Eugene Vasiliev is a Doctor of Philosophy and a member of the Russian Guild of Film Critics. This detailed analysis of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Banishment was originally published (in Russian) at Ruskino.
The Banishment, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s second feature-length motion picture after triumphing in Venice with The Return (2003), was received coldly by the audience. After the first screenings, bewilderment reigned even among “advanced” cinema enthusiasts. Some applauded languidly, some grumbled discontentedly, and when cineastes read slashing reviews by renowned film experts, a torrent of criticism pounced on Zvyagintsev like tsunami on the province of Aceh. It seemed that curses and swearing would sweep yesterday’s favorite down to the ocean of oblivion, and Andrei would drown there along with Baluyev, Konstantin Lavronenko, and Maria Bonnevie. Those who only yesterday had raved about The Return regretted their past admiration: as they said, “we were “bought” all for nothing at the time”. Those who had silently swallowed the success of The Return, felt relief at last by stating that “the movie is total shit.”
Yekaterina Barabash argued that Zvyagintsev had invented “spiritual glamor”: merciless in its form and meaningless in its content. Yelena Ardabatskaya noted that it had been a difficult viewing experience since The Banishment has nothing at all in it: no people, no scents, only Emptiness. Roman Volobuyev, who at first confined himself mostly to sneering, finally succumbed and began to speak his mind. According to him, even Mikhalkov, now an object of scorn, “is a complex personality, while Zvyagintsev is a single-layered structure; he is a good professional director, at the level of an average American TV series maker, who makes films about things he does not give a damn about – and out of mercenary motives at that, and because he works not in the world of ‘My Perfect Nanny’ but in Russian, kind of, spirituality, his indifference and the fact that he knows nothing about those abstruse things that he depicts in his movies is the most terrible thing.” Even peacefully disposed Sam Klebanov complained, “It seems as if it is repeatedly suggested that we should think about the meaning of all those religious parallels. Perhaps, we did not think well enough, but somehow we have not thought up anything.”
FEATURING: Noah Segan, Andrea Renda, Jon Budinoff, Ricardo Gray, Silvia Spross, Ezzra [sic] Buzzington, Elina Madison
PLOT: The spirits of two possessed serial killers who rape their victims to death stalk drug
abusing medical students.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: If you want unlikeable, unbelievable characters and prosthetic mutant penises, this is your movie; if you want something scary or meaningfully weird, however, look elsewhere.
COMMENTS: The strangest thing about Someone’s Knocking at the Door isn’t the variety of killer genitalia on display, but the bed-hopping, skin-popping residents of what has to rank as the Princeton Review’s number one medical party school. Besides engaging in frequently fatal kinky sex, these medicos in training spend most of their time taking speed, booze, ecstasy, nicotine, Xanax, Oxycontin, nitrous oxide, and attending Halloween parties where the students egg each other on with cries of “chug! chug! chug!” Fortunately for the kids, when one of their compatriots is killed via graphic demonic anal rape, the school’s hippie chancellor gives them the week off to grieve at the kegger of their choice. The students also get high off of vials of experimental psychiatric drugs, while listening to snuff audiotapes so they can catch up on the back story. (Only after shooting up do they think to look up the drug’s side effects, which include increased sexual appetite, hallucinations, and possible coma. Oops!) In a stroke of good luck for the audience, the kids are all perfectly detestable human beings, which means we don’t mind much when possessed serial killers from the 1970s somehow show up to rape them to death. Jon Budinoff, in particular, never says a kind or sincere word and punches his dates when they don’t put out; he’s so loathsome it’s impossible to believe he could have any friends at all. On the other hand we recognize Noah Segan as the film’s moral conscience when he objects after finding his socially inept buddy groping a half-nude, comatose female partier who may have stopped breathing (although he’s not so judgmental as to try to stop him). Knocking is a movie that would love to be offensive, but it keeps tripping over its own silliness. Ridiculous plot and lack of characterization aside, the movie is technically competent, and director Chad Ferris does put some interesting and occasionally very weird ideas up on the screen. All of the backgrounds are earth tones or sickly avocados; the film has the color scheme of a 1977 kitchenette. The genital prosthetics are genuinely nightmarish (the film focuses on the phallus, but the other sex gets its moment to, er, shine as well). Psychotic episodes are effectively conveyed through stuttering editing that mixes alternate views of the present with brief hallucinations, scored to eerie electronic noises. At one point, the sound effects even mimic a malfunctioning dial-up modem, a scarier effect than you might think. And, look closely at the funeral procession for an unexpectedly bizarre surprise. Other odd moments include a fleeing female who falls a modern record seven times (!) while covering a mere ten feet as she’s chased by a shambling but sure-footed killer. (In her defense, she may have been thrown off by the fact that the soundtrack was blaring an upbeat indie rock tune instead of the expected shrieking violins). Add a twist ending you’ve seen before and a strong moral against injecting experimental psychiatric medications for kicks, and you have a strange, if uneven, modern exploitation horror. If grindhouses existed today, this is what would be playing there. A mixture of time-tested horror clichés, careless scriptwriting, and mucho grotesquerie, Knocking features enough sex, violence and general outrageousness to save it from being boring, and enough stylistic innovation to (mostly) camouflage its derivative slasher story. Fans of modern disgusto horror will open up gleefully for Someone’s Knocking at the Door, but others will want to turn off all the lights and pretend no one’s home.
A title credit sequence featuring a vintage shower of pharmaceuticals cut with grainy 1960s home movies announces that this is a movie aimed squarely at the horror/stoner crowd, the genre’s largest unacknowledged demographic. In a clever exploitation-style marketing move, the poster and DVD cover features black censor bars not only over exposed naughty bits, but also over the actors’ and actresses’ eyes, giving the movie an extra aura of pornographic depravity.
We’re not the hugest Halloween promoters around these parts (Paul Lynde specials aside). We cover more than our share of scary stuff year round in the normal course of duty, so, while we’ll acknowledge the celebration on the day in question, but we generally prefer to go about our regular business without bending to seasonal themes. Still, largely by chance, we do have a horrific slate of movies upcoming next week. First off, though, we’ll mention the one article that has nothing whatsoever to do with the upcoming holiday: a distinguished guest will drop in with a review of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Tarkovsky-esque drama The Banishment (2007), which will set the record for the longest and most in-depth movie analysis ever published on 366. On a more terrifying note, we’ll have coverage of drug-abusing med students who find themselves raped to death whenever they find Someone’s Knocking on the Door (2009), we’ll visit a sleazy boardinghouse dripping with pyschosexual anxiety in Paul Bartel‘s Private Parts (1972), and we’ll throw in an annotated filmography of the great Bela Lugosi as a companion piece to our similar examination of the great Boris Karloff.
How can we be getting more and more Google hits every day, but encountering fewer and fewer truly deranged search terms? It make the search for a Weirdest Search Term of the Week a true challenge. We’re sometimes forced to nominate strings that are only odd if you read them the way they’re written rather than the way they’re intended: stuff like “burgess meredith threatening penguin.” Then there are the seemingly simple searches like “weird pink teenage girl” that make you wonder just slightly what the searcher was actually hoping to find. And of course, you can always count on the kinky searchers to come up with something unexpectedly bizarre, like the guy looking for “TRAMPS AND HOBOS PORN” (mild bonus points granted due to the urgency implied by his all-caps demand). We’ll dip again into the pervert basket to bring us our official Weirdest Search Term of the Week: “she has to breastfeed monster video.” Yeah, we know it’s not that strange, but do you see what we have to work with here?
Here’s the ridiculously long and continually growing reader-suggested review queue: Private Parts (1972) (next week!); Kairo [AKA Pulse]; Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Gluttony and society’s obsession with the virtual world appear to be among the many subjects portrayed in this wonderfully dismal short. As suggested by the director, we’ll leave the rest up to you to draw your own interpretations.
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.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Bombay Beach: Footage of three residents of the decaying Salton Sea region—a bipolar boy, a high school athlete fleeing gang violence, and a retired oil-rig worker—is mixed with musical montages from Beirut and Bob Dylan to create what the makers describe as a “slightly surreal documentary experience.” The screening order goes like this: New York this week, L.A. next week, DVD afterwards. Bombay Beach official site.
The Skin I Live In [La piel que habito]: Pedro Almodovar (who has never gone fully weird, but is always off-center) delivers a mad scientist revenge movie with significant superficial similarities to the Certified Weird Eyes Without a Face. The power of Antonio Banderas got this released in New York and L.A. this week, with scattered showings through the middle of the country in the months to follow. The Skin I Live In official site.
FILM FESTIVALS: TORONTO AFTER DARK (Toronto, Canada, Oct. 20-27)
One of the worlds most important horror-themed film festivals. This year’s lineup didn’t blow us away with its audacity or weirdness, but here are a few interesting titles:
Love – a man alone on a spaceship orbiting earth slowly loses his mind; there are Civil War battle scenes. The producers are proud of the score by Angels & Airwaves. Screens Oct. 23.
Monster Brawl – horror comedy featuring a werewolf, vampire, zombie, etc. fighting it out in a wrestling ring. Almost a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Screens Oct. 20.
The Theatre Bizarre – A six-film horror anthology from directors Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Jeremy Kasten, Tom Savini, and Richard Stanley. Apparently Hussain’s segment is surreal. Screens Oct. 23
Night of the Demon (Maria’s B-Movie Mayhem) (1980): Not to be confused with Jacques Tourner’s 1957 witchcraft classic, this Night of the Demon is an almost unreleased 1980 oddity mixing Bigfoot and black magic, with some of the most laughably inept gore effects ever seen onscreen. Or, as the Amazon “Editorial Review” inspiringly puts it, it’s a movie about “a psychodic [sic] Bigfoot on a killing rampage” that “has some of the goriest death scene!” Hosted by WWE Diva and Playboy Playmate Maria Kanellis. A true horror for Halloween. Buy Maria’s B-Movie Mayhem–Night of the Demon.
Night Patrol (1984)/The Wrong Guys (1988): Night Patrol is an spectacularly, unbelievably unfunny attempt by the uber-untalented Jackie Kong to make an Airplane! style spoof set in a police station. But what a weird cast: Pat Paulsen, Linda Blair, Billy Barty, Pat Morita and “The Gong Show”‘s Unknown Comic! The Wrong Guys, on the other hand, stars Louie Anderson, Richard Belzer, Richard Lewis, and John Goodman—and yet, you’ve never heard of it. What does that tell you? From Image Entertainment, it’s the perfect double feature for anyone who hates comedy and longs to see it spat upon and defiled. Buy Night Patrol/The Wrong Guys.
No Reason (2010): A woman wakes up from a bath in a pile of severed limbs with a mysterious figure promising to lead her to the white light; nudity and graphic gore follow. There are no English language reviews of this yet but from what I can tell from the Germans and the trailer, its brutal, confusing, and probably not very good. Buy No Reason.
“Snuff Box: The Complete Series” (2006): This dark and bizarre BBC Comedy about two executioners who travel through time meeting prostitutes of various eras and breaking into random songs lasted one season (six episodes) before the censors had enough. Fans of Chris Morris’ “Jam” may be interested in this one. Co-creator Rich Fulcher went on to write and perform the similarly absurd series “The Mighty Boosh,” while his partner Matt Berry worked on “The IT Crowd. “Buy “Snuff Box: The Complete Series”.
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Boccaccio ’70 (1962): An Italian short film anthology wherein Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Federico Fellini direct Sophia Loren, Romy Schneider, and Anita Eckberg in naughty (for the time) vignettes. It’s of some interest to weirdophiles because of Fellini’s segment featuring Eckberg as a milk-selling billboard temptress mocking a moralist. A fourth story by Mario Monicelli was originally cut for reasons of running time but has been restored for this release. Buy Boccaccio ’70 [Blu-ray].
“Tales from Beyond the Pale, Season 1”: Ten thirty minute horror stories spread across 5 CDs, recalling the old days of radio plays (this writer is old enough to have actually been glued to the radio, terrified, while hearing a rendition of Poe’s “The Black Cat” read on CBS Mystery Theater). The likes of Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick direct the voice talents of Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, Angus Scrimm, James Le Gros and more. A singularly spooky way to celebrate the season. Buy “Tales From Beyond The Pale, Season One”.
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Dracula [Bram Stoker’s Dracula] (1992): Read our capsule review. Francis Ford Coppola‘s visually overheated Dracula adaptation is a fun fever dream, and could have been a real classic—if not for Keanu! This was one of the first major films the studios offered for free on YouTube; when it was quickly withdrawn, we thought the experiment of offering quality entertainment for free had been scrapped. But now Dracula‘s back, and free YouTube seems like it’s here to stay… Watch Dracula free on YouTube.
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.
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
Yekaterina Barabash argued that Zvyagintsev had invented “spiritual glamor”: merciless in its form and meaningless in its content. Yelena Ardabatskaya noted that it had been a difficult viewing experience since The Banishment has nothing at all in it: no people, no scents, only Emptiness. Roman Volobuyev, who at first confined himself mostly to sneering, finally succumbed and began to speak his mind. According to him, even Mikhalkov, now an object of scorn, “is a complex personality, while Zvyagintsev is a single-layered structure; he is a good professional director, at the level of an average American TV series maker, who makes films about things he does not give a damn about – and out of mercenary motives at that, and because he works not in the world of ‘My Perfect Nanny’ but in Russian, kind of, spirituality, his indifference and the fact that he knows nothing about those abstruse things that he depicts in his movies is the most terrible thing.” Even peacefully disposed Sam Klebanov complained, “It seems as if it is repeatedly suggested that we should think about the meaning of all those religious parallels. Perhaps, we did not think well enough, but somehow we have not thought up anything.”
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