All posts by Pamela De Graff

I live in smoggy southern California where I am an arts major at a state university. My cinematic interests include dark movies like moody, brooding horror, the morbid, the macabre, the uncanny, occult films and black satire. I prefer movies with well executed plots which make me think.
Capsules

CAPSULE: EYE OF THE DEVIL (1966)

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DIRECTED BY:  J. Lee Thompson

FEATURING:  Sharon Tate, , David Niven, , Flora Robson

PLOT: A happy marriage descends into an odyssey of terror when a woman’s husband is called to his ancestral estate by pagan heretics.

Still from Eye of the Devil (1966)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While Eye of the Devil tells a strange story, the occult  genre always spins an unusual yarn. In this context, strange is normal. Aside from being well produced, Eye of the Devil is noteworthy only because it debuts the doomed Sharon Tate.

COMMENTS: Vineyard owner Marquis Philippe de Montfaucon (Niven) is called back to his castle when a drought withers the crop, upon which the entire region depends. His wife and children are supposed to remain in London, but of course she becomes curious and is compelled to intrude. Catherine de Montfaucon (Deborah Kerr) subsequently discovers that her husband is behaving in a secretive and peculiar manner. His personality has undergone a distinct change and he seems dreadfully grim and preoccupied. Why?

There are many mysterious comings and goings, some heavyweight clergy are milling around who appear to be legitimate, but why are the Marquis’ young cousins shooting medieval arrows at her, casting spells on her children, and trying to hypnotize her into leaping off of the castle parapets? And who the devil are those troublesome dark characters in black Franciscan monk’s robes, chasing Catherine about in the deep dark woods?

As Catherine snoops, she discovers mounting evidence of heretical pagan practices and that an extraordinary number of the Marquis’ antecedents met untimely deaths. Could there be a relation between the deaths and some profound event that her husband seems to be preparing for?

Flora Robson (The Shuttered Room) is creepy and aloof as always in her role as the Marquis’ Aunt.  Sharon Tate (in her film debut) plays a sinister and threatening witch who turns frogs into doves and seems to perversely enjoy taking a good old fashioned horse whipping from the Marquis. (Blow-up, Juggernaut) cavorts as her delightfully menacing, archery-happy brother. Eye of the Devil features crisp, striking, artful black and white cinematography by Erwin Hillier.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Kerr is our only touch with reality, and she tries to carry the pic, to little avail.”–Variety (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: EDEN LOG (2007)

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DIRECTED BY:  Franck Vestiel

FEATURING:  Clovis Comillca, , Zohar Wexleser

PLOT: A man named Tolbiac (Cornillac) awakens with amnesia alongside rotting corpses in a high-tech underground wasteland. He must find his way out of a massive labyrinth deep within the earth. To do so he has to collect and assimilate data and unravel clues to the bizarre circumstances in which he finds himself.

Still from Eden Log

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Shot entirely indoors in an underground setting, this unusual science fiction film blurs the line between supposed reality and apparent fantasy. Told visually, with minimal dialogue, the bizarre circumstances and setting disorient the viewer. One must see through the protagonist’s eyes to decipher his otherworldly experience. The fact that he has no memory and his world seems just as alien to him as it does to us heightens the challenge.

COMMENTS: Eden Log is told mainly with pictures. It is set in the near future. There is refreshingly little exposition. There are no long and grandiose on-screen paragraphs or narration at the inception telling about a land far, far away in a time long ago. As a result, the story is a bit murky.

The viewer must piece the action together from the protagonist’s experiences, which unfold from his point of view. The meaning of some events is not clearly delineated, and the beholder must learn how to interpret them. One must suspend disbelief to accept certain aspects of the plot, and one is never sure until the end how to understand some of Tolbiac’s impressions and experiences. It is, at first, hard to tell what is real and what is fantasy.

Tolbiac starts out at the bottom of a ruined, high-tech subterranean maze in pool of Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: EDEN LOG (2007) →

Capsules

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: THE SHUTTERED ROOM (1967)

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AKA:  Blood Island

DIRECTED BY: David Green

FEATURING: Oliver Reed, , Flora Robson,

PLOT: In this H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, a a string of grisly killings is linked to an unnameable creature inhabiting the loft of an abandoned New England mill inherited by newlyweds.

Still from THE SHUTTERED ROOM (1967)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:   The Shuttered Room showcases a strange story of monsters and madness. The setting is claustrophobic and creepy, the characters are downright bizarre, and so are the situations that the protagonists stumble into. The cinematography is expertly, if not artfully, executed. Thus the viewer expects a conventional storyline, and it is unsettling when shocking events unfold.

COMMENTS:  A newlywed couple, Mike and Susannah Kelton (Young, Lynley) travel to an island off of the Connecticut shoreline to visit an old mill which Sue just inherited.  It was once her childhood home.  From the start, she has reservations, but the couple perseveres at Mike’s urging.  They need to view the property with the goal of renovating the mill into a bed and breakfast.

As soon as they arrive on the island, the locals begin subjecting them to the old “Yew ain’t from around here!” treatment (even though Sue is). Mike meets her uncle who insists that they should leave.  The uncle’s employee shows Mike his mutilated face, missing an eye, and reports that the injury was caused by the devil when he got drunk and spent a night in the abandoned mill.  The couple also meet the local ruffians, a gang of unsavory toughs led by a psychopath named Ethan (Reed), who happens to be Sue’s cousin.  Mike is a dignified magazine editor. Both he and Sue are city-slickers—and it Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: THE SHUTTERED ROOM (1967) →

List Candidates

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: IN MY SKIN [DANS MA PEAU] (2002)

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DIRECTED BY: Marina de Van

FEATURING: Marina de Van, ,

PLOT: Esther is a nice yuppie girl who enjoys her office job.  She also enjoys dismantling and consuming her own body.  After disfiguring her leg in an accident, Esther develops a necrotic fascination with herself and begins to self-mutilate.  She engages in auto-cannibalism while having hallucinations of limb disassociation.

Still from In my Skin [Dans ma Peau] (2002)

In My Skin is a different kind of horror movie. It plays on those grisly nightmares about things like inexplicably sudden tooth and hair loss, parasitism and other subconscious fears centering on uncontrollable bodily damage. There are no phantoms or monsters in De Van’s film, no outside threat. The horror comes from within as a woman sinks into insanity and demolishes her body.

COMMENTS: In My Skin is a study of morbid preoccupation with the physical nature of the human condition. It explores dissatisfaction with body image, and the finding of a decadent delight in its destruction. The lead character seeks psychological satiation through bodily deconstruction and self-consumption  She tries in vain to attack inexplicable and inexorable anxiety via the demolition of the human vessel.

Esther (De Van) falls on some construction debris in back of a friend’s house and gashes her leg open. Oddly insensitive to the pain, she does not sense the severity of her ghastly injury. She discovers the extent of the damage later, but even then, she goes to a bar before seeking treatment. When she finally does obtain medical assistance, she perversely declines measures to prevent disfigurement. At this point, her psyche undergoes a sinister change.

In My Skin is reminiscent of a Ray Bradbury story entitled “Skeleton” (one of two he wrote Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: IN MY SKIN [DANS MA PEAU] (2002) →

Guest Reviews

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: SUBJECT TWO (2006)

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DIRECTED BY:  Philip Chidel

FEATURING:  Christian Oliver, Dean Stapleton

PLOT: A medical student gets more than he bargained for when he accepts an experimental internship and discovers that immortality comes with a steep price.

Still from Subject Two (2006)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Subject Two is a fresh twist on the Frankenstein plot. It envisions reanimation from the undead’s subjective perspective. It is deeply disturbing and every bit as repellent and hellish as one could hope for.

COMMENTS: A misanthropic medical student named Adam (who flunked his ethics exam) receives a cryptic email from a Dr. Fanklin Vick. It offers him an opportunity to assist in unusual medical research and subsequently to share in the revolutionary scientific advances in medicine that result.

He bites on the lure, but to accept the position, he must wait on an icy mountain road in the middle of nowhere to be offered a ride by a stranger. The alluring and mysterious chauffeur obviously knows more about what is going on than he does. His journey to meet the elusive Doctor Vick is itself a snowy odyssey into the isolated, surreal drifts and folds of the Colorado Rockies.

When Adam and his driver reach a landmark beyond which the driver is no longer allowed, Adam must hike up a snow covered mountain to the doctor’s laboratory. Now he is stranded, beyond the point of no return. The research facility turns out to be a converted chalet, reminiscent of  Nikola Tesla’s Colorado Springs retreat in The Prestige.

He meets Vick, who tells him that the research is very unusual and important and that Adam is uniquely qualified. Vick avoids going into much specific detail. Adam accepts. What Adam doesn’t understand is that what uniquely qualifies him is that he is now a captive. Nobody knows where he is, he has no means of departure, and nobody will miss him if he disappears.

On this isolated, snowbound mountain peak, Dr. Vick is indeed performing very unique research. He is experimenting with life, death, and reanimation. In combination with makeshift cryogenics, he is using a bizarre recombinant DNA serum that alters and Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: SUBJECT TWO (2006) →