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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FROM MORN TO MIDNIGHT (1920)

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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.

Still from From Morn to Midnight (1920)

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:

“Not a frame of From Morn to Midnight is wasted in creating a surreal atmosphere…  Its sets are so bizarre, so deliberately over the top that it overwhelms its own message. The audience can only take so much. No wonder theater owners balked at it.” – Lea Stans, Silent-ology

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.)  

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CAPSULE: SPIDER BABY (2024)

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AKA Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Dustin Ferguson

FEATURING: Noel Jason Scott, Skylar Fast, Emma Keifer, Jennifer Moriarity, Peter Stickles, Cody J. Briscoe

PLOT: A family of three young adults suffer from “Merrye syndrome,” which causes them to slowly regress to a childlike (but homicidal) state; their kindly caretaker tries to protect them from scheming relatives seeking to seize their ancestral homestead.

Still from spider baby (2024)

COMMENTS: Despite what laypeople might assume, it is rarely a fun exercise to review a bad movie. There are, of course, exceptions. Movies that are bad, but unintentionally entertaining, can be eviscerated and celebrated in the same breath. It can be cathartic to unload on Hollywood product cynically dumped into theaters just to make a few bucks off unwitting dupes by people who should care more about their craft —these provide excellent excuses to flex your mordant prose muscles. And there are a small number of movies for which calling out their antisocial elements—be they misogynist, sadistic, exploitative, ignorant, or bigoted—feels like a public service. But most bad movies, unfortunately, were made with love by decent people doing the best with what they had to work with; these flicks inspire disappointment, not indignation. And disappointment rarely results in prose that’s a delight for either reader or writer.

But the issuance of a remake of a weird movie classic  like Spider Baby is newsworthy. And although the project feels wholly unnecessary, people are likely to be at least a little curious. Seeing the name of original director on the marquee as executive producer is encouraging; surely he would not leave his baby in the hands of ne’er-do-well filmmakers? Unfortunately, the new Baby goes wrong in just about every way imaginable; so much so that any analysis reads less like a meaningful critique and more like a particularly grisly cinematic autopsy report.

Ferguson has added entirely new scenes, and yet the new version somehow runs almost ten minutes shorter than the original. The film is padded with little home-movie style clips (a tribute to House of 1,000 Corpses, a movie this actually resembles more than its source) and many more senseless murders—as if a greater quantity of perfunctory killings could make up for the carefully orchestrated, individualizes fates that befell the original’s scant three victims. The four top credited actors are Beverly Washburn (Elizabeth in the original), Ron (great-grandson of Lon) Chaney, Robert Mukes, and . Each of them spent at most an afternoon on the project, filming meaningless death, flashback, or wraparound scenes. Stevens doesn’t even speak. The actual principals are no match for the originals. Nor is the camerawork, the setting (sunny Cali mansion instead of old dark country house), the continuity, the humor, or, really, anything. A few of the performances aren’t completely embarrassing (Moriarity is best), the credit sequence is well done, and the score is good (if used far to liberally, in an attempt to manufacture a spooky atmosphere not happening onscreen). But it’s like a community theater enactment a beloved classic, with no real individual take to offer. Great scenes are omitted, inconsequential ones are substituted. All that you really need to do is to compare the two renditions of the famous “playing spider with Uncle Peter” scenes. The original is a masterpiece of suspense worthy of , playful and subtle, conveying themes of bondage, incest, and sadism through the context of a villainess with the unknowable, morally ambiguous mind of a child. Even though some of the dialogue is lifted verbatim for the remake, this re-enactment is more like watching candid security footage from the VIP room of a B&D-themed strip club. Ferguson establishes no relationship (much less chemistry) between the characters, starts the scene in medias res, and ends it in sleaziest res.

Of course, there will be some generous and charitable folks who think that this younger sibling is not such a bad egg, and good for them, I guess. But my recommendation is to avoid; the fact that, despite the cult tie-in, this movie has almost no distribution, marketing, or reviews from sources besides us bolsters that warning. It would be all terribly depressing, but the bright side is that this microbudget remake helps us to appreciate the miraculous accomplishment of Hill’s original so much more. Hill may have been working in schlock, but he was a master schlock craftsman, able to wring memorable performances out of mediocre talent and genuine suspense out of thin, musty air.

On Pod 366, we incorrectly speculated that the advertised “BONUS black and white feature” was a copy of the original film. It is, in fact, merely a monochrome rendering of the remake. There are a lot of interviews and behind-the-scenes footage on the disc, however.

Spider Baby (2024) [Blu-ray]

Spider Baby (2024) [Blu-ray]
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE APPOINTMENT (1982)

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DIRECTED BY: Lindsay C. Vickers

FEATURING: Edward Woodward, Jane Merrow, Samantha Weysom, John Judd

PLOT: Ian informs his daughter Joanne that he will be forced to miss her upcoming violin concert; Joanne takes the news poorly, and terrible dreams and mysterious occurrences ensue.

Still from The Appointment (1982)

COMMENTS: The Appointment is one of those movies that I’d seen before seeing it, thanks to the pervasiveness of memes. The film’s climactic car crash has been excised and circulated on the web as a bizarre mishmash of extreme closeups of screeching tires, unconvincing steering wheel acting, and a downright gymnastic final moment on the road before the car plunges over the side of a cliff. It’s absurd in isolation, but a notable demonstration of the crucial role of context. Restored to its surroundings, what seemed funny is revealed to be tragic, what was ridiculous is horrifically unavoidable.

The Appointment stands out for being so irrepressibly British. Not merely in its origins, with writer/director Vickers taking his first and only spin in the lead director’s chair after a career as an assistant with Hammer Films, a pastoral country home tailor made for a Britbox mystery series, and a budget bankrolled by the pension fund of the British Coal Board. Not even due to the casting of the quintessentially English, pre-Equalizer post-Wicker Man Woodward, or Weysom’s droopy voice that sounds like a Mike Myers character. No, the thing that makes The Appointment a cinematic version of a “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster is the ongoing and concerted effort to depress the stakes and make this horrific situation as mannered and emotionless as possible.

In many respects, ’s Carrie could be seen as a similar film, with telekinetic powers in the hands of a teenage protagonist confused by oncoming womanhood. But in the hands of De Palma (and original author Stephen King), the scenario is laden with intense drama; the potent subjects of acceptance and rejection fuel cataclysmic events. What The Appointment brings to the party is that classically British sentiment that says, “What if all that, but with everyone making a heroic effort to avoid talking about anything unpleasant?” Joanne’s possible supernatural abilities take a backseat to what the film considers a more compelling subject: a decent middle-aged man beleaguered by the conflicting demands of work and family. Consider that the most intense moment in the film involves a father walking past his daughter’s room, stopping outside the door, and standing motionless for many long seconds while both father and daughter wait for something to happen. Nothing does, and yet with the weight of repressed feelings and damaged psyches, the moment hits as hard as a bucket of pig’s blood.

That doorway scene serves as a litmus test for the viewer; you get to decide just what’s been going on between them, and how distasteful it is. But there are other signs that the rot runs deep in this family. Merrow petulantly complains that her husband ignores her in favor of their daughter, a sentiment he ratifies by absentmindedly complaining that she’s hogging the sheets. There’s the event that calls Woodward away in the first place, an unexplained inquest in which he must testify in place of his (mysteriously) absent business partner about the events that led to an employee (mysteriously) dying.  And that’s the say nothing of the prologue, an effectively shocking scene—that almost seems to have been flown in from another movie—in which a music student two years prior is violently attacked by an invisible force. Death is in the air. Perhaps young Joanne doesn’t come by her covetous rage honestly.

The Appointment goes exactly where it intends to, never straying from its course. This deprives the film of suspense, but it also gives it an unsettling feeling of inevitability. Ian repeatedly tells his daughter that he has no ability to change his plans, and this happens to be true; his fate is set. His dreams and those of his wife predict the circumstances of his demise. Both his own car and its replacement acquire similar damage, as if to ensure that there is no avenue for escape. Time itself is against him; moments that should pass in a heartbeat stretch out before us. Woodward is constantly out of sync with the clocks in his house, and his watch stops working during his drive (before he loses it entirely). That car crash which seemed sloppily edited turns out to be deliberately extended beyond linear time, showing every element of the incident from multiple angles and perspectives and lingering in the moment past what one would reasonably expect. The Appointment is about 10 minutes of story and 80 minutes of mood, but that’s less a shortcoming and more a choice.

The title ends up being the key to the whole film. Woodward has an appointment with death, a fact the film elides to preserve some degree of suspense (and to sidestep litigation from the estate of Agatha Christie). In some respects, that feels like a cheat, like a shaggy dog story that takes an awfully long time to reach its punchline, and with suggestions of more substantial plotlines that never quite materialize. But The Appointment has an almost noble focus on its primary aim, to capture the exquisite discomfort of watching every detail of the last 24 hours of a man’s life as he goes about it in blissful ignorance. Show me the meme that can do that.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an odd, not entirely coherent work, but obvious faults aside, it’s also something rather special, with a couple of stand-out, set-piece sequences which mark it out as a ‘must see’ for genre fans… The suburban doom theme finally manifests itself in an extraordinary, absurd yet chilling climax…” – Eddie Harrison, Film-Authority

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan, who remarked “it begins with an eerie opening and leads into a chilling accident sequence, one that had me muttering “W…T…F……. Truly a visual wonder.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)     

The Appointment (Flipside No 44) (Blu-ray)

The Appointment (Flipside No 44) (Blu-ray)
  • The disk has English audio and subtitles.
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THE LATTER YEARS OF COFFIN JOE

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In 1964, the black-clad figure who would soon become Zé do Caixão (“Coffin Joe”) appeared in a nightmare to a struggling Brazilian filmmaker named , and quickly tumbled his way onscreen as the magnetic pole of At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. As portrayed by Marins, Joe burst onscreen as an instantly iconic horror presence: snazzily dressed all in black with a top hat and a demonic monobrow, and, most notably, talon-like fingernails the size of paring knives.

at midnight i'll take your soul posterJoe’s first two classic appearances (Soul and its 1967 sequel, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse) quickly established the rules for the character beyond his iconic look. Coffin Joe, a mortician by trade, is wildly sadistic, favoring elaborate tortures that often utilize tarantulas and snakes. Joe is megalamoniacal, constantly asserting his personal superiority over the common rabble of peasantry. Joe is militantly atheistic (a shocking in the deeply Catholic Brazil of the 60s—Joe not only loudly denies the existence of God, but even eats lamb on Good Friday!) Joe is obsessed with securing the immortality of his bloodline, constantly searching for a woman brave and depraved enough to be worthy of bearing him a son. And, curiously, while Joe has no supernatural powers of his own—he triumphs over his enemies, whether musclemen or an entire posse of townsfolk, by cunning, bravado, and sheer force of will—he is always beset by occult forces: curses from his victims, visions of ghosts, and, in Corpse, a memorable trip to Hell itself (which Joe refuses to believe in, despite his ten-minute firsthand technicolor torture tour.)

Although they have their rough patches—Joe can get long-winded when discussing either his own superiority or his lust for a child—the first two films are horror classics. Zé do Caixão became a sensation in Brazil, a horror mainstay with the look of a Freddy Kruger and the cultural reach of a Dracula. Marins launched a series of comic books, TV guest spots (most now lost), and personal appearances in character. Strangely, Marins would not directly continue the Coffin Joe saga for forty years after Corpse; but the character would reappear in various guises, most of which are covered in Arrow’s box set, “Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe.”

strange world of coffin joe posterAlthough he does not appear in any of the three stories that comprise The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968), Joe lends his name to the film and introduces it (“You can’t accept the terror because you are the terror!” Joe proclaims as a lightning storm rages). Zé do Caixão even has his own theme song here, an a capella folk hymn (“it’s strange, it’s very strange, Coffin Joe’s world,” moans the lead singer over the credits, as the camera focuses up the miniskirt of a gyrating go-go dancer.) The three stories here are fairly standard horror tales, like Continue reading THE LATTER YEARS OF COFFIN JOE →

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: CHAINSAWS WERE SINGING (2024)

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Mootorsaed laulsid

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DIRECTED BY: Sander Maran

FEATURING: Karl Ilves, Laura Niils, Martin Ruus, Janno Puusepp,
Rita Rätsepp

PLOT: Tom and Maria meet and fall in love after each has had the worst day of their lives, not knowing events are going to turn for the even worse when they cross paths with a chainsaw-wielding cannibal.

Still from The Chainsaws Were Singing (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Oof, feeling lazy here, so from this wide menu I’ll proffer, “refrigerator-bound bukkake god” and “throat-piercing lesbo-hedgehog.”

COMMENTS: One-hundred and eighty hours of footage, then a three-hour first draft, and then landing just shy of the two-hour mark: Sander Maran obviously has a song to sing, inspired by his love of pleasantly idiotic comedy musicals. This story of two lost souls coming together is more than reminiscent of Cannibal! the Musical, but is also very much its own thing. At its Fantasia screening, the hoots, hollers, and theater-wide laughs in response to the odd touches and permeating sense of eccentric madcap made its qualities as entertainment clear.

I would like to start by telling you about Jaan, a gaunt goof who meets the hero whilst passing by in his car. Stopping for this hitchhiker, he laments that his love of the act (of hitchhiking, of course) is thwarted by his being too ugly to be picked up by passersby. Jaan has something to say at every situation, rambling from one topic to another at times with a speed matched only by his ever changing costume. This quirk is on decreasingly subtle display, as somewhere around the mid-way point the audience can delight in his “dextrous” changing of the duds mid-conversation with other characters. He has a string of bad luck, too: just about every vehicle he exits during Chainsaws Were Singing ends up exploding violently, always hucking a flaming tire at his feet. Supernatural, or not, Jaan’s presence on camera guarantees something silly, strange, and usually both.

Chainsaws Were Singing also manages a number of unexpected tonal shifts. When the heroine is trapped in the basement of a sinister family, Maran shifts the film’s gears on a dime, and for some fifteen minutes showcases some real, menacing, straight-up horror when introducing the evil matriarch. Horror lampoonery veers into broader lampoonery, such as when Maran introduces the mysterious man, Cobra, whose absurd tale about the wartime death of his fifteen year old brother (in some conflict between Portugal and Sweden) could pass for a monologue.

Returning to my earlier laziness, I’ll wrap up here with a, “C’mon, everyone” coda. There is gore galore, silly comedy, ill-fated lovers, Quixotic questing, finger-food, dark pasts, gore galore, your friendly Wandering Gun Man, breezy musical numbers (“Tapa Tapa Tapa!”), tension, massacres, more gore galore, and, as I’ve already mentioned, a very helpful lesbo-hedgehog. In his cross between The Sound of Music and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Maran offers everything you could want in a wacky and weird genre frolick.

[Cue Orchestra.]

Wait, stop.

Down your instruments; I forgot to mention the bukkake.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“While there will be an audience for this type of exaggerated surrealism, the film’s quirky scenarios, parody-type approach to storytelling, and crude humor won’t be for everyone.” – Emma Vine, Loud and Clear Reviews (festival screening)