I was lucky enough to get to see Brian De Palma's glam rock musical/horror/comedy/phantasy Phantom of the Paradise on the big screen, followed by a Q&A with legendary actor Wilford Brimley. I'm still not sure wha Wilford was doing there, as he had absolutely no involvement with the movie, but I wasn't going to complain. In case you're wondering: He's not a fan.
I, on the other hand, think this is one of the most unique and original movies to come out of the 1970s. I'm not a big musical buff by inclination (although unlike some people I don't really have an aversion to the genre either), but I love everything about this.
Let's start with the look. De Palma throws his trademark (but a little shaky, this is pre-Steadicam) long tracking shots into a kaleidoscope of color and sound, perfect for the glam rock milieu being depicted and satirized in the movie. Also thrown in are enough cultural touchstones for a time capsule: The Faust legend, The Phantom of the Opera, The Manchurian Candidate, Touch of Evil, Psycho, and The Twilight Zone all get shout-outs. Sad men who accuse De Palma of being a plagiarist would have lots of ammo here, but that would be a classic case of missing Carrie for the prom: Could anyone BUT Brian De Palma have been able to bring all these disparate ingredients (plus a lot more) together in a movie like this?
The cast is also pretty uniformly excellent. Gerrit Graham is a little wince-y today in his portrayal as a mincing glam rock queen, but even that could have been a lot worse considering the era. And Jessica Harper begins her long career of playing women who I think would like me if they knew me here, with Paul Williams making a pitch-perfect satanic record executive. And the soundtrack! Any one of these songs puts Rocky Horror to shame, and they're all produced and performed with a keen satirical ear toward a variety of different genres.
Over all, Phantom of the Paradise is one of the strangest movies ever to completely fail at the box office. Too rocking for the horror crowd, too scary for the glam rock people, I guess. But it's great for me.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Night of Terror #21: The Premature Burial
I was pondering some forgotten lore late last night when I heard a curious rapping at my chamber door. It turns out it was my friend Thaddeus who just watched one Roger Corman's classic Poe movies The Premature Burial. Here's what he had to say about it:
Corman has, in many ways, become a
victim of his own legend. It doesn't help that he is more well known
as a producer than a director: a trash guru working gleefully outside
the system giving a generation of American filmmakers space to hone
their craft on shameless exploitation films. As a director his films
are usually seen as benefiting from a certain ironic distance, as
outre genre schlock with a wink to the audience. The laughs that
invariably accompany a Corman retrospective aren't necessarily the
malicious cackles of of those who believe they are above the film
(although those are surely also to be heard) but the sympathetic
titters of an audience who believe themselves to be 'in on the joke.'
Not to risk ignoring the very real humor in many Corman films –
perhaps most notable in his rushed diptych Bucket of Blood
and Little Shop of Horrors
– there is ultimately so much more to be gained in watching Corman
than a knowing sense of kitsch or a respect for maverick film-making.
The
Premature Burial, the third
entry in Corman's celebrated series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations,
may seem like a strange place to take the stand of Corman as artist;
it's a distinctly minor entry in the series, not looking as gorgeous
as The Masque of Red Death
nor possessing the same thematic weight as Tomb of Ligeia
– not even casting the usual star of the series, Vincent Price, but
instead Ray Milland. It's telling, however, how many virtues can be
found in even so minor an entry in the Corman corpus, and it's often
the minor works that help to reveal aspects of the filmmaker's vision
that would otherwise stay buried. The Premature Burial
almost resembles a B-side of the
previous year's Pit and the Pendulum
(though showing only touches of that film's psychedelic
expressionism): in addition to the usual features of the Poe series
(neurotic men living in mansions within a valley of fog) both films
star men who share an unconfirmed but unshakeable belief that a loved
one had long ago been buried alive. While The Pit and the
Pendulum features this as but
one of a series of threads The Premature Burial focuses
in on this neurosis with laser-like precision.
Like
so many films of the Poe cycle The Premature Burial
has an outsider enter into the world of a neurotic man living with a
few others in a secluded mansion, in this case Emily Gault (Hazel
Court) the lover and eventual wife of Guy Carrell (Milland). Guy
fears he has inherited a condition he believes his father to have had
that leaves the sufferer paralyzed with no signs of life but still
alive. Guy has built an elaborate mausoleum for himself, with
fail-safe after fail-safe to ensure his escape should he ever meet
his greatest fear. Should a trap door fail he has a store of
dynamite, should the dynamite fail has a bell that will alert anyone
to his survival. His final fail-safe, however, is his most telling.
“What is it?” he starts with a certain glee, “the cure for all
suffering. The answer to all problems. The key, my darling, to
heaven. Or to hell. Or to nothingness. Poison.” His fear of
premature burial is not, in the end, a fear of a particularly cruel
and ironic death but of paralysis and confinement.
Other Corman protagonists are haunted
by their past – the endless parade of evil ancestors in House of
Usher, the sins of the father in
Pit and the Pendulum –
but Guy is haunted by his present, the physical conditions in which
he lives. It is mentioned in the film that the body and the mind are
far more intertwined than most people believe The mansion and the
privileges it represents that should free him instead only serve to
leave him shackled and confined until it becomes like a tomb. This
is underlined most obviously in scenes – most notably a wedding
scene – shot through bars, and Milland's torment is palatable
throughout. The film ultimately functions less as a horror film than
as a tragedy of madness.
It's not a perfect movie – I would
suggest two or three other places to start with Corman's Poe series –
but it's an effecting psychological drama that takes on chilling
tragic notes as Guy inevitably fulfills his role as both Angel of
Vengeance and Monster. There are those who will probably never be
able to fully appreciate Corman's films without the comforting
distance of irony. They laugh over the portraits of madness, the firm
grasp of form, the shots behind fireplaces that imply the
characters are already among the damned. Let them have their laughs,
they too are among the damned already.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Night of Terror #20: The Mummy and The Creature from the Black Lagoon
Today I was lucky enough to be able to go to a double feature of classic Universal monster movies: The Mummy followed by Creature from the Black Lagoon. Neither film is considered to be top-tier Universal monster material, but I've always liked both of them.
One thing that struck me watching them both back to back is how each movie arrives at a similar destination by a completely different route. Karl Freund, the director of Mummy, was a famous cinematographer for directors like Lang and Murnau, so it makes sense that his horror movies for Universal would have a strange, poetic, "artistic" quality about them, along with his signature tracking shots (there's a shot in The Mummy in which the camera floats from a shot of Karloff sitting by his magic pool, up, over, and eventually straight down into the pool that must have been very tricky to accomplish back in the early 30s). But Creature is a much more workmanlike affair, directed by Jack Arnold with a quaint-but-muscular 50s monster movie / amusement park ride atmosphere - which makes it all the more remarkable that there are sequences in it, particularly the underwater scenes, that are pure poetry.
I'm talking specifically about the scenes of the Gill-Man stalking his prey from under the water. Check out the way the creature moves - graceful, like a monster that's lived under the water his whole life WOULD look. And yet it isn't really "scary" in the normal sense, more like ballet or something. Even more impressive is the way Creature stands on its own as a "new" Universal monster movie, despite coming two decades after the series' heyday AND lacking a great central performance that would serve as an equivalent to a Karloff, Lugosi, or Chaney.
Speaking of which, let's talk about Boris Karloff in The Mummy: This has to be one of his best roles, right? His Imhotep / Ardath Bey is genuinely menacing and creepy, even though he doesn't do much besides speak quietly and perform some ancient Egyptian spells. And in classic Karloff form, there's a real (yet mostly unspoken) sadness to the character. And he does a great job conveying Imhotep's supernaturally advanced age, creeping around like he can barely walk upright (which is of course something that you'd see for real in Karloff's later movies, although he was only in his 70s rather than thousands of years old).
Oh, one more note on Creature: I got to see it in 3D, as it was originally intended to be shown. I'm not a big fan of 3D, and my eyes still hurt hours after it ended, but the underwater scenes are pretty spectacular in the format.
Anyway, nothing says Halloween like the Universal Monsters. These two aren't the best of the bunch, but they're definitely worth checking out especially if you haven't seen them in a while.
One thing that struck me watching them both back to back is how each movie arrives at a similar destination by a completely different route. Karl Freund, the director of Mummy, was a famous cinematographer for directors like Lang and Murnau, so it makes sense that his horror movies for Universal would have a strange, poetic, "artistic" quality about them, along with his signature tracking shots (there's a shot in The Mummy in which the camera floats from a shot of Karloff sitting by his magic pool, up, over, and eventually straight down into the pool that must have been very tricky to accomplish back in the early 30s). But Creature is a much more workmanlike affair, directed by Jack Arnold with a quaint-but-muscular 50s monster movie / amusement park ride atmosphere - which makes it all the more remarkable that there are sequences in it, particularly the underwater scenes, that are pure poetry.
I'm talking specifically about the scenes of the Gill-Man stalking his prey from under the water. Check out the way the creature moves - graceful, like a monster that's lived under the water his whole life WOULD look. And yet it isn't really "scary" in the normal sense, more like ballet or something. Even more impressive is the way Creature stands on its own as a "new" Universal monster movie, despite coming two decades after the series' heyday AND lacking a great central performance that would serve as an equivalent to a Karloff, Lugosi, or Chaney.
Speaking of which, let's talk about Boris Karloff in The Mummy: This has to be one of his best roles, right? His Imhotep / Ardath Bey is genuinely menacing and creepy, even though he doesn't do much besides speak quietly and perform some ancient Egyptian spells. And in classic Karloff form, there's a real (yet mostly unspoken) sadness to the character. And he does a great job conveying Imhotep's supernaturally advanced age, creeping around like he can barely walk upright (which is of course something that you'd see for real in Karloff's later movies, although he was only in his 70s rather than thousands of years old).
Oh, one more note on Creature: I got to see it in 3D, as it was originally intended to be shown. I'm not a big fan of 3D, and my eyes still hurt hours after it ended, but the underwater scenes are pretty spectacular in the format.
Anyway, nothing says Halloween like the Universal Monsters. These two aren't the best of the bunch, but they're definitely worth checking out especially if you haven't seen them in a while.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Night of Terror #19: Body Double
I was pretty horrified to discover that last year I went all October without writing up a single Brian De Palma movie. Not even Carrie! I don't know what I was thinking, but as always I blame illegal immigrants.
Anyway, I decided to cover probably his second-most Halloween-appropriate film Body Double. From the opening seconds of the movie, with its blood-oozing title sequence and cheesy vampire in a coffin, it's made clear that De Palma will be utilizing all kinds of horror movie grammar for his exploration of pet themes: Voyeurism, sex, murder, and movies.
The film follows Craig Wasson as a struggling actor (Wasson, in a sly in-joke by the filmmakers, is best known as comedian Bill Maher's personal body double) who gets roped into an unlikely murder scheme, and begins to worry that he's been duped into "playing the part" of witness to the perfect murder. The plot crystallizes into a blend of Rear Window, Vertigo, and 80s porno that only De Palma could have pulled off. Even before the plot really gets going there's a virtuosic sequence of Craig Wasson following a woman through a Los Angeles shopping mall that's suspenseful, sexy, and creepy.
I won't go further into the plot since I try to avoid spoilers, but I will say that Body Double isn't so much a horror movie as it is about horror movies - in part, anyway. And like lots of horror movies (good and bad), the Freudian imagery is spread thickly and heavily - it practically drips off of the movie like the blood in the title sequence. The famous "drill-kill" scene alone could probably fill a chapter about phallic imagery in horror movies. Freud once said that sometimes a killer drill is just a killer drill, but this isn't one of those times.
In conclusion I should single out Pino Donaggio's score, which shifts masterfully from cheesecake to terror and back again so many times it's easy to take it for granted. I love the way that in the first half of the movie the theme that plays every time Wasson spies on his sexy neighbor almost acts as a cheesecake version of the Jaws theme.
Also if you don't like this movie you don't like movies. Bye!
Anyway, I decided to cover probably his second-most Halloween-appropriate film Body Double. From the opening seconds of the movie, with its blood-oozing title sequence and cheesy vampire in a coffin, it's made clear that De Palma will be utilizing all kinds of horror movie grammar for his exploration of pet themes: Voyeurism, sex, murder, and movies.
The film follows Craig Wasson as a struggling actor (Wasson, in a sly in-joke by the filmmakers, is best known as comedian Bill Maher's personal body double) who gets roped into an unlikely murder scheme, and begins to worry that he's been duped into "playing the part" of witness to the perfect murder. The plot crystallizes into a blend of Rear Window, Vertigo, and 80s porno that only De Palma could have pulled off. Even before the plot really gets going there's a virtuosic sequence of Craig Wasson following a woman through a Los Angeles shopping mall that's suspenseful, sexy, and creepy.
I won't go further into the plot since I try to avoid spoilers, but I will say that Body Double isn't so much a horror movie as it is about horror movies - in part, anyway. And like lots of horror movies (good and bad), the Freudian imagery is spread thickly and heavily - it practically drips off of the movie like the blood in the title sequence. The famous "drill-kill" scene alone could probably fill a chapter about phallic imagery in horror movies. Freud once said that sometimes a killer drill is just a killer drill, but this isn't one of those times.
In conclusion I should single out Pino Donaggio's score, which shifts masterfully from cheesecake to terror and back again so many times it's easy to take it for granted. I love the way that in the first half of the movie the theme that plays every time Wasson spies on his sexy neighbor almost acts as a cheesecake version of the Jaws theme.
Also if you don't like this movie you don't like movies. Bye!
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Night of Terror #18: Melissa's Shorts
Hello horror fiends (fans)!! Tonight I'm very pleased to announce a guest post from none other than my friend Melissa, who (as she mentions in the post) has been gracing her friends on Facebook (and Twitter) with a different Halloween-themed short for every day leading up to Halloween. So I thought it would be cool to invite her on to discuss some of her picks so far. Here she at!!!
When I was a kid nothing got me more excited for Halloween than a themed cartoon. The same still applies today and I get just as giddy, if not more, for Halloween time and all the cartoons that go along with it! In preparation for one of my favorite holidays I’ve been posting various Disney classics (as well as some non-Disney cartoons) to my personal Facebook account, occasionally twitter, to get others as excited as I am. Since I don’t want to give anything away for the rest of my list I’ll discuss some of the clips I’ve posted thus far -- everything else is a surprise!
I’ve included quite a few of the original classic Mickey Mouse shorts like “The Haunted House”, “The Mad Doctor”, and “Lonesome Ghosts”. Also included is a more recent Mickey Mouse cartoon “Runaway Brain”, and if you haven’t seen it do yourself a favor and watch it. There are a few unsettling clips from full length Disney Animated Classic films such as the Headless Horseman in “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Mr. Toad and Ichabod Crane and the equally terrifying scene (if you’re 5 years old) “Night on Bald Mountain” from Fantasia. And certainly no Disney Halloween list would be complete without “The Skeleton Dance”, the original Silly Symphony and Donald
Duck’s “Trick or Treat”. Now, the reason that I’ve picked these specific cartoons are because they either hold some sentimental value to me, such as them scaring the shit out of me as a kid (again see “Night on Bald Mountain”), or because I feel that since Disney rarely plays their classic cartoons I should at least post them so people don’t forget about them and their significance. Also, they’re all available on YouTube so why not use them?
Many of these early cartoons had some sort of ground-breaking technique that make them the classics they are today. For example “the Skeleton Dance”, as I stated earlier was the original Silly Symphony directed by Walt Disney himself and animated by Ub Iwerks, was one of the first cartoons that had combined music and animation so that they would play off each other. While this concept wasn’t entirely new because cartoons had been using sound at this point, the idea of a musical cartoon and the two concepts being linked to each other was. Carl Stalling, the composer for the music for this cartoon, suggested this idea to Walt and Walt was hooked. “The Skeleton Dance” is interesting as well because not only is it a creepy cartoon, it’s also a funny one (with skeletons dancing and using each other as instruments). And with it’s inspiration being derived from Danse Macabre it makes for a perfect Halloween cartoon. So if you haven’t seen it -- watch it.
My other favorites from this list would be the Mickey Mouse cartoons “The Haunted House” and “Lonesome Ghosts“. I like “The Haunted House” because it has some cool animation techniques in it, like the part where Mickey plays the organ for all the dancing skeletons (apparently I have a thing for dancing skeletons). Also because it’s far creepier than any Mickey Mouse cartoon we would have seen at this point, what with Mickey playing an organ duet with the Grim Reaper. As a side note - I believe it was released the same year as “The Skeleton Dance”, so maybe Walt was just digging the
creepy feel of cartoons at this time. But “Lonesome Ghosts” is my favorite because Mickey, Donald, and Goofy were basically the original Ghostbusters (the part that is really reminiscent of Ghostbusters was how excited they were when they received their first customer!) and to me this is just the quintessential Halloween cartoon. The three blundering idiots are called in (by the ghosts ha-ha) to rid the house of ghosts! Upon arrival they discover the house is empty except for some ominous laughter so they decide to split up and take care of the ghosts. This of course results in more humorous altercations between the goons and the ghosts. When suddenly! Mickey, Donald, and
Goofy stumble into molasses and flour and look like ghosts themselves! Thus spooking the real ghosts away. Another reason I love this cartoon so much is because I’m a sucker for anything Walt Disney worked on, and at this point Walt was still voicing Mickey Mouse.
Stay tuned to the rest of my Halloween picks either on Facebook if we’re friends or on my twitter account. I promise I’ve got some great ones coming up still -- and I may even deviate from my Disney picks a tad -- that will be appreciated by all! And thank you Joe for letting me babble on about something I really love.
When I was a kid nothing got me more excited for Halloween than a themed cartoon. The same still applies today and I get just as giddy, if not more, for Halloween time and all the cartoons that go along with it! In preparation for one of my favorite holidays I’ve been posting various Disney classics (as well as some non-Disney cartoons) to my personal Facebook account, occasionally twitter, to get others as excited as I am. Since I don’t want to give anything away for the rest of my list I’ll discuss some of the clips I’ve posted thus far -- everything else is a surprise!
I’ve included quite a few of the original classic Mickey Mouse shorts like “The Haunted House”, “The Mad Doctor”, and “Lonesome Ghosts”. Also included is a more recent Mickey Mouse cartoon “Runaway Brain”, and if you haven’t seen it do yourself a favor and watch it. There are a few unsettling clips from full length Disney Animated Classic films such as the Headless Horseman in “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from Mr. Toad and Ichabod Crane and the equally terrifying scene (if you’re 5 years old) “Night on Bald Mountain” from Fantasia. And certainly no Disney Halloween list would be complete without “The Skeleton Dance”, the original Silly Symphony and Donald
Duck’s “Trick or Treat”. Now, the reason that I’ve picked these specific cartoons are because they either hold some sentimental value to me, such as them scaring the shit out of me as a kid (again see “Night on Bald Mountain”), or because I feel that since Disney rarely plays their classic cartoons I should at least post them so people don’t forget about them and their significance. Also, they’re all available on YouTube so why not use them?
Many of these early cartoons had some sort of ground-breaking technique that make them the classics they are today. For example “the Skeleton Dance”, as I stated earlier was the original Silly Symphony directed by Walt Disney himself and animated by Ub Iwerks, was one of the first cartoons that had combined music and animation so that they would play off each other. While this concept wasn’t entirely new because cartoons had been using sound at this point, the idea of a musical cartoon and the two concepts being linked to each other was. Carl Stalling, the composer for the music for this cartoon, suggested this idea to Walt and Walt was hooked. “The Skeleton Dance” is interesting as well because not only is it a creepy cartoon, it’s also a funny one (with skeletons dancing and using each other as instruments). And with it’s inspiration being derived from Danse Macabre it makes for a perfect Halloween cartoon. So if you haven’t seen it -- watch it.
My other favorites from this list would be the Mickey Mouse cartoons “The Haunted House” and “Lonesome Ghosts“. I like “The Haunted House” because it has some cool animation techniques in it, like the part where Mickey plays the organ for all the dancing skeletons (apparently I have a thing for dancing skeletons). Also because it’s far creepier than any Mickey Mouse cartoon we would have seen at this point, what with Mickey playing an organ duet with the Grim Reaper. As a side note - I believe it was released the same year as “The Skeleton Dance”, so maybe Walt was just digging the
creepy feel of cartoons at this time. But “Lonesome Ghosts” is my favorite because Mickey, Donald, and Goofy were basically the original Ghostbusters (the part that is really reminiscent of Ghostbusters was how excited they were when they received their first customer!) and to me this is just the quintessential Halloween cartoon. The three blundering idiots are called in (by the ghosts ha-ha) to rid the house of ghosts! Upon arrival they discover the house is empty except for some ominous laughter so they decide to split up and take care of the ghosts. This of course results in more humorous altercations between the goons and the ghosts. When suddenly! Mickey, Donald, and
Goofy stumble into molasses and flour and look like ghosts themselves! Thus spooking the real ghosts away. Another reason I love this cartoon so much is because I’m a sucker for anything Walt Disney worked on, and at this point Walt was still voicing Mickey Mouse.
Stay tuned to the rest of my Halloween picks either on Facebook if we’re friends or on my twitter account. I promise I’ve got some great ones coming up still -- and I may even deviate from my Disney picks a tad -- that will be appreciated by all! And thank you Joe for letting me babble on about something I really love.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Night of Terror #17: The Whip and the Body
In my second Mario Bava viewing of the month, we have what many apparently consider to be his best movie, The Whip and the Body. It certainly has all the elements of a Bava masterpiece: Bravura camerawork, lighting, and use of color, plus a thick and heavy horror atmosphere, with some gothic romance thrown in for good measure. Particularly romantic is the lush score by Carlo Rustichelli, which plays a huge part in the movie's effect on the audience particularly in the first part -I mean "first part" literally here, as the movie is inexplicably (and hilariously to me for some reason) broken up into parts announced via title cards. It's less than 90 minutes long so I have no idea why this was done.
Anyway, the story has to do with an asshole nobleman (played to the hilt by Christopher Lee in what has to rank as one of his best screen villains) who comes back to the estate of his estranged family to claim what's his. He gets knocked off by someone in the family, but his ghost continues to haunt the grounds.
One of the things I like best about The Whip and the Body is the weird blend of genre ingredients present in its weird stew. It's a ghost story, a soap opera, a whodunit, a gothic romance, and some kind of weird S&M thing all rolled into one. And Bava ties it all together with some of the most striking images of his career.
I was prepared to balk at claims that this is Bava's best, but the final scene between Christopher Lee and his - uh, victim? Love-interest? Girlfriend? - has an emotional resonance and power you don't often see in Italian genre movies. It kind of made me look at the rest of the movie with a new perspective. I still don't think it's top-tier Bava, but it's close.
Anyway, the story has to do with an asshole nobleman (played to the hilt by Christopher Lee in what has to rank as one of his best screen villains) who comes back to the estate of his estranged family to claim what's his. He gets knocked off by someone in the family, but his ghost continues to haunt the grounds.
One of the things I like best about The Whip and the Body is the weird blend of genre ingredients present in its weird stew. It's a ghost story, a soap opera, a whodunit, a gothic romance, and some kind of weird S&M thing all rolled into one. And Bava ties it all together with some of the most striking images of his career.
I was prepared to balk at claims that this is Bava's best, but the final scene between Christopher Lee and his - uh, victim? Love-interest? Girlfriend? - has an emotional resonance and power you don't often see in Italian genre movies. It kind of made me look at the rest of the movie with a new perspective. I still don't think it's top-tier Bava, but it's close.
Night of Terror #16: Beyond the Black Rainbow
Good evening, fans of the macabre and bizarre. Today we have a guest-piece from the macabre and bizarre Dr. P. Lloyd, he of the movie blog Cinematic Gestures. He's reviewing one of my favorites of the last couple years, Beyond the Black Rainbow. Take it away, Lloyd!
Thank you, Joe.
I’ve been pretty forthright on social media that I am a Big Squeamish Baby; my dislike of horror films comes more from a physiological level, though I do think that some trends in the genre are morally vile. Even though I’m the furthest thing from a horror fan, I’m aware of some of the commonalities of the genre, mostly on its frequent focus on “The Other,” the abject. Horror films usually exploit our fears of being invaded, of something unknown wrecking havoc on our bodies, our homes, our lifestyle, our communities, etc. There are a number of permutations, from different types of monsters – villains, frequently of the franchise quality – to more representative psychological horrors that speak to gender, race, or class issues. Even more immediately prominent than these common thematic issues are the templates of horror films, which consciously or not often dictate character, structure, and tone. There are so many horror films that follow a given formula that works like the first Scream (which I actually really liked), Hunger Games (which I hated), or this year’s The Cabin in the Woods (which I’m still suspicious of, despite the Whedon involvement) can take a “meta” approach because people are so familiar with tropes that they are hungry for a new perspective.
This Horror 101 preface is given because this entry, Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010), is unlike any horror film I’ve watched through laced fingers, or even any film, really. In short, writer-director Panos Cosmatos has made an experimental, avant-garde treatment of the barest minimum of a freaky narrative, while also being a throwback to early 1980’s horror films in a few ways. I wanted to share the description of it from Netflix (where you can stream it): “When telepathic teen Elena flees the mysterious facility where she's been imprisoned her entire life, her unstable therapist relentlessly pursues her.” Hmmm. Okay, somewhat true, except this only accounts for the last thirty minutes or so of the film!
Elena (Eva Allan) is a virginal girl, as seen in so many horror films, and her “therapist” Barry (Michael Rogers) is indeed a stalking figure towards the end of the film, with the various shades of Jason Voorhees / Michael Myers / etc. But nearly everything before that is so off-kilter and disturbing from its refusal to follow convention that by the time the fairly standard horror tropes come into play, with a few brief but graphic killings, it feels like a relief.
It would be impossible to spoil the tone or look of the film in divulging plot details, so here: Elena is being kept and studied, seemingly alone, in some sort of off-the-grid research facility in 1983, under the guise of some New Age hokum, that we’re treated to in an orientation / advertisement video at the start of the film. Barry is her main representative of humanity, who we almost immediately distrust. (It doesn’t help that Rogers looks like a gaunt, perma-pissed Christian Bale.) Something Strange Is Going On at this place, and the film slowly (methodically is arguable) furthers the sense of dread and unease as Elena and Barry’s sessions continue. I wondered not so much how the film would end but if anything resembling plot points would happen at all. The interim is filled with… well, let’s just say some bizarre imagery. The cinematography by Norm Li and the production design by Bob Bottieri were definitely the highlights of the film for me. Even as I was progressively weirded out, I kept wondering how they got those beautiful shots. The score by Jeremy Schmidt is more than reminiscent of Carpenter’s The Thing, but I think that’s a definite plus. Allan and Rogers are effective, but they seem more like servants of the experimental nature of the film than as characters with clear purposes (besides just “getting out” and “not letting her get out,” respectively).
I didn’t enjoy Beyond the Black Rainbow so much as I appreciated it. The pace is deliberately slow, and there are really only two characters – one doesn’t talk, the other is a madman – whose relationship isn’t that engaging, but it takes so many chances in so many ways that I hope it builds some more word-of-mouth success and inspires other filmmakers and studios to think outside the box. If it got me to delay writing off the horror genre entirely, it should find some fans among the more sturdy cinephiles out there.
Thank you, Joe.
I’ve been pretty forthright on social media that I am a Big Squeamish Baby; my dislike of horror films comes more from a physiological level, though I do think that some trends in the genre are morally vile. Even though I’m the furthest thing from a horror fan, I’m aware of some of the commonalities of the genre, mostly on its frequent focus on “The Other,” the abject. Horror films usually exploit our fears of being invaded, of something unknown wrecking havoc on our bodies, our homes, our lifestyle, our communities, etc. There are a number of permutations, from different types of monsters – villains, frequently of the franchise quality – to more representative psychological horrors that speak to gender, race, or class issues. Even more immediately prominent than these common thematic issues are the templates of horror films, which consciously or not often dictate character, structure, and tone. There are so many horror films that follow a given formula that works like the first Scream (which I actually really liked), Hunger Games (which I hated), or this year’s The Cabin in the Woods (which I’m still suspicious of, despite the Whedon involvement) can take a “meta” approach because people are so familiar with tropes that they are hungry for a new perspective.
This Horror 101 preface is given because this entry, Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010), is unlike any horror film I’ve watched through laced fingers, or even any film, really. In short, writer-director Panos Cosmatos has made an experimental, avant-garde treatment of the barest minimum of a freaky narrative, while also being a throwback to early 1980’s horror films in a few ways. I wanted to share the description of it from Netflix (where you can stream it): “When telepathic teen Elena flees the mysterious facility where she's been imprisoned her entire life, her unstable therapist relentlessly pursues her.” Hmmm. Okay, somewhat true, except this only accounts for the last thirty minutes or so of the film!
Elena (Eva Allan) is a virginal girl, as seen in so many horror films, and her “therapist” Barry (Michael Rogers) is indeed a stalking figure towards the end of the film, with the various shades of Jason Voorhees / Michael Myers / etc. But nearly everything before that is so off-kilter and disturbing from its refusal to follow convention that by the time the fairly standard horror tropes come into play, with a few brief but graphic killings, it feels like a relief.
It would be impossible to spoil the tone or look of the film in divulging plot details, so here: Elena is being kept and studied, seemingly alone, in some sort of off-the-grid research facility in 1983, under the guise of some New Age hokum, that we’re treated to in an orientation / advertisement video at the start of the film. Barry is her main representative of humanity, who we almost immediately distrust. (It doesn’t help that Rogers looks like a gaunt, perma-pissed Christian Bale.) Something Strange Is Going On at this place, and the film slowly (methodically is arguable) furthers the sense of dread and unease as Elena and Barry’s sessions continue. I wondered not so much how the film would end but if anything resembling plot points would happen at all. The interim is filled with… well, let’s just say some bizarre imagery. The cinematography by Norm Li and the production design by Bob Bottieri were definitely the highlights of the film for me. Even as I was progressively weirded out, I kept wondering how they got those beautiful shots. The score by Jeremy Schmidt is more than reminiscent of Carpenter’s The Thing, but I think that’s a definite plus. Allan and Rogers are effective, but they seem more like servants of the experimental nature of the film than as characters with clear purposes (besides just “getting out” and “not letting her get out,” respectively).
I didn’t enjoy Beyond the Black Rainbow so much as I appreciated it. The pace is deliberately slow, and there are really only two characters – one doesn’t talk, the other is a madman – whose relationship isn’t that engaging, but it takes so many chances in so many ways that I hope it builds some more word-of-mouth success and inspires other filmmakers and studios to think outside the box. If it got me to delay writing off the horror genre entirely, it should find some fans among the more sturdy cinephiles out there.
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