Horrorfest 2016: The Hitcher

Here's another for the, "I can't believe you've never seen that!" list. 1986's THE HITCHER, directed by Robert Harmon, stars the great Rutger Hauer as a hitchhiking serial killer.

Rutger Hauer makes this movie with his nightmarish, scenery-chewing performance as a rabid killer who just won't leave his selected prey alone. But C. Thomas Howell is equally great as the unassuming college-aged road tripper who unwittingly picks him up.

Unlike the victim in OPERA, Howell's character makes a bunch of pretty normal decisions. He gets the killer out of his car as soon as he can, he warns others about the killer, he calls the police and so on. So, the movie gets off to a good start where you sympathize with the character and believe in the situation. Which is good, because it escalates to insane action territory where Hauer becomes almost Terminator-like in his single-minded pursuit of Howell.

Ebert wasn't a big fan of this flick, particularly because of the way it treats Jennifer Jason Leigh's character, a waitress who goes on the run with Howell. And yes, the treatment of that character is gross and doesn't really fit with the rest of the movie. But I dunno. I still liked it. The central conceit is so strongly cemented in the realm of most people's shared fears and nightmares that it's hard not to be entertained by this gruesome game of cat and mouse.

Horrorfest 2016: Trouble Every Day

TROUBLE EVER DAY is another hard one to watch. This 2001 French flick from Claire Denis isn't long but it's very slow and abstract and when the violence comes it's really violent.

Vincent Gallo and Tricia Vessey star as a couple on their honeymoon to Paris. Well, Vessey thinks they're on their honeymoon, really Gallo is hellbent on finding a woman he's obsessed with: Beatrice Dalle. That's right, Beatrice Dalle, who opened this year's Horrorfest with INSIDE.

Dalle is being held captive in her home by her husband (Leo Semenau). If she gets out, she murders dudes. The murdering involves lots of face biting. It's gross and prolonged. I guess this is kind of a vampire movie. But it's also kind of not. Mostly it's just unpleasant.

TROUBLE EVERY DAY gets points for being artsy and having a definite tone and point of view. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. Still, I didn't really like watching it.

Horrorfest 2016: Irreversible

I've been avoiding the 2002 French film IRREVERSIBLE for years because of its most famous scene: a brutal rape shot in one 10-minute long unbroken take. This flick shows up on all kinds of "best of" lists and I always push it to the back because I have to ask myself if I feel like sitting through that and the answer is usually no.

Alas, the time has finally come, and while IRREVERSIBLE is a very difficult movie to watch, and an even more difficult movie to enjoy, it is hard to ignore the fact that it is actually legitimately powerful and innovative filmmaking.

The way the film is structured is actually more complex than the story itself, about one night in the lives of a group of French partygoers who start off happy and normal and end up murderers and rape victims. The thing is, the story is told backwards – so we start with brutal revenge in an underground gay S&M club, hit the rape scene about halfway through, and end up with our characters preparing to go out for the night.

On top of this, the cinematography and editing start out frantic to the point where it's hard to even tell what's going on for long stretches of the film, and eventually calms down until it feels like a conventionally shot and edited film towards the end. This makes sense, because obviously the early passages are at the end of the night when these people's lives have been shattered and their reality has been turned upside down, so confusion makes sense.

Still, I'd be lying if I didn't admit I thought it was a little suspect. As the equally fascinating and grueling opening sequences went by, where we very rarely get a good glimpse at anything long enough to figure out just exactly what's going on, I thought to myself, "How much you want to bet the camera magically calms down and stays still as soon as we get to the rape scene."

Unfortunately, I was right. Magically, as soon as we get to the brutality against Monica Bellucci's character, the camera's suddenly locked down, and we get to see the whole thing in excruciating detail. Now, it wouldn't be totally fair to just leave it at this. Obviously there are artistic reasons for this: the filmmakers want to make us look at it, experience how awful it is, won't allow us to look away, all that stuff. Still, why not the same examination of the S&M club early on? Again, I guess because by that time the characters are drugged up and confused and the club itself is disorienting, etc.

So what am I trying to say? I'm not sure. I guess, I simultaneously admire the way this film was made and the way this story was told, because it was a unique and expressive and appropriate way to do it, while also suspecting that it might be a little convenient that maybe some prurient interests can be fulfilled along the way.

Horrorfest 2016: Opera

Let's head to Italy for Dario Argento's 1987 flick OPERA. Argento's no stranger to Horrorfest. Some of his flicks are awesome (DEEP RED), others  are just okay (INFERNO) but from the music to the cinematography to the gore, they're all stylish.

OPERA is kind of a Cliff's Notes retelling of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, with Cristina Marsillach as an understudy who is pushed to center stage when the opera's star suffers an accident. There's a murder in the theater the first night of her performance, and many other murders follow, with the mysterious killer tying up Marsillach each time and using needle-like apparatuses on her eyes to force her to watch.

The opera house setting is beautiful, there's a gorgeous mountainside climax, the murder scenes feature good special effects and "inventive" kills, and the movie is filled with complex shots. There's also a great soundtrack featuring the likes of Brian Eno and Bill Wyman.

But this is one of those Argento movies that's technically awesome while totally lacking in the story department. For instance, the whole "forcing you to watch murder" thing is contrived. It makes for great movie scenes, but even if a killer propped my eyes open with apparatuses that would stab my eyeballs with needles if I dared to blink, I would still blink, because blinking is involuntary.

Also, our heroine doesn't even go to the cops after she escapes the first attack. Stuff like this made a lot of the movie hard to swallow. It's pretty typical of an Argento flick – they usually have more of a dream like logic than any kind of plot logic, and that's not always a bad thing, but sometimes it gets in the way.

Horrorfest 2016: The Leopard Man

With a title like 1943's THE LEOPARD MAN, you know it must be a Val Lewton production. Lewton, the genius producer behind such Horrorfest classics as CAT PEOPLE, CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE never met a wacky title he couldn't turn into a classy horror flick.

This time out, Jacques Tourneur takes over directing duties and Abner Biberman stars as the titular Leopard Man. Biberman's a sideshow performer who owns a leopard and rents it out to be used as an attraction in a night club performance. The leopard promptly escapes and mauled bodies start piling up.

At first the cops think it's the leopard, then they think it's someone killing people and using the leopard as a cover up. Biberman, who loves booze and drinks to black out on the reg, begins to wonder if he's the one behind everything!

Crazy, huh? Where do they come up with this stuff? What a weird premise. And so nicely executed, too. If you've never seen a Val Lewton flick, start with CAT PEOPLE, but don't stop until you get to THE LEOPARD MAN.