Category Archives: Horror

Secret Morgue #3: Final Report

The Secret Morgue, hosted by Film Geeks San Diego, is a one marathon festive for themed horror films with 12 hours of movies, munchies, and madness where the titles of the presentations are secret until actually screened.

Returning after a two-year pandemic hiatus the theme for Secret Morgue #3 was ‘witches.’ IN addition to the films and catered food we were treated to a lecture on the history of witches and witched in Comics.

Film #1: HAXAN (192) From Sweden this silent film, in a beautifully restored edition, if part ‘history’ and part narrative focusing on the myth of witches in the Middle Ages. I had never seen this movie and it was a pleasure.

Film #2: The Witchfinder General (AKA The Conqueror Worm) (1968) Vincent Price stars as Mathew Hopkins self-proclaimed Witch Finder General dur the English Civil war of the 17th century. The story presents no actual witches but the very real terror of unchecked power and prejudice. My sweetie-wife reminded me that we had watched this on DVD together but somehow I had forgotten it entirely.

Film #3: City of the Dead (AKA Horror Hotel) (1960) A flawed film with a bunch of brits pretending to me Americans as a small New England town is beset by a witch burned there in the 17th century. College students and professors arrive searching for a missing friend and unravel the mystery. With a better budget and script the core concept could have been quite good but a lackluster production and meandering script undercut what works.

Film #4: Inferno (1980) Written and directed by Dario Argento this is the middle film of Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy, between Susperia (1977) and The Mother of Tears (2007). The narrative of the movie is quite fractured, split among several viewpoint characters, most of whom come to grizzly ends, and as is typical of Argento’s work, mood, image, and style supersede story. It doesn’t quite have the dream logic of a David Lynch film nor the defined narrative of a typical story leaving it somewhere in a no man’s land between the two.

Film #5: Black Sunday (AKA The Mask of Satan) (1960) Director Mario Bava worked in a number of genres, mystery, Giallo, and of course horror. This film stars Barbara Steel in two roles as the 16th century witch, condemned along with her vampire lover, and the 18th century princess destined to be the witch’s vessel to revivification. Set in the eastern European country of Moldova, Black Sunday is a stylish gothic horror with impressive in camera transformation effects.

Film #6: Lvx Aeterna (2019) Written and directed by Gasper Noe of Irreversible fame this film is in a mock documentary style following two actresses, playing fictionalized version of themselves, who are about to portray witches burned at the stake. It is a short film, 50 minutes, but the late hour, my exhaustion, the foreign language soundtrack, and promised intense flashing sequences cause me to fear a possible migraine trigger and I instead left early but this is in no way a comment on the film’s quality only my own self-preservation in face of possible intense agony. (Driving into headlights at night with a migraine is not recommended.)

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Movie Review: X

 

Well, it has finally happened A24 has released a film that utterly disappointed me.

X, and man I would have worked for a better title, is the story of five twenty-somethings and one

A24 Studios

forty-something traveling to a secluded rural Texas farm in 1979 to film a pornographic film and the night of terror, violence, and murder that ensues.

The sub-genre that X best fits into is hicksploitation, represented by such diverse films as Deliverance and Gator Bait and of course the movie X is most often compared to, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, X has been overly praised.

The characters of X are sketched in only the barest contours and what is there that passes as characterization does little to endear much sympathy. I do not believe that this is the fault of the performers but rather of the script. There is little to recommend this film beyond Mia Goth’s dual performance as characters separated by more than 60 years in age. (From this point onward, I will be revealing spoilers, though not the ultimate ending, for the movie.)

The movie repeatedly shattered any suspension of disbelief I might have possessed. The character RJ has artistic aspirations of making a ‘good dirty movie,’ referring to avant-garde French Cinema and yet he is making a movie without any lights, reflectors, or even a single tripod. The movie hangs a hat on this incongruity when Wayne, the old man and producer, yells at Maxine for being absent and that RJ is ‘losing the light’ as the sun sets but then everyone rushed into a darkened barn to film, where there is no fricking light.

Later in the movie, after RJ feels betrayed and has attempted to abandon everyone his girlfriend and sound recordist enlists Wayne’s help in searching for him. Wayne wanders out into the Texas brush, at night, wearing one underwear and no shoes. Because apparently not one of the native Texans has ever heard of ‘chiggers’ (bush-mites), snakes, fire-ants, or even just thorns.

In addition to displaying a lack of any concern about insects or plants the film to hampered by situations around the character of Jackson Hole, the sole male performer in their ‘dirty movie.’ As a black man, engaging in interracial sex, and deep in rural Texas, with a shady elderly white man prone to brandishing a shotgun showing little more than antipathy towards these young people, he acts far too cavalier about his own safety to be anything other than a cinematic ‘professional victim.’

X boasts one really nicely crafted scene of dread and suspense amid it jarring editing and reliance on jump scares. When Maxine goes skinny dipping in a pond and is hunted by an alligator the entire sequence plays out beautifully but ultimately only serves to establish the ‘gator so that it can be used later in an attack that possess none of the slow stalking dread exhibited earlier.

X proved to be a waste of my evening but at least with the AMC A List subscription it cost me no extra money. My advice is to wait for streaming or cable and then miss it.

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Revisiting The Night House

 

August of 2021, I returned to the theaters for the suspense/horror film The Night Houseproduced by and starring Rebecca Hall. Over the past two weekends I have revisited the movie on Blu-ray. (Amazon had a sale with the disc over half off its retail price.)

I am pleased to report that the film works perfectly well on a second viewing as it did on its first.

Rebecca Hall plays Beth a public-school teacher and skeptic who is dealing with the sudden and inexplicable suicide of her beloved and devoted husband. After events prompt her to investigate his cell phone, she discovers that Owen took hundreds of photos of women, all strangers to Beth, who bear an uncanny resemblance to her. Plagued by nighttime visitations and visions that may be the product of overwhelming and suppressed grief Beth gradually moves from Skeptic to a believer in the supernatural with the possibility that Owen’s spirit has returned from beyond the grave to her.

The Night House is a sterling example of how a horror film can have real tension, real stakes, without requiring a body count or a monstrous example of violence every ten minutes. This is not to slag on those movies that work that way, the beauty of the genre is that it is wide and deep enough to welcome as film such as The Night House where an ambiguous ending leaves open the possibility that everything was the product of a grief shattered mind to the nine films of the Texas Chain Saw franchise that exists on its devotion to blood and violence. Personally, I am more drawn to films like The Night House where slow building dread drives the terror but far be it from me to denigrate what works for others.

 

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The Downside of Easy International Media

 

The internet gives us access to news and popular culture from around the globe and sometimes that access prompts frustration.

This morning as I ate my customary breakfast of toast and eggs, yes, I live such an exciting life, one of the social media sites threw up the news that this year there was going to be a Norwegian werewolf movie, Vikingulven (Viking Wolf), complete with trailer.

Man, that looks good, and it had a Norwegian release date of August 27th but as of the time of this writing no US distribution. (Disappointed werewolf whimper.) There are few really good werewolf movies and this looks promising.

I guess I will have to wait and hope that one of the streamers picks it up. (Yes, I am looking at you Shudder.)

 

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Streaming Review: Lake of the Dead (1958)

 

Despite what the title might lead you the think the 1958 Norwegian horror film Lake of the Dead contains zero zombies or undead.

Instead, it is the story of six adults friends, none of them remotely close to being a teenager, who vacation at a remote cabin that boasts a horrific and ghostly legend. Fairly quickly it is suggested that the ghost of the peg-legged murder may be possessing the vacationers and the clock is ticking for the group to solve the mystery of the lake as the dangers grows.

I wish I could say that I liked Lake of the Dead, but while it did not tempt me to switch it off nor did it fully engage me. The story is told entirely in flashback so on one level there are at least a set of character the audience is aware are going to survive their experience. I do appreciate the approach that had different character holding vastly different theories concerning the existence of the supernatural. However, a trained psychiatrist simply pronouncing the fact of telepathy as something as routine as antibiotics grated me in an entirely wrong manner. That said this film undoubtedly works for some and is competently crafted.

Lake of the Dead is currently streaming in Shudder.

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Streaming Review: Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster

 

I recently ignited a spirited discussion on the questions was the original novel Frankenstein science-fiction or not. A number of people argues the process of using electricity to vivify the creature as a principal aspect of the science in this fiction. But that image, the grand storm, the massive bolts of lightning, the sparking machinery, all originate with the 1931 film Frankenstein and if any visual image leaps into your head of the creature, particularly if that image is hulking, brutish, and mute then the person leaping to your mind is Boris Karloff.

This week I watched a fantastic documentary on the life of Karloff, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster and while I knew some of the story there was a great deal about this extremely talented actor I never knew. For example, due to the racism of the times he hid and never discussed his ethnicity and what I had assumed was a ‘Hollywood tan’ George Hamilton was actually his South Asian (Indian) heritage.

Remember almost exclusively in popular culture as Frankenstein’s monster, a part he gave pathos and empathy to that lives on nearly a century later, Karloff’s best work came in other films. Personally I have not seen a finer performance by him than as the murderous cabman in The Body Snatcher, (1945) where he is not only frightening but also disarmingly charming. However, The documentary also gave me new films to seek out and watch with the amazingly versatile man such as Lured starring Lucile Ball searching for a killer in London, or The Black Room where Karloff plays noble brothers with one decidedly evil.

The film covers his life, its hard knocks, and that somehow this man remained giving, gracious, and inspiring throughout the turbulent turmoils. For fans of good documentaries, classic horror, and above all Karloff, this is a must see.

Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster is currently streaming on Shudder.

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One Third of The Unholy Trinity: Blood on Satan’s Claw

 

In the realm of cinematic folk horror three films are enshrined as ‘the unholy trinity’, The Wicker Man, The Witchfinder General, and The Blood on Satan’s Claw. Of the films only The Wicker Man has a contemporary (at the time of production) setting with the other two set in historical times.The Witchfinder General is set during the English civil war and while no magical or supernatural events takes place it is a film with characters obsessed with witchcraft. The movie I watched this past Sunday night The Blood on Satan’s Claw takes place in the early 1800’s when the enlightenment, for the educated, has dispelled superstition but unlike The Witchfinder General, here the supernatural is real and evil stalks the land.

Originally conceived as an anthology film The Blood on Satan’s Claw kicks off with a country lad discovering inhuman remains in a field he was tilling. The educated judge visiting the isolated village dismisses any talk of demons as superstition leaving the villagers to face the growing threat alone. The children of the village fall under the thrall of some unseen influence bringing death and terror to the adults and children resistant to the unholy call.

While lacking in the gory effects made popular in the 80s cycle of horror films and not quite up to the standard of psychologically themed horror films, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, though not a massive hit in its time, has come to be seen as one of the founding films, along with the others in the unholy trinity, of the genre folk horror. What makes this movie effect as a horror film is that apparent randomness of the violence and misfortune that befalls various villagers. There is no ‘transgress and die’ pattern at work nor are the people targeted a direct danger to the growing evil. Terrible fates fall upon characters without reason leaving an existential dread in the air that anyone at any time is a potential victim.

Perhaps slow by today’s standards The Blood on Satan’s Claw is still worth a watch and is currently streaming on Shudder.

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Tilbury: an Update and recommendation

 

On Friday Jan 28th I posted my review and comments on the 1985 made for television Icelandic Folk horror movie Tilbury and in that essay, I commented that the film apparently took an antisemitic turn in its final act.

I am pleased, very pleased, to report that such an interpretation is at odds with the director’s intention and the Menorahs visible in the setting of the films climax were ultimately just an element of set decoration that carried the potential for misinterpretation and not confirmation of a character’s earlier accusations. The film’s reached out to me to discuss this matter and I’m happy to revisit my thoughts on this interesting piece of folk horror. (I also want to note that my Sweetie-wife strongly disagreed with my initial interpretation.)

Tilbury with its folklore that is unfamiliar to most people beyond Iceland and its strange nightmare logic sequences is not the sort of cinema that everyone enjoys but that we need more of, off beat and willing to be something more than a machete wielding masked madman. So please check out this unique piece of cinema currently streaming on Shudder.

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Icelandic Folk Horror: Tilbury

Icelandic Folk Horror: Tilbury

Made for Icelandic television in 1987 Tilbury is a short, just 53-minute, folk horror set during the British occupation of Iceland in 1940.

Audun is young man from rural Iceland. When he is sent near Reykjavik to part of the labor force building up defenses for the occupying British forces, he’s asked by the village priest to check in on a young woman, the priest’s daughter, who traveled there earlier and who has now fallen out of contact.

Out of place and naive Audun eventually finds the young woman but begins to suspect that a British officer she’s having an affair with may in fact be an imp from Icelandic folklore. As Audun investigates his experiences become more and more nightmarish.

Despite the limitations of television and budget Tilbury has much to offer; Lynchian dream logic sequences, amusing portrayals of British and American stereotypes by Icelandic performers, and a different vibe of folk horror.

The follow bit of text I am striking through. Please see my follow-up post but essentially it was wrong and I regret the error.

That said it must be noted that halfway through the run time the piece takes an ugly anti-Semitic turn that is truly baffling and utterly unnecessary to story or plot. At first these viewpoints can be dismissed as a character’s bigotry but the movie’s climatic sequence present imagery that invalidates such an interpretation.

With such an ugly turn I cannot recommend anyone support what otherwise might have been an interesting discovery.

Tilbury is currently streaming on Shudder.

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A Phantom Fidelity: Frankenstein Monster’s Creation

 

It is difficult to count the number of times Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein has been adapted in some form or another to motion pictures, but the count is in the scores. Some have attempted to hew closely to the novel as in Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 Mary Shelley’ Frankensteinwhile other are so disregarding of the text that creature is made into a kaiju fighting other oversized monsters in the Japanese wilderness.

What nearly all these adaptations have in common is a visually dynamic creation process where the creature is brought to life. The method varies wildly, in the first film adaptation from Edison’s company the creature is born in fire and in the aforementioned 1994 film the processed is wet and liquid much like a fetus growing in a womb. However, the most famous and most used process is lightning during a fantastic storm as inspired by the pre-code 1931 James Whale film Frankenstein. (Ironically it is not electricity that provides life the creature in this film but the undiscovered ‘Great Ray’ beyond ultraviolet that is the source of life, but the movie fixed in the popular imagination the idea of electrification into life.) This production also created another recurring fixture in future adaptations, the twisted assistant, here named Fritz, who later and indelibly became Igor.

What makes these phantom fidelities is that the novel spends an amazingly little amount of time or text on the creation itself. One paragraph, 98 words out 75,000 depict the creature creation.

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

And yet I think it would be very difficult to persuade a production company to fund a new adaptation of Frankenstein without a climatic creation scene present. And Igor has become so accepted as cannon that in the 2004 film Van Helsing when asked why he tortures the creature Igor responds, “It’s what I do.” His existence not only as assistant but as tormentor is so fixed it no longer needs any form of explanation. The mad scientist, the sadistic assistant, and the grand act of creation seem foundational to the story and none of it existed in the original text. Perhaps the person who casts the longest shadow in the universal myth, second only to Shelley herself, is James Whale.

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