There are loads of traditional Christmas films that people watch each year, It’s A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, The Muppet Christmas Carol and Die Hard to name just a few but in our household one of the movies on the season’s playlist is the charming Finnish Horror/Comedy Rare Exports.

Like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Rare Exports is a Christmas film from which Christmas cannot be removed without destroying the story and yet the film in absolutely not about the story or moral of Christmas in either the religious or secular senses. There is no learning to love your fellow man, no hearts grow three sizes larger, no understanding of the value of your life and all that it touches but rather to the simple tale of a young boy who discovers that origins of the winter holiday is much darker, much more fearsome, than the fairytale he had been told and that the Americans digging in the mountain are about to awaken ancient spirits that will descend upon the naughty.

Set in an isolated Sami border town in the frozen reaches of Lapland Rare Exports follows Pietari a young boy in the days before Christmas. Explosive excavations atop the nearby mountain of Korvatunturi has upset the local ecology and the reindeer herd that the Sami rely upon for their income is devastated threatening everyone’s livelihood including Pietari’s father Rauno. When Rauno’s illegal wolf pit captures something else the films turns from family dram to horror and the discovery of something monstrous in Mt. Joulupukki threatens more than just income.

Rare Exports is that exceptional film able to blend comedy, drama, and horror seamlessly into one story. Some have found the film to have jarring tonal shifts but that is not my experience. Each development of the story leads organically into the next as the characters are drawn into more dire and desperate actions trying to save their town and themselves. With gorgeous cinematography by Mika Orasmaa the film looks stunning and the now dated CGI effects match the tone and style of the photography perfectly. Director Jalmari Helander manages to make his budget of 1.8 million Euros look like a much more substantial production.  The bulk of the film is in Finnish with subtitles that as is common with Finnish production anytime characters of different nationalities are speaking English is the default tongue spoken.

I heartily recommend Rare Exports which is currently streaming on Shudder and Hulu.

I discovered a new podcast a week or so ago Cult 45 is a podcast devoted to cult and exploitation cinema. The name is a play on name of the malt liquor Colt 45 which of course is a play on a firearm so just from its title the podcast is meta.

The podcast is hosted by and comments on from an American black perspective and it is highly entertaining. So far, I have listened to episodes about the films The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Re-Animator, and a double episode on The Wicker Man commenting on both version of the movie. (And righteously they revere the original and mock the re-make.)

Here is their episode on the classic horror film that launched a franchise Night of the Living Dead.

This doc is exactly what it says on the tin, it is an hour and forty minutes of director William Friedkin speaking on The Exorcist the 1973 film he directed that terrified a nation and a world.

With supplemental footage from the movie and production documentarian Alexandre Philippe constructs an intimate discussion by Friedkin about one of his most well-known and iconic films. Friedkin’s voice, with the exception of one off-screen question from Phillippe, guides us through not only some of the production of The Exorcist including casting that was eventually discarded after Jason Miller convinced Friedkin to hire him as Father Karras, but also explores the artistic and musical influences that has motivated his long and controversial career.

Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist is an interesting, moving, and personal voyage into the artistic process. For people fascinated by art and artists and who consume Blu-ray bonus material by the hour this documentary currently streaming on Shudder is a can’t miss.

Hailing from the land down under, Blood Vessel is the story a small group that has survived the sinking of their ship during WWII and find themselves aboard a German warship, whose crew has met mysterious and gruesome deaths. An intriguing premise the film fails almost straight out of the gate. The survivors are a collection of cliched and cardboard caricatures instead of living breathing characters. At no point throughout the films 97-minute runtime does a single character present any sort of inner life, growth, or surprising turn. They are all exactly who they appeared to be when we met them floating in raft in the cold frigid waters of the North Atlantic, presumably in the winter of ’44-’45.

The lack of care or attention to detail in this film might be best typified by the scene where the greedy, brassy, and loud-mouthed character from New York discovers a cache of gold bars presumable looted by the NAZIs from their Romanian allies. Examining the gold, he lifts the bars easily even turning in the light while grasping it with just two fingers.

Had the characters been fleshed out and developed that film’s slow pace and attempts at building tension during the first half of its runtime may have worked. A derelict and deserted ship, particularly an enemy one, would make for a rich and atmospheric setting to explore characters and conflict but if you populate it with tired cliches then the lack of action becomes a drag and not a slow burn.

While watching Blood Vessel it was impossible not to think of similarly themed and flawed films such as 1980’s Death Ship. It isn’t until the third act that the monstrous cause for the carnage that befell the crew is revealed and released forcing the characters into a desperate fight for survival, but by this time it had become impossible to have any emotional stake in their escape or victory and the enjoyment comes from predicting which horror film tropes will rule the script and its ending.

I can’t but also feel that the cinematography also fails the film. While the sequences are well shot and atmospherically lit, there is something in the crispness of the images that works against the story’s period setting.

While some may enjoy the basic monster fight nature of the film, particularly its final act and resolution, I cannot recommend Blood Vessel as a movie worth your time.

Blood Vessel is currently streaming exclusively on Shudder.

Due to me running late and a minor migraine this will have to be quick.

Sunday my sweetie-wife and I watched, via Sd Film Geeks’ monthly festival of Italian Genre Cinema, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage one of the films, along with Blood and Black Lace that established and defined the giallo genre of movies that focused on lurid tales of sex and violence.

The film centers on Sam Dalmas an American author on an extended vacation in Italy. On the eve of his return to America Sam witnesses an attempted murder of a woman in an art gallery. Due to his intervention the woman survives, and Sam becomes part of the police’s hunt for the maniac who has already killed three times. Sam investigates on his own, but with surprising police assistance and acceptance, drawing the killer’s attention and becoming a target himself endangering his own life and that of his live-in girlfriend. Eventually the killer is discovered with the genre appropriate twists and order is restored.

This film was fun to watch. The twists in the plot and the eventual revelations are mor logical than last month The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, though as with all Giallo it is important to approach the film with prodigious suspension of disbelief. Luckily this edition was subtitled and not dubbed, preserving the actors’ portrayals and enhancing the experience/ The cinematography is lush and colorful displaying the tastes that would become the signature of director Dario Argento. As a cherry on top my sweetie-wife also spotted a connection to Star Trek the Original Series. So, if you get a chance to stream this one, do so.

When an important member of the Ministry of Defense vanishes from a tube Station Inspector Calhoun (Pleasance) starts investigation discovering that the station in question has a history of missing persons. More people go missing and one turns up murdered after being impaled by a broom handle. With the assistance of a college couple the mystery is eventually solved and the threat ended.

Death Line is a slow film taking its time to unwind and even at an hour and half it feels a bit long and padded. The concept when revealed is better suited to an hour-long anthology than a full feature film. There is one very impressive single-take tracking shot but overall the film suffers from too slow of a pace.

Pleasance has been noted for giving one of his most eccentric performances and that is well deserved. He doesn’t chew the scenery, but the Calhoun’s characterization is quite unlike the sort of the role one would associate with Pleasance.

Death Line is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of the collection 70s Horror.