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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS (2024)

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“Perhaps we were misled by skillful advertising when we decided to send Father here. Time put back – it sounded good, but what does it come to in reality?”–Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium pod Klepsydra, 1937

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DIRECTED BY: ,

FEATURING: Tadeusz Janiszewski, Wioletta Kopanska, Allison Bell

PLOT: An auctioneer witnesses the activation of a sepulchrum for a deceased retina while Jozef visits his dead/dying father in the titular sanatorium.

Still from Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: A film adaptation of the titular surreal short story by Bruno Schulz already earned a place on the List. Is another deserving? This version boasts the -esque animation stylings for which the Quay Brothers are rightfully renowned (with the technique utilized more heavily than in their Certified Weird feature Institute Benjamenta). ‘ Hourglass Sanatorium exploited the dream logic of the story, with events frenetically shifting from scene to scene. The Quays, in contrast, excavate the idea of time held back for an unspecified interval, its “limbos and afterbreezes,”i creating a somnolent Sanatorium of vague and enigmatic impressions.

COMMENTS: Like many films by the Brothers Quay, Sanatorium is difficult to summarize. A seven part structure forms less a coherent story than a series of tableaux nested within each other. The perspective shifts among dutiful son Jozef, an auctioneer, and a mysterious female patient, J. Jozef’s visit to his father, at the sanatorium where the dead still live because time is arrested, serves as a frame narrative within a frame narrative, within which isolated occurrences taken from a selection of Schulz’s collected writings appear.

We first meet an auctioneer on a rooftop, beneath a sky of swirling clouds, soliciting bids for unusual and impossible items like the thirteenth month and exotic birds’ eggs (recalling Father’s ill-fated menagerie in Schulz’s story “Birds”). His audience consists of only two chimney sweeps, and when neither makes a bid, he lets them to get back to work.

In the house below, a maid prepares for the auctioneer’s arrival. As he enters the room, she removes the dust cloth from an object perched on a table : a pyramidal box with oculus windows in its sides and a little drawer which opens to display the glassy retina of an eye. The auctioneer explains the mystery of this rare sepulchrum—at a propitious moment the eye will liquify and shed seven tears, and the preserved sights contained within will become Jozef’s dreams as he succumbs to the sanatorium’s will to sleep.

The auctioneer’s frame is live-action, filmed in the gauzy black and white style of Institute Benjamenta, as is J.’s (and a few scenes where an actor, and not a puppet, portrays Jozef). When the scene cuts to Jozef’s ominous train trip (he’s uncertain whether or not his father lives, and this uncertainty will persist), we enter the Quays’ puppet theater. Their minutely detailed miniature sets, to use Schulz’s words, “exude an air of strange and frightening neglect.” The sanatorium setting, its vaguely nineteenth century atmosphere with faintly Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS (2024) →

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CAREER BED (1968)/SEX BY ADVERTISEMENT (1968) AND SATAN’S BED (1965)/SCARE THEIR PANTS OFF (1968)

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DIRECTED BY:  (Career Bed, Sex by Advertisement); Michael Findlay (Satan’s Bed); John Maddox (Scare Their Pants Off)

FEATURING:  Georgina Spelvin (Career Bed, Sex by Advertisement); Yoko Ono (Satan’s Bed)

PLOT:  An overbearing stage mother pimps out her daughter to sleazy producers and unscrupulous talent agents (Career Bed); Dr. Joanne Richfield investigates Sex by Advertisement in the swinging sixties; sex traffickers kidnap a Japanese mail-order bride (Satan’s Bed); a pair of creeps kidnap women off the street and subject them to oddball role-playing scenarios (Scare Their Pants Off).

COMMENTS:  For those looking to (re-)experience the freewheeling world of ’60s sexploitation cinema, you could do worse than the latest Blu-ray re-releases by Distribpix and Something Weird. But you could also do better. These double features of impeccably restored films provide a sampling of what resulted when low budgets, rushed production schedules, and varying degrees of creativity and talent combined to churn out roughies for the Time Square theaters of old. The moments of weirdness glimpsed in this archive are sprinkled among nonsensical plots, long stretches of repetitive interiors, and New York City street footage with post-sync dialogue performed by bad actors.

In Career Bed, a conventional telling of a well-worn tale, a widow takes her daughter to New York, determined to make her a big star. Susan Potter just wants to marry her sweetheart from back home, but when her beau shows up in the city, Mrs. Potter seduces him, then tells Susan she’ll be better off pursuing an acting career. Through this Mrs. Robinson sideline, Mrs. Potter continues to get a piece of the action as she sets up dates for Susan with supposed entertainment industry bigwigs.

Future Devil in Miss Jones star Georgina Spelvin appears in a minor role as a talent agent who gets Susan to spend the night with her, after telling Mrs. Potter she has no interest in her daughter’s virginity “in the classical sense” (though she’s certainly interested in the “Classical” sense, if you know what I mean). This all leads to depressingly predictable results, though in the end, Susan thwarts her mother by marrying a producer. Mrs. Potter then sets herself up as a talent agent so she can continue exploiting naïve young women in search of fame and fortune.

Sex by Advertisement attempts the white-coater format, in which a medical professional discourses on the vices rampant in society. Unfortunately, Dr. Richfield (Spelvin again) is no Krafft-Ebing, and the narrative focuses more on condemning the pervasive advertising culture of the “Mad Men” era than in elucidating its sexual mores. Our narrator begins by describing how fetishists used to discreetly seek partners through coded ads (“Babysitter, for OLDER difficult children/Sitter supplies equipment”), but nowadays, with far more explicit language, everyone’s getting in on the game.

Within this vaguely constructed frame narrative, the few notable vignettes include an “art studio” where nude models serve as canvases Continue reading CAREER BED (1968)/SEX BY ADVERTISEMENT (1968) AND SATAN’S BED (1965)/SCARE THEIR PANTS OFF (1968) →

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CAPSULE: MORGIANA (1972)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Iva Janzurová, , Josef Abrhám

PLOT: After their father passes away, leaving the bulk of his estate to his younger daughter Klara, her older sister Victoria decides to murder her.

COMMENTS: When asked to provide a romantic story, director Juraj Herz baffled his production studio’s head by writing a Romantic script, complete with all the psychological Sturm und Drang of the original genre. Instead of a simple love story, Morgiana is The Tell-Tale Heart by way of a mad hatter’s tea party.

After watching Klara inherit their father’s wealth, then stealing the heart of Glenar, the family’s lawyer, Victoria plans to do away with her inconvenient sister. She uses a slow-acting poison to prevent anyone from suspecting foul play, but the nature of the toxin means she can never be entirely certain of its efficacy. While she waits to see if the desired effect will occur (and waits, and waits, and waits), the chemist’s wife decides to blackmail her, and Klara attracts another suitor who’s determined to figure out what ails his fiancée. Under the influence of the poison, Klara experiences rainbow-tinted hallucinations, causing her to suspect her sister. Both siblings end up paranoid and suspicious. The fact that the house is haunted by the ghost of a dancer and by Victoria’s Siamese cat, Morgiana, add to the atmosphere.

Adapted from a novel by Russian fantasy/adventure author Alexander Grin, the production design goes all in creating a Gibson girl-era Grinlandia. The sets, costumes, and giant hats, all elaborately detailed and brilliantly colored, swing between darkly haunting Gothic and ’70s psychedelia. The orchestral score by Luboš Fišer, known for his soundtrack to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, enhances the mood without overwhelming the opulent visuals. But these sumptuous sights and sounds still can’t quite make up for a plot that starts to drag about a third of the way through.

Unfortunately, Morgiana fell victim to a producer who insisted upon changes to the script that seriously weaken the story. Apparently Herz had originally intended both sisters to represent the two sides of a single woman’s fractured psyche. Their obvious good-evil dichotomy would have been more interesting if he’d had his way. Instead, the producer considered such mental aberration a “bourgeois” affliction and made Herz remove all reference to it from the script. This omission leaves perceptible gaps in the narrative.

Even though Janzurová gives a compelling dual performance, subtly modulating both her speech and body language for each sister, the exact nature of the conflict between them never really makes sense (nor does the father’s will privileging one daughter over the other). If Morgiana is a weird film, it’s because of its compromises. A few intriguing scenes seem to be holdovers from the original story. Whenever Klara hallucinates, she sees a doppelgänger version of herself who wears red like Victoria. Early in her illness she describes feeling like she’s changed bodies. A number of shots frame the actress in front of paneled mirrors, or viewing herself from a window, suggesting both the duplication and splitting of her good and evil impulses.

Herz’s producer wasn’t too keen on ghost stories, either, so the haunted house plotline feels truncated, as does the role of the cat. Morgiana, set up to be a significant character in her own right, gets a number of POV shots. Some vague suggestions imply she’s a ghost or possessed by a spirit. This insinuation adds shock value to a surprising scene in the otherwise anticlimactic conclusion.

Overall, Morgiana never reaches the intensity of some of Herz’s other films. What should have been a trippy Hoffmann-esque tale of a woman losing her mind instead presents a more stereotypical family drama of good versus evil. Stunningly beautiful, with a great cast, fans of Czech cinema from this time period may want to check it out, but serious weirdophiles can give it a pass.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… a weird take on 19th century gothic horror. Morgiana lacks the narrative or symbolic depth of The Cremator, but its visual richness and dramatic excesses make for a grand viewing experience.”–Rodney Perkins, Screen Anarchy (DVD)

HOME VIDEO INFORMATION: Recently released on Blu-ray as part of Severin’s  “House of Psychotic Women, Rarities Collection Volume 2” box set, Morgiana can be seen alongside Butterfly Kiss (1994), The Glass Ceiling (1971), and The Savage Eye (1959). Special features for Morgiana include an introduction from Keir-La Janisse; audio commentary with Briony Kidd and Cerise Howard; an interview with actress Iva Janzurová; “The Stone Forest,” a short feature about Pobiti Kamani, the Bulgarian shooting location; “Nightmares,” a made for TV “vampire rock musical” directed by Herz; and the short film “Rest in Peace,” made by Rachel Amodeo and Dame Darcy. The film is also available in a Region-free standalone Blu-ray from Second Run, and has been issued multiple times on DVD. There were no streaming options for viewing the film at the time this was written.

House Of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection Volume 2 [Blu-ray]

House Of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection Volume 2 [Blu-ray]
  • Producer/curator Kier-La Janisse presents a new quartet of international classics that explores startling depictions of female neurosis on screen.
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List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: FURIOUS (1984)

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DIRECTED BY: Tim Everitt, Tom Sartori

FEATURING: Simon Rhee, Phillip Rhee, Arlene Montano

PLOT: After “Mongol” warriors kill his sister, Simon’s karate master summons him to avenge her death—but all is not as it seems.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: All is literally not as it seems—from its opening credit sequence featuring a black-clad actor’s disembodied hands performing card tricks against a black background, Furious wants to be clever with sleight of hand symbolism, but absurdly unsubtle dialogue then robs the film of any mystery, heavy-handedly spelling out the plot. The result still baffles viewers through what must be the most random appearances of chickens in a movie since Death Laid an Egg.

COMMENTS: Furious seems to have been largely forgotten by mainstream movie culture. Only five people have bothered to write user reviews on IMDB; they either love it for its insane creativity or hate it for its stupidity. Both are valid reactions. Whatever chance Furious had to tap into the ’80s zeitgeist must have been lost forever when the original The Karate Kid was released in the same year. A weird gem kept alive through the devoted efforts of a small cult following, perhaps the time has come for its own resurgence from the astral plane.

Relying on the conventional plotline of a martial artist seeking vengeance for the death of a loved one, Furious manages to be a painfully amateurish effort. Either that, or it’s supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to badly dubbed imported films. If so, the effort falls flat, like a guy falling off a bridge into four inches of water. The many fight scenes feature wooden and uninspired choreography, a cardinal sin in any karate movie. The cheap special effects hardly dazzle, but they occur at such bizarre moments that they still amaze.

In the fifteen minute long dialogue-free introductory sequence, fur-wearing warriors chase Simon’s sister up a mountain and into a “Mongol” cave. A broken tusk guides her way and she discovers a box guarded by a skull. Unfortunately for her, some strange power makes this compass bone spin wildly, and after fighting off all but one of her pursuers, the final warrior kills her and steals the bone. The scene then cuts to Simon lighting candles for her on his family altar. It’s all the backstory we’re going to get.

Shortly thereafter, the “Mongol” warrior arrives at Simon’s house and gives him a card which turns out to be a key to Master Chan’s corporate headquarters/karate dojo. When Simon obeys his summons, Master Chan solemnly tells him he’s “between the hammer and the anvil.” His magician henchman illustrates his predicament with a dove and red and white silk scarves. After a brief test of Simon’s skills, he’s given an amulet and told that if he wants to avenge his sister he must find the man who wears the same symbol.

Outside the building Simon runs into friends who conveniently inform him that the symbol appears in the sign for a restaurant, apparently run by some evil chicken concern. The friends are attacked, and most of them killed, when they try to investigate. Simon later returns to dine and discovers the restaurant specializes in chicken served by masked waiters who perform magic tricks, while shirtless martial artists demonstrate karate with swords and nunchucks.

You’d think seeing the magicians would give Simon pause, especially after the trick they pull on him (and the random chicken wandering around Master Chan’s offices). Just in case this hint didn’t get through, a whispering waterfall warns Simon to “beware” because “traveling in the spiritual void can be dangerous.”

Traveling in the spiritual void can be dangerous. This line repeats multiple times while Simon experiences an agonizing series of flashbacks. Finally, he suspects Master Chan might not be who he seems. The plot proceeds, with the mystic waterfall providing spoilers to the audience along the way.

This consistent balance between what’s wrong and what’s right makes this film so bad it’s weird and so weird it’s good. The directors (a special effects technician and editor) make some very strange choices, but the high degree of WTF-ery proves to be their greatest strength.

The rapid cut editing in the montage sequences adds needed energy when the action starts to flag. A darkly lit office corridor effectively portrays Simon’s descent into the void (where he just happens to overhear his nemesis complaining that Simon is too powerful and must be stopped).

The score begins as typical operatic orchestral stings, but whenever what little suspense builds, synthy electronics pulse underneath. One of many inexplicable scenes reveals the music is coming from a room in Master Chan’s corporate empire where his white jumpsuited lackeys perform in a band. Why does a karate master have a techno band? In this life there are questions without answers, but in Furious all will be revealed (by a pig), so just wait for it. At only 71 minutes of runtime, you won’t have to wait very long.

Simon’s final showdowns against the magician and Master Chan must be seen to be believed. All those lingering close-ups of elderly ladies happily eating chicken in the restaurant while watching karate suddenly make wonderful and terrible sense, and yet in the end, Furious still makes no sense at all.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“To say that continuity and reason go out the window with Furious is an understatement. . .Its nonsensical and ridiculous plot, terrible acting and badly-scripted fight scenes are ripe for riffing. The entertainment value on that alone makes it a recommendation. Anyone looking for anything else will be sorely let down and outright confused at what they’re watching.”–Mike Wilson, Bloody Disgusting

Furious [Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition] [Blu-ray]

Furious [Visual Vengeance Collector's Edition] [Blu-ray]
  • The cult martial arts classic, first time ever on Blu-ray. Mystic aliens from the astral plane fight Kung Fu warriors for control of the universe!
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CAPSULE: INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS (1967)

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Kôya no datchi waifu; AKA Dutch Wife in the Desert

DIRECTED BY: Atsushi Yamatoya

FEATURING: Yûichi Minato, Shôhei Yamamoto, Masayoshi Nogami, Noriko Tatsumi, Mari Nagisa, Miki Watari

PLOT: A shady real estate agent hires a hitman haunted by the killing of his girlfriend to take out the gang responsible for the kidnapping and torture of his mistress.

COMMNETS: Every day at three o’clock in the afternoon a woman screams and the phone rings. It rings while off the hook, it rings when disconnected, it rings even half-buried in the sand of a desert wasteland. Shô always knows when three o’clock strikes because Rie tells him so. At three o’clock five years ago Shô murdered Rie—when she tried to call him and no one answered the phone.

Real estate agent Naka wants to hire a hitman, so Shô waits for three o’clock in a sunblasted middle-of-nowhere. The client needs to know the assassin of his choice can hit his target in three shots or less. Rie screams as Naka leads Shô to a lone evergreen tree, the only one around for miles, because the blood of “snitches” waters it. Shô chops it down in thirteen shots.

After this display of marksmanship, Naka takes Shô back to his city office. He shows the hitman a disturbing film reel of black-hooded goons recording their sexual abuse of Sae, the woman Naka wants Shô to rescue. Naka himself can be glimpsed in the background, tied to a chair and blindfolded, forced to listen while his girlfriend screams. Shô complains about the poor quality of the entertainment. He can’t see anything in a picture so grainy. Naka admits the film might be wearing out. He must have watched it a hundred times by now.

Shô agrees to take the case. He returns to his hotel room to find a naked woman waiting in his bed. He smells more than cheap perfume and forces her into a bathtub. Mina serenades him with a song overflowing with double entendres. Of course she’s part of the trap, she admits it, but Shô’s not like other gangsters. She wants to help him. He clutches his gun while succumbing to her advances, aiming at the door, ready to fire whenever his enemy enters the room.

Wastelands contains all the classic tropes of film noir—an emotionally compromised detective, a slightly seedy and suspect client, a femme fatale—and then some. Fans of may notice eerie similarities to Branded to Kill, also released in 1967 (they make a perfect double feature). Director Atsushi Yamatoya was one of the Guru Hachiro writers responsible for Branded‘s script. Callbacks ricochet like a volley of gunshots across both story arcs: three o’clock, rings (expensive in Branded, cheap in Wastelands), insects, an antagonist named Kô, hitmen obsessed with their reputations, a (maybe snuff) film within the film.

Both movies share a similar sense of fatalistic black humor and a dynamic visual style. The cinematography always goes for the unusual. Odd camera angles enhance ambiguities of space and perspective, adding to the disorientation. A scene with a character walking up a flight of stairs rotates so “down” becomes left with “up” heading to the right. When a henchman gets shot and slumps over a bar counter the camera tilts with him. The rest of the scene remains skewed as though we’re now viewing the film through the lifeless eyes of a corpse.

Plentiful shoot-outs punctuate the action and every actor who gets shot milks his death scene for all it’s worth. By contrast, the female characters lie around motionless and silent. Whether drugged or sleeping, or worse, it’s hard to tell. Aside from Mina, who radiates a voluptuous vitality (repeatedly rejected as untrustworthy), the others, both living and dead, become indistinguishable.

The final confrontation between Shô and the target of his revenge occurs as a protracted contest recalling Branded‘s Hanada and No. 1. After some creative trash talk (“I can see your heart” – “What color is it?” – “Sickly green” – “You’re colorblind”), they vow that by 3:30 pm tomorrow one of them will die.

Like a fly struggling to escape from a forgotten whiskey glass, time traps people in its vise. Outside a window Shô now sees the desert wasteland surrounding him, the same tree still there standing by its lonesome, as if he never shot it down in the first place. Even Sae and Rie begin to resemble each other. Can Shô save the one if death has already claimed the other?

One possible interpretation of the title implies the entire story takes place in a hellish afterlife where ghosts doomed by their former selves relive their last agonizing moments on earth. A blast of fire burns behind the opening credits. Everyone complains about the heat, but there’s never any air conditioning to cool their tempers. There’s nothing but heat (except for Shô’s lighter, which never works whenever he needs a cigarette). This inferno reduces not only women to puppets. The men jerk each other around by strings, but they’re all tangled together, everyone incapable of escaping their own personal purgatory.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“..an enigmatic and paradoxical title, perhaps capturing something of the film’s hybrid, even contradictory nature… It should come as no surprise that Yamatoya, directing from his own script here, had previously helped write Seijun Suzuki’s similarly surreal and abstract take on hitmen, Branded to Kill…”–Anton  Bitel, Little White Lies (2020 screening)