All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)

Gregory J. Smalley founded 366 Weird Movies in 2008 and has served as editor-in-chief since that time. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and his film writing has appeared online in Pop Matters and The Spool.
Apocryphally Weird

23*. JULIET OF THE SPIRITS (1965)

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Giulietta degli spiriti

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“I remember I had some exaltation about color. I see colors not like they are normally – we see colors in the object. In this case, I saw colors, just as they are, detached from the object. I had for the first time the feeling of the presence of the color in a detached way.”–Federico Fellini

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Mario Pisu

PLOT: Juliet, a wealthy housewife, has reason to suspect her husband is cheating on her. She has always been attuned to the spirit world, and after a seance she begins seeing visions and hearing voices; one of the whispering entities tells her that her neighbor, the strange, sexually liberated Suzy, will be her teacher. As her marriage disintegrates, her visions become harder to distinguish from reality, until Juliet snaps and banishes the spirits.

Still from Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

BACKGROUND:

  • Fellini’s first feature-length color film (although his short segment for the 1962 anthology film Boccaccio ’70 was in color.)
  • Fellini took LSD (in a clinical setting) for inspiration in making this film. He found it “a little disappointing.”
  • Some of the biographical details of onscreen Juliet’s stories come from Giulietta Massina’s own experiences in her marriage to Fellini. The house seen in the film is the couple’s real house.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Juliet of the Spirits parades a host of bizarrely costumed Felliniesque grotesques across the screen in its 130 minutes, but aside from the perpetually smiling eye-of-the-storm Masina, the one who makes the biggest impression is buxom, bodacious Suzy (Sandra Milo). In one of the movie’s unforgettable scenes, she disrobes (offscreen) in the blink of an eye to demonstrate one of the hedonistic accoutrements in her bordello-like haven: a slide winding directly from her bedroom to her personal post-coital swimming pool.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Hermaphrodite swami reception; faceless purple nuns

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Like his previous 8 1/2, Juliet of the Spirits is a Fellini trip where dreams and fantasies—the more baroque and colorful, the better—intrude into reality as a way to explore the psychology of the film’s protagonist.


Original trailer for Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

COMMENTS: Juliet of the Spirits is transitional Fellini—most obviously, in updating the director’s palette to the full color spectrum, Continue reading 23*. JULIET OF THE SPIRITS (1965) →

Interviews

INTERVIEW: ENTERING “STRAWBERRY MANSION”

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Grab yourself a chicken shake and listen as 366 Weird Movies sits down with and to discuss their new movie, Strawberry Mansion (full review). Mansion is set in a comically dystopian future where an auditor (Audley) is assigned to assess the dreams of an elderly woman for tax purposes, and finds himself falling in love with her younger self (in dreams). As always, stay to the end for hometown restaurant recommendations (from Baltimore, MD and Lexington, KY).

Strawberry Mansion is now available for VOD rental.

Capsules

CAPSULE: KING KNIGHT (2021)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Angela Sarafyan

PLOT: The leader of a Wicca coven falls into disgrace when a secret from his past is revealed.

Still from King Knight (2021)

COMMENTS: I don’t know if Richard Bates Jr.’s depiction of Wicca life is accurate or not, but many of the rituals (like the Beltane festival) seem believable, as do some of the practicalities involved (the coven’s priestess refuses to host a big bonfire this year because celebrants tend to overindulge: “I’m not trying to be a buzzkill, I just want to have one Beltane celebration that doesn’t involve a trip to the hospital.”) When King Knight is working, it’s because the script is making the Wiccans lives seem normal, despite their peculiar habits. Sometimes, the tone is mildly mocking: “Are you going to eat the placenta?” asks one congregant upon finding another is pregnant. “Obvi,” is the terse response. But there is no satirical bite here, and when it comes down to it the film is wholeheartedly on the side of these outsiders against the normies.

The thin conceit here is that the coven’s male leader, Thorn, harbors a guilty secret: he was popular in high school. While that fact would have made for a decent standalone joke, it’s hardly a satisfactory engine to drive an entire feature. It leads to unbelievable group dynamics: the coven’s excuse for shunning Thorn isn’t at all convincing, and their sudden about-face is just as difficult to swallow. Furthermore, I didn’t find most of the script very funny: the long discussion about “poo in the butt,” which becomes a sort of slogan, is tediously drawn out, getting less and less humorous as it drags on. But despite the clumsy setup, the movie soldiers on, and remains watchable because of the exotic milieu and its genuine fondness for its characters. The acting is solid TV-star quality, but there are welcome turns by icon , the voice of Aubrey Plaza, and a cameo by (which is similar to his appearance in Bates’ previous Tone-Deaf).

One thing that King Knight does really well is its long psychedelic scene, admirably achieved on an obviously low budget. It’s a masterclass for low-budget filmmakers in how hallucinatory effects can be conveyed with competent editing, lighting, and makeup, embellished with small bursts of simple but efficiently deployed optical tricks (Thorn’s third eye) and that always dependable standby, animation. Throw in a doppelganger, a talking pine cone, character development via phantasmal dialogue, and a smattering of Jungian symbolism, and you’ve got yourself a memorable trip.

Bates, who has been chugging away in semi-obscurity after failing to capitalize on the momentum gained from his 2012 debut cult hit, Excision, embeds a self-affirmation in the movie, delivered by no less personage than Merlin (“everyone’s favorite fucking wizard”). “The trick is, keep making your art, your way, without becoming bitter towards those who don’t appreciate it,” Merlin tells Thorn. “Remember, everyone has the right to their own opinion. So pick a song that speaks to you, throw caution to the wind, and most importantly, have fun.” A very simple message, but perhaps the most profound lesson in King Knight.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Bates’ script is so weirdly, gut-bustingly hilarious, and offers such an unexpectedly genuine insight into what witch life is like, that you’ll probably find yourself thoroughly entertained… , Bates’ film isn’t just weird for weird’s sake; the poignance at its core is genuine and represents a clear effort by the filmmaker to change how society views those operating harmlessly on the fringes.”–Shaun Munro, Flickering Myth (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE STENDHAL SYNDROME (1996)

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 La sindrome di Stendhal

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Marco Leonardi, Paolo Bonacelli,

PLOT: A female detective investigating a serial rapist finds herself stalked by her quarry, while intermittently experiencing hallucinations when she looks at works of fine art.

Still from The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)

COMMENTS: A little over halfway through The Stendhal Syndrome, Anna announces (slight spoiler) that she’s overcome the Stendhal Syndrome. She’s not kidding; she doesn’t hallucinate again (although her psychological struggles are far from over). Argento had used the Syndrome, a fanciful and dubious affliction in which viewers supposedly swoon into a fugue state when confronted with great works of art, as an excuse to stage a handful of hallucination sequences which, it turns out, were inessential to the plot.

The fact that syndrome supplying both the film’s title and its high concept would basically serve as a red herring indicates either a certain sloppiness, or an admirable disregard for conventional plotting by an auteur who’s always favored atmosphere over storytelling, depending on your point-of-view. Combined with the script’s predictable final twist and a number of superfluous scenes, I lean towards the confused execution opinion. There are other missteps, such as some clumsy and unnecessary CGI (pills down a throat, a bullet passing through a head), which comes across as the director playing with a new toy rather than as an element enhancing the story. All of which is not to say that The Stendhal Syndrome is a failure. It borders on the psychologically profound: Anna’s shifting identities and a recurring theme of gender confusion reflect a sympathetic, believable, and engaging view of a rape victim’s trauma. As always, Argento sniffs out poetic camera shots, e.g. Anna’s reflection trembling in a blood-red glass of wine. And the movie’s opening—a dialogue-free seven minute sequence of Anna wandering through Florence’s Uffizi, scored to Ennio Morricone’s deceptively simple, increasingly ominous theme, and ending with the heroine passing through the canvas surface of Bruegel’s “The Fall of Icarus,” then the diving under its painted water, where she eventually locks lips with a bulbous fish—is one of this director’s best standalone sequences. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie can’t live up to the mysterious promise here. The Stendhal Syndrome not quite the resurrection of the classic giallo form it might have been, but Argento fans will find enough spooky psychodrama to savor to make it worth a watch.

It’s awfully creepy to reflect on Dario directing his daughter Asia through the brutal rape scenes (though to be fair, she was only cast after a couple of other actresses, Bridget Fonda and , withdrew from the project). Asia’s acting here gets mixed reviews, but she has a classic beauty in three incarnations—regular Anna, tomboy Anna, and glamorous blonde Anna—and indulges in enough B-movie histrionics to carry the film. She positively shines compared to the rest of the blandly European cast. The English dubbing is atrocious, almost perfunctory like in a bottom-shelf vintage 1970s giallo, and the Italian soundtrack is recommended.

Blue Underground’s 2022 Blu-ray release is identical to their 2017 three disc limited edition, minus the DVD. Originally, this set shipped in a substandard video transfer; that issue was rectified and should not be a problem anymore. This version restores an additional two minutes of dialogue that were missing from previous U.S. releases.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…as fans of the Italian horror director may have guessed, [the syndrome is] little more than a suitably arcane jumping-off point for another of the filmmaker’s bizarre examinations of madness, obsession, and bloodshed.”–Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle (1999 US release)

The Stendhal Syndrome [4K UHD + Blu-ray

The Stendhal Syndrome [4K UHD + Blu-ray Set]

  • 2-disc Set: 4K Ultra HD (High Bitrate UHD100) / Region A Blu-ray

List Price : 54.98 $

Offer: 38.61 $

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