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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER SUGGESTED QUEUE: IRREVERSIBLE (2002)

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DIRECTED BY: Gaspar Noé

FEATURING: , , Albert Dupontel, Philippe Nahon

PLOT: A reflection on the destructive nature of time, centered around a ruthless sexual abuse and a vicious revenge.

COMMENTS: First things first: I balk at calling Gaspar Noé’s classic Irreversible a “weird” movie. Experimental, brutal, shocking, or thought-provoking are all more suitable adjectives. Its “weirdest” element, apart from its anxiety-inducing quasi-infrasound and some improvised dialogue, is perhaps that the movie exists in two versions: a disorienting one where the story is told in reverse and a clearer one, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, that retains the chronological order of the events.

Another aspect worth bearing in mind is Noé’s intention to blur the boundaries between the real and the fictional. At the time of filming, leads Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, both of whom offer superb performances as young couple Alex and Marcus, were actually married As a result, their scenes together feel tender and sweet, and they are imbued with genuine love—a stark contrast to the gruesome violence pervading most of the film.

Because, despite all the stylistic experimentation, Irreversible remains grounded in disturbingly realistic ideas. In an interview, Noé bleakly revealed that the film was meant to represent the fact “that people are animals who control themselves to survive in a civilized environment, and not the other way around.” In effect, while the movie is far from being a gorefest, the atavistic behavior that characters display in some of the sequences is chilling. When the outbursts of violence take place, the viewer can’t help but stare in astonishment at the dark underbelly of human nature presented on screen. The horror of the film lies in these very actions and in the realization that they can be triggered any time under the right circumstances.

The central conflict of the movie (spoilers ahead) exemplifies such unhinged violence. It is also literally the central scene, the one that doesn’t change its location irrespective of which version of the film one watches, and the one that is hotly debated among commentators who are undecided whether it’s one of the most powerful scenes in cinema history or simply gratuitous onscreen shock value. It is a crude, ten-minute static shot depicting Belluci’s rape and beating in an underground tunnel, whose red walls become a symbol of hell. This scene constitutes the trigger for Cassel’s revenge on the perpetrator, but it also works on a level beyond the screen, the long static shot directly making us viewers witness to a cruel reality, rendering us impotent before it, just as the victim is.

The other gruesome scene of the film takes place at the beginning or end, depending on the version, at a gay bar called The Rectum (fans of psychoanalysis may find links to the above-mentioned tunnel), where the rapist, referred to as Le Tenia, is blithely clubbing and having fun with other men. Cassel and his friend burst into the bar and, Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER SUGGESTED QUEUE: IRREVERSIBLE (2002) →

366 Underground, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

366 UNDERGROUND FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE ASSIGNMENT: THE WITCHES TALISMAN (2013)

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The Assignment: The Witches Talisman is available for free on YouTube.

DIRECTED BY: Kelly Helen Thompson

FEATURING: Kelly Helen Thompson, Bob Glazier, Abi Burgess, Kyle Calwhite, Steven S. Singer

PLOT: College student Cassy discovers that she is the only one who can prevent the gates of Hell from opening to unleash apocalypse upon the world.

Still from "The Assignment: The Witches Talisman" (2013)

 

COMMENTS: To drive home the point of how far from heroic the main character Cassy is, we open The Assignment: The Witches Talisman (a title I have copied exactly from the opening credits for maximum accuracy) with a scene of her academic advisor ripping her a new one. “How did you even make it into my school?… You disgust me! Why do I spend my time on you?” Basically, he’s not poised to write her a recommendation. So when he turns out to be the very same demon sent from the underworld to destroy life as we know it, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

Thompson, the film’s auteur, has publicly acknowledged that she wanted to make her own story in the vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a journey to female empowerment through a character who has greatness thrust upon her. A plucky heroine herself, Thompson has assembled the very definition of a DIY project, featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors, props and costumes pieced together from spare closets and dollar stores, and locations grabbed wherever they could be found. The score carries with it great power and importance, selected as it is from the oeuvre of the John Williams of royalty-free music, Kevin MacLeod. Simple solutions to big problems abound; in one crucial fight scene, I’m 90% certain that the villain’s chief weapon, meant to invoke Sith-like force lightning, is in fact Silly String. As I have said before, the completion of a film, any film, is something of a small miracle, and Thompson and Co. are to be commended for the effort of getting this thing to the finish line. It’s no Avatar, but by gum, it is a movie.

Unfortunately, some of those clever solutions end up being their own impediment, and nowhere is that more true than in the look of the film, which tries to make a virtue of its shortcomings by coating them with a thick layer of intentional obfuscation. Nearly every shot is filmed with a handheld camera to keep things unsteady, and then the images are overlaid with color filters, pixilation, and intense posterization. Rest assured that the filmmakers control the horizontal and the vertical; the opening warning advises, “You may think you are tripping out watching this film. Side Effects include Dizziness, blurred vision, due to the color, cave graveyard reality effect.” This warning is not oversold. Virtually every scene is presented in a mix of solarization and shaky-cam. Sound, too, is similarly blown out with massive reverb, scratchy sound effects, and more and more MacLeod. That makes it an uncomfortable viewing experience, if not actually strange. Anyway, take comfort in the affirmation that if you find it hard to watch The Assignment, it’s not you.

It might be possible to forgive the difficulties in, you know, seeing and hearing the movie. What’s harder to wave away is the lack of storytelling focus. It’s very hard to be sure just what you should take away from a screening of The Assignment. (I’ve watched it twice and still haven’t nailed it down.) The film isn’t really built around Cassy acheiving her destiny; she’s just thrown straight into it. It’s not about her introduction into a secret world hidden to us commoners, as the lore is mostly delivered through vague exposition and polished GIF inserts. And it’s definitely not a showcase for kick-ass fight choreography: when two characters attack each other with swords, it’s less enthralling then watching a pair of boys go at it with pool noodles. The film is episodic, with many scenes giving off a strong aroma of improvisation, as if the actors were given a one-line description of the scene and told to vamp. Rather than coming together, the pieces are just placed adjacent to each other.

I have mad respect for the hustle and the determination to keep at it that Thompson shows in getting this over the finish line and continuing to develop new work. (She has made the film available on YouTube, and her other works on the channel include what appears to be a sequel.) However, I must conclude that The Assignment: The Witches Talisman, while certainly weird in the sense of being inexplicable, is so hard to access that it’s difficult to evaluate it under any other metric. That said, there is something perversely charming about how impenetrable it is. You know who agrees with me? Cassy. Following the final battle, she finds herself in an empty field and looks around in a blinding rage. “Seriously?” she demands of the heavens. “This is how it ends? What is it? What is it? It’s just some fucked-up terrible film… What was the point of all this shit?” I mean… I didn’t say it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Weird is about the only type of films Florida churns out, not to say they are not good but something about the water here ‘em makes go crazy. Granted if you watching it and it’s Florida get ready to strap yourself in for a strange and possibly surreal ride. ‘The Assignment: Witches Talisman’ is no exception…” – Josh Darling, HorrorNews.net

(This movie was nominated for review by… well, whaddaya know, Kelly Helen Thompson. Hi, Kelly! Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: HYSTERIA (1997)

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DIRECTED BY: Rene Daalder

FEATURING: Patrick McGoohan, Amanda Plummer, Michael Maloney, Emmanuelle Vaugier

PLOT: Clinical psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Fry delivers an especially troubled patient to the only place he believes can help, the remote Langston Clinic, where he discovers that the cure for mental illness may be worse than the ailment.Still from Hysteria (1997)

COMMENTS: “Welcome to the last good old-fashioned madhouse!” exclaims Dr. Harvey Langston, and he does not deceive. They just don’t make mad scientists like they used to, and Hysteria is a throwback to that wonderful time, both historically and cinematically, when society just threw all its lunatics into one big Gothic mansion and trusted to let God sort it out. The fun is in seeing just how nuts people are going to get, and once you’ve made the decision to cast Patrick McGoohan as your mad scientist and Amanda Plummer as his majordomo, you’re setting the crazy bar pretty high.

A prologue hints at a sinister explanation for what’s going on at the Langston Clinic (and is quickly forgotten), but soon after Fry’s arrival, the real secret is revealed: Dr. Langston has pioneered the use of neurotransmitters to establish a mental link among everyone at the clinic, patients and doctors alike, turning the whole place into a kind of hive mind. The result is that the afflictions of these patients are shared among the group, meaning anyone could suddenly lapse into Tourette’s or begin stuttering or suddenly rip open their blouse. Hysteria‘s great innovation is not that everyone in the asylum is crazy, but that the crazy is collective. This spirit informs the film’s wildest scene, in which a sexual encounter is appreciated far more widely than one might expect.

Despite moments like this, or a surprisingly moving scene in which a victim of paralysis attempts to crowdsource the ability to dance, Hysteria isn’t weird so much as it is ambitious. Presenting itself as a traditional horror flick in which a lone man must do battle with the forces of insanity, it eventually reveals itself to be a lunatic-themed metaphor for “it takes a village.” It’s arguable that everyone we meet is at least a little bit wacko, especially our hero Dr. Fry, esteemed clinical psychiatrist and clear voice of reason in a world gone mad. Of course, the only reason he is driving his troubled patient to a mysterious clinic in the woods is because he’s blown up his spot in the big city, raging out at a policy that favors drugs over hugs and fiercely determined to rescue this woman for whom he secretly harbors a crush. We buy in because of Michael Maloney’s passionate demeanor and plummy English accent, but the movie wants you to know you’re backing the wrong horse.

Hysteria is best enjoyed as a fun bit of misdirection masquerading as a traditional horror. The effort is aided its strong cast, including McGoohan playing both paternal and happily demented, and Plummer as the true mastermind, earning pathos through her full commitment. (Special shout-out to Vaugier, who successfully accomplishes the two tasks set before her: to play convincingly crazy and to look beautiful when called upon to take off all her clothes.) It’s far from groundbreaking, but moves in enough unexpected directions to reward the casual viewer: a good old-fashioned madhouse.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Hysteria is a film that can’t quite find the right balance between the bizarre and the intriguing… it can seem as if Daalder is including weird things for the sake of weirdness, like some kind of David Lynch wannabe... It’s admirably ambitious, but the bulk of the film ignores Daalder’s more intriguing ideas and comes off either too conventional or too aggressively weird.” – Tyler Foster, DVD Talk (Blu-Ray release)

(This movie was nominated for review by jamesoliva76. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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Hysteria

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    List Candidates

    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEMONIA (1990)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: Meg Register, Brett Halsey, Lucio Fulci, Lino Salemme

    PLOT: An archeological dig unleashes vengeful ghosts. Still from Demonia (1990) WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It’s a matter of balance with Fulci: do the weird parts outweigh the boring parts? Consider Un Chien Andalou. That movie has a razor blade slicing an eyeball. Fulci (famous eye assassin, apparently settling a score from childhood where optometrists beat him and took his lunch money) has a cat jump up onto a woman’s face and chomp her eyeball out and eat it, amid a screaming swarm of clawing kitties. This, in a film that would play well next to a ade, complete with otherworldly dream logic and characters that act like anything but normal human beings with brains. Fulci is oft-capsuled in our pages, but never listed. One Fulci madhouse or another should ultimately claim the throne of weirdest, and we just as well might pick this one, if not The Beyond.

    COMMENTS: Demonia is chock full of images you don’t see everyday. Fulci outdoes himself in his notoriously over-the-top death scenes. One notable flashback has a nun collect a fresh-born baby swaddled in blankets and then unceremoniously toss it into a flaming altar to burn. In a super-imposed effects shot, we see the baby’s arm amid crackling flames sticking out of the blankets as it uncurls its fist into a very distinct middle finger salute. So, there’s no shortage of off-the-wall death scenes. You could also pick the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene where a naked cultist nun ghost materializes brandishing a ghost-harpoon-gun, only to fire a very physical harpoon into some guy’s gut and quickly vanish.

    The trouble with this title is the parts between the deaths: talky, boring, slow-paced, sloppily written. Fulci released Cat in the Brain, a parody with the director playing himself as a director who gets Hollywood hallucination fits after his sanity is taxed by directing endless gore scenes (a plot ripped off in Evil Ed) in the same year. Just sayin’. Fulci wasn’t exactly swinging for the pro leagues in 1990. In Demonia, Fulci is so low-effort between gore scenes that he might as well carry around a margarita to sip as he plays a police inspector who fruitlessly tries to solve these ghost murders.

    What holds this movie back and divides Fulci fans? The acting is atrocious all around, the characters make no sense and are all dumb as cheese, the dialog is flat, the plot might as well be steered by dartboard, the low budget production makes everything look cheap and dirty, and Fulci phones in a performance of himself phoning it in. The first half hour’s slow pace almost kills it, but this is largely just set-up for characters that will later die to the ghost-nun rampage like so many roaches writhing in bug spray fumes. The second two-thirds grinds to the film’s advantage as the craziness starts to pile up. How many ways can we kill a person? How about tie this guy’s legs to two different trees so when you trigger the trap, they split him in two? The non-murder parts also have quirky details worth mentioning, Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DEMONIA (1990) →

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    CAPSULE: NADJA (1994)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , , , , Jared Harris

    PLOT: Dracula’s estranged son and daughter reunite after his final death.

     

    COMMENTS: A remix of Bram Stoker’s original text haunted by the influences of prior adaptations, Nadja is an atmospheric homage to the Universal monster flicks of the 1930s filtered through the East Village art scene with deadpan Brechtian cool. Bela Lugosi portrays Dracula through clips of old footage. For half the film, the image appears distorted by an aura of supernaturalism, thanks to a pixelating camera. The rest of the cinematography is crisp black and white, interiors cloaked in Expressionist shadows, exteriors swathed in shrouds of fog.

    When André Breton met the woman who called herself “Nadja,” she had left behind one life and arrived in Paris seeking another. We meet Almereyda’s Nadja in a similar scene, on a date with a random guy who asks her the usual questions. “Do you work?” “No.” Her father provides for her. What does he do? He has money, family money – old money that goes back all the way to Romania. But she left Europe because it’s like a small village, whereas New York City is the world. She talks of how she wants to change her life. She can sense the potential for change but, as Renfield will remind her, changing your life is easier said than done, even when you’re undead.

    The guy asks if she wants another drink. A dangerous question to ask a vampire but apparently the old Romanian money didn’t tip him off. He takes Nadja back to his place and she has that second drink, disappearing before he even knows what happened.

    But then she feels it: her father is dead. Van Helsing has staked him, and Nadja knows immediately that Dracula is gone for good. She experiences a sense of relief, the impetus for change she’s been looking for. But first, she has to risk a reconciliation with her estranged brother, Edgar, who for unknown reasons, wants to kill her.

    Nadja was one of a slew of existential vampire films released in the early to mid-1990s. It makes a perfect double feature with ‘s The Addiction (1995), which features a similarly impressive cast, set in New York City just before it drowned beneath a tide of Starbucks lattes. But while Ferrara focuses on gritty street reality, Almereyda’s style is more Pictorialist, providing impressions of a city that never seems quite real. It’s all about the atmosphere, the vampire as symbol, as philosopher, though these musings are delivered with tongue-in-cheek humor, preventing the tone from ever becoming too ponderous or heavy. The story follows the basic outline of Stoker’s plot, but Almereyda introduces additional entanglements and family secrets to a pared down cast of characters. Peter Fonda’s Van Helsing is the embarrassing drunk uncle of Jim (Donovan), a Harker-esque character whose marriage to Lucy is on the rocks. When Lucy catches Nadja’s eye in a bar, she unwittingly sets Van Helsing on the trail of Dracula’s children.

    The ending sees the characters, somewhat improbably, whisked away to Transylvania, after some of them inexplicably survive an explosion, but don’t expect an action-packed, blood-soaked finale. The always lovely Suzy Amis delivers a moving monologue on humanity’s bereftness in the modern world, and Nadja finds the change she was looking for.

    Nadja largely succeeds as arthouse horror through its unusual visual style and subtle surrealism, enhanced by the strengths of its cast. Löwensohn captivates as Nadja, and plentiful shots focus on her unique face framed by the dark folds of a hooded cloak. She and Martin Donovan were regulars in Hal Hartley’s early ’90s films, where both perfected the technique of delivering emotionally resonant lines with minimal modulation of voice and facial expression. Fonda provides much needed energy as a zany and eccentric Van Helsing. For fans of , his brief cameo as a morgue security guard is a nice little bonus.

    Arbelos Films recently completed a 4K restoration of a director’s cut approved by Michael Almereyda, which has just finished its run in select theaters and will see by a physical media release in mid-October.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Stylish, eccentric and occasionally deliciously weird, it is a film for audiences who like their horror served with humour and their vampires with personality. With a runtime of under 90 minutes, for those willing to embrace its peculiar rhythms, Nadja reveals that even creatures of the night can have a sense of humour.”–Romney Norton, Dirty Movies (re-release)

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    Nadja

    Nadja

    • Director Michael Almereyda and Executive Producer David Lynch conjure a rare vampire film.

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