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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: TIERRA [EARTH] (1996)

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DIRECTED BY: Julio Medem

FEATURING: Carmelo Gómez, Emma Suárez, Silke, Karra Elejalde, Nancho Novo

PLOT: A man fresh out of a mental hospital takes a job fumigating a scourge of wood lice in the countryside in Spanish wine country, where he finds himself irresistibly drawn to both a comely young wife who is neglected by her farmer husband and a spirited wild child who is being kept as a mistress by that same husband.

Still from Tierra (1996)

COMMENTS: Ángel is cool as a cucumber. At least, Ángel as portrayed by Carmelo Gómez is cool as a cucumber. Looking like Judd Nelson at the moment when he might have been the sexiest member of the Brat Pack, he’s utterly unflappable, rolling into town in his exterminator truck and telling the residents how he will wipe out the wood lice that have been making their wine taste “earthy.” Is earthy bad? You wouldn’t think so to watch Ángel take a taste. On paper, he ought to be the most unsettled man in Spain: mental stability in question, with a trip to a sanitarium that everyone knows about, his life narrated by an alter ego that constantly reminds him of his mortality, reduced to killing bugs in a dusty nowheresville, and deeply attracted to two beautiful but distinctly opposite women, each of whom is being kept by a possessive and violent man. Ángel ought to be up to his ears in anxiety. But there he sits, laid back like the cool philosophy professor, taking things as they come, man. It’s fascinating.

Tierra is notably odd for being a character study about a character with very little character. Ángel keeps finding himself in extreme circumstances: encountering a lightning strike victim, arousing the ire of a full Roma encampment, accidentally (?) shooting a rival during a town-wide hunt for wild boars. In every case he is preternaturally calm, taking in the circumstances with the passive contentment of a saint—which the film suggests he may be, hinting more than once that he has had a life-changing experience. On the other hand, we’re also told that his stint in the mental ward was due to an “overactive imagination.” Whatever Ángel’s truth may be, Gómez plays it close to the vest.

It would be completely reasonable for Ángel to be torn between the two young women he meets in town. Ángela, the fetching young mom with a name that screams out how in sync the two must be, is played by Suárez with an aching need that she hopes the newcomer can fill. Meanwhile, Silke’s sexpot Mari always seems to be bending over a pool table with painted-on jeans and a come-hither stare, but she is just as desperate for the change in circumstances that Ángel could provide. But what exactly Ángel has to offer to either of them, beyond escape from the status quo, is not entirely clear. Medem manufactures some suspense over whether he will end up with the sweet mom or the hot chick, but neither the tension nor the choice is altogether convincing. 

In a review of another Medem film, a critic observed that “there’s the sense that he’s more interested in his ideas than in his people.” That suspicion permeates Tierra. The barrenness of the Spanish landscape captivates, creating an almost apocalyptic feel, and an outsider with a supernatural connection would absolutely fill a narrative void. But Medem’s affection for Ángel is such that his protagonist does nothing but win, which means that even the ideas aren’t all that compelling. Wherever Ángel and his new companion are headed, there is little reason to worry about them. No wonder he’s so cool all the time. He never has to feel the heat.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Like Medem’s two most recent films, ‘Tierra’ (Spanish for ‘Earth’) is an intricately structured, densely allusive affair. Its central figure is an itinerant exterminator named Angel (Carmelo Gomez) — a nod in the direction of Luis Bunuel’s ‘The Exterminating Angel,’ you might think, but only in the sense that both films draw water from the same surrealist pond… Despite its affectations, however — thanks mainly to a stunning ocher cinematographic palette, rock-solid acting and a story that’s as robustly sensual as it is otherworldly — ‘Tierra’ keeps its two feet (two of everything, in fact) firmly grounded on this Earth.” – Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post (repertory review)

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Tierra

Tierra
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Capsules

CAPSULE: PHANTASMATAPES (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Annie Choi, Joseph A. Ziemba, Norman Earl Thompson (The Revenge of Dr. X), (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die)

FEATURING: James Craig, Tota Kondo (Revenge of Dr. X); , (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die)

PLOT: A double-feature of The Revenge of Dr. X and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, presented as if it was taped off of a local TV broadcast complete with VHS tracking errors, amateur commercials, and more surprises.

Still from Phantasmatapes (2025)

COMMENTS: OK, so TV stations used to broadcast cheapo horror films late at night (especially weekend nights), interrupted by badly acted commercials for local pizza parlors, shoe stores, and video rental joints. If you never experienced this phenomenon—or if, for some sick reason, you want to relive this insomniac entertainment—the retro-weirdos at Bleeding Skull have come to your rescue.

Thankfully, they don’t recreate the experience faithfully, but instead imagine the broadcast as it might have appeared if you were dead tired and fading in and out of consciousness, or if you had the flu and had taken a greater than recommended dose of Nyquil before tuning in. First off, the movies are heavily edited, to fit into a brisk 72 minute total runtime, including commercials, station IDs, and a few other intrusive surprises I won’t spoil. The ruthless edits are not a problem with the -scripted Dr. X, an extremely dull and padded Frankenstein variation about a NASA scientist who decides to spend his vacation in Japan engineering a giant, mobile Venus flytrap. In fact, this crap still drags a little when cut down to about 30 minutes. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die moves much faster, and is still relatively coherent in the edited form, but they unfortunately cut out one of the WTF-iest moments (the catfight scene). The nearly-coherent editing exaggerates the surreal elements of the originals, while jettisoning a lot of blah filler. (Watching Dr. X unedited is recommended to cinema masochists only.)

Secondly, the two movies are not only edited, but manipulated. First off, synthy new 80s vintage soundtracks have been added— a pipe organ patch with a Casio keyboard beat underneath, that kind of thing. The digital doodling is more profound in the colorful Dr. X. Tracking errors and faded color are kept (and new ones are added), along with overlaid images: sometimes from other scenes from the original film, and sometimes from outside sources, so that suns and galaxies and landscapes and abstract dust storms occasionally play over the duller imagery. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is less altered than Dr. X—it plays straight for most of the time—but there are a few fun stylizations. One motif is that, in the more delirious second half, the mad doctor’s assistant is always shown in a different “film stock,” which looks like they played a battered VHS tape on a particularly staticky cathode tube TV set, filmed it with a cheap camcorder, and re-edited the new footage into the movie. Another cool idea is that when Jan’s severed head is monologizing, the “camera” does a slow zoom to focus directly on her mouth. Along with the soundtrack, these experiments supply the new reimagined content. I only wish they had pushed things even further. (The trailer is actually a little misleading, implying more video manipulation than actually shows up in the finished product.) The concept of using public domain B-movies as canvases for -type experiments is a thrilling one, and that potential is barely scratched here. Hopefully they will push the conceit further with the promised “Phantasmatapes 2.”

The Blu-ray includes uncut versions of both features, in VHS full-frame scans complete with lousy sound and picture quality. The Blu-ray wraps the whole package up with a commentary track from Choi and Ziemba and three nostalgia-themed shorts: a mini-documentary on the “Max Headroom” pirate signal broadcast from 1987, a supercut of “Casper the Friendly Ghost” scares, and another mini-doc on the early 80s moral panic around the Dungeons and Dragons game. All in all, this compilation will resonate strongly with a certain demographic—you probably have already decided if you’re in it—and is at least worthy of a gander for others.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

No other critics’ reviews located.

Phantasma Tapes: Volume One [Blu-ray]

Phantasma Tapes: Volume One [Blu-ray]
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE GOLEM (1920) / GOLEM (1979)

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When Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, and a host of other horror icons were lining up at the doors of Universal Studios in search of eternal fame, somehow the humble golem failed to get the invite. An immensely powerful beast molded out of clay, brought to life by a mystic Hebrew incantation, it may have had too much in common with Mary Shelley’s invention; or more likely, Hollywood’s Jewish studio chiefs prudently sidestepped anything that would offend sensitive and vociferous gentile audiences. Still, even without the spotlight, the legend of the golem has quietly endured, so much so that Golems appear in the vaunted Reader Suggestion Queue twice. Today we examine these two tales, one a literal origin story, the other something more abstract.

THE GOLEM: HOW HE CAME INTO THE WORLD (1920)

Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam

DIRECTED BY: Paul Wegener,

FEATURING: Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Lothar Müthel, Lyda Salmonova,

PLOT: When the Emperor decrees that all Jews must leave the city of Prague, Rabbi Loew invokes the help of the demon Astaroth to construct a defender for his people out of clay.

COMMENTS: An early classic of German expressionist cinema, you will find quite a few reviews of this silent rendering of the original folk tale about the avenger of clay. They tend to focus on three main topics: the source material that came to inform the film, the peculiar history of how it came to be made, and a detailed recap of the plot. It feels like someone’s got my number, because that’s where my instincts would normally lead me, as well. So let’s try and cover those basesin one fell swoop, and then we can turn in a different direction: the ancient folktale was codified in a 1915 novel, which writer/director/star Wegener spun into a trilogy. The first two, set in contemporary times, are now lost to history, but the third, a prequel delivering the backstory in which a rabbi summons the warrior to defend the Jewish people but soon loses control of his creation, has survived the years, and that leads us here.

That background established, it’s important to note how neatly The Golem serves to meet the moment while paving the way for the horror legends of the future. While the story is set in medieval Prague, the fanciful decoration owes more to Méliès than the Middle Ages: impossible peaks tower over the city, while buildings are adorned with twisty staircases and walls never Continue reading THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE GOLEM (1920) / GOLEM (1979) →

Capsules

ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR, VOLUME 2

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Severin Films. 13 disc set.

Severin Films continues their groundbreaking folk-horror “college course in a box” set with the second semester. Expanding and exploring on themes and offering more selections to discover and debate, this time around it has 24 features representing 18 countries, along with tons of extras. Acknowledging the literary roots of the genre, Vol. 2 also comes with a 250 page book, “A Folk Horror Storybook,” a collection of 12 short stories by noted writers in the genre—Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Cassandra Khaw amongst them—with an introduction by Kier-La Janisse, who returns as producer/curator of the whole shebang. The “expansion of themes” may cause some to feel cheated, as there are only a handful of films that fit the expected parameters of “horror” here. But that objection may be more of a failing of the viewer. There are elements of the frightful in all of the selections, and although perhaps  “uncanny” or “spectral” would be better terms, “horror” makes for a good umbrella.

Still from To Fire You Come At Last (2023)
To Fire You Come At Last

Disc 1 features the UK with a film by writer Sean (“England’s Screaming”) Hogan, To Fire You Come At Last (2023), a knowing homage to BBC shows like “Dead of Night” and “Ghost Stories For Christmas.” Four men carry a coffin to a graveyard along a “corpse road” and encounter dangers: from each other, and from something else. Bonus features include commentary by Hogan and producers, along with an earlier short by Hogan, “We Always Find Ourselves In The Sea,” also with commentary, and a separate featurette on corpse roads.

Paired with To Fire is Psychomania, a 1973 B-movie by Don Sharp involving juvenile delinquent bikers whose leader (Nicky Henson from Witchfinder General) learns the secret of returning from the dead—and promptly does it! He then starts recruiting the other members to follow suit. There’s witchery/devil/frog worship, George Sanders (in his last role), a sappy ballad, and lots of cycle action, making for some fine British cheese. This was a previous Severin release with featurettes about the actors and music, all which have been ported over, along with a new commentary by Hellebore Magazine editor Maria J. Perez Cuervo and a new short documentary on stone circles and standing stones.

Disc 2 focuses on two American features: The Enchanted (1984) with Julius Harris and Larry Miller (acting under the name Will Sennet), directed by Carter Lord, and 1973’s Who Fears The Devil? (AKA The Legend of Hillbilly John), with Hedges Capers and Severn Darden, directed by John Newland. Based on a story by Elizabeth Coatsworth, Continue reading ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR, VOLUME 2 →

Capsules

CAPSULE: MR. K (2025)

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“Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you.”–Rainier Maria Rilke

Mr. K is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: Tallulah H. Schwab

FEATURING:

PLOT: A magician planning to spend one night in a hotel finds it impossible to leave.

Still from Mr. K (2025)

COMMENTS: Mr. K clearly has a lot of time to contemplate the universe within. In a brief yet moving introductory sequence, he performs his magic act, setting a miniature solar system in orbit, for an audience who couldn’t be less interested. He then checks into a hotel, planning to move on after one night. As the title’s nod to Franz Kafka indicates, K. instead falls into a trap of Kafkaesque absurdity, though the weirdness here is of the paint-the-numbers variety.

It quickly becomes obvious the hotel exists as a world unto itself. After losing his way while trying to find the lobby, K. meets a string of eccentric characters, all of who impart tidbits of wisdom K. barely has the patience to listen to before he’s corralled back into his room by a roving brass band. On a second attempt to escape, he ends up in the room of two elderly sisters who have lived in the hotel for so long without ever leaving, they’re forced to admit they can’t remember how to find the exit.

One of them mutters something about the Oracle and rumors of divinity. Mysterious graffiti reading “Liberator” is seen scrawled across the endless, identical corridors. After another thwarted attempt to leave, K. ends up in the kitchen where he’s thrown an apron and told to get cracking—eggs, that is. Despite his insistence that he’s running late for an appointment and really must be leaving, the hotel immediately subsumes K. into its rhythms.

For viewers of a certain age, this will sound like familiar territory. It brings to mind that other film wherein a savior figure, encouraged to reach his full potential by a mysterious oracle, sets about freeing the ignorance masses from the narrow confines of their reality.

At first, K. takes great pains to insist he’s perfectly ordinary and not the Liberator everyone’s whispering about (and therefore Glover’s antic potential is never fully realized). He is, however, the only person in the entire hotel who’s concerned about the strange noises coming from the walls. Leaking pipes take the blame for periodic bouts of structural groaning and dripping wallpaper. After a House of Leaves-style investigation into the measurements of the rooms, K. realizes the building, despite being bigger on the inside, is also steadily getting smaller.

K. desperately tries to convince his few friends to assist with his seemingly futile quest to find the exit, but they’re satisfied with their existence in the hotel. Why would they want to leave? It provides everything they need, and with the gourmet meals continually being served, it seems there could be worse places to be trapped (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with quite so many food stylists listed in the credits).

K. continues mapping the hotel on his own, even as detractors work to sabotage his progress. With the discovery of what’s really going within the hotel’s walls, the story veers onto slightly weirder, though still familiar, territory. As the journey deepens, Mr. K asks a lot of questions but provides no answers. It’s left open-ended enough for the viewer to decide on their own interpretation if, by the end, they’re still interested.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Glover’s baggy role doesn’t really suit his weird charms… while casting Glover as a reluctant everyman takes admirable chutzpah, there’s not much to ‘Mr. K beyond its second-hand surrealism and strained counter-mythmaking.”–Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com (contemporaneous)

Mr. K [Blu-ray]

Mr. K [Blu-ray]

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