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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: SISTERS (1972)

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DIRECTED BY: Brian De Palma

FEATURING: Margot Kidder, , , Charles Durning, Lisle Wilson

PLOT: A reporter witnesses a murder through the window of a nearby apartment, but her investigation leads her to a mysterious pair of conjoined twins with a dark and disturbing past.

Still from Sisters (1972)

COMMENTS: Brian De Palma loves Alfred Hitchcock. Everyone knows that. Sure, he’s capable of turning a Stephen King novel into a horror classic or an old TV spy show into a -led blockbuster, but one thing we know for sure is that, once he got over his reputation as a comedy director, there’s nothing he’d rather do than a slavish impersonation of the Master of Suspense. Want proof? All you need to do is look at Body Double. Or Blow Out. Or the twisty thriller that made his name, Sisters.

The thing is, when you actually watch Sisters, what quickly becomes apparent is that De Palma is in conversation with Hitchcock as much as he is in thrall to him. Alfred Eaker compared De Palma to “a free jazz artist, filtering, reworking, improvising, and expanding on a body of filmmakers, which includes Hitchcock (among many others) to craft postmodern compositions that often are warmer and (as blasphemous as it may be to some) more startlingly original than the master.” Eaker also calls Sisters one of the best films of the decade. High praise, but quite defensible given the genuine shocks, eerie backstory, sprinter’s pace, and uncomfortable laughs the film still delivers. In the great tradition of low-budget horror flicks that rise above due to their cleverness and wit, Sisters is a welcome surprise.

Sisters does wear its forebears on its sleeve, with allusions to Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo among the most recognizable (to say nothing of the unmistakable sounds of Bernard Herrmann, who De Palma lured out of semi-retirement to lend his trademark screeching violins to the soundtrack), but the student demonstrates more facility with modern sensibilities than the Master, with powerful insights into racism and misogyny, comfort with sexuality, and  willingness to indulge the supernatural. Most notably, he’s found a subject that would absolutely appeal to Hitchcock, turning the true story of the conjoined Krivoshlyapova twins into Kidder’s pretty girl with a very dark past. Where Hitchcock made do with doppelgängers and confused identities, De Palma uses a genuine medical curiosity as his launchpad.

Mind you, none of this theft homage would mean a thing if the film didn’t work on its own terms. De Palma opens with a classic bit of misdirection, aping a “Candid Camera”-like show to introduce our charming hero couple, coquettish Kidder with her Québécois accent and babe-in-the-woods demeanor and the charming, unsuspecting Wilson. Their romantic whirlwind occupies the first third of the film. Wilson is an almost perfect gentleman, while Kidder tries to explain away her unusually possessive ex-husband (Finley, whose Slugworthian vibes never let up). If De Palma steals anything from Hitchcock, it’s the value of a full-blown paradigm shift that justifies admitting no one after the first act.

The film sputters a bit in Act II as the baton is handed over to Salt, who is a fine heroine but suffers from the script’s need to isolate her by setting her adrift in a sea of backstory and mansplainers. (Fun Easter egg: the headline of the news clipping from her column adorning her back wall reads, “Why We Call Them Pigs.”) It’s the final act, when she finally discovers the strange truth of Danielle and Dominique’s unusual condition and upbringing, that pays off in the form of the one scene that owes nothing to Hitchcock: a nightmare sequence in which Salt imagines herself as Kidder’s conjoined twin and gets the scoop on just what screwed up the twins so many years ago. It’s a moment that DePalma gets to claim all for himself.

It’s hard to deny that Sisters is De Palma doing Hitchcock. The parallels are just too obvious, right through to the final joke of the unclaimed MacGuffin. The truth, though, is that he does Hitchcock extremely well, with a freshness and modernity that the Master’s later works struggle to capture. If this is mere copycattery, audiences were right to demand more of it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“From start to finish, Sisters is weird, but it rarely feels like it’s just for the sake of being weird… the story is infused with so many off-kilter details that even when you know what’s going to happen, you can never predict how you’ll get there.” – Jenna Stoeber, Polygon (Blu-ray)

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

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Sisters (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: HYSTERIA (1997)

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    DIRECTED BY: Rene Daalder

    FEATURING: Patrick McGoohan, Amanda Plummer, Michael Maloney, Emmanuelle Vaugier

    PLOT: Clinical psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Fry delivers an especially troubled patient to the only place he believes can help, the remote Langston Clinic, where he discovers that the cure for mental illness may be worse than the ailment.Still from Hysteria (1997)

    COMMENTS: “Welcome to the last good old-fashioned madhouse!” exclaims Dr. Harvey Langston, and he does not deceive. They just don’t make mad scientists like they used to, and Hysteria is a throwback to that wonderful time, both historically and cinematically, when society just threw all its lunatics into one big Gothic mansion and trusted to let God sort it out. The fun is in seeing just how nuts people are going to get, and once you’ve made the decision to cast Patrick McGoohan as your mad scientist and Amanda Plummer as his majordomo, you’re setting the crazy bar pretty high.

    A prologue hints at a sinister explanation for what’s going on at the Langston Clinic (and is quickly forgotten), but soon after Fry’s arrival, the real secret is revealed: Dr. Langston has pioneered the use of neurotransmitters to establish a mental link among everyone at the clinic, patients and doctors alike, turning the whole place into a kind of hive mind. The result is that the afflictions of these patients are shared among the group, meaning anyone could suddenly lapse into Tourette’s or begin stuttering or suddenly rip open their blouse. Hysteria‘s great innovation is not that everyone in the asylum is crazy, but that the crazy is collective. This spirit informs the film’s wildest scene, in which a sexual encounter is appreciated far more widely than one might expect.

    Despite moments like this, or a surprisingly moving scene in which a victim of paralysis attempts to crowdsource the ability to dance, Hysteria isn’t weird so much as it is ambitious. Presenting itself as a traditional horror flick in which a lone man must do battle with the forces of insanity, it eventually reveals itself to be a lunatic-themed metaphor for “it takes a village.” It’s arguable that everyone we meet is at least a little bit wacko, especially our hero Dr. Fry, esteemed clinical psychiatrist and clear voice of reason in a world gone mad. Of course, the only reason he is driving his troubled patient to a mysterious clinic in the woods is because he’s blown up his spot in the big city, raging out at a policy that favors drugs over hugs and fiercely determined to rescue this woman for whom he secretly harbors a crush. We buy in because of Michael Maloney’s passionate demeanor and plummy English accent, but the movie wants you to know you’re backing the wrong horse.

    Hysteria is best enjoyed as a fun bit of misdirection masquerading as a traditional horror. The effort is aided its strong cast, including McGoohan playing both paternal and happily demented, and Plummer as the true mastermind, earning pathos through her full commitment. (Special shout-out to Vaugier, who successfully accomplishes the two tasks set before her: to play convincingly crazy and to look beautiful when called upon to take off all her clothes.) It’s far from groundbreaking, but moves in enough unexpected directions to reward the casual viewer: a good old-fashioned madhouse.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Hysteria is a film that can’t quite find the right balance between the bizarre and the intriguing… it can seem as if Daalder is including weird things for the sake of weirdness, like some kind of David Lynch wannabe... It’s admirably ambitious, but the bulk of the film ignores Daalder’s more intriguing ideas and comes off either too conventional or too aggressively weird.” – Tyler Foster, DVD Talk (Blu-Ray release)

    (This movie was nominated for review by jamesoliva76. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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    Hysteria

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      It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

      IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BUBBLE (1966)

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      AKA Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth

      DIRECTED BY:

      FEATURING: Michael Cole, Deborah Walley, Johnny Desmond

      PLOT: When a storm, and his passenger’s birth pangs, force a charter pilot flying a pregnant woman and her husband to make a sudden landing during a storm, the travelers find themselves trapped in a strange community.

       

      COMMENTS: Another brainchild of Arch Oboler, The Bubble is an odd little curiosity. Oboler had a surprise hit with the first American 3-D picture, Bwana Devil, in 1952. Fourteen years later, he tried to replicate this success, despite the subsequent boom and bust of the 3-D fad. Not only do The Bubble‘s technical gimmicks hearken back to the 50s, its plot derives heavily from another cheap sci-fi horror flick made ten years previously, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). But while Body Snatchers would earn a place in the American psyche, and become subject to numerous remakes (along with Night of the Living Dead, the zombie film these earlier efforts anticipate), The Bubble never gained quite the same degree of cultural cachet.

      The Bubble begins in the heart of the action. A young married couple, Mark and Cathy, plan a brief stay in a remote mountain cabin before she gives birth to their first child. They hire a charter pilot, Tony Herric, to fly them to their destination but their plans go awry when they encounter unexpected bad weather and Cathy goes into labor. After losing radio contact, Tony makes a sudden descent onto what he thinks is a landing strip, but turns out to be a deserted stretch of road flanked by street lamps. Having no idea where they are, the trio seem to experience amazing luck when a cab pulls up out of nowhere.

      “Cab, mister?” asks the driver.
      Mark and Tony hurriedly explain how they need to get Cathy to a hospital ASAP.
      “Cab, mister?” replies the driver, as though he hasn’t heard a word they’ve just said.

      They manage to make it to the hospital, but since the baby is a month premature, the doctor insists on keeping him in a incubator for at least a week. While Cathy recovers in the hospital, Mark wanders empty streets, trying to find a working telephone. Having no luck, he finally runs into Tony at a bar that looks suspiciously like a saloon from a Western movie set. Here they encounter more odd behavior from the bartender. Like the cab driver, he’s a one trick pony. He polishes glasses and repeats the phrase, “What’ll it be, gents?,” but that’s it.

      The 3-D action heats up a little when a cabaret dancer performs, her fishnet-stockinged legs projecting off the stage into the audience, which includes the very appreciative Tony. He then offers her a drink, and in an otherwise unexplained moment, the tray of beer bottles and glasses floats off the counter and flies across the room—

      Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE BUBBLE (1966) →

      It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

      IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: A BOMB WAS STOLEN (1962)

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      AKA They Stole the Bomb

      DIRECTED BY: Ion Popescu-Gopo

      FEATURING: Iurie Darie, Liliana Tomescu, Haralambie Boros

      PLOT: An everyday man finds himself in the midst of conflicts between opposing factions for the possession of a small nuclear bomb.

      Still from A Bomb Was Stolen (1962)

      COMMENTS: The Cold War nuclear annihilation paranoia that raged from the late 1940s to the 1980s left a lasting impact on global cinema. ‘s nihilistic political satire Dr. Strangelove (1964) is perhaps the most iconic work on the subject.  And who can forget the ominous haunting animation When the Wind Blows (1986)?

      The cinema of the former Eastern Bloc followed a slightly different, more didactic approach, however; it tried to offer constructive arguments. Even Krakatit (1948), a Czechoslovakian film following a dreamlike logic, offers a moral lesson towards the end. Romania’s A Bomb Was Stolen, despite stylistic differences, is a product of the same ideological line. The plot follows an everyday man finding himself amidst a chaos of conflicts for the possession of a small stolen nuclear bomb. By pure chance, he comes into possession of a valise containing nuclear explosives, without the slightest idea of its contents. While wandering around town trying to find the bag’s owners, he finds love with a beautiful girl working in the tramways.

      The first few moments of this film establishes long shots of deserted landscapes, showcasing a formalist geometrical austerity in the composition, but this aesthetic won’t be sustained for the film. Instead, variety shows and silent era slapstick cinema are the main influences. Silent cinema in fact dictates the style, since dialogue is completely absent. What we have is exaggerated, hysterical acting and a plethora of visual gags—from typical food fights to the most bizarre (an inventive method of assassination). Add in futuristic imagery from a 1950’s sci-fi B-movie and a few stop-motion animated effects and the result is a playful overall tone.

      Our protagonist remains an everyday man ignorant of the bigger events surrounding him; but not in a Kafkaesque sense. He is never in real danger, always having a sense of control and agency. In the end, along with his newfound girlfriend (an exemplary representative of the working class) he even have constructive propositions to suggest, contributing to positive social change.

      WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

      “…starts and ends with satire and comical surrealism, and presents a fun farce with slapstick in between.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

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      Director Retrospective, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, Shorts

      DIRECTED BY JIM HENSON: TIME PIECE (1965) / THE CUBE (1969)

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      September 24 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of Jim Henson, in this writer’s opinion one of the greatest creative artists of the 20th century. Even though we have been without his imagination and humanism for nearly four decades, the loss is still keenly felt.

      Although we have never enshrined any of his productions here, Henson’s projects make a legitimate bid for full-fledged weirdness. The vaudevillian surrealism of the Muppets borrows as much from Ernie Kovacs as it does from Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, and The Muppet Movie (1979) is an unexpectedly metatextual work, to the point where Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem come riding to the rescue by virtue of having read the script. And this was no accident. Blessed with a blank check from the success of the Muppets, Henson opted to direct the dark fantasies The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, At the very least, he’s weird-friendly.

      There is another Jim Henson, though, one prone to seeing doom around the corner. You get hints of it in his most popular works, like the way “The Muppet Show” is always just one Gonzo-led stunt away from disaster. It’s likely that this was a holdover from his earliest days in show business, when he was finding different kinds of success, but none that brought stability or security. In the years between his first foray into television, “Sam and Friends,” and his eventual arrival on Sesame Street, Henson was a hustler, grabbing work wherever it might be found. The Muppets were regulars on “The Jimmy Dean Show,” frequent guests on Ed Sullivan, and leading lights in TV advertising. Amidst all this, Henson was a movie director, and two films from this period represent an inflection point, a moment when Henson could have legitimately become a pessimistic avant-garde filmmaker. Fate intervened, arguably for the betterment of all mankind, but it’s interesting to glance at the road not taken. 

      “Time Piece” has its place in history as the project that earned Henson the only Academy Award nomination of his career. A meticulously planned short film, “Time Piece” features Henson himself (looking, in the words of Boston Phoenix critic David Harris, “like a beatnik posing as an office worker”) as he flits about his imagination Continue reading DIRECTED BY JIM HENSON: TIME PIECE (1965) / THE CUBE (1969) →