Horrorfest 2011: The Changeling

THE CHANGELING was a nice spooky way to close out Horrorfest 2011. What starts out as a fairly slow, moody flick quickly ramps up into a compelling mystery as a composer played by George C. Scott investigates some strange goings-on in his newly rented mansion. Scott has moved across the country to Seattle after he lost his wife and daughter in a tragic car accident, but before he can settle into his cavernous new digs, he has to do some ghost busting.

First we get the usual stuff like faucets turning themselves on and loud banging noises coming from somewhere deep within the house. Later, Scott discovers an ominous blocked off staircase to an abandoned attic room furnished for a little kid right down to a pint sized wheel chair. How come old timey wheel chairs are so creepy? It's not long before Scott is seeing visions of murder and his friends suggest he bring in a local medium to conduct a seance.

Scott also investigates the history of the house and starts to piece together what seems to be a murder cover up among a wealthy, well-respected family. The well respected Senator (Melvyn Douglas) might hold the key to the mystery, so Scott goes head to head with him in an electrifying scene.

The movie is shot interestingly, mostly in wide angles, so the house seems to travel around Scott as he explores it, instead of Scott traveling around the house. This lends itself well to the story, which is basically about a ghost desperately trying to lead Scott from clue to clue to help put himself to rest. There are also several scenes that use deep focus to great effect as characters are seen in the foreground as well as glimpsed through portals in the background, whether it's a mirror, a hole in the ground, or a window. This adds phsical depth and layers to scenes in which characters are figuratively (and sometimes literally) digging for answers.

The movie probably wouldn't work half as well as it does without Scott as the lead. Always a great acting presence, Scott is no different here, and it is interesting to see a main character in a haunted house movie who won't take any shit from the haunted house. Scott's curiosity is challenged at first, and then he intuits that the ghost is asking him to help solve a mystery, which he does. But then, as the house continues to shake with ghostly stirrings, Scott loses his patience, gets fed up, and actually yells at it, "What do you want? I've done what you asked! What else can I do?" This is a lot more engaging than characters in similar haunted house movies who simultaneously want to get the hell out while inexplicably lingering around. This also eliminates the annoying moments in which characters either scoff at obviously supernatural occurrences or are disproportionately frightened by seemingly explainable goings on.

Thus ends Horrorfest 2011 and my mission to watch 31 horror movies I've never seen before in 31 days, and write about each of them. I actually watched more than 31 horror movies this month, but I can't count the ones I've already seen and/or didn't write about, can I? No, that's against the rules.

Time for some stats:

I watched 14 flicks from the USA. Japan came in second with 5 films and Germany and Canada tied for 3rd with 3 each. Spain and the UK tie for 4th with 2 each, and I watched 1 film each from Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Italy, Mexico and South Korea. You may notice this adds up to more than 31 -- that's thanks to a couple co-productions.

I watched 6 movies from the 60s. The 80s, 40s and 70s were tied for 2nd with 4 movies each. The 30s and 20s each had 3 movies, the 2000s, 90s and 50s each had 2 movies and the current decade had 1.

4 of the movies I watched were silent and the remainder were talkies. 17 were in black and white, 12 were in color, and 2 were primarily black and white with color segments.

My least favorite film of the month was WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? It was the only one that really had no redeeming qualities.

Most of the rest ranged from kinda okay to absolutely great. It would be difficult for me to decide which one was my favorite, so I'll give you my top 5 in the order watched:

THE UNKNOWN

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME

SANTA SANGRE

THE OLD DARK HOUSE

THE BODY SNATCHER

Horrorfest 2011: I Saw the Devil

I SAW THE DEVIL is a 2010 Korean film about a secret agent (Lee Byung-hun) whose pregnant wife (Oh San-ha) is murdered by a serial killer (Choi Min-sik). The secret agent takes a couple weeks off work and sets out to find the killer. At first we think the secret agent has just gone vigilante, but after he captures the killer and lets him go, only to hunt him again, we realize things are a little more complicated.

The secret agent wants revenge, but he also wants to torture the killer. Using GPS tracking technology, the secret agent is never far behind the killer, and shows up just in time to stop the killer from striking again, a couple of times. A couple of other times he doesn't show up quite on time. Each time, after a severe maiming and beating, he lets the killer go, only to pursue him some more.

This premise is both the strength of the film and the drawback. On one hand, the idea of this willful game of cat and mouse in the name of revenge is interesting. This is more than just a guy torturing another guy in an isolated location. It becomes a sort of hunting game. On the other hand, it stretches the audience's suspension of disbelief pretty thin. There are so many opportunities for disaster in this plan, including collateral damage, that it becomes hard to believe that the revenge fueled secret agent would take the risks he takes just to torture the killer.

Because of the collateral damage, for the first half of the movie I was thinking the secret agent isn't much better than the killer he's hunting. Yes, the killer is insane and evil and must be stopped, but the secret agent is presumably sane and has some kind of morals while also allowing the killer to be out on the loose, thus putting other people (just like his late wife) in danger. To the movie's credit, about halfway through, some characters finally start giving this idea some lip service -- the secret agent is turning into a monster, etc.

That would be fine except that the movie doesn't allow much room for things to escalate. It starts off so brutally and violently, both on the part of the killer and on the part of the secret agent, that we don't realize we're supposed to think the secret agent is getting out of control until other characters tell us. To us, he just seems ruthless from the get go, as he ruthlessly attacks suspects who aren't even the killer he's looking for.

The movie is beautifully shot and has some good performances but it is too long and has an overblown musical score that gets in the way of what could have been some more subtle emotional moments. There isn't much that is subtle about this movie, thanks to the over the top violence and gore, so cutting back on the orchestral score might have been a step in the right direction. When stuff on the screen is already extreme, the audience doesn't need to be pounded over the head by the composer.

Early in the film I started to wonder, what's a beautifully shot movie when the subjects being filmed are ugly? What's the point? In cases like these, there damn well better be some kind of message, and I'm not convinced there is one here. Revenge movies are tricky -- you want to identify with the guy getting revenge for the satisfaction, but if the revenge is too brutal, you don't want to identify anymore. On the other hand, if the villain is awful enough, and the filmmakers go out of their way to show you how awful he is, as they do here, then this might help make it easier to stomach the brutal revenge scenes later on.

What this means, though, is that now we, as an audience, have to sit through unpleasantly long, drawn out, meticulously detailed scenes of violence between a sick serial killer and his innocent victims. A little of this would have gone a long way, and you begin to wonder what the point of lingering so much is -- are we supposed to enjoy this first, then enjoy the revenge even more, later? Or would the type of person who enjoys the murder and rape scenes for the visceral thrill even care about the difference in motives between the killer and the secret agent?

In any case, with the inflated running time, I kept thinking, moral ambiguity aside, we could have shaved some time off this movie by not indulging every little tiny moment of violence so much. But then I began to wonder, without all this magnified violence and gore, what would be the point of the movie? I mean, in a sense, isn't the movie about the violence and gore? Taking that stuff out would be like taking the sex scenes out of a porn flick.

So, I don't know. I SAW THE DEVIL was okay, but I think there was a much better movie buried within it. I think the misguided attempts to shock and titillate the audience with ultra violence actually got in the way of this movie being as good as it could have been. When I watch a movie, I want to be in the moment, not thinking, "Why am I watching this?"

Horrorfest 2011: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

I took a look at the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS from the 1950s for Horrorfest 2009, so now it's time for the 1978 version of the same name. This remake is well regarded as a good film in its own right, and from what I can tell some viewers believe it is superior to the original. I still prefer the original, but this one was definitely a good flick.

Donald Sutherland stars as a San Francisco health inspector whose co-worker (Brooke Adams) becomes convinced that her live-in boyfriend (Art Hindle) is some kind of impostor. At first Sutherland recommends Adams consult his psychologist friend (Leonard Nimoy!) who is also a best selling author. But soon, Sutherland's buddy (Jeff Goldblum) discovers a weird body that seems to be from another world, and things start to come together. As crazy as it seems, our heroes come to the conclusion that humans are being replaced with clones from outer space.

As more and more of the city becomes possessed, our group of heroes is forced to go on the run, only there isn't really anywhere to run that isn't already taken over by the bad guys.

Although both films are about paranoia and loss of identity, I think the original INVASION did a better job of setting an overall paranoid tone for the movie. The isolated small town atmosphere made a more frightening counter point to the horror than San Francisco does in this film. In the original, the characters seems insulated enough that it was additionally horrific to them that anything bad could be going on at all in their seemingly perfect world. In this one, the characters seem world weary enough that we lose a little bit of that innocence and the invasion becomes more of a confirmation as if to say, "See, the conspiracy kooks were right all along."

On the other hand, some of the updates are welcome. The movie goes into more detail showing where the pods came from, how the grow, and how they infect people. It makes use of more modern fads like self-help and health spas. It was a nice surprise to have Brooke Adams walking around naked in the finale. Sutherland, Adams and Goldblum all turn in good performances and Nimoy is particularly well cast as a character who starts off as an arrogant blowhard and ends as an outright villain. And, there's a great ending.

Anyway, next time someone starts bitching and moaning about how all remakes suck, point out INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS was good. It doesn't matter if a movie is a remake, a sequel, or based on something that came before. If it's good, it's good, and if it sucks, it sucks. And this one's good.

Horrorfest 2011: Eraserhead

Growing up as a movie nerd, of course I heard of ERASERHEAD and its dark brand of weirdness many times. The famous black and white shot of Jack Nance as Henry Spencer with his wild tower of hair has become iconic and writer/director David Lynch has become synonymous with cult films. Now, I've finally seen it first hand.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, partially based on ERASERHEAD's widely known and notorious weirdness, but also based on my experiences with the David Lynch films I have seen. He has made films I honestly enjoyed like THE STRAIGHT STORY and ELEPHANT MAN, films I like in spite of the fact that they're a giant mess, like DUNE, and films I wanted to like but just didn't vibe with like LOST HIGHWAY.

Now that I've seen it, I'm still not sure what to think. ERASERHEAD is just as weird as they say. The movie doesn't go to very far lengths to explain itself, but goes a long way to set a creepy, foreboding tone using stark black and white photography and a lot of disturbing white noise on the soundtrack.

ERASERHEAD seems to take place in some kind of post apocalyptic world -- there doesn't seem to be many people around and everyone seems to live in abandoned buildings in urban industrial areas. The white noise droning in the background makes it clear industry still survives and that this urban area is not pleasant to live in. Wandering this wasteland is the afore mentioned Jack Nance as the wild haired Henry Spencer, an unassuming single man living in a tiny rathole of an apartment.

At the outset of the film, Nance is invited to his ex-girlfriend's (Charlotte Stewart) house to have dinner with her parents (Jeanne Bates and Allen Joseph). The gathering is suitably awkward and weird, and ends with Nance finding out that he has apparently impregnated his ex and now must marry her.

"They're still not sure it is a baby," Nance's future wife says, ominously.

The couple moves in together to raise the baby, and sure enough, we see why there was some confusion on the doctors' part. The baby doesn't look human -- it is nothing more than a monstrous, alien head poking out of a sack of bandages, constantly wailing, eventually breaking out into diseased boils. Nance's wife can't take it and bails early on. Nance can't take it either, but he won't leave the kid, so instead he descends into his fantasies, flights of madness, dreams and nightmares in an effort to escape.

That literal description of what little plot the film has doesn't really do it justice. Like most weird movies, this one must be seen to be believed. The plot tells us very little about the movie's intended "meaning" -- that's all conveyed in mood and tone, both of which the movie has plenty, laid on nice and thick. Most of the movie is a succession of striking visuals, including a grotesque woman singing on a stage while alien like creatures reminiscent of sperm drop from the ceiling on her and a sequence in which parts of Nance himself are recycled into pencil erasers, hence the name of the movie.

A movie like this, heavy on imagery and light on exposition, leads viewers to think there must be some deeper underlying meaning. These images must be symbols, right? I'm not 100% convinced there's much here beyond what's literally shown in the film, but it is definitely a uniquely stunning piece of work. My own guess is that the whole movie is just a nightmare manifestation of some common deep rooted fears among young, single males -- the fear of being alone, the fear of women, the fear of fatherhood, the fear of losing your freedom, the fear of death. Basically, the entirety of human experience.

One thing that saves this film from getting too full of itself is the central performance by Jack Nance. He plays Henry Spencer as bemused, confused, naive, shy, and often times nonplussed by the weird things going on around him. Most of his line readings have an open tone to them, giving us a character who is not cynical or self conscious, which stands as a stark contrast to the feelings a viewer might get about the film itself. This also helps provide a little bit of dark humor to keep the movie from dropping entirely into the realms of despair. Still, it gets pretty damn close.

Horrorfest 2011: Cure

Time for another detective story. CURE is a Japanese film starring Koji Yakusho as a detective investigating a series of strangely similar murders. Victims are turning up with "X" marks slashed into their necks. This at first seems like the mark of a serial killer, but each victim seems to have been killed by a different murderer, usually someone close to them who is easily caught and readily admits the crime while offering little or no motive.

Meanwhile, a mysterious transient (Masato Hagiwara) wanders into and out of innocent bystanders' lives, confusing them with his endless questions repetitive questions. He seems to be suffering from extreme amnesia, and eventually seems to be connected to this string of murders.

CURE builds a lot of suspense and has a definite overwhelming sense of dread throughout, exploiting disturbing sound design to put the viewer on edge. The film moves along at a slow, deliberate pace with lots of long takes and long shots, using pacing and framing to keep the viewer somewhat removed from the action on screen.

This distance between the viewer and the movie is similar to the distance between Yakusho's detective and the other characters in the movie. Yakusho plays a workaholic who attempts to hide his feelings both at work and at home where he takes care of his wife (Anna Nakagawa) who seems to be slowly and quietly losing her mind. As Yakusho gets deeper into his investigation and becomes more involved with the mysterious amnesiac, we get the feeling his mind is starting to go, too. He struggles not only with his sanity, but with his attempts to repress his normal, human feelings.

One interesting aspect of the film is that the central villain is more annoying and frustrating than he is evil and frightening. As played by Masato Hagiwara, the villain here is not suave and charming like Hannibal Lecter or cold and brutal like various slasher monsters. Instead, he seems to enjoy passive aggressively taunting his victims and the investigators as a petulant child might. This is both a unique approach to a villain for a movie and, I suspect, a fairly realistic one -- rather than building up the criminal as some kind of misunderstood genius or otherwise romantic figure, he's revealed to be little more than an anti-social weirdo you wouldn't really want to hang around.

The film has a frustratingly ambiguous ending, and there are several theories floating around about what it might mean, but like the last episode of the SOPRANOS I think all that stuff is secondary to the mood and tension the film creates while it's rolling.

Horrorfest 2011: Angel Heart

ANGEL HEART starts like detective noir and ends like a horror movie and has some comedy in the middle. This is my kind of movie.

Mickey Rourke stars as Harry Angel, a private eye in 1955 New York who is summoned to a Harlem church where some form of devil worship seems to be going down and hired by a creepy dude played by Robert DeNiro to find a missing person. DeNiro has long hair, a Satanic beard, fingernails filed into points, and seems to sit on a throne as he fills Rourke in on his mission, ominously noting, "I feel like I've met you before." So, early on, we get a feeling something supernatural is going on here.

The supernatural overtones continue as Rourke's investigation takes him to New Orleans where he finds himself associating with a fortune teller (Charlotte Rampling), a voodoo priestess (Lisa Bonet) and an aging blues man (actual aging blues man, Brownie McGhee). As often happens during Horrorfest, the bodies start to pile up. The investigation seems to get more confusing the deeper it goes and Rourke starts to fall apart, both mentally and physically, as he gets closer to the truth of this mystery.

I basically guessed the twist ending early on, though didn't exactly nail it, but I think that's a result of two decades of similar movies coming out after this one. I'm pretty sure if I saw this as an adult in 1987 the solution to the mystery would have taken me completely by surprise.

British filmmaker Alan Parker wrote and directed this film, and his trademark visual flair is fully present. The whole movie is beautiful to look at, particularly an early scene in which Mickey Rourke interviews a couple on the beach on a cloudy day shot almost entirely in long shots. Some say Parker's somewhat detached approach to filmmaking leaves his movies lacking a little humanity, and I can see where they're coming from sometimes (see ANGELA'S ASHES) while I totally disagree at others (see PINK FLOYD - THE WALL, one of my favorites). Here, Parker goes way out of his way to make sure the film looks beautiful, is period accurate, and he definitely nails the classic style of the noir and horror genres. Still, his critics would be correct in pointing out the character development and motivation is a little lacking here.

The one thing that rescues the movie from being totally emotionally cold is the performances. Mickey Rourke, as usually, pours his entire self into this role, and can deftly handle drama, horror and comedy with little ego displayed on screen. He's totally content to let it all hang out, and that's the kind of actor you need for a flick like this. Even when the screenplay asks him to ascend to ridiculous heights of lunacy in the final act, he doesn't back down and rises to the challenge.

DeNiro's performance is the opposite, but just as effective. He's so minimalistic, it's almost infuriating, but that's good. It's interesting to see him in this kind of more fantasy based role, and I'd like to see him as some kind of super villain again before his career is over.

Bonet is compelling as the young voodoo priestess, and of course ANGEL HEART is famous for her graphic sex scene. This caused some controversy with fans used to seeing her on the decidely G-rated COSBY SHOW, and that controversy is probably partially why she never had much of a career after this, which is a shame, because she definitely has a presence here.

Watching this film, I couldn't believe I could go so long without seeing a movie with so many elements I love -- noir, Mickey Rourke, Alan Parker. On one hand, it's crazy that this movie has been out since 1987 and I'm just now getting around to watching it. On the other, it's great that I can watch so many movies so often and still find totally awesome stuff I've never seen.

Horrorfest 2011: The Ghost Breakers

It's funny, as famous as Bob Hope is, I never actually saw one of his movies until now.

THE GHOST BREAKERS is a charming little comedy set against the backdrop of a haunted house. Bob Hope stars as the star of a gossip radio show who goes on the lam when he runs afoul of some gangsters and ends up accidentally stowing away aboard a ship bound for Cuba in a trunk belonging to Paulette Godard, who has recently inherited a castle and is on her way to check it out.

Godard's plagued with warnings of how dangerous and haunted the castle is, and receives ominous threats in the form of voodoo trinkets, but with the help of Hope, she soldiers on to check out her new property.

Hope takes it upon himself to check out the supposedly haunted castle -- mostly to impress Godard, but also because he simply refuses to buy the local legends. He brings along his reluctant servant, played by Willie Best, to find out if the ghosts are real or an elaborate scam to keep Godard away from the castle.

The plot is pretty simple and most of the movie deals with the mishaps that lead to Hope making it onto the boat to Cuba. It's about an hour before our heroes actually get to the haunted castle, so most of the ghost hijinks work as the finale of the movie as opposed to the bulk of it. Aside from ghosts, there are also a couple supposed zombies -- the caretaker of the castle (Virginia Brissac) and her son (hey, it's Noble Johnson again!).

Anthony Quinn is on hand in a mysterious dual role, along with Richard Carlson as a little bit of romantic competition for Hope and Paul Lukas as a solicitor who tries to dissuade Godard from taking over the haunted property.

For a fairly light hearted comedy, THE GHOST BREAKERS has some great, creepy atmosphere. While it is never outright scary, the castle and its surroundings are beautifully built and lit sets, and even scenes in the hotel at the beginning of the film and on the decks of the ship to Cuba are shot as if this is a big budget special effects picture instead of a humble comedy. I also like that the plot has Hope investigating the hauntings as a skeptic who dismisses the existence of ghosts out of hand.

The thing I liked most about this movie is also the thing that challenged me most, and that is the performance of African American actor Willie Best as Hope's cowardly servant. Best gets all the choicest lines and has great comic timing, both verbally and physically. He makes the perfect sidekick for Hope and the two are an engaging team. He's the highlight of the flick. Unfortunately, he's in one of those roles that's a little cringe inducing these days -- a bumbling black servant to a superior white guy. If you have even a teeny little bit of social conscience, you'll probably find yourself wondering if you're "allowed" to laugh at this material or not.

I finally settled on not being too uptight. The fact of the matter is, Best is hilarious. He basically steals the movie. Regardless of the historical context or the broader meaning of his role, the way it was written and conceived, and what that might say about society at large, he's still funny. It sucks that certain truths about racism made me have to think twice about an otherwise brilliant performance, especially a comedic one, especially when so few black actors had a chance to shine in this period.

Best got into this movie both because of and in spite of racism, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to give his performance its due.