Horrorfest 2013: House by the River

Ah, a film by Fritz Lang – what better way to end Horrorfest 2013?

1950's HOUSE BY THE RIVER is another combination of noir and horror from Lang, a master of both. The film stars Louis Hayward as an unsuccessful (but well to-do) novelist who accidentally murders his maid (Dorothy Patrick) after she resists his advances. Hayward talks his brother (Lee Bowman) into helping him cover up the crime before his wife (Jane Wyatt) gets home.

The duo sinks the body in the nearby river, but it isn't long before the body surfaces and things start to go wrong. The disappearance of the maid becomes a media circus and the brothers react quite differently, with Hayward relishing in the attention and taking advantage of it to rekindle his career and fuel his next book and Bowman becoming more and more withdrawn with guilt.

Like Lang's earlier work, HOUSE BY THE RIVER is a master class in cinematography. Here Lang teams with Edward J. Cronjager to turn Hayward's house into a dimly lit cavern.

The best part of the movie is Hayward's performance as the truly creepy main character. This guy is totally unsympathetic, becoming more and more depraved and evil the longer the movie runs. Instead of learning his lesson, he courts more and more potential disaster, seemingly willing to do anything to cover up his crime. Hayward is great at being fake-nice one minute and then transparently manipulative the next.

Bowman is also good as the brother, basically the exact opposite of Hayward, a super-sympathetic character who is lonely and reserved and usually wants to do the right thing. This contrast serves to make Hayward seem even more evil by comparison. It could have been a bland role, but Bowman makes his character real enough that he doesn't come off like a saint or anything phony like that. Just a regular guy.

So ends Horrorfest 2013 – 31 horror movies in 31 days, in honor of Halloween. I'll list my 5 favorites below, and just for fun, the one I liked the least, as well.

Top 5 (in no order):

Targets
Mad Love
Scream of Fear
Island of Lost Souls
House by the River

The worst:

The Conjuring

And some quick stats:

Of the films watched this month, 13 were black and white, 18 were color and 2 were silent. 14 of them were from the U.S. with 4 each coming from the UK and Spain, 2 each from Czechoslovakia and Japan, and 1 each from Korea, Russia, Denmark, Poland and Sweden. 7 were from the 60s, 5 from the 80s, 4 each from the 40s and 2010s, 2 each from the 20s, 30s and 2000s, 3 from the 90s and 1 each from the 50s and the 70s.

In the interest of full disclosure I should note that I also watched DRACULA, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON this month, all on the big screen – but of course they don't count because I'd already seen them. And tonight, FRANKENSTEIN is on the menu.

Happy Halloween!

Horrorfest 2013: They Live

Continuing my slow but sure viewing of every single John Carpenter movie ever, I’ve now landed on 1988’s THEY LIVE.

Here’s the thing: THEY LIVE is a weird movie. It gets off to a slow start with Roddy Piper as a homeless unemployed drifter who rolls into Los Angeles, is welcomed into a shanty-town, wanders into a church that isn’t quite what it seems and eventually stumbles upon a pair of sun glasses that let him see “the real world” around him.

Turns out the “real world” is infested with alien beings who have the faces of ghastly skulls. With the glasses off, they just look like regular people. Also, with the glasses on, Piper is startled to see that advertising billboards and magazines actually carry messages like “Watch television” and “Obey.”

The two weirdest things about this movie are its offbeat main character played by Piper and its stubborn refusal to follow anything recognizable as a usual film narrative. Both of these things work in the movie’s favor, ultimately.

The movie gets off to a slow start, but once Piper finds the sun glasses and starts rebelling against the alien overlords, things pick up. The thing is, Piper plays a total asshole who, without thinking, immediately goes to war against the aliens. Even before he has any explanation as to what’s going on, he’s blasting the aliens with shotguns and car-jacking civilians to get away from the cops.

In a lot of ways Piper is his own worst enemy – any chance he has to progress in the plot, he totally ruins by being a dick. In some ways this is realistic – you have to imagine your average real life homeless drifter would probably not be the most apt person to investigate an alien invasion.

The film is interrupted halfway through by a prolonged fight scene between Piper and Keith David as one of the shanty town residents. All Piper wants David to do is try on the glasses and see what’s up, but David won’t have it. So, they two beat the shit out of each other for what feels like roughly 15 minutes of the movies 94 minute run time.

This fight drags on so long it starts to get hilarious. Even the actors look like they can hardly believe what’s happening. So here we’ve got this alien invasion movie and more attention is given to these two guys beating hell out of each other than anything else. You’d think the movie would spend more time on the thrilling climax, but no. Let’s lovingly shoot every second of this little alley fight and linger over every single punch.

Like I said – it’s weird. But, it’s charming. Like Piper himself, the movie is mostly likable for how aggressively unlikable it is. If that makes any sense.

Horrorfest 2013: Bedevilled

Based on a couple brief synopses of BEDEVILLED I’d read online, I wasn’t really looking forward to watching it, but hey – it’s on my list, so it must be watched.

This 2010 Korean film stars Ji Sung-won as a young woman working in a bank who heads to a remote island where she once visited her grandmother for vacation. There she meets her childhood friend (Seo Young-hee) who is one of the only young women on the island and is treated as a second-class citizen and slave by everyone else.

It’s really a terrible situation, involving brutal rapes and lots of violence. That’s the part I wasn’t looking forward to. It’s not easy to watch, that’s for sure.

If you make it past the slow opening and the brutal middle passage, you’ll eventually get to the part where Seo Young-hee seeks her bloody revenge. Again, it’s hard to watch – very graphic, very violent – but at least now the tables have turned.

Probably the best part of this film and its main redeeming quality is the performance from Seo Young-hee. It must not have been easy to play out a lot of the more intense, ugly scenes, and the role could have been thankless if it had been handled differently. But, Seo Young-hee is able to get a lot of range out of it and show a lot of emotions that you don’t often get to see in movies. This is a real three dimensional character, even if she is at the center of degradation.

Horrorfest 2013: White Dog

Samuel Fuller’s WHITE DOG is a notorious horror film because of how little-seen it is. It barely had a release at all in the U.S. because Paramount was afraid it would be deemed racist. It played on cable and overseas, but didn’t see a home video release until relatively recently. So, the movie is more famous for having not been seen than it is for its actual content.

This is one of those cases where people have confused a movie ABOUT racism with a movie that IS racist. Turns out, it’s possible to discuss race and racism and admit that racism exists without actually being racist. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, WHITE DOG stars Kristy McNichol as a young actress who hits a dog with her car and takes it in after it recuperates and pays her back by fighting off a home invader. She becomes concerned there’s something wrong with the dog when it attacks a co-worker of hers for seemingly no reason.

McNichol takes the dog to a wild animal trainer (Burl Ives) who sizes it up as an attack dog and recommends having it destroyed. The dog attacks yet another person for seemingly no reason and… guess what? Both victims of unprovoked dog attacks are black!

Enter Paul Winfiled as another trainer who explains to McNichol that her dog is a “white dog” – a dog specifically trained to hate, fear and attack black people. Winfield takes it upon himself to correct the dog’s training, even though he admits that it’s probably impossible.
The dog escapes, there are more killings, etc, etc. You can probably figure out how this thing goes.

In any case, it’s a good movie, with a cast and direction that elevates the story above its borderline exploitative aspects. Winfield is particularly good as the trainer who takes the deprogramming of this dog personally.

Fuller always chooses shots and setups that take an interesting angle on the story. There’s one particularly well shot scene in which the dog has broken loose and is foraging through trash in an alley. The camera is at the corner of the alley and the main road, and we can see a young black kid walking down the street toward the dog. The kid can’t see the dog, the dog can’t see the kid, but we can see both. As the kid draws closer, we can’t help but cringe at the thought of the potential upcoming attack.

The movie isn’t offensive or shocking, really. Its reputation precedes it. Still, it’s a solid suspense flick that has balls.

Horrorfest 2013: The Lodger

Here’s another stab at noir-horror from John Brahm, THE LODGER, a 1944 remake of one of Hitchcock’s silent flicks inspired by the real-life story of Jack the Ripper.

Laird Cregar stars once again as the killer, this time a nervous, socially awkward lodger living in the attic of a nice family’s house, leaving at night with his medical bag to cut up women.

There’s another lodger in the house, a singer played by Merle Oberon, who Cregar gets a dangerous crush on and quickly becomes obsessed with.

Like HANGOVER SQUARE, THE LODGER is expertly shot in black and white and features some great performances and set pieces, not least of which is the final showdown between the killer and his captors backstage at a cabaret.

This was the second remake of Hitchcock’s attempt and though I haven’t seen the two earlier versions, it is my understanding that this is considered the best of the three. So, keep that in mind next time someone tells you all remakes suck.

Horrorfest 2013: The Fearless Vampire Killers

Roman Polanski's horror comedy, THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, is interesting in that it's positioned within his filmography right after the super dark REPULSION (a Horrorfest alum) and right before the equally stark ROSEMARY'S BABY, but it doesn't seem to match either of those.

THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS seems more like a first film than a stop-gap between two horror classics. Granted, it's well loved among audiences and critics, alike, but I didn't get it.

Thing is, it's not funny enough to work as a real comedy and not horrific enough to work as real horror. It just sits kind of in the middle, too flabby the skip along like the early works of Mel Brooks or Woody Allen, and not sinister enough to join the ranks of... er, early Polanski.

The film takes place in 19th century Transylvania and stars Polanski himself as a nebbish assistant to a Van Helsing by-way-of-Van Winkle vampire hunter (Jack MacGowran) who enter a vampire's (Ferdy Mayne) castle on a rescue mission when the pneumatic daughter (Sharon Tate) of an inn-keeper is kidnapped.

The cast is great, the movie looks beautiful, and it's not boring, but for whatever reason it just never took off for me. Maybe on the right day I'd see what others see in it, but not today, I'm afraid.

Horrorfest 2013: Little Otik

Here's another, more recent, flick by ALICE director Jan Svankmajer -- LITTLE OTIK, another surreal, creepy flick that verges on horror, blending live action with off the wall stop motion animation.

This time we have the story of a Czech couple who desperately wants a baby, but is having a hard time conceiving. The husband (Jan Hartl) ends up carving a weird-looking baby out of a stump removed from the yard, and much to his chagrin and surprise, his wife (Veronika Zilkova) starts taking care of it as if it was a real child and names it Otik.

It isn't long before the thing does seem to come alive, and this is where the stop motion comes in. The tree stump has one hole in it that it alternates to use as an eye or mouth, depending on what it needs at the moment, with a creepily real looking tongue that's constantly lolling out and a set of chompers that seems a little too animal for a kid.

The stump cries like a baby, gets pushed around in a stroller like a baby and generally acts like a real baby. Except when it comes to food. First, the couple is disturbed when Otik seems to want to eat his own mother's hair and then they're even more disturbed when he eats the couple's cat. It's only a matter of time before the human bodies start piling up.

This is also an apartment horror movie, so we have a whole community of snoopy neighbors that are witnessing the action in one way or another. Chief among them is a little girl (Kristina Adamcova) who reads a fairy tale that has striking similarities to the Otik situation and thinks she's figured out what's going on.

Where things go from there I'll leave for you to discover. I will say this takes the disturbing pieces of ALICE to a much higher level. Again, the movie is funny in parts, and not outright scary so much as it is just vaguely unsettling. The animation is other worldly and creepy, and you always feel a little on edge watching the flick. I guess part of that might be due to the constant baby cries. In that sense it's similar to ALICE -- the animation and sound design keeps you on edge even though nothing particularly frightening happens in the film. You just can't relax.

Eve though the movie has funny moments and is definitely surrealistic, the cool thing about it is that it takes its premise about as seriously as anyone could expect. It definitely exploits every potential aspect of its insane situation and doesn't lack imagination at all.

Horrorfest 2013: Hangover Square

All right back to the 1940s and England for HANGOVER SQUARE, a flick that would be more of a film noir than a horror movie if it wasn't for the Victorian setting.

Still, it's a genre bender, and a good one, about a pianist and composer (Laird Cregar) who suffers periodic blackouts. When a series of murders occurs, he begins to suspect himself as the perpetrator. However, a Scotland Yard doctor (George Middleton) says this can't be, based on the evidence.

Stressed out from being wrapped up in his work writing a new concerto, Cregar slums it in a beer hall only to fall in love with a singer (Linda Darnell) who has a hit with one of his songs and begins to string him along in hopes of more hits, even though she's engaged to be married to someone else.

Not really the way you want to treat a guy who thinks he might be in the middle of a murder spree.

As you might expect from this set up, things proceed to a tragic and dramatic conclusion, all set against the backdrop of Cregar's concerto performance.

Bernard Herrmann wrote the music, and it's a killer soundtrack. It could stand on its own but also does a really good job of reflecting the mood of the film. And, to the film's credit, there are very, very convincing scenes of Cregar pounding out the notes on the piano. I'm not sure how they did it -- if Cregar was a pianist, or if he just memorized where to put his fingers, or what, but all you have to do is look at Dooley Wilson's work in CASABLANCA (around the same time) to see a huge difference in good cinematic pretend piano playing and bad cinematic pretend piano playing.

Cregar is good as the depressed, stressed, and psychotic lead, able to be an every-man and a villain all at the same time, and the film is shot as moodily as any noir, but with the Victorian twist that makes it unique.

The film's director, John Brahm, also made THE LODGER, coming soon to Horrorfest, so I'm interested to see if that's as awesome a combination of noir and horror as this one was.

Horrorfest 2013: The Conjuring

Even though it just came out in 2013 and has barely hit the new release shelves of video stores, THE CONJURING is high on IMDB's highest rated horror movie list. I'd heard good things about it from friends and read good things online, so I was glad for an excuse to check it out.

Unfortunately THE CONJURING is another let down. This is a haunted house film, a supposed "true story" about real-life self-proclaimed demonologists (is there any other kind?) Ed and Lorraine Warren, the same couple who investigated the "true" Amityville thing. As a result, the movie is more than a little reminiscent of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, which has its moments but ultimately is annoying as well.

Why, you ask? Because all haunted house movies are annoying. Well, most are, anyway. They all fall prey to the whole "let's make this seem real" school of horror filmmaking, where the filmmakers have the family in their movie scared of stuff that could plausibly happen in a real house (creaking floor boards, cold spots, catching glimpses of things out of the corner of your eye in the dark, etc). Now, in real life, these are the only things "super natural" that there are to be afraid of, because you'll never find a real ghost. So, if you think your house is haunted, all you have to go on is doors that slam shut and shit like that. But this is a movie, folks. In movies where ghosts and demons exist, anything can happen! Let's see some shit!

We do see some shit, but by the time we see it it's too late and there's too much screaming and loud noises and blah. Fuck haunted houses.

Everything that's wrong with this movie can be summed up in an early seen in each Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) visit a couple young women who believe they've got a possessed doll. Two things are obnoxious about this.

Firstly: the doll has been so thoroughly production-designed to look like a devil doll that all suspension of disbelief goes out the window. You don't for a second believe anyone in their right mind would want to own this doll or keep it around the house. It looks possessed. If you're a production designer on a movie like this, your job is to make the doll have plausible deniability. You want it to be creepy (as some dolls are) but believably doll-like, as if someone would actually produce such a doll and successfully sell it. So you have to find that uncanny valley where the doll looks almost normal... BUT NOT QUITE! You don't want it to just look like the possessed chick from the Exorcist.

Secondly: if you want me to buy that the doll is possessed, or that Ed and Lorraine are super experienced awesome demonologists, you have to give me some good evidence. This is literally what happens: the girls say the doll mysteriously ends up in parts of the house where they didn't put it, and then one day they come home and their house has been trashed. So, obviously, the doll is possessed. I mean what other explanation could there be? No one ever misplaces anything, do they? And break-ins never happen, either, right? So, devil doll is the only explanation.

Now, if I'm some expert paranormal investigator and someone tells me this story the first thing I'd say is, "How do you know someone didn't just break into your house and trash the place?"

But not Ed and Lorraine! They just go, "Oh, it's not possessed. It's a demon."

Sigh.

So, why's everyone like this flick, you ask? I can only guess, and here's my guess: unlike many contemporary horror films, this one at least attempts to look like what people might recognize as a movie. It's a 70s period piece, and therefore the aesthetic and filmmaking techniques remind us of a golden era when THE EXORCIST and ALIEN and shit like that were the norm. So, that's nice.

Also, I like the cast a lot. Aside from the great Farmiga and the perfectly fine Wilson, we also get the awesome Ron Livingston and glorious (and underused) Lili Taylor as the parents of the haunted family in question.

So, the movie looks good, and has the vibe of a good movie, and has a good cast, so points for trying, but c'mon with the haunted houses already.

Horrorfest 2013: Return of the Living Dead

WHAT? I've never seen RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD? Nope. Well, I mean, at least, not until now.

I've been a fan of the Romero zombie flicks since high school, but never got around to watch the RETURN series for whatever reason. Maybe it's because I saw a trailer for one when I was like 6 and it scared the shit out of me. Or, maybe it's just because when you watch a billion movies all the time it's tough to get around to watching a billion other ones.

Whatever the case may be, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a horror comedy about a bunch of dead bodies that come back to life when mysterious chemical drums are accidentally opened at a medical supply warehouse adjacent to a funeral home and graveyard.

This flick is firmly 80s-tastic as it uses stereotypical 80s versions of punk rockers as the main characters. Hey, I bet the guys who made the MANIAC MANSION video game were into this flick.

The best thing about RETURN is that it's funny -- not satire funny like Romero's flicks, but outright slapstick funny. And, it has great zombie effects, with each member of the living dead lovingly and individually designed as a detailed, gross creature.

The movie also has a killer soundtrack and keeps things fresh by alternatively ignoring zombie conventions and creating them. This is the first time zombies craved brains, and, I think, the first time zombies were fast. Remember when 28 DAYS LATER came out and everyone was like, "No, dude! They're fast in this one! It's crazy!" Well, they did it here first. The zombies even talk!

The best joke in the flick is reserved for the closing scenes, so I won't give the ending away here. Suffice it to say it involves an 800 number stamped on the toxic barrels in case of emergency.

Horrorfest 2013: Sleep Tight

What the hell, let's do 2 Spanish films about apartment buildings in a row! Only this one's much darker than the last, and not funny at all. But, this is Horrorfest, right? Dark's the name of the game.

2011's SLEEP TIGHT stars Luis Tosar as an apartment concierge who delights in psychologically torturing the tenants in his care, without them knowing what he's doing. Well, maybe the word "delight" isn't right, since it's clear Tosar is not happy at all and can't seem to find joy or happiness in anything. He's a lonely man who only has his bed-ridden mother to talk to. Still, his main hobby is making everyone else around him miserable without letting them catch on.

We learn early on that one of his unknowing victims is a young, beautiful tenant (Marta Etura) who Tosar drugs nightly and sleeps with, leaving in the morning before she wakes up. No matter what he does, she remains optimistic -- when she develops a mysterious rash, she's cool with it. When roaches infest her apartment, she's still cool. All of this is perpetrated by Tosar, and the more she seems to stay happy, the more it becomes his central mission in life to eventually break her.

So, Tosar goes to creepier and creepier lengths to make her life hell, and this is what makes up the bulk of the movie. There's also a suspicious boyfriend who shows up (Alberta San Juan) and a little girl who thinks she knows what's going on and is bribing Tosar (Iris Almeida).

This is definitely a creepy premise, and there are some horrific scenes, but a lot of the scares come from scenes in which Tosar has gone to great lengths to pull off his evil schemes on his victim only to get so far in over his head that he almost gets caught. This puts us in the old position Hitchcock used to love to exploit, where we're rooting for the villain to get away with his dastardly deeds, even though, rationally, we'd never want that to happen in real life. That's an interesting dichotomy -- we're simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by the voyeurism aspect, able to identify enough with the villain to get nervous when he's almost caught, but not so much that we don't cringe in horror when he's about to do his deeds.

This flick was directed by Jaume Balaguero, who made the found-footage flick [REC] from a previous Horrorfest, and as good as [REC] is, this one's even better.

Horrorfest 2013: La Comunidad

Okay, so, remember with DAY OF THE BEAST where I said I was impressed with this Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia and looking forward to seeing the next movie of his on my list, LA COMUNIDAD? Well, now I've seen it and... I still like Alex de la Iglesia.

LA COMUNIDAD is as much a horror movie as it is a comedy, starring Carmen Maura as a middle aged real estate agent who decides to stay in an apartment property she is currently showing in order to take advantage of some of the luxuries within (waterbed, etc). In the process of pulling off this little con, she inadvertantly causes the other residents to think she lives there, and stumbles across a fortune in a neigboring dead guy's apartment.

From the outset, it's clear there's something going on in the apartment building -- the other tenants seem to keep a watchful eye on our heroine and also seem to be preoccupied with the apartment of the recently deceased neighbor. At first I was wondering if there was a supernatural element at play here, but SPOILER WARNING -- it turns out they're all out to get the money, and to get it away from the real estate agent.

The greatest strength of this film is the central performance by Carmen Maura. It's a pity how rare it is to see a character like her -- she's a middle aged woman, kind of down on her luck, with a loser boyfriend, but ultimately plucky, resourceful, capable and confident. She keeps her sense of humor and wits about her as things spiral out of control and won't be dissuaded from her scheme to escape the apartment building with her newly found money intact. She's allowed to be sexual and adventurous and human. She's not just a one dimensional stock movie woman.

My only complaint might be that towards the end some of the violent scenes are more brutal than I think the tone of the first half of the film sets up. Maybe it was hard to watch just because I loved our heroine so much, or maybe the level of violence at play wasn't quite earned by the movie. Still, that's just a minor complaint as the film comes to a satisfying conclusion and our heroine perseveres.

Horrorfest 2013: The Dead Zone

THE DEAD ZONE is one of those movies that falls into the "I can't believe I haven't seen this until now" category. This 1983 Stephen King is directed by David Cronenberg and stars Christopher Walken as a car accident survivor who emerges from a 5-year coma with the power to see into the future.

The movie almost plays more as a biopic of a real guy than as a traditionally plotted out horror movie. In fact, I admire how little of a plot this movie really has. I mean, it's a great story, but it unfolds at a liesurely, satisfying pace that gives us time for three dimensional characters and more than just cheap thrills.

For instance, Walken's character's girlfriend (Brooke Adams) has gotten married and had a child in the 5 years since his accident, and as much of the movie is spent exploring the sadness of this situation as it is spent on horror or the supernatural.

The film has a great cast, including the afore mentioned Walken and Adams, as well as Herbert Lom as the doctor taking care of Walken, Tom Skerritt as a local sheriff who wants to use Walken's powers to solve crimes and Martin Sheen as a politician who just might bring on the nuclear holocaust. That is, unless Walken can stop him.

Horrorfest 2013: Viy

Now let's head off to Russia for 1967's VIY, a horror flick based on a Gogol story with the distinction of being the first horror movie released during the Soviet era.

VIY stars Leonid Kuravlev, a n'er-do-well of a philosophy student who finds himself abducted by a witch on a night away from the seminary where he is studying. After a psychedelic flight through the night on her broom, the student is able to beat the witch to near death, only to find out that she was actually a beautiful woman (Natalya Varley) who had been possessed.

The next day the student is surprised to find that he has been summoned to the bedside of the same possessed woman he has just escaped -- she wants him to say prayers over her. Mystified, the student attempts to resist, but is ushered to her side where he is eventually tasked with saying prayers over her dead body for 3 nights.

The nights turn out to be hellish, as all manner of demons appear to tempt and harass the student.

Gogol loves his black humor and this film was surprisingly funny in parts, getting some laughs out of the reluctant, frightened monk. The special effects aren't great, but in some ways that adds to the horror -- the witch and demon effects are so matter of fact, that it doesn't leave much room for any kind of interpretation. You're just faced with exact, traditional representations of what these creatures are supposed to be, and the filmmakers are left with using the oldest tricks in the book to pull it off.

Horrorfest 2013: Scream of Fear

Horrorfest just wouldn't be the same without at least one Hammer movie and at least one Christopher Lee movie. We'll kill two birds with one storm with SCREAM OF FEAR.

SCREAM OF FEAR has a premise kind of similar to THE CAT AND THE CANARY -- it's about a young woman who is set to inherit some money and some greedy people who conspire to keep it away from her. I don't want to give away too much -- maybe I already have. This flick has plenty of twists and turns and I was definitely surprised by the ending.

The film starts as a ghost story -- a paralyzed young woman (Susan Strasberg) returns to her family home to find her father recently deceased and a stepmother (Ann Todd) she has never gotten along with. It's not long before the young woman starts spotting her dead father in dark rooms, his corpse or ghost haunting her every move, and then disappearing before she can prove what she saw. She's determined to get to the bottom of the mystery and enlists her stepmother's hunky driver (Ronald Lewis) to unravel the help investigate.

Christopher Lee is on hand as a local doctor who was friends with the young woman's father and now seems to potentially have designs on the stepmother. We're not sure what he's up to, but it's Christopher Lee, so it can't be anything good, right? He certainly seems to be hanging around a lot.

Aside from being a nicely told mystery, the film is beautifully shot in black and white, taking full advantage of both beautiful of natural outdoor locations as well as the shadow-filled rooms of the family home.

The flick looks classy, but the story is nice and pulpy, and that adds up to a damn fine movie.

Horrorfest 2013: Alice

It makes sense that someone would make a surreal horror movie out of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND because that book is surreal and horrific. Yeah, yeah, I know it's for kids and alternative types are supposed to think it's super deep and all that bullshit but come on. There's a Queen who chops off everyone's heads and a baby that turns into a pig. Horrific.

Anyway, this version of ALICE is part live action, part stop motion animation, and comes to us from Czechoslovakia. It stars Kristyna Kohoutova as Alice and tells the familiar story mostly through images. Alice narrates the film and recounts any necessary dialog, as if she's reading it out of a book. This gets a little repetitive, as we cut to a close up of Alice's mouth saying "X character said," every time someone talks, but the repetitive nature of the movie is one of the things that makes it surreal and horrific.

The other thing is that instead of taking place in a wide open country where Alice travels from place to place through forests and paths, etc, this movie takes place almost all within the confines of a dark, dirty, abandoned house. Alice travels from one foreboding room to the other, each room containing some characters or a scene from the book, as interpreted through the creepy lens of this weird stop motion animation.

You'll recognize lots of stuff from the famous story, but it's all a little skewed and even weirder than its source material. On top of the voice over and creepy atmosphere, there's also a lot of very creaky sound design. Almost every sound effect has been recorded after the fact, and they're comprised of all kinds of scratches and scrapes. It's like listening to someone play a recording of nails on a chalk board.

This isn't a horror movie in the traditional sense and has more than its fair share of commenters on IMDB asking why people think it is so scary. It's not really scary so much as it's just weird and unexplained. The images and sounds will stick with you after seeing a movie like this. That's not such a big deal if you're an old man like me but if I had come across this when I was 8 you can bet I would have been disturbed by it.

It's also kinda funny, though.

Horrorfest 2013: Day of the Beast

Welcome to the first VHS rental of Horrorfest 2013, DAY OF THE BEAST, a surprisingly funny Spanish flick that apparently isn't easily available on DVD or online streaming. So, time to warm up the old VCR.

This 1995 flick stars Alex Angulo as a Catholic priest who has decoded some numerological code in the book of Revelation that reveals the Antichrist is going to arrive on Christmas -- but where? In order to find out, the priest decides the only person to really ask is Satan himself, and the only way to meet Satan is to go undercover as a sinner -- so, he spends much of the movie ripping people off and committing funny little "crimes" in an effort to cover up his holiness with sin.

In order to summon Satan, the priest enlists the help of a death metal loving record store proprieter (Santiago Sagura) and a hacky occult TV-show host (Armando De Razza). It's a race against time as Christmas rapidly approaches and our priest hero finds himself tasked with pesky errands like finding the blood of a virgin.

To give you an idea of how this movie might play if it had been made in the English-speaking world, picture this: Simon Pegg's the priest, Nick Frost is the metalhead. There you go.

The version of this film I watched had a bad English dub but even with that in place you could tell the director, Alex de la Iglesia, and cast have good comedic timing, especially Santiago Sagura as the record store guy. He steals pretty much the whole movie, and is a very memorable and funny character.

The movie is a little dated and clearly did not have the biggest budget, but enough directorial talent showed through that I looked up Iglesia's filmography to see if he ever went on to anything else and was pleased to see that another upcoming Horrorfest movie was one of his -- LA COMUNIDAD. So, I'll be looking forward to that one.

Horrorfest 2013: Island of Lost Souls

Here's another in a long line of flicks I read about as a kid but never got around to seeing -- until now. 1932's ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, an adaptation of H.G. Wells' ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. I remember seeing pictures of Moreau's man-beasts, particularly Bela Lugosi, in my monster books as a kid, so I was excited to finally watch the flick.

Charles Laughton stars as Dr. Moreau, a mad scientist who has been chased out of civilized society and now lives on a secluded island where he carries out his experiments in peace. That is, until a castaway (Richard Arlen) ends up on the island and a tragic end for Moreau quickly approaches.

The island is crawling with beast-like men who appear to be half man, half animal, led by Bela Lugosi, as well as a "panther woman" (Kathleen Burke). Turns out Moreau has been experimenting first on plants, now on animals, in an attempt to rush along the evolutionary process and transform animals into more human-like creatures. In doing so, he employs unethical, torturous methods of surgery, and seems not to care if he hurts his subjects, and relishes the fact that he is their God.

There's some pretty risque stuff here for a flick from 1932, including a major plot element revolving around Moreau's attempts to get the castaway to mate with the panther girl in an effort to see just how human she can be.

Laughton is great as Moreau, so slimy, corrupt and pleased with himself that it's amazing this is the same guy who turned in a heartbreaking portrayel as Quasmido in the HUNCHBACK remake a few years later.

The other standout here is the makeup effects. There is a wide variety of different creatures in this film, as opposed to the one or two you might get in other horror movies of the era. There are so many, they're relegated to background extras. Unfortunately there's no credit on the movie for makeup so we may never know who was responsible for all these grotesque designs.

Horrorfest 2013: Nightwatch

I remember when I was in high school, renting pretty much every independent movie that looked cool on the video store shelf, or said "Miramax" on the box, or both, I'd constantly see a trailer at the beginning of every tape for this flick NIGHTWATCH, a horror movie starring Ewan McGregor. And I'd think, when's this movie coming out? I should watch it. And then it kept on not coming out.

Somehow I never ended up watching it, and now I know that this was actually a remake of a 1994 Danish flick of the same name. So, now I've seen the original, and I still haven't seen the Ewan McGregor one.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as a law student who takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue. His friends balk at the creepiness of the job, but our hero is attracted to the fact that he can sit on his butt doing nothing all night and basically get paid to study. Much like my ill-fated job watering the Bayou golf course, it turns out the reality of the job is much worse than the fantasy.

Turns out there's a necrophiliac serial killer in town knocking off women who's bound to cross paths with our law student hero.

There's a great sequence early on in which an older night watchman (Gyrd Lofquist) shows our young hero the ropes, including an alarm in the night watchman's office that's triggered by chains hanging above morgue beds in case any of the bodies happen to wake up in the night. "It'll never go off," we're assured. But what if it does?  "It won't." Still, what if? The old night watchman ominously recommends keeping a baseball bat handy.

There's also a lot of time devoted to our hero's relationship with a ne'er-do-well best buddy (Kim Bodnia). The real story here is how these two guys are already disillusioned with their lives, even though they're so young, and they're at a point where they don't know whether or not they want to stick with their serious girlfriends or have another shot at going wild. In an effort to explore this, they pose "challenges" to each other ranging from picking fights at bars to hiring hookers.

The serial killer plot is really the least interesting aspect of the movie. It has a lot more going for it than that, specifically, a great premise. Hell, the premise is creepy enough, I would have been happy with a movie about the realities of being a night watchman in a morgue, no serial killer needed.

Horrorfest 2013: Mad Love

Back to Hollywood for the great Peter Lorre's first English-language film, 1935's MAD LOVE. Lorre stars as a gifted surgeon in Paris who is obsessed with the star of a Theatre des Horreurs production that is coming to the end of its run. He hasn't missed a single show and introduces himself to the beautiful actress (Frances Drake) on closing night, only to find out too late that she is married and leaving Paris for England with her famous pianist husband (Colin Clive).

Lorre's a creepy guy, as usual, but the greatness of Lorre is that he still seems vulnerable. Whether he's buying a wax figure of his obsession, attending an execution just because he likes to watch, or even going on a murderous rampage, you still feel kinda bad for the guy. He's a criminal mastermind, sure, but he's also misunderstood. Right?

The plot thickens as the pianist is in a train wreck, injuring both of his hands beyond repair, potentially ruining his career. Lorre's called in as a favor -- the actress knows he loves her and will do anything for her, so she uses him for his genius in a desperate attempt to save her husband. Luckily for Lorre, a knife-throwing murderer has just been executed nearby, and he's able to transplant the freshly dead hands to the pianist. Yes, this is that kind of movie.

You'd think the plot convolutions would end there, but you'd be wrong. Man, there's stuff in this movie that you don't even realize is planted to pay off that ends up paying off in the last few minutes. Spoiler alert: once the pianist husband has the transplanted murderer's hands, they seem to have minds of their own, and he can't help but attack people. Uh oh.

Karl Freund directed this great horror flick, and it's clearly steeped in his usual German expressionist style. He's the guy who shot DRACULA and directed THE MUMMY. It's a pity MAD LOVE was his last film.

It's nice to see Colin Clive in something other than FRANKENSTEIN, where he played the title character for the first two films. He can do manic and desperate unlike anyone, and although he's not much of a presence in the first half of the film, in the second half he lets loose and really chews the scenery. It's great -- Peter Lorre vs. Colin Clive. How had I not seen this movie already?

Horrorfest 2013: Perfect Blue

Now we travel to Japan for 1998's PERFECT BLUE, an animated psychological thriller about a young woman who leaves her career as part of a squeaky-clean all-girl pop group in favor of a new career as an actress in a gritty crime drama, upsetting her fans in the process, with murderous results.

Although I've seen plenty of great Japanese animated films in my day, I've also unfairly dismissed the genre at times for a few reasons. Fans of the genre tend to claim every movie is the greatest, not unlike fans of martial arts, so it gets tough to tell the crap from the good stuff. I can only be fooled so many times. There's also tons of it -- especially now that all kinds of media is immediately available all the time, so everything gets exported, not just the stuff that rises to the top. You could argue a dismissal like this would be similar to someone saying they hate all American films because they got tricked into seeing something like ARMAGEDDON one too many times and you know what -- that's fair. But, I wouldn't blame someone for hating all American films because of ARMAGEDDON. So there you go.

Anyway, PERFECT BLUE is interesting because it embraces the hallmarks of Japanese animation while subverting them. When I say "hallmarks" I mean... well, it's hard to describe, and I don't want to write off an entire culture by painting in broad strokes but... you know, like... lots of these cartoons seem to be about innocent little girls and their panties.

There, I said it.

To PERFECT BLUE's credit, it's totally willing to explore this, as the story directly involves the objectification of women, the relationship between fans and stars, and where these things blur and become gray areas. Is it objectification if the woman is in on it? Does a star owe anything to their fans?

These aren't the only lines that are blurred as the story unfolds. As our heroine moves from pop stardom to starring in a show involving nudity and explicit rape scenes, she begins to doubt her own identity. She's somewhat willingly going along with the racy photo shoots and traumatic scenes, but then deeply regrets them and has a hard time reconciling them later. It gets to the point where she seems to have a dual personality -- the pop star persona she left behind is taunting her, telling her she's damaged goods, making the wrong decisions, won't be taken seriously anymore, is now an impostor.

At the same time, real murders are happening. Or are they? Things seem to be piling up in a way that implicate our heroine -- is she killing without knowing it? Or, is it the creepy security guard who seems obsessed with her, killing on her "behalf"?

The movie gets off to a slow start but as reality starts to unravel and the plot thickens, it really picks up steam and races towards a pretty cool conclusion that surprised me.

Is the movie totally exonerated for it's more exploitative qualities, by being about exploitation? Not exactly, I don't think -- it revels a little too much in the nudity and violence to really hammer its point home. But, it gets points for trying. If you HAVE to have rape in your Japanese animation (which seems to be a recurring theme in the medium), at least use it to try to make a point.

Horrorfest 2013: Targets

1968's TARGETS is a great little gem to discover -- a Roger Corman produced, Peter Bogdanovich directed horror flick starring none other than Boris Karloff. It wouldn't be Horrorfest without Corman and Karloff. But Bogdanovich?

This was only Bogdanovich's second film, and it's great -- a genre-bender, combining parallel plots concerning Karloff as an aging horror movie star, ready for retirement and disillusioned with the direction of his career, and Tim O'Kelly as an unassuming Vietnam vet and gun nut who murders his family and then goes on a killing spree. The two stories collide at a drive-in theater where Karloff is making his final appearance and O'Kelly is sniping innocent victims as they watch the film from their cars.

Karloff, as always, is great, and it is especially interesting to see him in such a seemingly autobiographical role. I imagine the real Karloff probably wasn't quite as bitter and fed up as his character is here, but I'm sure he had a lot more fun playing this interesting twist on his persona than the usual ghoul of the week that most Corman productions called for.

O'Kelly's performance is appropriately understated and what is most interesting about his portion of the plot is how timely it seems -- his deadly sniper character was based on a few incidents in the news at the time, most notably the University of Texas sniper, Charles Whitman. Still, it's probably even more timely today than it was back then, what with crazed gunmen seeming to strike at least once every couple months in public places these days.

At first glance it might seem strange to combine these 2 stories, but it is an interesting juxtaposition, putting the classing "monster" Karloff at odds with the present-day monster, a cold-blooded, seemingly motivationless killer.

Horrorfest 2013: Seconds

Some say Rock Hudson's performance in 1966's SECONDS is the best in his career. The movie wasn't well received upon first release and was almost forgotten until it was finally released on home video in 1997. To this day it still remains rarely seen and that's a shame because it was truly ahead of its time.

I remember when it hit video store shelves in '97 because a few of my friends really wanted to see it and when they did, they sang its praises. I never got around to it, until now. I don't know if I would have really understood it when I was a teenager. I say this because I'm not really sure I understand it, now.

I mean, I get the broad strokes. Don't get me wrong. But, there's a lot going on here.

The movie opens with John Randolph as middle-aged man who is not happy with his life. His marriage has ground to a boring halt, he never sees his daughter, he has a thankless job with a shitty commute. The only thing he has going for him is a series of mysterious phone calls from a man claiming to be his old friend -- his dead friend.

The phone calls give Randolph instructions for seeking out a vaguely sinsiter secret organization that the voice on the other line claims can improve Randolph's life. Spoiler alert: it turns out this is a group that can fake your death, give you extensive plastic surgery, and set you up with a brand new second chance at life where you can do everything you always wished you did, but didn't.

Randolph is reborn as a younger, more vital Rock Hudson. Unfortunately this second chance at life is not all Randolph/Hudson dreamed it would be and the film, which has already been unfolding like a nightmarish dream sequence, spirals even further into the realm of the surreal.

Frankenheimer over-directs at times, favoring flashy trick shots where they're not always needed, but this can be forgiven because, hey, this is a weird movie. Still, I prefer the scenes where Frankenheimer and cinematographer James Wong Howe go simple and handheld over the ones in which they shoot a scene from the strangest angle they can find. Somehow, even with all this craziness, which must have inspired guys like David Lynch, the film remains rooted firmly in reality.

There's also an early, beautiful Jerry Goldsmith score that both heightens the horror and stands at a counterpoint to it.

The themes are universal -- anyone can identify with someone who wants a second chance at life, and we all know the grass is always greener, and we all feel paranoid and lost, sometimes. We've all had dreams and nightmares and been uptight when we should have let go and let go when we should have been uptight.

Still, I have this nagging feeling that SECONDS is floating somewhere just outside of my grasp, which is actually refreshing. It means there's something unique there.

Horrorfest 2013: 10 Rillington Place

Good grief, why didn't anyone tell me Richard Attenborough could be so creepy? Here I was thinking he was the kindly grandfather type as seen in JURASSIC PARK and it turns out he can just as easily play real-life serial killer John Christie. To be fair I guess John Hammond in JURASSIC PARK is kinda creepy, now that I'm not 12 anymore, but still -- who knew?

I guess the votes on IMDB did, because their list pointed me towards 10 RILLINGTON PLACE, a chillingly detached and matter of fact account of the killings perpetrated by an unassuming Englishman in his cramped London flat during and just after WW2.

Richard Attenborough stars as the killer and the movie wastes no time assigning him motivations or delving into his psyche. Thanks to the great performance, we can see some of the thoughts the killer must be having right there on Attenborough's face, but it's never discussed or dwelled upon. You get the feeling the guy has an inferiority complex, as he seems very pleased with himself for having once been a war-time cop. He's also quite eager to pass himself off as a man with medical knowledge, although the extent of his knowledge appears to be his ability to gas his victims using domestic gas valves.

Attenborough claims a victim in the first scene of the film, and from the state of his garden it is clear he has killed before, but the majority of the movie deals with his interactions with new upstairs tenants played by John Hurt and Judy Geeson. Attenborough's crimes extend beyond rape and murder as he convinces Hurt to take the fall and even testifies against him in court, sending him to the noose.

The two strengths of this film that help it rise above others is its cold detached approach to the subject mater and the central performance by Richard Attenborough. The straight forward narrative helps steer the film away from being lurid or exploitative and avoids any annoying attempts at moralizing. However, with Attenborough's great performance, this approach might have left nothing for the viewer to latch onto. When a movie relies so heavily on subtext, you better hope your lead is compelling.

This performance by Attenborough is the best of Horrorfest 2013 yet, and there have been some good ones. 

Horrorfest 2013: The Uninvited

Now we head back to Hollywood for 1944's THE UNINVITED, notable for being one of the first Hollywood films to feature a house that actually ends up being haunted by real ghosts, instead of impostors.

The film stars Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey as brother and sister vacationing in England who encounter an abandoned seaside mansion, fall in love with it, and decide to purchase it. They're surprised when the house's owner (Donald Crisp) unloads the house on the cheap, especially since his daughter (Gail Russell) seems quite attached to it.

It isn't long after they move in that they realize there's something wrong with the place. There's an attic room where a foreboding presence resides, none of their pets seem to want to go up the stairs, and a disembodied woman's voice weeps throughout the night.

The duo investigates the house's history with the help of the local doctor (Alan Napier, Alfred from the BATMAN TV series) and even conduct a seance. It seems there's a sordid history with the family who once resided in the house.

Like THE CAT AND THE CANARY, THE UNINVITED spends a lot of time on comedy. Our brother and sister team of heroes in this film is a somewhat lazy, bemused, affected duo who, with their terrier, are kind of a low rent Nick and Nora. Still, Milland is amusing in this light role and has some of the charm of a Carey Grant type as he romances the previous house owner's daughter, Gail Russell, who probably comes out the best in this whole affair. Russell probably has the most to work with, showing a full range of emotions as her family's past is unearthed.

The ghostly effects, when they arrive, look pretty cool and are nicely understated. For all the lighthearted comedy and romance, there are definitely some real creepy moments that go far beyond bumps in the night.

Horrorfest 2013: The Skin I Live In

I was surprised but happy to see Pedro Almodovar's latest film THE SKIN I LIVE IN on the IMDB list I'm working off of this month. I've been meaning to check it out, so here we go.

Spoiler warning: The great Antonio Banderas stars as a plastic surgeon driven to revenge after becoming unhinged thanks to a double trauma involving the burning and eventual suicide of his unfaithful wife and the rape and eventual suicide of his daughter.


It's difficult to discuss much of the plot without giving something away. As usual, Almodovar's story never goes where you expect it to go and always has a surprise waiting. Going into this movie I had no idea what I was in store for and was genuinely surprised by the twists and turns of the plot, which is more than I can say about most movies, even the supposedly surprising ones.


Suffice it to say that once again, Almodovar tells a story that jumps back and forth between the present and the past, from one point of view to another, and reveals motivations you could never guess. We're continually presented with the end result of a plot element before we're filled in on how things came to be that way, and it is never the explanation that you think it's going to be. There's sex, violence, sex-violence, romance and lots of creepy mad doctor type stuff.


Banderas remains sympathetic, regardless of his actions, and I guess that's what makes a movie star a movie star. Elena Anaya also does some heavy lifting as Banderas' prime experimental subject, always rising to the occasion of what the plot asks of her.


The film deals with questions of gender and sexual identity and I'm not really sure where it lands on these issues. I guess it doesn't land anywhere, really, which I suppose is fine, since it's difficult to ever really have an answer when it comes to issues as complex as that. Still, the topics raised could be troubling for some viewers -- too "out there" for a conservative audience, not sensitive enough for a more liberal one. On one hand, you don't want to see this kind of stuff used as window dressing for a pulpy, exploitative thriller. On the other, it's fun to have some pulp and exploitation served up with your art and social commentary. So I don't know what to tell you. In lesser hands THE SKIN I LIVE IN could have been a disaster, but these are not lesser hands.

Horrorfest 2013: Kuroneko

The 1968 Japanese film KURONEKO is a ghost story set in war torn Japan in an era when Samurai war lords ruled the country and civil war upset civilian peasant life. As the film opens, a young woman (Kiwako Taichi) and her mother-in-law (Nobuko Otowa) are raped and murdered as starving and battle-weary Samurai invade their farm. The man of the house (Nakamura Kichiemon II) isn't around because he was forcibly conscripted by another group of Samurai.

It isn't giving anything away to let you know that soon after this horrific scene, the two dead women reappear as ghosts and begin entrapping Samurai traveling on the road, luring them back to their new home deep in a bamboo grove, seducing them and murdering them. These ghosts are into blood drinking, and they coldly go about their business of offering one Samurai after another sake, tempting them with the daughter-in-law and then BAM -- revenge.

The local governor gets wind of the tales of ghosts preying on Samurai and sends a young warrior who has recently proven himself on the battle field to dispatch the monsters. This turns out to be none other than -- you guessed it -- the son/husband of the ghostly duo. He quickly recognizes the true identity of the ghosts and both parties must decide -- do they do away with each other, or give in to their desires to be together again?

In the brief description above, this sounds like a cheap rape/revenge exploitation flick. But it's not. The thing is, this movie is beautiful. The lush black and white photography makes great use of totally black space to set a lot of the film in what seems like a floating limbo. This is almost Samurai noir, the way black fills the screen. The film also makes great use of nature, however, with the bamboo stalks and fields of high grass and even falling snow in the climactic scene standing in as important characters.

Like a couple other movies this month so far, KURONEKO is not straight up horror. Even though it deals with ghosts, there's also room for a nice love story and some Samurai action. Like some other early Japanese horror films I've seen, KURONEKO has almost a fairy tale quality to it. The title literally translates to "Black Cat" and refers to a cat who lingers around the ghosts and seems to have something to do with their resurrection and powers. I wonder if Tim Burton saw this movie before he made BATMAN RETURNS.

Horrorfest 2013: The Cat and the Canary

Back to the silent era we have THE CAT AND THE CANARY, one of horror giant Universal's earliest efforts in the genre and the movie that basically created the whole "old dark house" thing (along with, uh, THE OLD DARK HOUSE).

The 1927 flick's plot involves an eccentric millionaire whose greedy family pesters him for their inheritence on his deathbed. Driven slowly bitter and insane, the millionaire does leave a last will and testament but orders that it cannot be read until 20 years after his death.

The movie opens on the 20th anniversary in the now deserted mansion, where only the creepy housekeeper (Martha Mattox) remains. The millionaire's lawyer (Tully Marshall) arrives to find that a second will has appeared in the supposedly locked safe. The housekeeper maintains the ghost of the millionaire planted it -- it comes with instructions that his estate can only be bequeathed if the relative he left it to is judged sane. If they're not, whoever's in the second will gets the money, but it's not to be read until after it's decided who's sane or insane.

Several relatives, distant and close, arrive for the reading, and it turns out the most distant relative of all (Laura La Plante) is named in the will as receiving the entire estate. As they wait for the doctor to arrive and judge her sane or insane, it becomes clear that she is at the mercy of the other family members, who may or may not wish her harm or attempt to make her appear to be insane in an effort to get the money away from her.

As if that's not enough, a guard from an insane asylum (George Siegmann) shows up to announce a murderous lunatic is on the loose on the grounds of the house. Not long after this people start disappearing and bodies start showing up, as a creepy clawed hand periodically emerges from secret panels in the walls of the house to menace our heroine.

A lot of THE CAT AND THE CANARY relies on comedic relief more than horror. The hero of the film (Creighton Hale) spends most of the running time as a slapstick coward, frightened of everything and constantly stumbling into and falling over things. Unfortunately a lot of this humor is dated and doesn't work as well now as it probably did in 1927, so there's a lot of what seems like useless filler here.

Still, there are some genuinely creepy moments -- Martha Mattox, as the menacing housekeeper, is delightfully weird as she looms intimidatingly in the background of many scenes. There's also Lucien Littlefield as the doctor who eventually shows up in the last act to figure out whether or not La Plante is insane, and turns out to be seemingly insane himself. Finally, the look of the lunatic who is on the loose is very startling, with bulging eyes, fangs, and clawed hands -- after all the comedy and shenanigans, it comes as a shock when we finally catch a full on glimpse of this guy towards the end of the flick.

It's a good classic setup that inspired a whole genre of films to follow, and there are some very interesting visual tricks here and there, but THE CAT AND THE CANARY does suffer a little from the silly comedy and overwrought melodrama that plagues the average silent film.

Horrorfest 2013: Mother Joan of the Angels

Next we travel to Poland for 1961's MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS. The film opens as a priest (Mieczyslaw Voit) arrives in a 17th century Polish village to stay at an inn while visiting a nearby convent. It seems the nuns who live at the convent have been possessed by the devil and it's the priest's job to exorcise the demons. Unfortunately for him they burnt the last visiting priest at the stake.

The titular Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnika) is said to be the most possessed of the nuns and as the story unfolds, the priest dedicates himself to saving her soul, taking on all of the burdens of her sins and descending into madness as he attempts to absorb the evil that he thinks is inside of her.

Early on it becomes clear that there may not be anything supernatural going on at all. To be sure, the film asks lots of questions about faith and mysticism, so there's definitely a spiritual element to the narrative. But, it's not your traditional exorcism movie. The "horror" in this film is more of an existential horror, like you might find in a Bergman flick, rather than a literal one. Are the nuns possessed, or are they just sick of being nuns? Or, rather, sick of being human? What happens when the toil of day to day ordinary life becomes too much to bear and religion doesn't seem to fix anything?

The story is set against a beautiful but bleak landscape, made all the more hopeless by the stark black and white photography. There are many long shots of the characters, as tiny as ants, traversing the wasteland between the inn and the convent, passing the stake where the previous priest was burnt as it still stands as an ominous warning and reminder.

It's really a shame this movie is not more well known than it is. I mentioned Bergman before, and he's a director with a rightfully famous name, but Jerzy Jawakerwicz deserves a spot in the hall of fame as well for this artistic and entertaining meditation on faith and spirituality.

Horrorfest 2013: Dead of Night

I'd never heard of DEAD OF NIGHT before I made my list for Horrorfest 2013, but now I'm glad I've seen it. This British horror anthology from 1944 sneaks up on you as you watch it – at first it seems a little obvious and dumb, but as the ghost stories get more intense, you get sucked in even more and eventually... well, I can't give away the ending.

The series of ghost stories, each with a different director, is framed by a meeting of a group of characters gathering in a country house. Our main character (Mervyn Johns) arrives and reveals to the group that he has seen them all, and the house, in a recurring dream and that the dream always turns out to be a nightmare. He can't the overall "story" of the dream, but he does recall quick flashes that become premonitions and impress most of the party guests, except the resident skeptic (Frederick Valk) who has an answer for everything.

As things get spooky, the party guests begin to reveal their own seemingly supernatural tales, and these becomes the stories of the anthology. It seems each of them has had a run-in with a weird experience before. These range from the potentially easily explainable (a car crash survivor who refuses to get on a bus that crashes moments later) to the overtly sinister and magical (a ventriloquist dummy with a mind of his own).

Although the movie gets creepier and creepier as it goes on, it also does some interesting things with bouncing the tone around to keep you on your toes. If this isn't done right, you end up with a mess. But here it works, especially in the leap between a light-hearted story about a golfing rivalry that continues beyond the grave to the freakiest story of them all about a living ventriloquist's dummy who torments his master (Michael Redgrave).

I'm not sure why this film isn't more well known than it is, but I'm glad it's liked well enough to end up on IMDB's list, and then on mine.

Horrorfest 2013: The Phantom Carriage

It's cold and rainy and the leaves are falling off the trees. You know what that means. It's time for Horrorfest 2013. I'll watch 31 horror movies in 31 days and write about each of them. This year I've scoured the IMDB's list of the highest rated horror features with at least 1,000 votes for titles I haven't seen yet that are readily available either through Netflix or Mike's Movie Madness here in Portland.

We'll start with the 1921 Swedish film THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, which has been on my lists a couple years in a row but hasn't made it all the way to Horrorfest until now.

THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE uses the trappings of the horror genre to tell what basically amounts to a morality tale about human relationships. The film starts on New Year's Eve in a small village where a Salvation Army girl (Astrid Holm) is on her death bed. One of her last requests is to see one of the town drunks (Victor Sjostrom).

We find the drunk getting wasted in a nearby graveyard, filling his friends in on the legend of a Phantom Carriage, driven by a ghostly messenger of Death (complete with hooded cloak and scythe), collecting the dead. Legend has it, the last person to die each year is doomed to become the new driver of the carriage.

Here begins a series of flashbacks and side stories filling the viewer in on how the drunk became alienated from his family, involved with the Salvation Army girl and, eventually, visited by the titular carriage. In some ways the movie unfolds as a kind of darker, more sinister IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, as the drunk is taken on a supernatural journey through his past and eventually through the present on a soul-saving journey.

The remarkable aspects of this film all revolve around the special effects. There's extensive use of double exposure in this film to create the ghostly images of the see-through phantoms and carriages. And when I say extensive, I mean extensive. This isn't just a couple trick shots. There are entire sequences built around double exposure. At first glance this might not seem like a big deal for two reasons -- first, that's day 1 stuff by now. We're used to it. Secondly, these days, you can shoot two things separately and combine them later in the lab. Not back then. Back then, you literally had to shoot multiple things multiple times on the same piece of film, on hand-cranked cameras. So this isn't just a matter of printing one image on top of the other. This is a matter of shooting stuff blind with as much attention to detail as possible, hoping the effects come out as they're intended.

Luckily, they do, and they're as effective as anything that comes out of a computer now. Something as simple as a ghost walking behind something that's in the foreground, than passing into the foreground and walking in front of it, is a revelation. The cool thing is, you don't even really notice it unless you stop to think. The movie isn't about the effects, but the effects help tell the story, which turns out to be a fairly melodramatic domestic morality tale.

Still, the effects and the supernatural angle help elevate this material above its leanings toward soap opera theatrics common to other lesser silent flicks, and I consider this a good start to another month of spooky fun.

One interesting note: there's a scene towards the end of the film in which a drunken father bashes down a door with an axe to get at his wife and children. I couldn't help but think of THE SHINING. THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is famous for influencing Ingmar Bergman, but I suspect Kubrick might have been a fan as well.

Romancefest 2013: It

Well, looks like I'm not going to make it to 28 romantic movies in 28 days. There's a first time for everything, including a failed Romancefest. So, I'll just skip right to the top of the list with IT.

No, not IT as in the made for TV horror movie starring Ben Heller as a handsome young Boy Scout. I'm talking about the silent romantic comedy from 1927, also called IT.

The movie is loosely based on a Cosmopolitan article by Elinor Glyn (who shows up in a cameo as herself) that attempts to define the concept of "it" -- that certain something some people have that seems to make them irresistible.

Clara Bow stars as a shopgirl who is in love with the rich owner (Antonio Morino) of the department store in which she works. Her roommate (Priscilla Bonner) is a single mother who is too sick to work, so Bow is helping her out. When Bow is noticed as potentially having "it" by the department store owner's friend (very funny and fussy William Austin), she welcomes the attention in an attempt to get closer to Morino.

As it is in films like this, there are many obstacles and misunderstandings that pop up to prevent the two love birds from getting together, this time including a misunderstanding about just who is the mother of Bow's roommate's baby.

The film probably would have been forgotten by today if it wasn't for the central performance by Bow -- she is so cute and charming and funny that the whole movie flies by like a breeze, no matter how many times the central couple makes up and breaks up. Clara Bow really does have "it", so this can be seen as a rare instance of perfect casting -- she defines the movie and the movie defines her.

It's a nice note to end the month on, even if I didn't get up to 28 movies. Oh well, there's always next year.

Romancefest 2013: Bus Stop

BUS STOP, a 1956 “drama” starring Marilyn Monroe, has probably given me the most trouble of any movie I’ve watched this month so far. I didn’t particularly like it, because both the premise and the main character are annoying, which makes things difficult.

Despite top billing, Monroe actually plays second fiddle (unfortunately) to newcomer at the time Don Murray, who stars as a backwards cowboy who has no experience with women. Traveling by bus from Montana to Phoenix, AZ to compete in a big rodeo, Murray’s informed by his mentor, an older cowboy (Arthur O’Connell) that it’s about time he finally hooked up.

This is where Monroe comes in as a singer and dancer at a small café in Phoenix, not far from the rodeo grounds, where Murray sets eyes on her and immediately falls in love with her.

We’ve already seen that Murray is a bit of a hothead. Everywhere he goes, he gets in fights with people over bullshit that doesn’t really matter. This is why he’s so annoying, and Monroe immediately picks up on it and, to her credit, even though she thinks he’s a hunk, she’s like, “No way, get away from me, you’re annoying.”

Okay, so this all makes sense except for the fact that the movie seems to think we should be rooting for Murray and Monroe to eventually hook up. I guess this means Murray will learn his lesson and come around and stop acting like such an asshole, but until he does we have to sit through scene after scene of him pursuing Monroe to the point of even kidnapping her and taking her on the bus back to Montana with him, claiming she’s going to marry him whether she wants to or not. I mean, by this time, I’m hoping Monroe escapes, not that they end up happily ever after.

It’s funny, watching this film it occurred to me that even though Monroe wasn’t a great actress (though she’s fine) or a great singer (though she’s fine) and even though what seems to be her attempt at a southern accent is laughable, she is still the most riveting thing on screen and the only redeemable part of this movie. I’m not just talking about her looks, either – she’s the only person involved here who has any charisma or presence. It’s clear here, maybe even more so than in some of her better movies, that she’s way above and beyond the material and simply a natural star.

Probably the best thing about Monroe is that it always looks like she’s having fun. She may not have been, I know she didn’t have the happiest of times behind the scenes, but she seems to be. Everything looks like a laugh to her and she’s naturally funny, even if the material isn’t. It suits her character, here, and keeps the movie from becoming completely creepy and stalkery by at least implying that Monroe isn’t deathly afraid of Murray and actually views him as a little bit of a joke.

All that said, the happy ending is a downer, ironically, and I wanted more for Monroe’s character than this dickhead played by Murray. I didn’t notice as I was watching the movie that it was directed by Joshua Logan, but reading up on it afterwards I realized he was the director of the equally dreadful PICNIC, which I found puzzling and hard to a couple Romancefests ago. Figures.