quite one note. There Will Be Blood had the same features but it was considerably less subdued, letting itself loose with BIG melodramatism from time to time. It had some emotion in it.

Anderson is a clear Romantic but here he insists on making a big, ponderous film with the cold analytics of Kubrick and the poetism of Malick, reaching the heights of neither. The film could use several more important character's viewpoints, as of now it only really looks at two, MAYBE three individuals. It's still not a bad film by any means, and the several themes Anderson juggles throughout the film are quite interesting.

Lost

The clearest implication of the film is that it's about a lost soul looking for a place in the world. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is an ex-Marine from the War of the Pacific and doesn't know what to do or where to go after the war ends. Everything feels empty, until a chance takes him to the family of spiritual leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dodd convinces Quell that he holds all the keys of life, answers to all the mysteries. But "the master" keeps them to himself, constantly repeating the half-truth that his next book will change Quell's world when it's finished. Of course, when the book comes out, it doesn't make anything clearer and was just the kind of big build-up with hot air inside Dodd specializes in.

In a very Andersonian fashion, the director sees that (post-war) America is built on ideas. But rather than these ideas being always the best and the most solid, the things which to build upon are chosen by however well they are sold to people. It's a country of traveling salesmen, and Hoffman is a down-on-his luck Cut-Me-Own-Throat seller. Dodd truly believes his own product is truly wonderful, it is just too hard to grasp and too great to be able to explain to the public. His followers are sold to this false ideal rather than any real thoughts or ponderings.

But Quell doesn't get any better. In fact his aimless, reckless ways are increasingly seen as a threat to the Dodd empire by the matriarch Peggy (Amy Adams). Quell sticks around, partly because he hasn't anywhere better to go, partly because he thinks he's been convinced by Dodd's BS when in fact he isn't even thinking about it. Dodd asking endless questions and making personality tests has also Quell convinced the Master can make deep analyses of his life and knows what's best for him.

A lot of people have found a father-son relationship within Dodd and Quell. In fact both the actors seem to play a little off of each other, as if belonging in separate movies. Their relationship is depicted coldly, and both attempt feed off each other. It's more of a master-apprentice relationship as the title suggests. But in this case neither realizes there's little the other can teach, before it's too late. The father-son relationship does raise it's head at least in times when Quell rebels against his philantropist.

Castles made of sand

In the film's sun-burned imagery, the ocean is one of the rare things to be in full color. Indeed the image Quell reminisces throughout the film, is the foam forming behind his ship sailing away from the war. It's a metaphor how he approaches life. He doesn't look back or ahead, he lives in the spur of the moment like the foam, that doesn't last long. It's also repeated in the scene where the speed of a motorcycle blinds him from the brainwash inflicted by the Dodds and he manages to do a short-lived escape. An escape into nothing, it turns out.

He builds short-form sand castles for pleasure in his very first scene where he builds a sand mermaid to fuck, infinitely bored waiting for a ship to take him home. And at home the same thing goes on, idle sex, dumping the women afterwards, and Quell getting fed up with any career opportunity he's offered. It's interesting to note how Dodd is foreshadowed in the scene where Quell annoys a similar pudgy middle-aged mustached patron into a fist fight. Quell brings a hot photography light too close to his face just for the laugh.

While most of the movie is very light, there are several darker night scenes. At those points Quell almost always mixes up his trademarked cocktails, featuring all sorts of poisonous solvents and drain cleaning liquids. It hints on his character being suicidal, or just oblivious on how much harm he can do.

Looking for love in all the wrong places

The film's view on sex is that it's more or less an act of control. Peggy keeps her husband at bay with a well-timed hand job. Part of Quell's interest in Dodd's cult stems from the fact that the Master can make women object to his whim, like stripping naked while playing a tune for him to sing. Picking up random girls for Quell is a way to pass the time and his attempts at controlling the women are feeble at best. He hasn't got anything to offer them, but unlike Dodd, he can't disguise the fact.

Quell does try to look for the light for his life, but it is very hard to find with the film being burned throughout with light anyway. The only relationship he's ever had was with his high-school girlfriend, and even that may have been a memory gilded by living through worse times. Quell has difficulties grasping other people don't live like him, in a timeless vacuum where not much progress happens.

That's also kind of like this movie. I realize my major gripe is that a film about an aimless wanderer being offered vague wisdoms and circumspect truths, feels like an aimless, vague circumspect quasi-movie. That's the whole point. Like the Master, I just wished it had more to offer for me than it does. I may still be missing on some major revelation  It's a film I really should see again, but for the moment don't really have the energy to do so.

Night Visions Maximum Halloween 3012

Night Visions Maximum Halloween 3012. Even writing the name of the festival makes me tremble. It was very, very cool. I wrote several extensive reviews already for the Elitisti web magazine, so check those out if you happen to know Finnish. But since I hadn't the time or the resources to write about every single film I saw at that festival, I'll leave the scraps here. But never fret, for since the festival's quality this year was nothing short of brilliant, there were plenty of interesting new genre pieces to go here, too. This year at Night Visions saw a rise of thrillers that didn't quite fit the regular horror form the festival is known for, but won audiences over by their sheer inventiveness and quality.

Berberian Sound Studio (Great Britain, 2012)
Director: Peter Strickland

This Italian-shot Brit thriller had plenty of positive buzz surrounding it. And I was both disappointed and satisfied with the resulting film simultaneously. Director Strickland plays with the sort of mental breakdown story that horror fans know by heart from the films of classic directors from Polanski to Cronenberg. The difference here is that Strickland isn't twisting the screw of suspense as tightly as those two masters. But audio-visually his film is on par with those masterpieces.

The timid sound engineer Gilderoy (the sublime Toby Jones) is summoned to Italy to work on a movie he knows nothing about beforehand. The middle-aged man is still a real mama's boy, and pines for peace and nature. But his work requires him to stay at an artificial environment at all times, working with artificial sounds. To top all that, he finds the Italian film producers, led by Francesco (Cosimo Fusco) sleazy and unpleasant. The film he is working turns out to be a simple-minded torture-porn, all squishes, slashes, burning flesh and screaming young ladies. So Guilderoy's sanity slowly begins to crumble.

The film homages the old genre films made in the 70's. For fans of giallo and other violent Italian film, there are plenty of references to classics. But generally, the film resembles more artistic thrillers such as Blow Out or The Conversation, as the plot moves forward very slowly, and at first only tiny, almost insignificant little signals hint that something is very wrong.

The film tricks the viewer himself by mixing up timelines, fact and fiction and various layers of the story. These methods bring to mind Oliver Assayas's Irma Vep. Berberian is very confidently handled, and in a way that doesn't give any sense of catharsis or ending. This leaves the viewer hugely unsatisfied, which makes for the biggest flaw and the biggest strength of the film at the same time. Sometimes we need something to irk ourselves a little.

In the end technology destroys the nature-minded main character. He begins to infuse together with the very machines he works with. Mark Kermode compared the film to Videodrome. This comparison didn't cross my mind watching the film because there are so many more obvious (visual) inspirations. But that comparison is in fact perfectly apt. In both films, our subconscious, it's worst fears and greatest desires fuse together with an obsession to the means of a technology to create a hideous mutant.

Subsequent viewings may raise this film's score considerably in my mind. One thing is clear, the audio-visual strength on display here is so powerful, it is a pure waste of time to even attempt to watch this anywhere else than at a proper cinema.

★★★ 1/2

Tulpa (Italy, 2012)
Director: Federico Zampaglione

From one tribute to old Italian horror cinema to the other. Whereas Berberian attempts to say something about old movies and their technology, Tulpa is more pure regurgitation. It has the same inherent sadism than the films of the likes of Lucio Fulci, and the same obsessions with sexual perversions, laced with violence. But story-wise it fumbles up even worse.

Lisa Boeri (Claudia Gerini) is a tough-as-nails business woman by day. At night she likes to head off to an underground sex club to bang masked strangers. But it appears that a mysterious black-gloved stranger is following the club patrons home, and murdering them in the most brutal fashions. Ever-growing worry of her own survival starts to ruin Lisa's daily businesses, and she attempts to find out the identity of the killer before she gets offed too.

The film has at times a very odd, dreamlike quality, best presented by the creepy thin butler of the club (Nuot Arquint). This is contrasted by the very violent, pitch-black humour and sadism-laced murders. the best among them is a young lady's horrible merry-go-round trip around a ball of barbed wire. Even the strongest violence does have a surreal quality and doesn't feel like sheer torture-porn.

But the film loses steam as it goes along. The final act is a mess, with nothing remaining to hold the audience's interest in the mystery.

The film had it's first screenings at this year's FrightFest and Sitges festivals. After those screenings, the film was reported to be ludicrously bad, with its hokey dialogue and inexplicable plot-holes. After a frantic re-cut, the movie is mostly just dull. I probably would have greeted the stupider and sillier version more warmly.

★★

The Seasoning House (Great Britain, 2011)
Director: Paul Hyett

A feminist thriller from the Balkan war would seem to fit Love & Anarchy or Artisokka better than Night Visions. Still, the resulting film was still one of the most suspenseful of this year's lineup. The film is the feature debut of special effects wizard Paul Hyett, and very surprisingly it relies more on stark characterizations, moods and athmosphere than buckets of gore or any supernatural scares. The film is very realistic in all its violence, which makes it all the more scary.

In 1996, soldiers have locked the young ladies of a occupied village into a house where they come to rape them. The captive girls are kept under strict order by the house's master Viktor (Kevin Howarth), so as to please their clientele. But there is one girl that Viktor has spared form sexual violence, the deaf and mute Angel (Rosie Day). Viktor hasn't got anything good in store for her either, he just likes to torment her and keep her in fear as to when he will violently pop her cherry. But Angel has got an ace up her sleeve, she is small enough to fit into the ventilation shafts and crawlspaces of the house.

Much of the time the silent Angel goes around offering to help her fellow captives however she can. They are tortured, tied to beds and brutalized on a constant basis. As Viktor and the visiting soldiers get more and more ruthless and brutal, she makes up her mind to have her bloody vengeance on the lot.

Hyett utilizes the blueprints and the cross-cut of the house rather brilliantly. The viewer follows Angel through wall-busting transitional shots. The character moves from being a victim to being a vengeful, unreachable ghost to become hunted like an animal. Hyett's cynical and gray-scaled photography is hopless and cynical. The film piles up ghastly things so thickly and often that the viewer becomes numb to its horrors before the end. But the film is still very close of becoming a future classic. The only thing stopping it is that a film this harsh and brutal isn't one anyone would want to return to.

★★★ 1/2

Shogun Assassin (Japan/USA 1972/1980)
Directors: Kazuo Koike, Robert Houston

Roger Corman's film releasing company bought the rights to Kazuo Koike's classic Japanese samurai/ninja series Lone Wolf & Cub in the late 70's. Producers David Weisman and Robert Houston realized a super-violent serial hinging so tightly in Japan's history, and so purposefully repeating itself, wouldn't be a success in the west. So they had a bright idea to cut the first two films of the series into a new one, thus giving the film more of a dramatic ark and making it resemble a revenge western more. The film was also laced with modern synthesizer music and English dubbing. Against all odds, the end result was quite good, and became a classic among gore-hungry action fans.

The small boy Daigorō (Akihiro Tomikawa) narrates the story of how his father became a wandering ronin, a samurai without a master, home or honor. The executioner Ōgami Ittō (Tomisaburo Wakayama) is the right hand of the shogun of the Yagyu clan. The cruel, power-hungry shogun brings hundreds of prisoners of war for him to kill, but at the same time becomes fearful of his servant's skills and brutality. He orders his ninja assassins to kill Ōgami  but they only manage to murder his wife. The furious Ōgami makes his infant son Daigorō choose between life and death. Since the boy chooses the way of the sword, Ōgami doesn't gain straight revenge on his former master which would be suicidal. Instead, he sets off to walk around Japan and live by accepting the odd assassination job. The shogun's pursuing henchmen he can off one by one if he has to. And he is totally able to, too.

The cinema hasn't really seen a protagonist as bad-ass as Wakayama before or since. The stoic, chubby man appears to be always carrying grudges, yet can have surprising scenes of tenderness and care when taking care of his son. At the same time he suffers no remorse in cutting his enemies into tiny pieces and letting blood flow like geysers  The comically overblown amounts of splatter and inventive fight scenes make the film exciting. But the real value is in the surprisingly poetic, quiet scenes just before the slaughter. The film thus shares something with the films of Sergio Leone.

In the end, like in a true serial, Ōgami's exploits have no proper end. The wandering knight and his son just wander on to new adventures, on their never-ending walk to hell.

★★★★

Seeding of A Ghost (Zhong gui, Hong Kong 1983)
Director: Chuan Yang

At first glance, this year's final film of the festival didn't seem to be as insane and hilarious as previous Night Visions closers. But this Shaw Brothers horror classic gets crazier and crazier as it goes on, to the point where the oddity is so mind-blowing one has trouble keeping up with all its twists and turns. The early screening after a night of staying awake might be to blame. But more probably it's the fact that this film is so sprawling with ideas that the viewer has no time to recover until the next one comes from out of nowhere.

Why hello there! Am I delirious or is this really happening?

A regular Hong Kong taxi driver Anthony Fang (Norman Chu) hits a man while driving in a dark and gloomy street. He is relieved to see the man survived, but then the victim reveals himself to be an evil sorceror and promises that Anthony is cursed from there on. Anthony shrugs this off since he has a beautiful young wife (Mi Tien) to go home to. But soon, she grows ever more restless and embarks on a relationship with the card shark Fong (Norman Tsui). Coming home from her lover, she ventures into a dangerous neighborhood and is raped and murdered by hoodlums.

The broken Anthony seeks the evil sorceror to help him. The wizard promises to bring her back to life, but swears to use dark forces with will fare badly on the man already jinxed with bad luck. Anthony doesn't care. So, the wife is brought back as a supernatural zombie, but she's not particularly happy about it. The evil magic zombie starts to have her revenge on everyone who irked her, as well as their whole families, her former lover first and foremost. The resulting havoc destroys everything it comes across.

While the first half of the film is sold on ridiculous soft porn sex scenes, and stupidly melodramtic romance, the real fun begins when black magic comes properly into the picture. The resulting fight between the forces of good and evil are nothing short of spectacular, and feature a lot of actually quite good effects work. Blood and guts are pumped out ridiculous amounts. The film also develops the then-popular themes of body horror by featuring plenty of odd mutilations and human body parts turning into bloody, monstrous appendixes.

The film plays a lot on the presumed fairy take ending of love and goodness triumphing over hate and vengeance. But the film packs a mean punch, and its final scene in particular is deliciously wicked. I am not an expert on Chinese folklore, but I would have to say, if this represents it, the country is a lot more insane than I ever imagined.

★ or ★★★★★

So that was that. I hear the theater itself is calling me to return again and again. It's saying... I've always been at Night Visions.

Come, come, nuclear bomb

We have only three weeks to live in the case the Mayans were right. So, in terms of public service announcements, I will be writing a bit more on various visions of how life has been cinamatically wiped off of Earth in movies, and how people have come to terms with the fall of civilization.

During the time of the Cold War, there was an ever-looming threat of the United States and the Soviet Union wiping each other out by their massive arsenals of nuclear missiles. The threat of nuclear war went so far as to treaten the very destruction of life on Earth, particularly in the Bay of Pigs crisis in 1961.

That's why nuclear disaster has also inspired a great number of filmmakers for decades. James Cameron wouldn't have as successful a career without the threat, for one. I'll take a look at three visions of events leading to nuclear disaster, which take different viewpoints.

Fail-Safe (1964)
Director: Sidney Lumet

One of the most famous Cold War thrillers that faced the threat of nuclear annihilation was this film, based in part on the same book as Dr. Strangelove. Fail-Safe deals mostly with sweaty politicians trying to fix the catastrophy a minor error causes, to little avail. For anyone who has seen Strangelove, the film is a little hard to take seriously since it shares a number of plot twists and turns with Kubrick's satire classic. Nevertheless, the film is held to high acclaim today, thanks in large part for Lumet's unrelentingly dramatic direction and strong lead performances.

A radar alert for possible intrusion to US airspace causes nuclear bombers to fly off to Moscow. It is soon found out that an out-of-course airline plane was the cause of the alert, and the Rush'N Attack is meant to be called off. But a human mistake, as well as Russian radio wave jammers, cause the message not to reach the bombers. High tensions with the Soviet Union leaders would cause them not to believe any explanation of the accident. The President (Henry Fonda) is called to make tough decisions to make sure mankind would survive the tragic catastrophy. And this includes doing the unthinkable, attacking New York City by themselves.

The film uses stark contrasts and is shot mostly indoors, in stuffy cabinets, with people watching monitors and radars. There's a strong sense of claustrophobia since neither the characters nor the viewers have any means of getting out of the sticky situation. Most of the time the film plays like a chamber drama, with the tensions arising in discussions and the stakes getting to impossible heights. In the end the president's solution is quite hard to swallow. This twist makes the otherwise naturalistic film drive off the cliff of being too fantastic. But the incredible final scene, shot in an expressionist manner, makes up for most of the major flaws in the movie's script.

★★★ 1/2

The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)
Director: Val Guest

While Americans tend to look upwards to authority figures and decision-makers, the Brits tend to choose more down-to-earth viewpoint characters in their catastrophy films. Made on the same year as the Bay of Pigs Invasion took place, Val Guest's thriller is a nuclear disaster only indirectly. It's still quite clear the fear of the cloud and tempering with the power of the atom is the catalyte for disaster here. The movie centers on reporters out to make a story on the fall of planet Earth.

The young Peter Stenning (Edward Judd) and the experienced Bill Maguire (Leo McGuire) are reporters for the London-based Daily Express. Stenning has gone through a messy divorce and is in a slump of his career, getting only boring assignments. The friendly Maguire attempts to help him out when he can. While investigating odd weather reports, Stenning realizes something horrible. The recent nuclear tests ran by both United States and the Soviet Union have caused the Earth's rotation to change and hurl the planet closer to the sun. Nothing can survive the rising temperatures, unless drastic measures are taken to fix the situation.

The film perhaps suffers a bit for imitating the studio-era Hollywood style rather than embracing a bit wilder 60's aesthetics. The film's scenes of pandemonium and looting look awfully tame when compared to the news reports that began to flood in during the same decade all across the world. Yet the film features several awfully clever visual ideas. One is to tell the back story in flashback in regular black-and-white, while the moments of reckoning are shot in a scorched sepia-typed tone. One can almost feel the temperature rising while watching this. Guest manages to tighten the suspense sufficiently, although wastes time for a pretty tacked-on romantic subplot. Another great idea is to close the film on ambiguous church bells. What will the future bring? We may never know.

★★★

Threads (1984)
Director: Mick Jackson

Another British drama, film this goes to lengths not possible two decades before. The 80's were a lot more cynical and not as much on the edge as the common atmosphere 60's. It seemed that there was no doubt nuclear annihilation would come. The question was only, when. The film tells the documentary-styled ugly story of total nuclear devastation in England, as seen through the eyes of two families of regular people. They have no particular hopes or dreams, except for to survive. The film is made-for-TV, but in its effectiveness it's been raised on the level of other movie classics. Shows how TV is thought to be the inferior medium. Even it's major classics are always compared to cinema.

In Sheffield, northern England, the families of Becketts and Kemps come together since the proposal of Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale) to Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher). At the same time, Cold War is going global and heating up, fast.

Fear grips England and people start hoarding food and survival supplies in case of the worst-case scenario. Loud protests and riots erupt on the streets, which Chief Hirst (Michael O'Hagan) is unable to control. Little by little society crumbles, starting with politics and moving on to the mico-level. In turn comes just a simple battle of survival. When the bombs finally hit, the remains of civilization burn to the ground, leaving the survivors in a frantic search to find their missing loved ones. Charred corpses and collapsed buildings litter the streets. Even the very basics of human culture start to falter, with people repressing to the state of animals.

At the center of the movie is not just an apocalyptic nuclear disaster. It's still a central element to the story and delivers several horrific scenes, but the larger details on why the bombs drop are never really explained. Instead, as the title suggests, the film is about the British society and how it's hanging by a thread. When all chips are down, no element of the intricate network of society works and people are left to fend for themselves.

The film offers no warmth, distancing itself from the terror with a narrator and intervowen nature film footage. This is harrowing, as terrifying and cynical as a film can get. It's no wonder the film is often categorized to belong in the "horror" genre. No knife-wielding maniac or monster attack could dream of being as terrible as the notion that people cease to be humane when civilization fails.

★★★★