Sombre (1998)

Being Film #11 in Hail Horror 5.  Thanks to Leaves for the recommendation.

Extra Note:  One week later this movie still sits like a bad meal in my gut, proof (perhaps) that there's more to the film than my experience and consequent write-up get across.  Leaves came back with a lengthy comment that goes into detail why he thinks the film works, and it's a great counterpoint, so I link to it here and heartily recommend checking it out.

SOMBRE, the debut film by experimental artist Philippe Grandrieux, eschews straight narrative, opting instead to provoke visceral reactions in the viewer.  It succeeds in its goal.  Everything is dark and oppressive, even in daylight.  Images are either ramped up or slowed down to such a degree that even the most innocent activity - children being delighted by a puppet show - turns into a Lynchian nightmare.  The story centers on Jean, a serial killer who preys on prostitutes until a chance encounter with two women in a broken down car on the highway provides a new diversion and a chance to consummate the act whose failure seems to drive jean to his murderous acts.  There is the barest hint of fable in this, but its glow is dampened by enough abuse and violence to take any artistic message SOMBRE has and leave it by the film's end abandoned on the side of the road.

Or at least that's my impression.  I knew after about 15 minutes I was going to hate this movie, although part of that reaction could conceivably be Grandrieux's whole point.  Unlike the stylized (though equally brutal) acts of violence perpetrated by Mario Bava or Dario Argento, there's a depravity and bluntness to Jean's sadistic acts that leaves you sick in the stomach.  This feeling is only enhanced with numerous dead scenes of driving on highways, evil looking children, and sickly pale yellow light when there's any to be found.

So, yeah...not a movie I even remotely enjoyed or recommend.  However I'm open to the chance that I'm just not the target audience for this kind of thing (my tastes running more classic Universal, Hammer, and giallo) so in the interest of fairness there's an in-depth review of the film available at d+kaz which really picks the film apart.  I can definitely see all its points, but it doesn't do anything to improve the experience I had with SOMBRE.

That's it.  One more quick review done in pictures, and then a final 13th review for one of the most anticipated horror television series in a long time...

Habit (1995)

Being Film #10 in Hail Horror 5.  Thanks to J.D. at Radiator Heaven for the recommendation.  

You ever keep hearing about someone, a director or a writer, someone that people keep telling you to check out, and you want to, only somehow it never seems to happen?  And then when you finally do you can't understand what took you so long to do it?

Well, for me that's Larry Fessenden, and HABIT, his 1995 re-working of an independent video he shot back in 1982 is kind of an indie revelation.  Fessenden wrote, directed, edited, and stars in HABIT as Sam, a lost soul in New York City - a witty, nice enough guy who unfortunately is so far down in the drink his entire life is a crumpled heap.  All of this is communicated in a few short sequences as Sam arrives at his friend's Halloween party, "costumed" as a vagabond Cyrano de Bergerac.  It's there that he meets Anna, a mysterious beautiful woman with who he shares an immediate attraction.  She seems to come and go, leaving him after a party in the street but suddenly behind him a few days later at a street fair.  Their first night together leaves Sam in a daze the next morning in a park, his lip bloody...

So is Anna a vampire or not?  The incredible thing about HABIT is that it doesn't matter very much.  There's certainly enough in the film to suggest it - Anna and Sam's love making in the park end with her sucking on his lip as he begins to go numb.  Later he has visions of being chased by something in the air; he has a craving for rare meat, and the sight of a dead roach on the floor of the bar he manages almost puts him in a trance.  Anna for her part doesn't make it easy.  Played by Meredith Snaider (who played the same role in the 1982 version, as did Fessenden) with a cool understatement, Anna's only real power she uses over Sam is that she listens, and seems to care about him in a way he desperately needs.  She's sensual and passionate, but her draw is not the typical vampire allure (she may be the only vampire in the history of cinema to buy her victim a barbecue), and it's one of the many things that stand out in the film.

But the real star of HABIT is Fessenden, who besides giving a remarkable performance as Sam but displays a very keen eye as a writer/director.  The dialog and performances all around are very naturalistic and have an improvisatory feel.  The cinematography is superb for such a low-budget feature: filmed on location in New York gives everything an authenticity lacking in other, larger budget pictures.  There a dozens of little things that bring Sam's existence to life: from his enormous set of keys shown locking his door in the beginning of the film to shots of sinks filled to the brim with dirty dishes and change on tables.  As Sam falls more under the spell of Anna, Fessenden begins slowly unraveling the world he so completely put together in the first hour of the movie.  Clocks spin backwards, voices begin to echo.  He doesn't know if he's hung over, sick, or just overly sensitive to light.  Do we take him at his word?  Or are these just more effects of his drinking?  Fessenden keeps it ambiguous up to the end, and even then you can argue equally for both viewpoints.

So.  A vampire movie that may or may not be about vampires at all, but is about those things we associate with vampires because we don't want to think about it in any kind of realistic fashion.  And that's insatiable need, hunger...base desires more comfortably expressed creatures of the night.  Fessenden knows this, and has crafted a genuine gem of a film.

Survival of the Dead (2009)

Being Film #9 in Hail Horror 5.  Thanks to Sean at Spectacular Views for the recommendation.

Is there a horror fan left on the planet that isn't at least familiar with George A. Romero's DEAD films?  Both NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD influenced entire schools of horror, and established the rules by which hundreds of zombie films adhere to.  Romero's game - both in his zombie movies and in his other films like MARTIN, KNIGHTRIDERS and THE CRAZIES - is to address larger societal themes under the guise of horror, more often than not showing the real horror to be the "normal" folks trapped in whatever scenario Romero devises for them.

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, Romero's sixth investigation into the world of the living dead, brings us back to the beginning of the outbreak, and is a sequel of sorts to 2007's awkward DIARY OF THE DEAD, a point of view movie about a group of college film students who are there at the onset of the reawakening of the dead.  Deciding to use the event as fodder for a film they're creating, one sequence has them coming up against a group of soldiers turned thieves, out to save themselves and find someplace safe.  SURVIVAL is the story of those soldiers, where they go, and what they find.

What they find is Plum Island, seemingly a perfect to wait out a zombie apocalypse.  Unfortunately, this particular island has a good old fashioned Irish blood feud between the Muldoons and the O'Flynns.  In the beginning of the film we learn that Old Man O'Flynn was kicked off the island because it was his belief that the family and friends coming back to life on the island couldn't be saved, and that a shot to the head was an act of mercy.  Shamus Muldoon and his clan think otherwise, believing that if they can get the zombies to eat something other than human flesh, there's a chance they can be saved.  O'Flynn's daughter Janet is in agreement, so exile it is until he meets up with the soldiers and comes back to settle the score.

Romero is right in his element here, and where DIARY was often stilted and a little ham-fisted due to the way it was shot, SURVIVAL works much better (despite some narration that just falls flat - has no one learned from BLADE RUNNER?).  Both Muldoon and O'Flynn no longer whether or not their point is correct: all they want is for the other to admit that they were wrong, something neither is willing to do until it's too late.  Romero's still got some fun gags up his sleeve, and his flesh-eating ghouls get exploded by a fire extinguisher, combusted from the inside by a flare, and in one case hung from a rope, a poor cowboy on the other end fighting to stay away from the snapping jaws.  Taking a cue from LAND the zombies still have some semblance of their past lives, and we're treated to some great visuals like one poor zombie mailman chained to a mailbox, slowly shambling back and forth the length of the chain as he delivers the same mail again and again.  The effects are mixed - there are some horrible CGI effects, particularly in the beginning of the film, but there's also some decent shots, and enough practical gore to give everything an even keel.

There's not a real scares to be had, though, so if you're looking for something truly frightening you'd probably have to go back to 1968's original film.  I'd argue though that Romero hasn't been interested in scares for quite some time; he's more intent on having a good time and throwing scenarios and situations into a world of his own making, one that reflects in its own goopy and gory way our own.  The biggest surprise I came away with was how much fun SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD actually is, and that it looks like Romero's still got a couple tales left up his sleeve to tell in this world.

A world with just slightly more zombies than our own.

Don't Look Now (1973)

Being Film #8 in Hail Horror 5. Thanks to Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder and Captain Blake of The October People for the recommendation

Cut away the non-linear structure, the running visual cues and kinetic editing, and DON'T LOOK NOW would probably still be a good, if fairly predictable movie.  But fortunately for us we don't have to do that, and the fact is that Nicolas Roeg in only his second feature as a director has crafted a masterpiece of mood and tone, and DON'T LOOK NOW stands as an achievement of the presentation of pure dread, and a stunning example of how a director can directly engage the audience in his vision.

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie star as John and Laura Baxter, a couple who in the opening of the film tragically lose their young daughter in a drowning accident.  The sequence, cutting back and forth between the Baxters calmly working in their cottage and their young daughter Christine playing outside near a lake is a superb lesson in film making.  Christine's bright red raincoat is shot reflecting in the water as she runs outside, and the image of water, as well as the color red serve as markers throughout the film. In fact, the actual shot is doubled later in the film to wonderful effect.  Actions in the house are mirrored outside, and in some instances are perfectly edited to be a continuous motion between the two, such as a ball tossed in the air cutting to John tossing a pack of cigarettes to Laura.  A quick shot of Laura covering her mouth, instantly cutting to Christine doing the same.  A dropped ball echoes a glass dropping, cutting John's thumb (which echoes his young son's cut finger outside) causing blood to smear across a slide of a church window, specifically on the image of a red hooded person sitting in a pew.  The blood slowly moves across the slide, and it's then that John gets a sense that something's not right outside.

 

I could go on and on just analyzing the opening of this film.  It sets up everything we can expect from Roeg throughout the rest of the film.  An indeterminate amount of time later the setting shifts to Venice, which captures the crumbling state of affairs between John and Laura.  I've never seen Venice look more depressed and decayed on film.  John is restoring an old church, trying to escape from the death of his daughter in his work.  In a restaurant they come across two older women, sisters, one of whom is psychic and tells Laura that she can see young Christine sitting right next to them, happy but trying to tell them them something.  Laura collapses, and awakens later finally at ease with events, ready to believe the best and resume their lives.  John, however, is strictly rational, refusing to buy into anything other the solid reality of the walls and windows he fights so hard to bring back from their own state of decay. 

When Laura learns that Chrstine's message is actually a warning to leave Venice before it's too late, and that the message is for John, who whether he wishes to believe it or not is capable of some psychic insight himself, DON'T LOOK NOW moves with a dreadful pace to its horrible and inevitable end.  But the manner in which it does so is so remarkable, and so visible to the audience that Roeg elevates the story to classic status.  He's ably assisted by Sutherland and Christie, who turn in one of the most believable portraits of marriage I've seen on film.  So much has been said of the pivotal love-making scene, cutting between the unbridled intimacy of the act itself and the distant dressing afterward, but beyond that what makes John and Laura's relationship so believable is in the little things: the constant interruptions in each other's conversations that never escalate into arguments but rather feel like this is how they've always talked.  The small touches and brushes into one another on the bed before the lovemaking, in the restaurant, and the jogging steps John takes as he runs to touch Laura's hand one last time before her boat leaves.  In a film surrounded by so many odd supporting characters (the sisters, the supremely odd police chief) John and Laura are utterly grounded in reality, and it makes the fantastic events that occur all the more tragic.

 

The last thought I wanted to get out about DON'T LOOK NOW is how deliberate Roeg's direction is.  Typically in a horror movie the directions a film takes align up with the perspective of the main character.  You the audience learn something because the main character is learning something.  Roeg does the exact opposite in DON'T LOOK NOW - he uses dissolves, flash-backs, genius editing and color to explicitly alert you - not John - to what's going on in the film.  In one particular set-piece John is matching a newly cut tile to see how it matches against the original tiles for a mosaic high on a church wall.  He stands on a rickety scaffold, and the camera constantly cuts back and forth from sets of eyes: on the mosaic, on pictures aligning a sheet of glass, and all of this cuts back to the cataract eyes of the psychic sister who heard the warnings to leave Venice before it was too late.  Roeg doesn't rub your nose in it; rather, he very purposefully presents his cues and guides you through to the climax of the film.  It's an incredibly assured job (not surprising considering some of his past work with David Lean and Roger Corman), and indicative of the visual themes he would continue to pursue in films like THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and BAD TIMING.

DON'T LOOK NOW is a modern horror classic, not because it's particularly horrific or frightening (although in its dreadful way it is both of these things), but because of its maturity, a film firmly grounded in genre that isn't afraid to be art as well.

MOTD: Aunt Ange, Olga Walks Away

Music of the Day is a series of brief asides alerting you, the keen reader, of the music currently wafting pleasantly in my headphones and vibrating against my skull.  Written however I choose and, as always, to be continued...

It's a rare occurrence that I get a music recommendation from my wife.  This is not a dig on her tastes; she'll be the first to tell you that she hasn't bought a piece of music for herself in almost 20 years, which accounts for the last band she turned me on to, U2.  But one night she came home from work with a small brown envelope sealed in wax.  

Aunt Ange (band page here) carry the "independent" label in the truest sense of the word: a carefully constructed, unique collective intent on crafting music with texture: layer upon layer of instrumentation and voice that remain distinct despite contributing to a singular vision.  True categorization is elusive - think a spinning, artful hybrid of Radiohead and Tom Waits as produced by George Martin, with a dense, sumptuousness to the vocals reminiscent of the type of interplay found in Local Natives or Fleet Foxes.  

Their latest album, Olga Walks Away (available via bandcamp) is awash in diverse instrumentation and rich harmonies, an eclectic folk collection from the other side of a dream.  Although there is a loose thread of a story that winds through the songs, the emphasis is on tone, mood, and a mastery of instruments that never overwhelms the song but always serves it.  The percussion of "Pumpkins and Patches" immediately brings to mind Bone Machine era Tom Waits until the vocals kick in, when you're treated to a narrative describing a land of sweets conjured in the fever-dream of Willy Wonka.  Each song springs from the same landscape (food does figure pretty prominently in the lyrics) and proves to be a satisfying, cohesive album that rewards with each additional listen.  Perfect for late night headphone duty.

Standout tracks: "Pumpkins and Patches", "Butternut Sunshine", "Velvet Sidewalks"