Category Archives: Capsules

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE ONE YOU FEED (2020)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Drew Harwood

FEATURING: Gareth Koorzen, Rebecca Fraiser, Drew Harwood

PLOT: When a hiker is injured, a man and woman bring him back to their remote farm to recuperate, where they engage in mind games of attraction and power that are destined to meet a calamitous end.

Still from "The One You Feed" (2020)

COMMENTS: The One You Feed luxuriates in its silences. The Stranger’s wanderings through a Western landscape are a wordless reverie, and the only residents of the ranch where he finds himself laid up after a wild animal attack speak in rudimentary instructions, when they deign to speak at all. He is an isolated character, by choice and then by happenstance, and we are forced to consider the world largely via the visual information available to us.

It soon becomes clear that the silence may be as much out of a lack of things to say as it is a mission statement. Writer/director Harwood (he also takes credits as editor, production designer, and casting director, and shares producer, story, costume design, and set decoration credits with Koorzen) has created a funhouse mystery, with a pair of antagonists (The Woman and The Man) who behave curiously and arbitrarily. They live in a timeless space, with modern tools on their farm but a 19th-century aesthetic indoors. Harwood clearly hopes that by withholding information, he’ll stoke interest. The names of the characters point to his dedication to this strategy.

The result, however, is not intriguing, but frustrating. If no one talks, then we’re going to rely on actions to guide us through. But if no one takes action, then it’s going to be damn hard to figure out what anybody’s game is. So we have to settle for what we can see: the Stranger is crippled by injury (and by a haunted memory which will be teased out over the course of the film). The Man is beefcake, dressed in his overalls with one strap carelessly unbuckled, delivering sparse dialogue that alternately identifies him as a himbo or an aspiring poet. Meanwhile, The Woman is harsh and shrill with a soupcon of neediness, and her propensity for plunging necklines suggests she shops exclusively in the Sexy Homesteader section at Spirit of Halloween. It’s all tropes, but tropes without consistency of purpose.

I’ve seen this film described as “romantic,” and while both of The Stranger’s healers/tormentors copulate with him, both encounters border on or fully embody rape. When he ultimately makes his plea to one of them to join him, the moment hasn’t been earned by anything that has come before. If this is supposed to be a universal tale of love, attraction, and jealousy, then the universality is based on capriciousness and hostility.

Ultimately, the roots of the film’s faults can be found in the title, which alludes to a metaphor about two wolves living inside a person’s heart. One thrives on love and hope, the other on hate and despair, and they are in perpetual conflict. Which will win? See the title. But in The One You Feed, there is no love, no hope. Violence is only a moment away, and anything more than a stock motivation is nowhere to be found. There’s only one wolf in this tale, and it eats the only thing it is served.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s a dreamy tone to this artful drama… The plot is meandering and vague, so it’s not clear what actor-filmmaker Drew Harwood is saying, but the ideas that he throws around have an intriguing kick to them, while the archly surreal tone and quietly intense interaction holds the interest.” – Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: PERDITA DURANGO (1997)

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AKA Dance with the Devil

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Rosie Perez, , Aimee Graham, Harley Cross,

PLOT: Perdita Durango teams up with Santeria priest/bank robber Romeo to transport a truckload of fetuses to Las Vegas, kidnapping a couple of college kids along the way for fun.

Still from Perdita Durango (1997)

COMMENTS: Sexy leads Rosie Perez and . Alex de la Iglesia directing with a mid-range budget. Barry “Wild at Heart” Gifford co-scripting from his own novel. Small parts played by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and .

From this assemblage of talent, you’d predict an unqualified gonzo masterpiece. But, although it has its fans, Perdita Durango‘s results are qualified, at best. True, the film is wild and unhinged: any movie with black market fetuses as a plot point has got some impudent imagination going for it. The problem is that Perdita Durango and Romeo Dolorosa aren’t sympathetic outlaws like Sailor and Lula from Wild at Heart, or the sinful-but-valiant trio of de la Iglesia’s previous outing, Day of the Beast. They’re unrepentant sociopaths, in the vein of Mickey and Mallory, but lacking those characters’ satirical edge. That leaves de la Iglesia trying to navigate a dangerous border between black comedy and grindhouse nihilism; and although the movie work in spurts, he never gets the difficult tone flowing just right.

The big problem is the rape scene that happens fairly early on. It’s one thing to rob banks, or even to plan to eat your victims in a Santeria ritual—those are understandable, forgivable movie crimes, motivated by greed and misplaced mystical beliefs. But this sadistic violation is motivated by pure meanness, and Perdita and Romeo can never quite recover our affection. The script only compounds that problem when, instead of offing the dead weight after their cannibal ritual is foiled, Perdita and Romeo let their blonde collegiate kidnap victims tag along for the rest of their spree. Their neglect in ruthlessly killing these two is totally out of character, and seems transparently motivated by narrative interests—giving the criminals someone to talk to other than each other, providing opportunities for suspense from the teens’ escape attempts, and maybe even granting Perdita some kind of unearned character growth—rather than any sort of logic.

And that’s a shame, because Perdita Durango has a lot of cool pieces that could have cohered into a fun movie: Javier Bardem’s Aztec mullet. Random Herb Alpert music scattered throughout. Genuine sexual chemistry between Perez and Bardem. Santeria rituals involving snorting obscene amounts of coke and tossing hearts at the wall while Screamin’ Jay wails in the background. A jaguar dream sequence. But alas, when there’s no one in the movie to root for, and not enough humor (or weirdness) to compensate for the depravity, it’s all for naught.

Normally, I would blame the distributors for cutting the film by ten controversial minutes, retitling it Dance with the Devil, and barely releasing it at all—but this project was a mess from the beginning. It was originally to be directed by Bigas Luna, with Madonna, Victoria Abril, , , and all variously attached before dropping out. Four writers worked on the screenplay. Dialogue slips from Spanish to English (heavily accented, often difficult to understand English, in Bardem’s case). Overall, the production was unsettled, and the chaotic, underwhelming results were almost to be expected. Bardem would go on to better things, Barry Gifford would again collaborate with on Lost Highway, and de la Iglesia would bounce back; but this is something of a low point for most everyone involved. Nevertheless, thanks to Severin films and their 2021 Blu-ray release for rescuing this early de la Iglesia film from oblivion.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…[a] kinetic and bizarre journey through the dark underworld of wild debauchery, reckless abandon, and Santeria.”–Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

(This movie was nominated for review [as Dance with the Devil] by “StarWanderer.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: DAY OF THE BEAST (1995)

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El día de la bestia

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Santiago Segura, Armando De Razza

PLOT: A priest decides he must become a great sinner as part of a scheme to summon the Devil and stop the Apocalypse; he enlists a death metal fan and a TV occultist to help him.

Still from Day of the Beast (1995)

COMMENTS: Cult favorite Day of the Beast builds its story around a trinity of characters, who become sort of the three anti-wise men at the nativity of the Antichrist. Having discovered the place and date of the Antichrist’s birth (typical of copycat Satan, it’s to be on Christmas Day), priest Angel enacts a plan to draw the devil’s attention by committing as many sins as possible. His apprentice crimes involve him stealing a beggar’s alms and assaulting a helpless mime (an act that shows how poor his grasp of the idea of “evil” really is). Angel knows he needs help to get that real, gnarly aura of wickedness, so he seeks out death metal records to play backwards; impressed with his musical taste, dimwitted and instinctually sinful record clerk Jose Maria agrees to tag along on the apostate’s adventures. Now, the duo need only recruit occultist television charlatan Cavan to teach them the necessary rituals to summon Old Scratch.

Of course, that requires them to convince a reluctant Cavan to join them… and to acquire the blood of a virgin and other items necessary for the ritual. Around the halfway mark, things get truly wild; de la Iglesia picks up the pace, sending his trio through an obstacle course that sees them fending off a matron with a shotgun and hanging off a neon billboard atop a skyscraper. Along the way there are a few genuinely weird scenes: a naked LSD-scarfing grandpa, and a trip to a convenience store where the staff has been dispatched by an anarchist murder cult. But mostly, the film is a series of black comedy hijinks and effective Satanic horror imagery (the devil is depicted both by a real goat and by a man in a goat costume). It’s quite a ride: subversive, but with comic characters you actually like and root for.

This was de la Iglesia’s sophomore feature and is typical of his output: genre pictures with strong characterizations, brutal violence, transgressive imagery, dark humor, and complex, fast-paced plots. They all have a / energy to them that might be best described more as “wild” than “weird.” Perhaps we should consider de la Iglesia’s work “weird-adjacent.” Whatever you call it, it’s well worth checking out.

El día de la bestia  was a big success in Spain, even notching a Best Director Goya (and five other awards, too, although not Best Picture). Unfortunately, other than a successful international film festival run, it did not screen much outside of its native land, and was poorly distributed on home video, not even scoring a region 1 DVD release. Severin rectified this absence in 2021 with a Blu-ray edition of Day of the Beast (along with another rarely-seen de la Iglesia movie, 1997’s Perdita Durango). Along with a newly restored print, the deluxe release contains a feature-length “making of” documentary, interviews with de la Iglesia and select cast and crew, and most substantially, de la Iglesia’s 1990 short film “Mirandas Asesinas,” an antique-looking B&W horror comedy featuring Álex Angulo as a literal-minded psychopath.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… appealingly unrefined, this serving of satanic excess and good-naturedly dumb humor should please young audiences with a taste for off-the-wall cult fare.”–David Rooney, Variety (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: TEN MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT (2020)

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DIRECTED BY: Erik Bloomquist

FEATURING: Caroline Williams, Adam Weppler, Nicole Kang, William Youmans, Nicholas Tucci

PLOT: DJ Amy Marlowe is bitten by a flying animal on the way to her final broadcast, and things get a little bloody.

COMMENTS: Does Ten Minutes to Midnight embody low-budget horror? Let’s go down the list. Closed environment? Check: radio station, nary an outside scene. Undercurrent of macabre humor? Check: the night manager is a skeezy, New Wave-vintage coke-snorter, while the oddball security guard spouts good cheer with a sociopath’s menace. Pile of corpses? Check: the ladies room becomes shin-deep in victims. Brief run-time? Check: 72 minutes zip right along. Throwback lead? Super check: Caroline “Stretch” Williams owns her role as DJ Amy Marlowe. But sophomore director Erik Bloomquist throws in peripherals left, right, and center. With all that weight on the sides, the center does not hold.

From the start, Ten Minutes veers into ambiguation. The establishing shot, something I always note, shows an upside-down clock positioned at—you guessed it—11:50. (The outdoor light levels and an urgent broadcast about “tonight’s” rain storm answer the “AM or PM?” question; warning: you will get very comfortable with this clock setting.) Amy’s adventure begins offscreen and the dual bite-mark she receives on her to work introduces one possible explanation for the strangeness that ensues.

As far as cast goes, aside from the over-caffeinated security guard Ernie (Nicholas Tucci, deceased) and the station’s past-his-prime manager, there’s young-guy-with-lip-piercings radio technician Aaron who might be nursing a crush for the mature blonde DJ. And oh yeah, incongruous UC Berkeley grad Sienna (Nicole Kang) is there to act as some generational counterpoint to Amy.

You cannot hope to adequately convey much with a runtime under an hour-and-a-quarter, but that doesn’t stop our boy Bloomquist from trying. Ten Minutes explores transition—Amy is menopausal and retiring, Sienna is starting a new job, Aaron just broke up with another redhead, and callers’ lives are at a crossroads. It explores aging, death, purgatory, the modern work environment. It wants to be a vampire movie, a psychological study, a meditation on mortality, and a horror comedy… Imagine you’re at an all-you-can-eat buffet that is rigged to explode unless you consume all the offerings, from the bad pizza to the passable fresh-carved roast beef, in 72 minutes; Bloomquist seems to have endured an artistic form of this hypothetical. As a rule, I don’t mind a movie leaving me with more questions than answers, and I don’t necessarily shy away from incoherence. But while Ten Minutes to Midnight left me overstuffed with bloody imagery and thematic twists, it left me hungry for something more substantial.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In the span of just 70 minutes [Bloomquist] manages to cover an awful lot of ground, creating a surrealist tone early on that he never lets up until the closing credits roll…  a B-grade feature wrapped up in a 1980’s mindset that gloriously marches to its own bizarre beat.”–Peter Gray, This Is Film (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE AMUSEMENT PARK (1973/2019)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Lincoln Mazaael

PLOT: An old man spends a terrifying afternoon at an amusement park.

Still from The Amusement Park (1973)

COMMENTS: In 1973, the Lutheran Society decided to fund an educational, public service film about the problems faced by the elderly. Certainly a worthy, even progressive, cause. But it doesn’t seem like the first thing you’d say when pitching this project to the congregation is, “You know who we need to get to make this for us? The Night of the Living Dead guy.”

The sedate opening, with the distinguished looking older actor Lincoln Mazaael strolling along, reciting the problems faced by the seniors—neglect, disrespect, high health care costs, diminished incomes, crushing loneliness, and so on—is probably the kind of respectful, boring homily the church had in mind when they commissioned the project. But this turns out to be only a brief introduction; Romero quickly shuffles his protagonist into an all-white room and initiates a “Twilight Zone”-style scenario where he sees another old man, battered and bandaged, cowering in the corner. After awkwardly attempting to engage this beaten figure (whose identity is no real secret) in conversation, Mazaael then declares that he intends to enjoy his day and confidently strolls into the amusement park.

His adventure begins satirically enough, with a long line of older people buying carnival tickets from a combination salesman/pawnbroker. But events progress from the undignified to the brutalizing, as Mazaael finds himself barred from the more invigorating rides, witness to a bumper car accident between an old woman and a reckless whippersnapper, scammed by a pickpocket, menaced by bikers, and shuffled through an impersonal assembly-line medical clinic. As he journeys through the park, he accumulates bumps and bruises, both physical and emotional. Younger pedestrians thoughtlessly jostling him, or callously passing him by when he is clearly in distress, becomes a repeated motif.

Visually, The Amusement Park is far from glamorous, but the unpretentious, antique presentation suits the material. It’s shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, naturally, and although it was restored as much as possible, the print still looks brown and dusty, often reminiscent of stock footage. Besides Mazaael, the cast is completely composed of amateurs (the many elderly extras were probably recruited from a local nursing home, and reportedly had more fun on the shoot then they had experienced in years). The donated amusement park location provides almost all the production value; a few cheap props (a pine box, a comically oversized pencil) appear (although to be fair, the makeup is good). None of this proves to be a problem; the entire thing ends up looking like a home movie, which makes it feel even more like an artifact from some bizarro alternate universe.

I can’t say I found The Amusement Park viscerally terrifying. Even though zombielike figures, Grim Reapers, and dead rats randomly pop into frames every now and then, there is no real sense of mystery or existential dread; the blatantly allegorical nature of the project makes it more thought-provoking than scary. The Lutheran Council, however, was apparently horrified, concluding that the results were too gruesome for the edification of their parishioners and burying the film. Nevertheless, the mismatch between message and messenger is precisely what makes The Amusement Park fresh and fascinating. Making its point efficiently in under an hour, anyone with an interest in Romero, experimental horror, or obscure cinematic oddities will want to put this ambitious little curiosity on their bucket list.

After finishing up it’s limited run in theaters, The Amusement Park will stream on Shudder starting June 8. Who knows what the future holds after that?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Following a group of senior citizens as they get terrorized during a surreal trip to a Pittsburgh theme park – where ride tickets are gained through the bartering of precious family heirlooms and carnival barkers are scam artists ready to pick your pocket – The Amusement Park is one of Romero’s trademark hammer-over-the-head metaphors.”–Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail