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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEAFULA (1975)
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DIRECTED BY: Peter Wechsberg
FEATURING: Peter Wechsberg (as Peter Wolf), Lee Darel, Dudley Hemstreet, James Randall
PLOT: In a universe where everyone communicates via American Sign Language (ASL), theology student Steve Adams discovers that he is the son of Dracula and has been leading a second life as a blood-thirsty vampire with a trail of bodies in his wake.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Even if it weren’t one of the first (and, to this day, one of the only) films made exclusively in ASL, Deafula’s imaginative presentation of a world where gestural speech is the lingua franca and its singular interpretation of the Dracula legend make it a movie that truly has no comparison.
COMMENTS: Let’s start with the remarkable durability of the Dracula myth. Vampires have lost none of their fascination even in our modern world (I’ve discussed this phenomenon before), and Dracula lords over them all, appearing in some form in more than 200 films. Unlike most of his classic horror brethren (werewolves, mummies, zombies, Frankenstein monsters, creatures from black lagoons and the like), Dracula is verbal, and even handsome, as likely to use seductive words as violent action to achieve his aims. So when an underrepresented community wants to tap into the mainstream, there’s probably no figure more iconic and adaptable and copyright-free than Dracula, standing by and ready to tell his tale once more. Blacula, anyone?
And so we come to Deafula, in which writer/director/star Wechsberg endeavored to give the deaf community something they had never had: a popular entertainment of their very own. He conjured up a messily layered version of the story, with the fundamental vampire-kills-people plotline frequently taking a back seat to the hero’s fraught relationship with his father, a police procedural featuring a Van Helsing substitute whom everybody hates, and a substantial commitment to themes of religious devotion and divine punishment. We do get Dracula in this movie (as an appropriately imperious and condescending figure), but he’s not our star. Instead, our hero is a pretty average, milquetoast kind of guy who, when he transforms into a villain, looks less like a demonic force and more like a low-rent Svengoolie with a ridiculous fake nose.
It is impossible to divorce Deafula from the circumstances of its creation. A drama student at Gallaudet University, Wechsberg was drawn to the power of film, and after getting into some production work, he scraped enough money to make a movie his way, with the deaf audience in mind. (He also aspired to give deaf creators their due; the closing credits specifically distinguish the hearing-impaired performers from their hearing colleagues.) His inexperience shows, especially when it comes to action. He crafts a clever introduction to reveal his hero emerging from the vampire state, but afterward gets caught up in disjointed edits and inconsistent pacing. Deafula’s savage mind-control of a would-be robber should be evidence of his Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEAFULA (1975)
IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FROM MORN TO MIDNIGHT (1920)
Von morgens bis mitternachts
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DIRECTED BY: Karlheinz Martin
FEATURING: Ernst Deutsch, Roma Bahn, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Lotte Stein, Frida Richard
PLOT: A bank cashier is so enchanted by a customer that he steals an enormous amount of money in hopes of persuading her to run away with him, but when he rejects him, he abandons his family, skips town, and reinvents himself, using the money in pursuit of earthly pleasures to diminishing returns.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: One of the pre-eminent early examples of German expressionist filmmaking (no discussion of it is complete without mentioning its fellow 1920 release The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), From Morn to Midnight delivers a healthy dose of abstract imagery and proto-surrealism, taking advantage of both the newness of the medium and its silence to tell its cautionary tale.
COMMENTS: The Cashier, the protagonist of From Morn to Midnight, doesn’t walk on to the screen, nor do we cut to him. No, director Karlheinz Martin dissolves in on our central character, summoning him to life in the middle of a bank vault as though he were being added to a holodeck program. We will later learn that this wretched figure has a home and an adoring family waiting for him there, but this first scene provides us with the real scoop: The Cashier exists purely for the purposes of this allegorical tale, and no pesky background or deeper characterization will be needed.
So begins a surprisingly didactic and moralistic story. Once the Cashier decides to break bad, he goes whole hog: ditching his family as callously as he can; making himself over from a bent and wrinkled old man into a spry, slick dandy; and spending all his ill-gotten gains on wine, women, and song. At every turn, he meets with disappointment. The money doesn’t bring him respect or pleasure. Intriguingly, his road-to-Damascus moment doesn’t work out, either; having forsaken his past sins, he is sold out by a gentle Salvation Army worker who turns him in the moment he mentions the reward for his capture. The final image—the Cashier dying in a crucifixion pose with the words “ECCE HOMO” flickering above him like a neon bar sign—is not exactly subtle.
Then again, absolutely nothing in From Morn to Midnight is subtle, because director Martin is here to sell an art form more than a story. He piles on all the Expressionist touches in his arsenal. He places every scene in a black void, with only the most abstract simplistic props and scenic elements providing hints of location. What little set decoration there is takes the form of mismatched flats lined in hastily applied white paint, turning every setting into a chalk drawing. Even The Cashier’s trudge through a blizzard is charmingly minimalist, as he walks down a tightly curved pathway while confetti is thrown at him. The actors themselves become two-dimensional elements through heavy makeup and wildly outsized emotional displays. Dogville almost a century before Lars von Trier could get around to making it, From Morn to Midnight is fiercely presentational, and makes sure you know it.
Like any self-respecting morality play, The Cashier’s sad fate can be predicted from the outset. For one thing, throughout the course of the film, on-set clocks are counting down the inevitable march to midnight (a touch that might have inspired Peter Greenaway). Even more telling is an image so indelible that it not only repeats, but the same actress is called upon to fill multiple roles just so it can be summoned anew. For each character Roma Bahn portrays, whether it be a homeless waif on the steps of the bank, a floozy in a hotel bar, or that young Salvation Army officer, there comes a moment when her pretty face is transformed into a death skull. Her every appearance is a red flag that The Cashier fails to heed.
The story behind the film is refreshingly optimistic by comparison. Many of the cast, including lead actor Deutsch, were Jews who later escaped Germany to live and work in the United States. Meanwhile, the movie itself had a limited release in Germany and was thought lost for decades until copies were unearthed in Japan, where Expressionism’s similarities to Noh theater made From Morn to Midnight relatable. And today, through the wonders of public domain and the internet, it’s available for all to enjoy, in the original German or translated into English. In this morality play, at least, the love of film is a virtue.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
ADDITIONAL LINK OF INTEREST: A Cinema History provides a comprehensive review of the film, with extensive visuals and thoughtful analysis.
(This movie was nominated for review by Shane. [But not, you know, this Shane. Some other Shane.] Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
CAPSULE: PSYCHOSIS (2023)
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Psychosis is currently available fro rental or purchase on-demand.
DIRECTED BY: Pirie Martin
FEATURING: Derryn Amoroso, Kate Holly Hall, James McCluskey-Garcia, Pj van Gyen, voice of Lindsay Dunn
PLOT: Van Aarle, a criminal “fixer” who hears voices (but is not otherwise obviously schizophrenic) reluctantly takes a case involving drug dealers, zombie-like assailants, a vigilante, and a master hypnotist drug kingpin with a connection to his own past.
COMMENTS: “They said you’d be weird,” observes a dim-witted pusher after Van Aarle explains how his paracusia (auditory hallucinations) give him a “unique perspective” that helps him to tap into “unknowing awareness.” We, the audience, directly experience that auditory condition—sometimes as a murky choir of overlapping advisors who sound quite a bit like those YouTube videos that try to put you inside the head of a schizophrenic, and sometimes in the form of an omniscient narrator, whose commentary may or may not be audible to Van Aarle. The voices are sometimes helpful to our fixer, alerting him to the presence of hidden enemies or whispering clues, but just as often they’re warning that everyone is going to die, or simply reminding him to keep up his psychotic coffee regimen (Van Aarle apparently does not sleep while on a case). Although Derryn Amoroso looks more like Serge Gainsbourg than a matinee idol, Van Aarle is in the lineage of hard-bitten, haunted, and cynical-yet-decent private investigators: the great-grandson of Mike Hammer or Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade, with an Australian accent. The official narrator, a chatty sort who fills in quiet spaces and is sometimes almost comically redundant (“in the distance, he sees something”), adds another film noir note to a movie already flavored with dashes of action, horror, psychological thriller, and science fiction.
Stylistically, you will immediately notice that Psychosis is (95+%) black and white, and with a boxy 1:1 aspect ratio, the narrowest I’ve ever seen in a feature film. You actually get used to it fairly quickly, but along with odd camera angles and other tricks (one scene is shot upside-down) it puts your mind in an odd space. Unusually for a film of this budget, there are a lot of action scenes, and director Martin compensates for a lack of ace action choreographers and athletic stunt doubles by shooting scenes in disjointed styles: schizophrenic editing, strobe lights, woozy double-vision cam for an under-the-influence melee, the upside-down sequence previously mentioned. The fights aren’t as involving as the movie’s concepts, but their ingenuity allows for a richer and more exciting cinematic experience.
Obviously, there is a lot going on in Psychosis—-we haven’t even gotten into the hypnotically-induced hallucinations, or the Batman-like LoneWolf character prowling about. While there is some “is he hallucinating or not?” ambiguity—heck, the title suggests as much—Psychosis doesn’t lean into that motif, but treats its world as if it were a genuine alternate reality, one where advanced mesmerists have almost magical mind-control powers. This means the struggles of Van Aarle (and LoneWolf) have real stakes—that punch to the gut hurts, that knife slashing at him is no metaphor, and the villain may really kill our hero, or drive him insane. A few scenes drag, and not every stylistic embellishment feels utterly necessary, but overall Psychosis is an insanely ambitious debut film that nails the madness of a man whose mind is in the process of being shattered.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE TENANTS (2023)
세입자
Seibja
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DIRECTED BY: Eunkyoung Yoon
FEATURING: Kim Dae-gun, Heo Dong-won, Park So-hyun
PLOT: A looming eviction forces Shin-dong to sub-lease his bathroom to a pair of eccentric newlyweds.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The Tenants is Kafka à la Korea, with a home invasion scenario playing out as a paperwork nightmare.
COMMENTS: Shin-dong is not very popular. He has a work acquaintance, who only chats with him because they’re desk neighbors. Outside the office, he talks with just two people. His landlord, labeled “Mr. Bastard” on his phone address book, is a too-cheery little kid eager for a better clientele. And his friend, labeled “Mr. Dork,” is as antisocial as Shin-dong. Our protagonist is trapped: cramped apartment, cramped job, all playing out on a cramped screen and with a claustrophobic sound design. So it is with more trepidation than relief that we meet a tall man with a double-feathered chapeau, and his short trad-clad wife, who are interested in renting out Shin-dong’s bathroom. Because the government’s “Wolwolse” program ties the hands of landlords, this sublease arrangement will help Shin-dong, while also helping these newlyweds with the space they need—as well as a sly opportunity they take advantage of after some months of tenancy.
The Tenants occupies a dreary space that makes Terry Gilliam‘s Brazilian vibrancy appear sensible. Shin-dong’s day (and increasingly, night) job as a low-level office functionary is the epitome of a corporate grind. The wealthy CEO’s inspirational messages drive the point home: it is not passion, innovation, or ambition by which his artificial meat company succeeds, oh no, but work, work, work. And that’s just about all Shin-dong has time for, especially when the prospect of a company transfer to “Sphere 2” is on the cards: the newest, cleanest, bestest place. But his tiny dream grows increasingly precarious the longer his tenants tenant.
This pair: the tall, crisply suited, always gloved, and invariably be-hatted husband is a man out of place, and not just because his well-blocked fedora sports matching bird plumes on either side, giving him an antenna’d appearance. He crowds the frame’s vertical space, and is capable of strength. His reassuring use of the term “bro” whenever speaking with with Shin-dong is creepy from the start, and he has a tendency to speak with two meanings. A misunderstanding between he and Shin-dong—regarding the wife’s mysterious appearance in Shin-dong’s bedroom—is both amusing and troubling. The wife is nearly non-verbal, but always happy to offer a deeply cut, eye-shutting smile.
But this peculiar husband and wife duo are not nearly so troubling as the layered and growing paperwork and procedure which threatens to consume our hero. As Mr. Dork observes, cities are dying, and pursuing ever more drastic means to procedurally chain their citizens. Though the Wolwolse program starts as a blessing, its complications become a curse. From the start, director Eunkyoung Yoon shovels sheaves of postmodern evil on Shin-dong through her dark and darkly comic means; and when he learns why his Wolwolse tenants were so keen on the bathroom, their disclosure about a sub-tenant of their own might be just enough to break him.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: