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List Candidates, Reader Recommendations

READER RECOMMENDATION: THE TINGLER (1959)

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Submission for the reader review writing contest #4 by Shane Wilson

“In the final count, I think we must have buzzed 20,000,000 behinds.” – William Castle

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman (the older brother of “Dobie Gillis” star Dwyane Hickman)

PLOT: There are two plots running simultaneously in The Tingler. In the first, Dr. Warren Chapin (Price) frees the parasite that lives in the human spine and grows when the host experiences fear, and must save the unsuspecting public from the menace he’s unleashed by stressing the importance of screaming.  In the other plot, film director William Castle raises his penchant for outrageous gimmicks to new heights by running shocks of electricity through auditorium seats.

Still from The Tingler (1959)

BACKGROUND:

  • As was his wont, director/producer Castle supported the release of The Tingler with several gimmicks, including hiring actresses to play nurses to stand outside the theater and planting audience members to scream and faint at key moments in the picture.  His piece de resistance was called “Percepto.”  For the theatrical release, Castle arranged for a handful of auditorium seats to be wired with war-surplus electric vibrators.  At a key moment during the film’s climax, the projectionist would activate the zappers, buzzing unsuspecting viewers (or eagerly-hoping viewers) with a jolt of electricity, thereby breaking the fourth wall in a way 3-D never could.
  • William Castle earned his reputation for his attention-getting publicity stunts. Beneath his huckster’s heart, however, lays a surprising credibility. Castle served as assistant director on Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai, and produced the horror classic Rosemary’s Baby.
  • Directors Stuart Gordon and John Waters both included The Tingler in their Top Ten lists for “Sight and Sound”‘s 2002 Top 10 poll.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: A blank projection screen, onto which ambles the shadow of a large rubber insect puppet, followed immediately by blackness, the sound of faux audience members shrieking their heads off, and the unmistakable command of Vincent Price: “Scream! Scream for your lives! The Tingler is loose in this theater!”

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: William Castle always dabbles in oddness. The Tingler’s means of engaging the audience certainly ups the ante in this regard. Whereas previous auditorium gimmicks were content to merely startle theater patrons, The Tingler was now actively complicit in harming the audience, by attempting to electrocute select viewers.  On another level, though, The Tingler represents a fascinating metatextual experience. On the one hand, Percepto pushes the film beyond the boundaries of the screen by affecting the audience physically, rather than through the usual avenues of picture and soundtrack.  The movie not only breaks the fourth wall, but actually rebuilds it behind the audience. Consider Price’s admonition: “The Tingler is loose in this theater!”  He means the very theater we are sitting in.  We have suddenly assumed the role of the audience in the film-inside-the-film, and for a moment, we are actually part of the action, not merely in front of it.  Castle’s prank destroys the proscenium.  Many films play games with the insurmountable distance between the screen and the seats.  Castle is happy to throw it away entirely.

COMMENTS: Vincent Price’s legend is built on a reputation for portraying elegant, velvet- Continue reading READER RECOMMENDATION: THE TINGLER (1959) →

Reader Recommendations

READER RECOMMENDATION: VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS [Valerie a týden divů] (1970)

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The sixth submission in the June review writing contest: by “Kat.”

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jaroslava Schallerova, Helena Anyzova, Petr Kopriva, Jiri Prymek

PLOT:  13-year old Valerie lives with her grandmother in a small rural village in

Still from Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Czechoslovakia; on the week of her menarche she drifts into a sensual, and at times threatening, dreamworld.

WHY IT DESERVES TO MAKE THE LIST:  This is a gently weird film, as close to representing a dream on film as I have yet seen.  Every shot is a thing of beauty.  The plot is loose but generally true to its own dream logic.  As she approaches adulthood Valerie finds herself the object of desire for men, women and weasel-men alike.  Responding to all the strange occurrences around her with unflappable calmness, Valerie is a passive heroine, but Schallerova oozes charm and is a complete eye magnet whenever she is onscreen.

COMMENTS: A tight, coherent plot is not the strength of this piece, it has to be said.  It’s very much like the moments when you first wake from a puzzling dream, before your conscious mind has started to add little bridging details to try and make sense of it.

Valerie lives with her grandmother, and at the age of 13 has her first period.  Her grandmother tells her that this is the same age as her mother was.  It seems to be an occasion for neither celebration nor shame.  Valerie tells her grandmother that she is excited at the prospect of a troupe of actors arriving in the village and is informed that she’d do better to be excited about the arrival of the bishop and his priests.  You’d be forgiven for thinking that her grandmother is a bit of a party pooper, but like everyone in this film she’s not just what she appears to be at first glance.  Throughout the film religion and sexuality arm wrestle for dominance, but it’s rather like both arms are on the same body.

The performers arrive, as do the clergy.  The bishop has come to deliver a sermon to the virgins of the village, and it’s a pretty inappropriate one.  The bishop himself is a tad inappropriate at times, and has a face not designed to inspire confidence, looking like the hideous love child of Graf Orlak and Bergman’s Death, but with some of the most terrible teeth ever committed to film.  Again though, by the end of the film you’ll see him in different light.

During the course of the film Valerie will see transforming weasels, a hairy priest striptease and the nubile young women of the village will invite her to join them in a game of “hide the fish down your bodice” in the sun dappled river.  She will cure a young women of a strange vampiric ailment by sleeping with her, spy on her grandmother in a odd sexual situation while the toothy bishop lurks at her shoulder and will laugh in the face of being burned at the stake.  Throughout it all Valerie is protected by her mother’s magic earrings and is watched over, in a slightly creepy way by her brother (or would be lover?) Eagle.

Films about girls “coming of age” are few and far between and this is a gorgeous example.  Valerie is surrounded by sexuality both threatening and inviting.  She is on the receiving end of aggressive approaches from the hairy priest and her domineering female cousin, but also sees a guiltless, inviting sensuality in the form of the women in the river, the young woman she spends the night with and the gentle Eagle.

In the end Valerie seems to have explored both the dark and the light of impending womanhood and emerged into the sunlight, where even the toothy bishop seems a bit of a sweetie.

This would make a perfect double bill with Neil Jordan and Angela Carter’s Company Of Wolves, if you fancy an evening of oestrogen-heavy weirdness.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a collection of dream adventures, spurred by guiltless and poly-sexual eroticism. Virtually every shot is a knockout…”–Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader (rerelease/screening)

Reader Recommendations

READER RECOMMENDATION: WILD, WILD PLANET [I CRIMINALI DELLA GALASSIA] (1965)

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The fifth submission in the June review writing contest: by Andreas O. Stoehr.

DIRECTED BY: Antonio Margheriti

FEATURING: Tony Russel, Lisa Gastoni, Massimo Serato, Franco Nero

PLOT: In 2015, the space police fight to stop an organ-miniaturizing mad scientist from

Still from Wild, Wild Planet (1965)

building a utopian community.

WHY IT DESERVES TO MAKE THE LIST: Although the synopsis might make it sound like a typical space opera, Wild, Wild Planet is anything but. Everything about the film simultaneously screams “bad!” and “weird!” The dubbed dialogue, for example, is as laughable as any Toho monster movie, with a mix of technobabble and would-be ‘60s clichés like “That’s the wildest, most way-out I’ve ever heard!” The grandstanding villain, Nurmi, constantly repeats his ill-conceived master plan, and his kidnappings are carried out by beautiful women teamed with bald, four-armed mutants.  This is 1960s Italian sci-fi at its wildest and most way-out.

COMMENTS: I’m not sure why Margheriti (who was credited as “Anthony Dawson”) hasn’t become more of a cult figure, though being name-checked in Inglourious Basterds might raise his status among film geeks.  Wild, Wild Planet displays much of the same untalented passion you might expect from Ed Wood or Coleman Francis, and with the screenplay so awkwardly translated into English, it feels even more delirious.

The film’s futuristic aesthetic, which was already outdated in 1965, involves bad model cities and psychedelic dresses; it’s like “The Jetsons” meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers by way of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”  TVs advertise “Computo-dolls,” and the only remaining form of art has performers dressed as butterflies prancing around in a circle.  When the mutant henchmen attack, they do so by suggestively enclosing victims in their trench coats; one scientist escapes in the midst of this process, and ends up as a comatose midget.  It may be ridiculous, it may be cheap, but it sure ain’t predictable.

Who, after all, could guess that the climax would take place on a resort planet amidst an exploding river of blood (that looks suspiciously like cranberry juice)?  With its bizarre interior design and enough hilarious non sequiturs to rival Plan 9, Wild, Wild Planet is a weird, weird movie.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The Wild, Wild Planet has a colourful bizarreness to it… But despite throwing up such an outre and colourful plot, the way Antonio Margheriti allows it all to transpire on screen is really rather pedestrian and dull. This rather wild skew of ideas ends up as a rather murky plot.”–Richard Scheib, Moria: Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review

Reader Recommendations

READER RECOMMENDATION: GARDEN STATE (2004)

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The fourth submission in the June review writing contest: by “Billy.”

DIRECTED BY: Zack Braff

FEATURING: Starring Zack Braff and Natalie Portman with Peter Sarsgaard, Gideon Largeman and Method Man

PLOT: Andrew Largeman (Zack Braff) returns home to New Jersey to attend his mother’s

Still from Garden State (2004)

funeral.  While there, he realizes the funeral was only the beginning.

WHY IT DESERVES TO MAKE THE LIST:   There is a family who repeatedly kills hamsters, grave robbing, argumentative spin the bottle, conversations in Klingon, marijuana, ecstacy and a man dressed up as a knight in shining armor.  Random moments through out the movie shine of weirdness and that alone will keep you glued to your seat.

COMMENTS: When you’ve finish watching this movie you may be puzzled.  I can see you now with that tilted head and unsure expression.  You will probably want to take a moment and allow the movie to ferment in your mind.  However, that doesn’t make a movie “weird” by itself.  But, considering the flashes of nearly 2 hours of surprise and complexity… I’m not sure if I have a better adjective to describe the movie.

Also, not to mention, the cinematography is amazing and the soundtrack is absolutely perfect.   It fits clip by clip and moment by moment with the movie and I recommend it to anyone. The movie, from beginning to end is strange and odd in the purest sense of the words.  All in all it is a really a great movie.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This is not a perfect movie; it meanders and ambles and makes puzzling detours. But it’s smart and unconventional, with a good eye for the perfect detail, as when Andrew arrives at work in Los Angeles and notices that the spigot from a gas pump, ripped from its hose when he drove away from a gas station, is still stuck in his gas tank. Something like that tells you a lot about a person’s state of mind” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (contemporaneous)

Reader Recommendations

READER RECOMMENDATION: HOUSE [HAUSU] (1977)

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The third submission in the June review writing contest: by Alex Kittle.

DIRECTOR: Nobuhiko Obayashi

FEATURING: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Yôko Minamida

PLOT: A group of fun-loving Japanese school girls plan to spend their summer at a

Still from House [Hausu] (1977)

beautiful, isolated mansion, but after experiencing some paranormal activity they eventually realize the house itself may want them DEAD!

WHY IT DESERVES TO MAKE THE LIST:  “Weird” doesn’t even begin to describe this movie.  A floating head, a ravenous piano, sporadic animation, a laughing watermelon, a dancing skeleton, a glowing cat, gusts of wind that only affect one person, a host of aggressive, mobile objects, and a group of girls who REFUSE to acknowledge the weirdness: it defies explanation, really.

COMMENTS:  House is a wondrous sight to behold, with delightfully trippy colors, spontaneous animated sequences, and experimental horror imagery; several sequences are reminiscent of home-made youtube music videos.  The effects are noticeably antiquated, but that just adds to the fun!  The entire film is really a collection of incredible, strange, and under-explained moments that left me as incredulous as I was tickled pink.  Cats fly, clocks bleed, mattresses, logs, and floating heads attack, skeletons dance, and a score of other ridiculous, unexpected things happen at every turn.

The bluntly-nicknamed characters are hilariously one-dimensional, each one relegated to her specific interest/trait.  Mac talks about nothing but eating, while Melody is only the focus when there’s a piano in the room (a very… hungry piano).  Fantasy is the only one who plays witness to most of the strange occurrences, and of course no one believes her for her overactive imagination.  Kung-Fu is by far the best character, handling every obstacle with badassery and no questions asked.  Also: she has the best hair.  Supporting characters include the girls’ heavily-sideburned teacher en route to the House but finding an impediment in bananas (that will make sense when you see it, I promise- well as much sense as it can make), a pudgy salesman with talking watermelons, and Gorgeous’s new step-mother, who literally cannot go more than 2 seconds without a gust of wind blowing romantically around her.  It’s a remarkable talent.

The dialogue oscillates between being frivolous and insanely over-dramatic, but the best part about it is its frequent insistence on completely ignoring what’s happening in its own movie.  Most of the weirdest scenes are just passed over by the characters without comment, and that just makes the “WTF?!” factor that much better.  House is a strange, strange, strange film and I absolutely loved it.   It’s hilarious, inventive, utterly unexpected, and lends no comparison to any other movie I’ve seen.  Look for it on Criterion in September 2010!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“You, my friend, lover that you are of the obscure, the grotesque, the inscrutable, and the just flat-out funky and awe-inspiringly eccentric, have never, ever seen anything like House (aka Hausu). Even by my permanently warped standards, House is beyond the pale: a surreal, indefinable piece of proto-Japanese horror/comedy that was made in 1977 (it was director Obayashi’s debut feature), only to find a second life at Austin’s Fantastia International Film Festival, Sitges, Fantasia Fest, and wherever connoisseurs of the outré, the outrageous, and the seriously freaky gather.”–Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle (rerelease)