Tag Archives: Horror

Apocryphally Weird

59*. REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (1972)

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Requiem pour un vampire, AKA Vierges et Vampires, Caged Virgins

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“[M]ore than thirty years later, Requiem remains one of my favorite films. In my view, it’s a real naïve film, written naively without thought, almost automatic writing, without prior idea and above all without reflection. It’s nothing else but a simple stream of ideas out of an unconstituted imagination. It’s a real ‘B’ movie with all that that involves. No intellectual reflection, no intentional symbolism. Nothing but this free and disordered imagery which I care so much about.” —, “The Making of Requiem for a Vampire” (2005)

DIRECTED BY: Jean Rollin

FEATURING: , Mareille Dargent, Dominique, Louise Dhour, Michel Delesalle

PLOT: Two teenage delinquents disguised as clowns escape unknown pursuers in a car; their getaway driver is gunned down in the chase. After escaping they remove their harlequin makeup and make their way across the countryside. They are eventually bitten by bats and wind up trapped in the medieval castle lair of a dying vampire and his minions.

BACKGROUND:

  • Rollin’s script for his fourth film, written in two days in a stream of consciousness, evolved out of two scenes: the car chase through the countryside and the piano concert in the cemetery.
  • The first half of the film is nearly silent. Inspired by the pioneering adventure serials of Louis Feuillade, Rollin chose to emphasize the action sequences by keeping them mostly dialogue-free.
  • The art direction was inspired by surrealist painters Clovis Trouille and Paul Delvaux.
  • The dungeon scenes were filmed in the twelfth century Château de la Roche-Guyon, after the crew was evicted from their first choice of castle when the owner caught sight of the film’s nudity. Edmée, Duchess de la Rochefoucauld never saw the script; she agreed to rent her chateau for filming under the impression the story was, in Rollin’s words, “a sort of fairytale.”
  • The dungeon torture scene is ten minutes long, the minimum length of sleaze sales agent Lionel Wallman required in order to sell the film on the international grindhouse circuit. Wallman also donated the getaway car that gets shot to pieces and set on fire.
  • Interpol briefly investigated the film’s production after local gendarmes discovered the shot-up car with Belgian plates in a secluded patch of forest and assumed it belonged to foreign drug traffickers.
  • The cemetery scenes were filmed in a burial ground for medieval plague victims in Crèvecoeur-en-Auge, a small village in Normandy, believed by locals to be cursed.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Many fantastic scenes in Requiem haunt the mind (the vampire Erika playing the organ in a chapel to an audience of skeleton monks, the crimson torture chamber, the master vampire’s coffin in a green-glowing crypt), but the two main characters dressed as stock clowns stand out whenever they appear, whether in a golden field, a collapsing barn, or a cemetery at dusk.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Clown car getaway; vagina bat

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A car chase gunfight along a winding country road; a solitary food truck in the middle of nowhere; a motorcycle in an abandoned water tower; a chapel doorway glowing crimson in the dead of night. Requiem for a Vampire transitions from scene to scene with the abrupt illogical shifts of a dream, as the intrepid heroines traverse a deserted landscape freighted with mystery. Mysterious themselves, the girls transform from clowns to teenage outlaws with handguns in their miniskirts. It remains unknown quite how they’ve ended up here, who was chasing them, and even where “here” is.

Trailer for Requiem for a Vampire (1972)

COMMENTS: Disregard for normal narrative conventions (establishing the setting, introducing the characters) give Rollin’s films a Continue reading 59*. REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (1972) →

Apocryphally Weird

58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976)

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AKA Demon; God Told Me To Kill

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” – Proverbs 3:5-6

DIRECTED BY: Larry Cohen

FEATURING: Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levene, Mike Kellin, Richard Lynch

PLOT: NYPD detective Peter Nicholas investigates a series of spree killings in which the perpetrators all seem to act with no provocation or explanation, each justifying their actions by saying “God told me to.” Nicholas, a devout Catholic, is infuriated by this claim, but equally plagued by their certainty and his shame over his own sins and infidelities. His investigation leads him to an unearthly suspect, an individual with stories of alien abduction, virgin birth, and Nicholas’ own family history.

Still from God Told Me To (1976)

BACKGROUND:

  • Cohen was a genre chameleon whose c.v. includes the blaxploitation gangster flick Black Caesar, the giant-beast-in-New-York movie Q: The Winged Serpent, and the consumerism horror-satire The Stuff, and his previous film It’s Alive, the tale of a monstrous baby that our own Alfred Eaker called “one of the best horror films of the decade.”
  • Cohen planned to engage Bernard Herrmann, who provided the music for It’s Alive, to compose the score for the new film. According to Cohen, Herrmann watched a rough cut and afterwards discussed his plans with the director over dinner. Unfortunately, Herrmann passed away in his sleep that night. (The film is dedicated to the composer.) Cohen’s next choice, Miklós Rózsa, turned down the job, saying, “God told me not to.” Frank Cordell eventually scored the film.
  • Cohen first cast Robert Forster in the role of the detective. Forster worked on the film for several days before tiring of the director’s methods and leaving the production.
  • The policeman who goes on a shooting rampage at the St. Patrick’s Day parade is portrayed by Andy Kaufman, in his film debut. Cohen crashed the actual parade to film without a permit, and said later that he had to intervene with onlookers to protect Kaufman when the comedian taunted them.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In their final showdown, the glowing, androgynous Bernard tempts Nicholas to join forces and spawn a new race of beings on earth. As proof of his bonafides, Philip pulls up his tunic to reveal a pulsing vagina located squarely in the left side of his chest. It’s a startling sight (and a curious location at that), but it clears the bar for shock value, and ensures that Nicholas is definitively unconvinced to join the cause.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Abstract alien abduction; ribcage vagina

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: God Told Me To builds upon the intriguing decision to take the rantings of homicidal lunatics seriously, and to consider the possibility that God really is commanding the insane to do their horrible deeds. Upon this simple subversion, Cohen piles up a child’s treasury of conspiracy theories and paranoid tropes, including shadowy cabals of power, police corruption, ancient astronauts, hermaphroditism, mind control, and angel/devil dichotomies. It’s a mad melange of wild ideas and outlandish plot twists that guarantees you never quite get your footing.

Original trailer for God Told Me To (1976)

COMMENTS: “It’s based on a true story!” Larry Cohen told the Village Voice about God Told Me To in 2018. “No, seriously, it’s a picture about religion, and the violence people do in the name of religion — which feels really relevant today.” Of course, Cohen was far Continue reading 58*. GOD TOLD ME TO (1976) →

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE SHROUDS (2024)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , ,

PLOT: An entrepreneur who’s obsessed with his dead wife invents a graveyard which allows the bereaved to watch their deceased love ones’ bodies decompose in real time; when some of the graves are vandalized, he’s led to investigate a mysterious conspiracy.

Still from The Shrouds (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Starting from a typically Cronenbergian premise–straddling the line that separates the just barely plausible from the utterly implausible, but presented as if it were perfectly natural—the august director takes a deep dive into human depravity and loss, accompanied by plentiful hallucinations. (Walkout report: there was one other person in the theater with me when the film started; I was alone when the end credits rolled, although I didn’t notice when the other guy left.)

COMMENTS: “How dark are you willing to go?,” asks the improbably named Karsh of a first date, before taking the at-first-game lady on a walk to see a live feed of his wife’s decomposing corpse. Needless to say, he doesn’t get a second date.

When vandals attack Karsh’s hi-tech necrovoyeur cemetery, his business model is jeopardized. He seeks out the culprits with the help of his nerdy ex-brother-in-law and an A.I. assistant who looks suspiciously like his deceased wife, with paranoid suggestions offered by a sister-in-law who also looks suspiciously like his late wife. His investigations suggest abnormal growths on dead tissue, and the possibility that a cabal of international hackers are behind the whole thing. Meanwhile, Karsh has disturbing erotic dreams—all the more disturbing because he finds them comforting—about his deceased love. While probing into the mystery, Karsh also revives his sex life, after years of post-marital celibacy. More impossible, or nearly impossible, events follow, the plot becomes muddled, and The Shrouds wraps on a hallucinatory note.

Now an octogenarian, Cronenberg, who lost his own wife eight years ago, is still able to invent delicious perversities—Karsh’s sexy amputation nightmares, conspiracy theories as aphrodisiacs—even as he seems less and less interested in conclusive narratives. The conspiracies of The Brood (1979) or Videodrome (1983), as bizarrely unlikely as they may be, at least gave you a sense of who the enemy is and their motivation. In Shrouds and Crimes of the Future (2022), the menace is inconclusive, leading to a situation where the audience gets involved in the mystery only to be left hanging at the end. It is clear enough that the thematic enemy here is grief, jealousy, and death itself; but on the narrative side, the antagonist remains murky to the end.

Cronenberg leaves us with plenty to think about, however, including the question of why all of Karsh’s precious memories of his wife revolve exclusively around her body. Is this a personal flaw of Karsh’s, or an honest philosophical recognition that the ultimate reality is the material? Like the motives and identity of The Shrouds’ antagonists, it’s left to you to decide.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Watching The Shrouds dribble its way through a third act that’s as anticlimactic as it is knotty, we can only lament all the weird, intrepid endings Cronenberg might have found for a story about the destiny of flesh – none of which, alas, he actually chose.”–Tim Robey, The Telegraph (festival review)

Capsules

CAPSULE: JACKER 2: DESCENT TO HELL (1996)

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DIRECTED BY: Barry Gaines

FEATURING: Phil Herman, Barry Gaines, Ben Stanski

PLOT: After being thrown off a cliff Mike, the carjacker-cum-serial killer from Jacker, becomes an invulnerable supernatural entity.

Still from Jacker 2: Descent Into Hell

COMMENTS: Where to start with Jacker 2? Well, maybe start with Jacker, the senseless story of a serial-killing carjacker who likes to put blood in his Wheaties and who easily outwits some of the stupidest cops in the world, who can’t figure out he killed his girlfriend because they never think to check the handwriting on her suicide note and can’t figure out he killed the investigating detective’s sister despite his basically threatening to do so in front of a group of police witnesses. It features dingy VHS camcorder videography often lit by streetlights, some less-than-thrilling taking-an-elevator-to-your-apartment scenes, lobotomized acting, sound that ranges from inconsistent to inaudible, and a reasonable amount of violence, but almost no gore or special effects. (To be fair, the script for Jacker was written in a reported four days.)

Jacker 2 picks up exactly where Jacker left off, and most of Jacker‘s characters—including the dead ones—show up again. This fact might give you some reason to watch Jacker, but the main reason to watch Jacker is because it makes Jacker 2 look so much better by comparison. Although the sequel’s story is even more nonsensical—a positive, since the whackadoodle plot is the only real reason to watch this—everything else is much improved. There are a greater variety of creative camera shots, more effective attempts at deliberate comedy, sleazier sex scenes, goofier supporting characters, better (though still not good) sound, occasional lighting for scenes, more non-sequiturs, a bigger ketchup budget, and a trip to Hell (which, as you might have suspected, is actually a basement in New Jersey)—complete with demonic costumes that might have looked silly except for the fact that you can barely make them out through the heavy yellow filter and solarization haze. The editing is actually impressive, given the low quality of the raw footage they had to work with. While Jacker 2 likely would have earned a “Beware” rating if I had seen it first, in contrast to Jacker, it’s a near masterpiece—the Citizen Kane of New Jersey-shot microbudget invulnerable supernatural carjacker flicks.

Of course, it’s a rough ride for the average viewer accustomed to movies with more polish, but Jacker 2 is—if not actually good—at least memorable. The 90s no-budget shot-on-video aesthetic is a real one (heck, Harmony Korine even deliberately aped it). In fact, with all of its technical deficiencies, the biggest complaint against the film is that, at 105 minutes, it’s way too long. Trim out a few of the carjackings that went nowhere, and it would almost be a strong little indie.

Falcon Video was (is?) a New Jersey-based team of zero-budget horror film makers who originally sold most of their movies through mail order. They take turns directing, writing and producing films, but Phil Herman (who stars as Mike the Jacker, wrote both films, and directed the first one) is the central figure. They’re a fascinating collective: a group of friends who break out the camcorder and make feature films in their spare time while holding down day jobs. We should all be so lucky. There are lots of references to Falcon Video and other FV films spread throughout Jacker and Jacker 2, including a running joke that whenever someone’s TV is on, there’s an FV production onscreen.

Semi-star alert: Marilyn Ghigliotti had a major role a few years earlier in cult classic Clerks (she played Dante’s girlfriend, Veronica), but accepts a much smaller role here; talk about climbing down the ladder! (Don’t worry, Marilyn rebounded and is doing just fine today, having accumulated 42 IMDb credits and counting.)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…it doesn’t just repeat the earlier movie’s formula but adds horror and the supernatural to the mix in a way that comes across as properly creepy, and it’s clear to see the filmmakers made the most out of what little they had. And the result … may not be a masterpiece, objectively speaking, but if you’re into shot-on-video movies from the era, there’s a good chance you might like this one.”–Michael Haberfelner, (Re)search My Trash

Jacker / Jacker 2: Descent to Hell [Blu-ray]

Jacker / Jacker 2: Descent to Hell [Blu-ray]
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