Night of Terror #14: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The "paranoid thriller" is one of my favorite subgenres so I've always been a big fan of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which has a surprisingly potent paranoid atmosphere for a Hollywood movie made in the 50s. But it has an infamously unconvincing "happy ending" that I don't think anyone who sees the movie really buys - luckily, two decades later, Hollywood was under no compunction to tack on such a happy ending. By the time Philip Kaufman's remake came around, depressing was the new happy, and disturbing was the new palatable.

I still prefer the original, but it's really hard to argue against the subtle, creeping dread of the remake, particularly in the first scenes. So few movies, particularly mainstream Hollywood genre ones, have the courage to just put weird, unsettling stuff on the screen without calling attention to it or explaining it. But this movie has enough weird stuff for a dozen movies, with Kaufman doing everything he can to put the audience off-balance, from weird camera angles to a shot of Robert Duvall as a priest playing on a child's swing. Whatever works, I guess.

The area where the remake suffers by comparison to the original is once the danger becomes explicit and it devolves into a long chase between Donald Sutherland and his slowly-decreasing band of human friends and the overwhelming population of pod people in San Francisco. In the original, this part of the movie begins and ends in 10 or 15 minutes, whereas the 70s remake is bound by the expectations and conventions of a horror/thriller and has to provide the requisite amount of "action." Unfortunately this stuff is the least satisfying part of the movie compared to the subtly haunting atmosphere of the first 2/3rds.

Fortunately, however, this is still a much more special movie than 90% of horror movies out there, and it picks up again in a big way in the famous final scene. I guess I should also mention that dog/folk-singer hybrid, which is still one of the most disturbing things I've seen in a movie.

Night of Terror #13: Videodrome

It's tempting to try and view David Cronenberg's Videodrome through the prism of some kind of social satire or commentary on the media, akin to They Live on Regan-era greed or Dawn of the Dead on materialism, but I don't think this reading comes close to getting at the dark and nightmarish guts of the movie. It's more like window-dressing, pr maybe just content Cronenberg needs to get your nervous system to accept the signal he's transmitting - and it's a much darker and more complex signal than some "the media is bad" thesis statement.

At its heart, Videodrome isn't about TV, not really - it's more about the terrifyingly real hallucinations that can drive people suffering from serious mental illnesses to do horrible and violent things. In my probably uncontroversial opinion, it's a much more satisfying exploration of that theme than Cronenberg's later film Spider which is more explicitly about schizophrenia and its effects. But everything about James Woods' character in Videodrome screams schizophrenia to me, from the deeply disturbing hallucinations of technology made flesh (and vice-versa) to the strange directives from supposed authority figures telling him to "kill your partners." So what starts out (or seems to start out, anyway) as a relatively uninteresting satire about the sick shit we watch on TV becomes a deeply chilling picture of how scary and awful it would be if we couldn't tell the sick shit on TV from the sick shit in the real world.

As usual with Cronenberg, these themes are brought from the realm of heady, Dick-inspired science-fiction right to your front door thanks to the earthy settings and hyper-stylized dialogue (as well as crack acting from the entire cast, particularly Woods). Even if you buy the schizophrenia interpretation though, Videodrome resists easy answers: I would have sworn I remembered the final shot being Woods holding a gun like normal, implying that the organic fuse between gun and hand was another hallucination, and by extension the rest of the Videodrome conspiracy was simply a product of his diseased mind as well. But nope, it turns out that Cronenberg keeps the illusion going to the very end, so we can't be sure what was "real" and what wasn't. Now, just be glad that feeling goes away after the movie is over - if you're lucky, I mean.

Night of Terror #12: The Invisible Man Returns

After rewatching an enjoying the masterful original The Invisible Man I thought I'd give one or two of the sequels a shot. I vaguely remembered liking The Invisible Man Returns although the only specifics that stuck in my memory were a couple of cool special effects shots and Vincent Price in the lead role. As it turns out, those special effects shots were as cool as I remembered (they both involve the see-through guy being rendered visible by clouds of smoke), but Price is unfortunately not anywhere close to the peak of his powers here. Understandable, since this was several years before he began appearing in horror movies regularly and refined his screen persona into the immortal one we know and love today. He's actually much more of a bland romantic lead in the part - even his voice, which I consider to be one of the all-time great movie voices, hasn't developed into what it would become yet.

The Invisible Man Returns is lacking in other respects compared to the original, too. Director Joe May doesn't have the mastery over tone that James Whale does, so his sequel seems lumpy and silly by comparison. And the muddled nature of the lead character - is he crazy? Is he a hero? A villain? - has a reckless quality that flies in the face of Claude Rains' uniquely sympathetic antihero in the first movie.

There are some things to like, though, beyond those cool smokey effect shots. The rest of the special effects are good too (I especially liked the shot of the dust-caked ladder being climbed by the Invisible Man). And I feel I should single out Cecil Kellaway who puts in a much-too-good-for-this-movie performance as the implacable detective hot on his unseen suspect's trail.

Night of Terror #11: Torture Dungeon

Good morning corpses! Today we have a bone-chilling peek at a film by Andy Milligan. If you're not familiar with Andy's work, here's a brief primer: He was a sour and sociopathic misanthrope who made sleazy horror movies that were actually just filmed records of his mistreated and abused actors shouting at each other. But there is another crucial ingredient to Milligan's work, one that I imagine most people who watch it tend to miss: Magic. Here to try to pin that down is my friend and mentor Ira Brooker who runs the awesome A Talent for Idleness blog. Check him out ... IF YOU DARE:

Somewhere in a medieval kingdom that looks a lot like Staten Island, a wicked, one-armed, epileptic young duke has his eye on the throne. With the assistance of his hunchbacked servant/lover, he is more than willing to kill off his entire royal family to get it. That’s not an especially difficult task, since the total population of the kingdom seems to be around 20 people, most of whom are blood relations. Fortunately, that necessitates some long pauses between sadistic killings, which in turn gives us ample opportunity to watch various people get naked and screw and/or whip each other.

So yeah, this is an Andy Milligan movie. I’ve written at length about my relationship with Mr. Milligan before, so here’s the capsule version for those unfamiliar with his work: Andy Milligan made ugly, hate-filled movies filled with florid dialogue, awful gore effects and beyond-wooden acting. His films are deeply unpleasant viewing experiences, not so much because of their content – the tour of the titular torture dungeon here, for instance, is intended to be disturbing but is so badly executed that it’s just kind of boring – but more because they’re so personal. There are plenty of shock and schlock filmmakers out there with an unmistakable personal style, but your Herschel Gordon Lewises and Fred Olen Rays direct like they’re making movies. Andy Milligan directed like he was splattering the screen with globs of his very soul.

Torture Dungeon is the seventh Milligan film I’ve subjected myself to in the past several months, and it may be the best. I think that’s because it feels like the most honest. The awkward monster movie trappings of Blood and The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! are eschewed in favor of straight-up torture porn. I don’t use that phrase in its modern, post-Hostel parlance. Rather, I mean that the scenes of torture, murder and dismemberment are filmed so lasciviously that it’s pretty evident that the filmmaker gets off on that sort of thing.

That intimacy also shines through in the lead character. Milligan himself was a sexually omnivorous sadist, and it’s hard not to read some autobiography into Jeremy Brooks’ campy, flamboyant turn as the gleefully decadent Duke. Brooks, a regular Milligan player who also wrote a couple of early screenplays for the director, gives probably the best performance I’ve seen in a Milligan film. (That’s a pretty low bar, although I’d argue that Milligan was actually quite good at directing actors – the performances in his films are almost uniformly awful, but they’re all awful in a very specific way that perfectly fits his singular style). Brooks embraces the role of a murderous, “try-sexual” (as in he’ll try anything for pleasure) lunatic with reckless abandon, flouncing about madly in a black Prince Valiant wig apparently designed for someone with a head three times as big. He leers, sneers and gobbles scenery as a Caligula writ small. In an odd way, he may be the most admirable character in the Milligan lexicon, a character of pure id who is at least capable of pleasure, if not love.

Torture Dungeon isn’t a good film. There’s no such animal in the Andy Milligan oeuvre. But it is a damn sight more disturbing than a lot of what passes for horror. Granted, it’s disturbing for different reasons than most horror, but that just makes it all the more memorable.

Night of Terror #10: Waxwork

Hello fright fans! Today we have another terrifying guest review from my friend who requested she be billed by her hacker alias "false_rumors." You can read more about her hacking adventures on her personal hacking web-journal here. Now, here she is on a movie I had never heard of before today - Waxwork:

Nestled near the top of my list of Favorite Terrible Films, you’ll find Waxwork, the 1988 directorial
debut of Anthony Hickox who went on to direct such gems as Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, Warlock: The Armageddon, and something called Jill The Ripper, among other films you’ve never, ever heard of. Do not confuse this Waxwork with any other movies in the horror sub-genre involving wax figures, and especially do not confuse it with the German silent film Waxworks, as our fearless leader Joe did.

No, no. This Waxwork stars Zach Galligan (Billy from Gremlins!) and Deborah Foreman (the Valley Girl from Valley Girl!) as two high school students (lol) who, along with some of their generic friends (one of them is Bobby from Twin Peaks!), get invited to the midnight opening of a mysterious new waxworks run by David Warner. Check out David Warner’s IMDb page because he has literally been playing creepy dudes forever, in tons of movies you’ve seen.

DUH, this is of course no ordinary waxworks. All the exhibits portray scenes of famous horror movie
denizens, such as the Phantom of the Opera, vampires, werewolves, and the Marquis de Sade.

Yes. You read that correctly. The Marquis de Sade is arguably the main evil wax figure in this movie.
What even.

ANYWAYS, one by one, the kids become fascinated with a particular scene and for a variety of reasons like “Oops, I dropped my lighter on the other side of the rope partition”, they walk into the exhibit that struck their fancy. BOOM! CRAZY BLUE LIGHT AND HOLY SHIT now they’re actually IN the scene being portrayed.

I won’t go into why the scenes come to life because I don’t want to spoil anything, and by spoil anything I mean I couldn’t explain the absurdity if I wanted to, but let’s just say I’m pretty sure it involves a plot to take over the world with history’s greatest villains or something.

For all its utter stupidity, there’s at least one legitimately disturbing scene when China (a character’s
name!) enters the vampire’s lair. You’ll never be able to hear “steak tartare” without thinking of it and if you’re like me, you won’t be able to say it without imitating the way the vampire says it. Not that I have very many chances to say “steak tartare”.

One last bit: When I saw Cabin in the Woods, I thought of this movie for a very specific reason.

It’s streaming on Netflix if you want to see what I mean, or if you want to see what happens when
someone puts the Marquis de Sade in a campy horror movie from the 80’s. Trust me, you do.

Night of Terror #9: Shadows and Fog

For tonight's spooktacular Night of Terror, we have another installment of Woody Allen's Chiller Theater. It goes by the name of Shadows and Fog, and it depicts Woody as a down-on-his-luck business clerk who gets roped into a sinister and Kafkaesque plot to capture a mad killer who's stalking the German Expressionist town in which he lives.

Contrary to what you might expect from a Woody Allen "horror" movie, there are some genuinely suspenseful sequences here, although it admittedly never crosses the line into full-on horror territory. Or does it? While the plot may not get too scary, some of the philosophical implications are downright terrifying - particularly the expert depiction of an angry mob (or mobs) just articulate enough to explain why an angry mob is necessary - and why you can't take any time to think about what you're doing because lives are at stake! - but not articulate enough to actually say what their plan is. Maybe some would disagree but I find this aspect of Shadows and Fog incredibly haunting in much the same way that people who have learned how to read and write describe Kafka's effects on them.

But enough of that shit, let's get to those shadows and that fog! I've always thought Woody Allen occupied a sort of middle ground between an unheralded visual stylist and a heralded one, as people are always talking about how he doesn't get enough credit for how good his movies look. Shadows and Fog is inarguably one of the movies they're talking about - he perfectly captures the look and feel of thrillers from directors like Murnau and Lang while simultaneously filling the screen with his trademark naturalistic acting and lengthy philosophical dialogues. At times it almost comes off like some kind of TV sketch parody ("Woody Allen Chiller Theater" starring Andy Dick as Woody, maybe?) but for me the whole thing works pretty damn well, albeit in a way that doesn't necessarily put me in a trick-or-treating kind of mood.

And the final scene, in which Woody rejects the humdrum normality of everyday life in favor of magic and Kenneth Mars? One of my favorite endings in any movie, ever.

Night of Terror #8: Eraserhead

What up what up what up. Tonight's horror spooktacular is Eraserhead by David Lynch. Because such a terrifying experience is too much for my mortal nerves, I pass the reins to Mr. Oswald Hobbes, he of the Audio Assault podcast and various karaoke and open-mic nights in coffeehouses around the country. Here he is:

Wow. Hello. May I start by saying, Hey, it's really great to be here again. Joe spends a lot of time loitering around my stomping grounds in Old Jollyville - I often catch a glimpse of his distinctive profile at the corner store or the Whataburger, hovering, taking in the tableau - so it's nice to return the favor once a year here on 31 Nights of Terror! dot com. Joe's the guy who invites you to his apartment for an "adult Halloween party" and you show up ready to really “get down” but he just meant there was going to be some suggestive funk music soundtracking the evening's events (which include bobbing for apples and making/eating taffy apples). He's a great guy and he scared us all a lot last year with this project, so let's give the guy a hand. I'm lucky to have a front row seat, as it were, here in beautiful Central Texas, from which to watch the festivities ramp up. I've heard there's actually a Halloween-themed fireworks display planned for the final night - and a screening of John Cusack's THE RAVEN in 70mm!

Now: Eraserhead! Written, directed, and produced by David Lynch. A true labor of love - Lynch slaved diligently for years to complete it and then waited even longer for it to catch on with discerning audiences and become the quintessential midnight movie of the 1980s. It's a daunting piece of work; concessions to narrative or thematic clarity are few and far between, and the images, while striking and original, lack the bright, deliberately artificial luster of Lynch's more conventionally “watchable” later works (Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, the television series Twin Peaks and its underrated companion film Fire Walk With Me).  

But the truth about Eraserhead is this: you don't necessarily need to strap yourself into any complicated apparatus (physical or mental) to appreciate it. Because, a) it's not that Serious and b) in the same way that certain moments in any David Lynch movie will silence even the rowdiest, most jaded crowds, Eraserhead doesn't just demand your attention but violently and unapologetically grabs it. I found myself slack-jawed and wide-eyed throughout, unable to look away during even the most disgusting/excruciatingly boring parts.

Have you ever seen Eraserhead? I should've started by asking this. In case you have not: it depicts a brief period in the life of a character named Henry Spencer (who seems to be at least partially based on Lynch himself), which happens to include his eventual ascendence into a Heaven-like environment/state of being. And I don't think it counts as a spoiler to say that, because I don't even know what happens in this movie. The important thing is that this is not actually a difficult or frustrating experience; it's unconventional, and at times unpleasant, but it's by no means impossible. In fact: Lynch is working at such elevated levels of metaphor and symbolism that you can take this one pretty much however you want to.

When we meet Henry Spencer, he's "on vacation." He ambles aimlessly around a cold, imposingly industrialized city, assaulted by the rude ambient clatter of factories and street noise and hissing steam. He has formed strange relationships with the objects in his filthy one-room apartment; sometimes he stares at the radiator while a tiny woman with a deformed face sings to him from a lit stage (with curtains and everything) inside the radiator.

His life is suddenly given purpose, if not meaning, when, while stammering through some seriously awkward pre-dinner small talk, he's informed by the mother of his former paramour that she (the paramour) has given birth to a thing that is probably not a baby but still requires the level of care and attention that you would give to a baby, and that she (the paramour) and it (the mutant baby) will be moving to live with Henry, in the aforementioned apartment, as a family unit.

And this is where things really get nightmarish, because the mutant baby never stops crying and the wife leaves to pursue sleep and Henry is woefully inadequate as a caretaker. The situation becomes more nightmarish yet again when Henry has an actual nightmare, in which his head falls off and then through several different worlds and is ultimately turned into (spoiler) pencil erasers at a pencil factory. There's also a romantic interlude with The Beautiful Girl Across The Hall and a climactic battle in which the mutant baby is suddenly huge.

As best I can tell, Eraserhead is about one man's response to/gradual acceptance of the modern world. Think about the opening shot, as The Man In The Planet does stuff with the levers while Henry screams and then those little sperms come out of Henry's mouth. The mutant baby is conceived in the grip of this unmanageable terror. What Henry has to do (spoiler: he eventually does this) is cut open the bandages the mutant baby is swaddled in to reveal that the bandages were the only thing holding its organs together. This knowledge makes the mutant baby (aka Henry's horror at the ugliness that surrounds him) a lot easier to kill with a scissor. And this is the most perfectly realized slice of a true auteur's energy field you will ever have the pleasure to taste, because it contains, as its most special ingredient, this auteur's personal key for unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Eraserhead isn't Lynch's best movie, but you need to see it to fully appreciate the even better stuff that came later. Beyond that, you need to see it to truly live, man. It’s a trip!

The real question, though: was Joe right to let me cover Eraserhead for his explicitly horror-themed blog? I doubt it. So let me say this: this is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen! If you watch it in a theater with a sound system that really cranks, it will (metaphorically) cut open the bandages that hold your whole shit together and then stab your heart with a scissor.

In Heaven, everything is fine, am I right?