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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY (1968)

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DIRECTED BY: Elio Petri

FEATURING: Franco Nero, Vanessa Redgrave, Georges Géret, Rita Calderoni, Gabriella Boccardo

PLOT: After relocating to a run-down mansion in an attempt to recharge his imagination, a famous painter begins to suspects that the ghost of the previous owner, a beautiful young woman with nymphomaniac tendencies, may be endangering his sanity.

Still from A Quiet Place in the Country (1968)

COMMENTS: A filmmaker has to know what he’s doing when he opens a film called A Quiet Place in the Country with a cacophonous opening credit sequence, flashing snippets of famed pieces of art (which will be visually referenced throughout the film) to the sounds of percussive crashes from Ennio Morricone and the improvisational ensemble Nuova Consonanza. Sure enough, the only thing noisier than those titles is the mind of our protagonist, whom we first meet tied to a chair, nearly naked and surrounded by unnecessary electric appliances bought by his hot girlfriend. This ought to be a moment of supreme satisfaction, an introduction to someone at the top who is about to be brought low for our entertainment and edification. But Leonardo, the handsome and successful painter with money and public adulation and said hot girlfriend, is already in free fall. The point of the movie is to show how much further he’s going to go.

Nero plays a man in the grip of maddening dissatisfaction. He’s stricken with a drought of creativity; the works he produces are dissonant blotches of color, and he seeks inspiration in images of war, famine, and smut. His libido is barely under control: he molests women on the street (or imagines he does) and he greedily collects skin mags at the local newsstand despite knowing that Redgrave (arguably looking as beautiful and certainly as overtly sexual as she had ever been on film) is waiting at home for him. He’s desperately seeking something, and it isn’t until he comes across a decrepit mansion on the outskirts of the city that he gets anywhere close to figuring out what it is.

Did I mention that A Quiet Place in the Country is a giallo? The house contains a supernatural murder mystery, with the previous tenant allegedly gunned down during the war, but the townsfolk may be keeping some secrets about her, especially the old groundskeeper. Leonardo’s obsession with the woman leads him to have bloody, violent thoughts that he doesn’t do a great job of keeping in check. The threats only grow, while Leonardo’s grip on his sanity slips. He attacks a photographer, he terrifies his live-in housekeeper (although he seems to accept her absurd assertion that the young man sharing her bed is her little brother come to keep her company), and he grows ever more paranoid about his girlfriend Flavia. He dreams of her killing him, and sees visions of her everywhere he goes, often pushing him around immobilized in a wheelchair. By the time insanity erupts into violence, it seems inevitable.

Perhaps that’s what leaves me cold about A Quiet Place in the Country. Director Petri (whose work I have reviewed previously) has unquestionably put together an efficient piece of shock cinema with a highbrow veneer. But because Leonardo seems pretty unstable from the outset, there’s not really any suspense or surprise in his story. He’s like a jack-in-the-box: you know he’ll pop, and it’s only a question of when. And because we are rooted in his point of view, the twist ending loses a lot of its punch. Rather than recontextualizing all that has come before, it just reinforces the fact that we’ve been watching everything through the lens of a crazy person. That makes A Quiet Place in the Country an interesting piece of art, even unique. But it doesn’t linger. Once it’s through, we’re on to the next piece in the gallery.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…one of the weirder, more vaguely satirical contemporaries of Argento’s definitive Italian post-BLOW-UP giallo; it’s the brother, not the son, the cool uncle the Argento generation never sees anymore except on rare holidays when they can get away to visit him at the ‘funny’ farm… It defies expectations for a giallo while riffing on them in a deadpan absurdist abstraction that puts it more aligned with Spasmo and nothing else.” – Erich Kuersten, Acidemic Journal of Film and Media

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

A Quiet Place in the Country [Blu-ray]

A Quiet Place in the Country [Blu-ray]
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Capsules

CAPSULE: HOUSE OF SCREAMING GLASS (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: David R. Williams

FEATURING: Lani Call

PLOT: After her mother’s death, Elizabeth inherits her grandmother’s school building and moves in.

House of Screaming Glass (2024)

COMMENTS: In a story such as this one, told in this particular style, a good deal is left up to the viewer to either figure out—sooner or later—or choose to overlook. It requires a certain ambience, and a compelling lead. She needn’t be a great actor so much as a curious presence (in both meanings of the modifier). Crafting a liminal space as much as a narrative film, in this dreamy wibbly-bit between sleep and waking, between story and mood, there can be a captivating pathway for the viewer to follow along. While Lani Call nails her task as protagonist—indeed, as the only human character—of House of Screaming Glass, at the half-way mark David R. Williams throws a Necronomicon-sized spanner into the work’s erstwhile smoothly-ticking gears, knocking the entire experience into a gooey netherworld of tedium.

What the film does right is feature Lani Call. Her narration is deadpan, sometimes bordering on comatose, lulling the listener into a sort of mental surrender. Her character, Elizabeth, seems done with life before the movie has even begun, and a great deal of the House of Screaming Glass experience is us watching her looking at things in the creepy building she has come to own. (Worry not, she’s as confounded at the turn of events as we are, so we’re in good company.) She tours the abandoned, semi-converted school building in fast-motion, with the camera locked on her face (à la Angst-cam). We enter a daze with her as she builds routines and gets a feel for the place, talking to it in her narration. She plays a bit of piano and a strange entity approaches over her right shoulder. She finds some photo albums, and a child’s book of doodles—which holds a set of nudie photos, quite probably of her grandmother.

So far, David Williams has done well. You probably know the type of thing going on here—something akin to Enys Men, or a less minimalist Skinamarink. It is a meditative and repetitious experience, but summons growing ill-ease. But (oh, but!) at the half-way point, Williams decides this is not what he wants to do any more. Improbably, Elizabeth finds a box full of occult props, tools, liquor, and reading material. The revelation scene, as she drinks the potion from the tentacle bottle and looks over a tome on loan from the Evil Dead museum, is pretty darn cool: colors sicken and glowing text cycles across the screen as she gains understanding.

But it comes at too high a cost, as far as I’m concerned. It is here that House of Screaming Glass stops being interesting and becomes just kind of gross. The thorough gear-shifting wrenched me from the reverie the film had worked so hard to put me under, and I spent the next forty-five minutes Hm-ing, Hrm-ing, and occasionally wishing there were fewer skin lesions. Better luck next time, maybe? I’m certainly interested to see what Lani Call ends up doing. She’s better than what Elizabeth is ultimately obliged to go through.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In due course we will get to body horror… we enter a world in which hallucination is added to the litany of possible visual and psychological interpretations… The juxtaposition doesn’t quite work, and yet its very oddness signals that we have now crossed over into a different interior space… A lovingly made entry in the tradition of feminine psycho-horror, House Of Screaming Glass pits a stubbornly lifeless vérité against the allure of the Gothic.”—Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film (contemporaneous)

House of Screaming Glass [DVD]

House of Screaming Glass [DVD]
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Capsules

CAPSULE: SPOOKIES (1986)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Genie Joseph, Thomas Doran, Brendan Faulkner

FEATURING: Felix Ward, Maria Pechukas, Alec Nemser, Dan Scott

PLOT: A mad warlock with his would-be bride in a coffin needs human blood to bring her back to life, so he sets up a mansion full of monsters to slaughter hapless travelers; the plan almost works.

Still from Spookies (1986)

COMMENTS: Bear with me this time, because Spookies takes some explaining. It’s well-established as a bad movie, and yet has a cult following. That cult, contrary to the norm, loves Spookies not in a so-bad-it’s-good ironic way, but for being a certain kind of niche “good.” The limited appeal of Spookies depends upon one’s appetite for carnival dark rides, AKA ghost trains, the horror-themed indoor track ride you find at every state fair and boardwalk. These rides are chock full of random scary props, rubber suit monsters, blaring air horns, blasts of compressed air, strobe lights, hairpin turns leading from mad scientist’s laboratories into mummy’s crypts and whatnot, and—attend carefully here—no logic. Here’s dark ride YouTuber Carpetbagger with a tour of one. The point of a dark ride is not to experience an enriching story. The point is to make your girlfriend scream and cling to you when the rubber bats swoosh overhead.

I have just perfectly described the experience of watching Spookies, right down to the “no logic” part. It is unrelentingly stupid. But if you’re the kind of person who never passes up a tour through those haunted house attractions that pop up around Halloween, this is your Citizen Kane. Come and get your monsters, we got all your monsters here! We got your vampire monsters, your zombie monsters, your eight-limbed spider-woman monsters, your possessed demon monsters, your green goblin monsters, a werecat monster, a skeleton monster, any monster you want! Grim Reaper fans, yes, you too, we got a Grim Reaper attack just a little after the 1:00 hour mark. It’s never a dull moment here at Mad Marvin’s Mansion o’ Monsters, come on over for Witching Hour when all our curses are half-price!

Just leave your brain at home. This movie was also allegedly produced in sections: either two half-finished movies nailed together or an unfinished movie that later got footage added, depending on who you ask. I’m going to try telling it in alleged filming order, not movie order, because this will help it make what little sense it can.

We have two carloads of teenagers, plus older people hanging out with them for some reason, who are driving around lost at night looking for someplace to party. They find the big spooky mansion located in a cemetery surrounded by foam headstones. “What a silly place for a house!” they titter as they stagger inside. Doors slam, lights go out, monsters attack for about an hour and fifteen minutes. This is all triggered when one member of the party finds a Ouija board in the house—she obviously missed her OSHA class on “Never Use A Ouija Board In An Abandoned Mansion In A Cemetery” day. This part of the movie was supposed to be a horror-comedy called Twisted Souls, but it was never finished.

In the tacked-on part, we have a “warlock” Kreon (Felix Ward) brooding in a secluded sanctum, far from the action, as he laments his late, pretty bride in a coffin, Isabelle (Maria Pechukas). To bring Isabelle back to life, he needs human sacrifices, so, it turns out, he is the one controlling the monsters. Earlier a young boy, Billy (Alec Nemser), ran afoul of one of Kreon’s monsters while running away from home because his parents forgot his 13th birthday. He got buried alive and resurrected as a vampire boy in a Little Red Riding Hood outfit, who plays candle-lit chess while Kreon discusses his plans in his Transylvanian Baron Von Hissing-Lisp accent. With all those people he slaughters to bring Isabelle back to life, is she going to be grateful? What do you want to bet? Ah, posthumous love, thy name be treachery!

So like I say, this is a stupid mess. Nobody can act, the scripts for both film fragments suck hot vacuum hose, and everyone on Team Carload of Teenagers is an idiot who obligingly stumbles right into the claws/fangs/tentacles of Team Monster. Team Monster, however, brings its A-game of practical effects at the cutting edge of 1986 technology (but sadly not a minute later). Although at one point even Team Monster has a setback, with a gang of sludge monsters (made of mud?) who fart when they walk. In a group, every step, “Prrt! Prt! Prrrrt! Prrt!” But for the most part, we keep to that dark ride pace, a fresh monster attack in a fresh room every ten minutes, whether you were ready for the next one or not. Which, once again I have to point out, makes it braindead, but never boring for a second.

As confounding as Spookies is, I still can’t recommend it specifically for our list.  We have haunted house movies, and when it comes to monster-per-minute low-budget horror, Turn in your Grave‘s weirdness-factor flush beats Spookies‘ bigger-budget straight. By sheer nose (snout) count, The Cabin in the Woods has more monsters. In fact, B-movie monster-mashes aren’t that uncommon; it’s just that Spookies did it in peak ’80s style, when rubber masks with pulsating goop were in their prime.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“[The later additions] made an already kooky movie even weirder, creating a disjointed plot no matter how hard they tried to shoehorn in the sorcerer. Yet, it also made it even more memorable at the same time, because it’s so nonsensical.”–Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

The story behind making-of Spookies

Thorough YouTube review of Vinegar Syndrome’s 2020 Blu-ray

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

STANLEY KUBRICK’S THE SHINING (1980)

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There is a story, possibly apocryphal, which claims that telephoned author Stephen King shortly before filming commenced on The Shining (1980). Allegedly, Kubrick asked King: “Do you believe evil exists, as an entity?” “Yes, I do,” King answered. “Well, I don’t,” Kubrick replied as he slammed down the phone. According to the anecdote, King then knew his pulp novel had been “taken away” from him. His budding 1980 fan base agreed, feigning outrage at cinematic liberties Kubrick was to take. Despite King’s fans, The Shining was largely a hit with audiences and critics, though hardly unanimous. Since then, it has developed an epic cult reputation and is considered by many to be one of the greatest horror films of all time. As per the norm with extreme opinions, both views are off-kilter.

Underrated by literary critics and overrated by housewives, Stephen King was already a household name by 1980, and a film version of his novel about a possessed hotel was inevitable. What King was not prepared for was a forceful filmmaker with his own ideas. To be certain, this is Stanley Kubrick’s Shining, not King’s, and for that we can be thankful (King later proved the point in a dreadfully faithful 1997 television remake).

In Kubrick’s The Shining, the face of evil is not the hotel. Rather, it is the bourgeoisie husband/father Jack Torrance (), with the Still from The Shining (1980)hotel standing as an obvious symbol for man’s eternal evil. That very simple decision confused the hell out of its hyper-linear 1980 audience, although contemporary viewers seem less troubled by it. Yet, there are drawbacks; Kubrick does not make good on all of his promises. There is no substantial character arc for Jack. He is most interesting in the first half before being reduced to a monotone Looney Tune archetype. In sharp contrast, his wife Wendy () emerges from her bedside banality, like a figure jumping off a Symbolist canvas, to become a torrent. Channeling modernist painters (Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Amedo Modgiglini) is a recurring Kubrick theme. Casting Duvall was shrewd. Footage from a “making of” documentary  reveals Kubrick was tyrannical when directing her. It paid off.  Unfortunately, the development of the patriarchal antagonist is not as layered. Kubrick fails to reign in Nicholson, whose character solicits identification and sympathy only from the film’s thug demographic (much in the same way that the Al Pacino’s Tony Montana does). In painting Jack two-dimensionally, Nicholson and Kubrick open wide the door of identification for simpletons. The film falters in allowing the ink to dry on Jack. The banality of evil theme is as subtle as the second half of Nicholson’s performance, but of course, Kubrick’s The Shining is not relegated to a single character.

Kubrick’s The Shining is a far more complex machine than the source Continue reading STANLEY KUBRICK’S THE SHINING (1980) →

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CAPSULE: BURNT OFFERINGS (1976)

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DIRECTED BY: Dan Curtis

FEATURING: , Oliver Reed, Lee Montgomery,

PLOT: A family of three, and their elderly aunt, find a deal allowing them to stay in an old country mansion for the summer, providing they keep the place up and leave out a plate of food for the house’s reclusive matron, who never leaves her room.

Still from Burnt Offerings (1976)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s too mild, with some slight ambiguity but no significant weirdness.

COMMENTS: Burnt Offerings was the beginning of a late 1970s/early 1980s haunted house cycle that encompassed three Amityville Horror movies; the mini-movement climaxed commercially with 1982’s Poltergeist and artistically with 1980’s The Shining. In fact, Offerings is most interesting when considered as a precursor to The Shining, which would take its theme of a parent possessed by an evil spirit and catapult it into the horror stratosphere. Offerings, on the other hand, suffers from poor pacing. It’s too leisurely getting started: it’s over a half hour into the film before we see the first incident which might be categorized as “supernatural.” Up until then, the focusing on spooky shots of light bulbs while horror movie music plays just doesn’t cut it. Even when things do finally start to happen—swimming pool roughhousing that gets dangerously out of hand, a recurring nightmare about a smiling chauffeur—events occur in fits and starts, with husband and wife spending the interim discussing how each previous manifestation of evil is affecting their relationship. Offering a few creepy moments along the way, the movie crawls to a non-surprise ending.

The film’s biggest virtue is its cast. Karen Black, by now no longer a sex kitten but not yet a matron, centers the film. Her sensuality is perfectly constrained, and we are not surprised at hints that the couple’s sex life may be well past the honeymoon phase. Son Lee Montgomery is acceptable; he doesn’t sink the film, which is the most you can really hope from a young actor. Bette Davis is unremarkable here, but she is Bette Davis; her very presence adds legitimacy. Of all the actors, Reed may understand the material’s urge vto break through into camp the best; the moments when his face goes spastic as he fights off the evil inside him give it the film some melodramatic tics of life.

Burnt Offerings was based on a 1973 novel by Robert Marasco, although director Dan Curtis (of TVs “Dark Shadows” fame) rewrote it significantly. The movie was not a critical success, but it has a small but devoted fan base (probably enough to categorize it as “fondly remembered,” but below the threshold that would make it a true cult movie). The 2015 Blu-ray contains a number of new interviews with the surviving cast and adds a new commentary track from critic Richard Harland Smith to the old one from Curtis, Black and co-writer William F. Nolan that has been ported over from the DVD release.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Most of the cliches of the Gothic genre are encompassed in the plot about Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, and young Lee H. Montgomery having a weird summer after moving into a home owned by batty Burgess Meredith and Eileen Heckart… might have been interesting if director Dan Curtis hadn’t relied strictly on formula treatment.”–Variety (contemporaneous)

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

Burnt Offerings (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Burnt Offerings (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]
  • This terrifying thriller does for summer homes what Jaws did for a dip in the surf
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