List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: INFERNO (1980)

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DIRECTED BY: Dario Argento

FEATURING: Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, ,

PLOT:  The second in Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy, Inferno follows his masterpiece Suspiria. The earlier film is not referred to explicitly, and it’s not necessary to have seen Suspiria to enjoy Inferno—though it might get you in the mood.

Still from Inferno (1980)

Rose, a poet living in New York, buys an old book about the Three Mothers from a neighboring antiques dealer and after reading it begins to suspect that the basement in her apartment block is home to Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, one of a trio of sisters who are the age old matrons of witchcraft.

After investigating a strange, flooded ballroom below the building, Rose and a neighbor are murdered by an anonymous, black gloved killer.

Rose’s brother Mark is a music student in Rome.  He receives a letter from his sister mentioning the Mothers and flies to New York to investigate.  The apartments she lives in are home to a small group of strange people, given to uttering premier league non-sequiturs, asking weird questions, and performing bizarre actions.

Mark explores the building, discovering the weird architectural features designed by the Mothers’ architect, Varelli, the one whose book kick-started the whole affair.  After a long ramble through tortuous crawlspace, Mark uncovers the lair of Mater Tenebrarum.  She reveals herself to be Death; the building burns to the ground; a dazed looking Mark wanders out unscathed; the end credits roll; you wonder what you’ve just witnessed.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:  Its dream logic story line and stylized cinematography mark it out as weird, but Inferno really pales next to Suspiria. It features some wonderful scenes and startling images, but they’re too widely spaced out, and the film is marred by some wooden acting and inadvertently hilarious dialogue.

COMMENTS:   Inferno is a very enjoyable film, not always for the intended reasons.  The dialogue is so disjointed and at times downright bizarre as to be chucklesome. It also features the inconsistent acting and wooden delivery common to any number of giallos (understandable given the speed of some productions and the vagaries of international dubbing); after watching a number of giallos, you may come to view them as a feature rather than a flaw.

Inferno features a number of Argento trademarks: an oneiric story flow, driving soundtrack Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: INFERNO (1980) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: DEAD AWAKE (2010)

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DIRECTED BY: Omar Naim

FEATURING: Nick Stahl, , Amy Smart

PLOT: Haunted by the memory of a car crash, a lonely funeral assistant fakes his own

death. Tracking a mystery mourner, he finds himself tangled in intrigue while suffering from bizarre, piecemeal flashbacks from his discordant, seemingly supernaturally influenced past.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  While Dead Awake captures our imagination at first with ominous flashbacks and peculiar visions which emphasize details in a way that foreshadow profound significance, none of these clues pan out to reveal an extraordinary plot.  The method of revelation builds interest in previous events that turn out to be not very mysterious once we are let in on their meaning.  Worse, at about the halfway point, the story becomes a derivative, conventional chiller.

COMMENTS:  The setup:  Nick Stahl plays sullen, skulking  funeral director who stages his own death to see if old friends will arrive at his funeral.  When an enigmatic young woman comes to mutter cryptic utterances over his “corpse,” he follows her and has some unusual misadventures.  In the meantime, he flirts with an ex-girlfriend who also came to his viewing, unlocking a cascade of strange memories and guilt about some mysterious, previous tragedy that broke them apart.  Eventually, we find out how both women are connected to  Nick’s past and to his haunting recollections.

Sounds like the makings of a real whiz-bang chiller-thriller, right?  Wrong!  What a massive disappointment. I was expecting something clever, brooding and supernatural like Dark Corners, and that’s how Dead Awake starts out. There is a mysterious car crash, a mortuary attendant faking his own funeral, a mysterious griever talking in riddles, indications that half the characters may be dead and not know it, and eerie flashbacks wrought with hidden symbolic meaning.

The non-linear plot, dark tone and twists and turns made me think I was in for a real doozy of a story.  And then the film peters out.  The flashbacks reveal no great mystery, the symbolism turns out to be arbitrary and empty, and real ideas are replaced with melodrama, over-acting and a grandiose musical score that is more fitting of a sweeping historical epic.  The score seems calculated to try to fool the viewer into thinking he is watching something more important than he really is (it didn’t work).

The movie wraps up with an unlikely stretch of a “climax” (more of an anti-climax) and a corny, happy (more like sappy) ending with a lame and very mild twist that opens up a bunch of plot holes.

I paid money for this???  I swear, no more poppy juice and Colt .45 before I read DVD jackets at the video store.

I saw that Nick Stahl was in this and so far, I have seen him in three other movies that turned out to be artistic, independent, and pretty good, so I took a gamble.  Mind you, Dead Awake is not a bad movie.  It doesn’t smack of major studio schlock.  The problem is that is promises to be so darned intriguing and then drops the ball, almost as if a writers strike led to someone with no imagination completing the script from the halfway point.

Rose McGowan, formerly a delicious woman, looks just . . . awful, post plastic surgery.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A poorly structured and even more poorly shot mixture of a gothic suspense thriller with a vanilla romance filmed in Des Moines, “Dead Awake” never comes close to springing to life.”–Mark Olsen, The Los Angeles Times (contemporaneous)

Dead Awake trailer

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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We haven’t checked in on everyone yet, but we currently believe that none of the 366 Weird Movies staff was raptured yesterday; this means that we can go on with our next week of reviews as scheduled.  If you weren’t raptured either, then next week you can check out our reviews of the psychological thriller Dead Awake (2010), about a junior mortician who finds things getting strange after he fakes his own funeral; Inferno (1980), Dario Argento‘s borderline incoherent followup to the Certified Weird Suspiria; Philip Ridely‘s return to film, Heartless (2009), about a man with a heart-shaped birthmark on his face who makes a deal with the devil in a Hellish modern London; and catch up with Alfred as he returns to his series on Tod Browning to inform us about The Show (1927), a tawdry carnival melodrama that could be seen as a dress rehearsal for Freaks (1932).

There were some nice entries in our unofficial “Weirdest Search Term of the Week” contest.  A couple of short-but-sweet three-word search phrases deserve at least an honorable mention: “lezbo bridge film” and “chicken part catalogue.”  In the category of most random use of a gay slur in a search string, the winner is  “janis joplin and homo hendrix songs in across the universe.”  And, while we don’t like to pick a Weirdest Search Term of the Week that contains naughty words, we had to make an exception for this beauty: “japanese children of know f**ky movie.”  Now, the searcher actually may have been looking for a Japanese funky movie (in which case we have him or her covered), but that still doesn’t explain the children of know…

Here’s how the reader suggested review queue stands (more titles after break as always): Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (this appears to be unavailable at present, actually); The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/20/2011

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A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

There’s nothing weird in theaters this week (not really a surprise there).

NEW ON DVD:

Daydream Nation: A love triangle between a teen girl, an age-appropriate boyfriend, and their English teacher.  The press release calls it a “mash-up of the bizarre and the beautiful” and two separate reviewers have compared it to Donnie Darko.  Buy Daydream Nation.

Deep Red [Profundo Rosso] (1975): Dario Argento‘s Deep Red, about a jazz pianist caught in a web of murder, is more a standard, suspenseful giallo than a bizarre film, but it shows early traces of the extreme stylization and atmosphere he would expand on to create the Certified Weird Suspiria two years later.  This re-issue is reputed to be the director’s preferred cut; at 105 minutes, it’s longer than the 98 minute “R-rated” version that originally played in US theaters, but faster paced than the 126-minute “uncensored” cut.  Note that only the director’s cut is on the DVD, but the “full” 126 minute version is also included on the Blu-ray (below).  Buy Deep Red.

“Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job: Season 5” (2011): Absurdist sketch comedy from the Cartoon Network. Contains the episode “Lucky,” which had been removed from digital distribution for unstated reasons. An entire season fits on one 110 minute DVD. Buy “Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job: Season 5”.

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010):  Read our capsule review.  An unexplained plague of darkness falls over Detroit in this mystical horror from director Brad Anderson. Buy Vanishing on 7th Street.

Year of the Fish (2007): Here’s a movie idea you don’t see everyday: a rotoscoped adult retelling of “Cinderella,” with the lead role taken by a Chinese immigrant woman forced to work in a “happy-ending” massage parlor and befriended by a magical goldfish.  Previously available only on DVD-R, Fish is now available in a respectable DVD reissue complete with commentary tracks. Buy Year of the Fish.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Deep Red [Profundo Rosso] (1975): See entry in DVD above.  Note that the Blu-ray contains both the 105 minute director’s cut and the 126 minute “uncensored” version. Buy Deep Red [Blu-ray].

FREE MOVIES ON THE WEB:

Diseaster [Paashat] (2011): Dutch carrot farmers are terrorized by a killer Easter bunny.  This 30 minute horror/comedy features Easter eggs filled with blood, a rapping narrator with Down syndrome, crossbows that shoot sharpened carrots, and scary/ridiculous killer bunny puppets; it’s like a more professional, European version of Thankskilling.  With blood and guts and mild nudity and sexuality, but the only thing that might offend is that Down syndrome character.  Watch Diseaster for free at the official site.

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

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