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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE 4TH MAN (1983)

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De vierde man

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DIRECTED BY: Paul Verhoeven

FEATURING: Jeroen Krabbé, , Thom Hoffman, Dolf de Vries

PLOT: A writer prone to waking nightmares encounters a mysterious woman who he hopes to use to reach a man for whom he lusts, but realizes that his urges may have led him into a dangerous trap.

Still from The 4th Man (1983)

COMMENTS: A sentence that has never been uttered regarding the career of Paul Verhoeven is, “I admire his subtlety.” His whole ethos is big, bold, and blatant. That made him particularly well-suited to transition from European art cinema to American box office. His refusal to put limitations on his excesses would ultimately cause its own set of problems, but let’s turn the clock back to Verhoeven’s pre-Hollywood days, when his budgets were smaller but his subversive imagination was still unbounded. That’s where we find him making The 4th Man, the enjoyably twisty psychological thriller that raked in millions of guilders and punched the director’s ticket for greener pastures in the States.

Based on the novel by Gerard Reve, the film stars Krabbé as a writer named Gerard Reve. (“Reve” is the French word for “dream.”) Gerard has a suitcase full of issues, including unchecked alcoholism, a voracious bisexual appetite, a long-term relationship that now fills him with disgust, an alarmingly low bank account, and a devout Catholic faith. These elements combine early on to produce striking images—peepholes become eyeballs, blood pours down the walls of a train car—as Gerard slips into waking nightmares that deliver visions of impending death. These have a corresponding comical mirror image as Gerard is confronted with the reality of his visions, such as when a wreath on a casket bearing his name is pulled back to reveal the actual occupant. Whatever the cause, Gerard is an exposed fuse, ready to spark at any moment.

The match turns out to be Christine. An archetypal icy blonde, Soutendijk plays up the self-evident sweetness and innocence of the character, even as Gerard keeps uncovering evidence that she may be secretly sinister. (Careful observers of the opening credits will note that Verhoeven provides a pretty on-the-nose metaphor.) If anything, Gerard is the more obvious villain, tripping clumsily over his honest feelings (during sex, he covers her breasts and tells her she looks like a beautiful boy) and blatantly wagging his tongue at a beefcake photo of Christine’s occasional boyfriend Herman. As he dives deeper, though, he learns more about her past husbands and the circumstances of their collectively untimely demises. The ensuing battle between his uncontrollable urges and his devotion to the protective interventions he is certain are coming from God and the Virgin Mary will send him hurtling to the shocking and amusing climax.

A lot of the tricks Verhoeven pioneers here will return in his Hollywood ventures. His affection for cartoonish violence will appear in Robocop and Total Recall, the defiantly cavalier attitude toward sex is a hallmark of Showgirls, and the whole noirish plot feels like a rough draft of Basic Instinct. His most important trick, however, is his state of mind. There’s no subtext that can’t quickly become text, and the sheer outrageousness of Gerard’s plight is what keeps viewers in suspense. For a little while, this approach would make Verhoeven one of the more unpredictable directors to top the global box office. It’s nice to catch him at a time when his audacity still had an undercurrent of hunger.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…so loaded with symbolism that the film leans toward camp… The 4th Man is one of the most audacious movies ever made, but the imagery isn’t just fancy trimmings because Verhoeven grounds the movie’s bizarre flights of fancy within the twisted yearnings and fears of Gerard’s mind.” – James Newman, Images Movie Journal (DVD)

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

The 4th Man (1983)

The 4th Man (1983)

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    List Candidates

    FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HER PRIVATE HELL (2026)

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    DIRECTED BY: Nicolas Winding Refn

    FEATURING: Sophie Thatcher, , , Charles Melton, Dougray Scott, Diego Calva

    PLOT: It’s Elle’s birthday, and her father is heading out of town, leaving her in the company of her BFF-turned-step-mother and a beautiful new “sister,” as a sinister fog heralds the arrival of The Leather Man.

    Still from Her Private Hell (2026)

    WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Refn doesn’t waste our time with nonsense like clarity. Space encounters with Candy Flux ray-guns, mega-crystal caverns, rent rib cages, and daddy issues laid on as thick as the ambient mist is all we need to get by in this surreal fairytale.

    COMMENTS: It’s kind of a chamber drama, with a cast of six. Plus two. Plus some flashback goons. And it all takes place in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel. Except, of course, those bits on a movie set. And that violent string in post-WWII occupied Japan. And, now that I think of it, that club consisting primarily of sharp shadows, strobing neon, and dozens and dozens of Romanesque statues. Oh, and that nebulous underworld with the jutting rods of serrated crystal, too. And Refn’s exploration of a lachrymose psyche would have been incomplete without the pair of seamstress-cum-manitous manipulating events, one of them maneuvering like an interpretive dancer.

    Suffice to say, the story is one of remorse, grief, sibling rivalry, and just about everyone being very attractive and dressed in the highest of bleak-chic.

    This last bit is true, at least for the trio-plus-two of the female protagonists. The fellows look more along the lines of middle-aged Harry Dean Stanton (Elle’s father, Johnny Thunders), young Harry Dean Stanton (Nico, adversary of said father), and violently clean-cut angel of vengeance in a US army uniform (Private “K,” also a father, who’s lost his daughter to a mythical murderer who manifests mainly with diamond-studded gloves and seems unbound by temporal limitations). Regardless, these half-dozen orphic oddities keep events moving forward, from the lobby to the suite to the sinister backrooms of 1940s Japan to the candy crystal caves.

    This disjointed recollection of the characters and events is, upon consideration, probably more true to a narrative through line than I credit. Her Private Hell is very much about Elle: she is the first character we see, aside from the truly bizarre cityscape with towers, lights, a massive Ozymandiosian bust, and fog, fog, fog, which is a character in its own right. The hotel (named, I believe, “Fog Tower” or something like that) is a grim-glittery wonderment, as if gave ‘s Megalopolis a good once over. The props for the movie within the movie look like the best low budget doo-dads a groovy ’60s space epic could ask for. And while Elle’s birthday cake looks delicious, I’m not sure how we’re supposed to feel about her former BFF hand-feeding it to the anniversary girl before breaking into dog-speak.

    At an early point in the movie, a choice presents itself: ponder deeply about symbolism and implications for clinical understanding of this grisly vision, or turn your brain off and allow scattered mental impulses to soar and bounce amongst the cavalcade of sickly grandeur summoned by this witch’s brew. I opted for the latter, and I believe Refn would approve. As he explained during his introduction, the point of a film is to enjoy it, with all the sex, violence, sickness, and humor that may have been tossed in the cauldron.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…a bizarre new fantasia moodscape, a midnight movie of fear and dreamy disquiet…resists interpretation, like so many of Refn’s recent films, but executes a slow dervish swirl of hypnotic strangeness.”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (Cannes screening)

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    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DOGRA MAGRA (1988)

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    ドグラ・マグラ

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    DIRECTED BY: Toshio Matsumoto

    FEATURING: Yôji Matsuda, Shijaku Katsura, , Eri Misawa

    PLOT: Waking in a sparse cell, a young man tries to piece together the reason for his confinement, assisted—and thwarted—by adversarial psychologists.

    Still from Dogra Magra (1988)

     

    WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: From the get-go, the viewer is in for disorientation and dismay, spiked with foetal philosophizing and sinister slides.

    COMMENTS: Conspiracy, by its nature, is insidious—lurking in the background until the moment of impact. Consider the conspiracies of history: events from over a millennia ago, aging and festering, awaiting their catalyst. The conspiracies of society can blossom into a nefarious constellation of constraints and crucibles. And perhaps most perfidious of all, there is the conspiracy of the mind, wherein the dark elements of the subconscious band together to wreak havoc on waking life.

    So imagine all these conspiracies themselves colluding, and you can glimpse the terrible fate of Ichirô Kure (Yôji Matsuda). He awakens to a blurry yellow light, rising from the floor in troubled wonder, unable to remember his name, his past, or even his face. Enter an older gentleman, going by the name Professor Wakabayashi, who shares with the young man a tale set 1100 years prior. This dark narrative of a mad artist who wishes to capture decomposition, a fixation beginning with the corpse of his murdered bride, is related by one Professor Masaki, hissing out from a phonographic record from beyond the grave.

    Or is Masaki actually dead? Director Toshio Matsumoto depicts his protagonist’s madness with seamless aplomb, but that by no means makes things any clearer. Poisoned flashbacks shudder coherency, as do imagined encounters that appear all too real. Kure is a brilliant student, or was, who had begun groundbreaking research of the mind—we observe him lecturing to a gallery peopled by asylum inmates, with none other than Professor Masaki joining the growing chaos chanting an “Ahodara Sutra” (or “Fool’s Prayer”) as he traipses merrily through the classroom. Or maybe Kure is just lecturing to himself in his cell. As with the cryptic prenatal visions, little is clear aside from these facts: Kure’s mother was killed; Kure’s fiancée was killed; and the two professors observing the fellow gravely overstepped their ethical bounds.

    Intriguingly for a film engrossed by narrative slight-of-hand and the malleability of memory, the truth can be found in the film within-the-film. Professor Masaki records the wards of his care, all undergoing a “freedom” regiment akin to the inmates chronicled in Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” A chance encounter with a janitor leads to a projector in an abandoned storage room, its information triggering a cyclonic hallucination. The elements swirl and bombard the pitiable Ichirô Kure, as the three agents of conspiracy crash down together on his consciousness.

    He awakens to a blurry yellow light.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…[A] puzzling work that blends reality with fantasy. I expected a horror movie of sorts. While that classification does kind of work, labelling it as such doesn’t do the film any favors. This is one of those movies that defies genre classification.” — Bret Oswald, Irish Film Critic

    Dogra Magra

    Dogra Magra

    • A man wakes in an asylum with no memory. Dr Wakabayashi helps him to recall his past in which he killed his bride on their wedding day

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    366 Underground, Interviews

    366 UNDERGROUND: MATADOR BOLERO (2026)

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    Weirdest!

    DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Rosado

    FEATURING: Yves Tumor, , Jack Irv, Stephee Bonifacio

    PLOT: A high-profile murder at a nightclub triggers various factions into action, including a computer intelligence from the depths of space.

    Still from Matador Bolero (2026)

    COMMENTS:  Matador Bolero looks good in that DIY, retro kind of way, at times feeling like a down-at-the-heel Koyaanisqatsi with a nebulous crime story tacked on. But I would like this filmmaker—and his team—to consider a project stripped of a plot, or at least stripped of explication. The murder of a beloved actress at the beginning isn’t nearly as important as the camerawork capturing the fascinating motion of the topless dancers and their viewers. Yves Tumor is better with ardent bed-dance performances than meekly relaying cryptic “information” to an overzealous detective (Kansas Bowling, whose physicality is not well served by dialogue in this film). And the young blonde pulling a magician’s handkerchief from a notch in the beach? I am on board with all of this—except for one thing,

    To clarify, I’m a “style-over-substance” kind of guy. I revel in cinematic excess, be it sets or sound production or costuming, or what-have-you. But Matador Bolero is one of the few films where I actually became somewhat annoyed when substance cropped up. What is this narrative you’re trying to tell? Who are these recurring characters? Shoo, shoo. Rosado is in his element when he’s playing around in post-production to further dreamify his already dreamy shots and vignettes. Three scantily-clad young women in wolf masks pursue a fourth (non-masked) woman down a sinister corridor and tear her dress to ribbons while a purple-glowing super-intelligence orb thing pulsates conversationally? I don’t need a “Why” for that.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “So there’s our justification for the film’s the title, but are we still feeling confused? Almost certainly; Matador Bolero is confusing by design – if we accept that the film is much more about blending moods, impressions and visual styles than telling a story… a bold project but a strange prospect, pushing the boundaries in what feels like both experimental, but recognisable ways, and coming up with something off-kilter, but visually strong.” — Keri O’Shea, Warped Perspective (contemporaneous)

    Capsules

    CAPSULE: MORGIANA (1972)

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: Iva Janzurová, , Josef Abrhám

    PLOT: After their father passes away, leaving the bulk of his estate to his younger daughter Klara, her older sister Victoria decides to murder her.

    COMMENTS: When asked to provide a romantic story, director Juraj Herz baffled his production studio’s head by writing a Romantic script, complete with all the psychological Sturm und Drang of the original genre. Instead of a simple love story, Morgiana is The Tell-Tale Heart by way of a mad hatter’s tea party.

    After watching Klara inherit their father’s wealth, then stealing the heart of Glenar, the family’s lawyer, Victoria plans to do away with her inconvenient sister. She uses a slow-acting poison to prevent anyone from suspecting foul play, but the nature of the toxin means she can never be entirely certain of its efficacy. While she waits to see if the desired effect will occur (and waits, and waits, and waits), the chemist’s wife decides to blackmail her, and Klara attracts another suitor who’s determined to figure out what ails his fiancée. Under the influence of the poison, Klara experiences rainbow-tinted hallucinations, causing her to suspect her sister. Both siblings end up paranoid and suspicious. The fact that the house is haunted by the ghost of a dancer and by Victoria’s Siamese cat, Morgiana, add to the atmosphere.

    Adapted from a novel by Russian fantasy/adventure author Alexander Grin, the production design goes all in creating a Gibson girl-era Grinlandia. The sets, costumes, and giant hats, all elaborately detailed and brilliantly colored, swing between darkly haunting Gothic and ’70s psychedelia. The orchestral score by Luboš Fišer, known for his soundtrack to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, enhances the mood without overwhelming the opulent visuals. But these sumptuous sights and sounds still can’t quite make up for a plot that starts to drag about a third of the way through.

    Unfortunately, Morgiana fell victim to a producer who insisted upon changes to the script that seriously weaken the story. Apparently Herz had originally intended both sisters to represent the two sides of a single woman’s fractured psyche. Their obvious good-evil dichotomy would have been more interesting if he’d had his way. Instead, the producer considered such mental aberration a “bourgeois” affliction and made Herz remove all reference to it from the script. This omission leaves perceptible gaps in the narrative.

    Even though Janzurová gives a compelling dual performance, subtly modulating both her speech and body language for each sister, the exact nature of the conflict between them never really makes sense (nor does the father’s will privileging one daughter over the other). If Morgiana is a weird film, it’s because of its compromises. A few intriguing scenes seem to be holdovers from the original story. Whenever Klara hallucinates, she sees a doppelgänger version of herself who wears red like Victoria. Early in her illness she describes feeling like she’s changed bodies. A number of shots frame the actress in front of paneled mirrors, or viewing herself from a window, suggesting both the duplication and splitting of her good and evil impulses.

    Herz’s producer wasn’t too keen on ghost stories, either, so the haunted house plotline feels truncated, as does the role of the cat. Morgiana, set up to be a significant character in her own right, gets a number of POV shots. Some vague suggestions imply she’s a ghost or possessed by a spirit. This insinuation adds shock value to a surprising scene in the otherwise anticlimactic conclusion.

    Overall, Morgiana never reaches the intensity of some of Herz’s other films. What should have been a trippy Hoffmann-esque tale of a woman losing her mind instead presents a more stereotypical family drama of good versus evil. Stunningly beautiful, with a great cast, fans of Czech cinema from this time period may want to check it out, but serious weirdophiles can give it a pass.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “… a weird take on 19th century gothic horror. Morgiana lacks the narrative or symbolic depth of The Cremator, but its visual richness and dramatic excesses make for a grand viewing experience.”–Rodney Perkins, Screen Anarchy (DVD)

    HOME VIDEO INFORMATION: Recently released on Blu-ray as part of Severin’s  “House of Psychotic Women, Rarities Collection Volume 2” box set, Morgiana can be seen alongside Butterfly Kiss (1994), The Glass Ceiling (1971), and The Savage Eye (1959). Special features for Morgiana include an introduction from Keir-La Janisse; audio commentary with Briony Kidd and Cerise Howard; an interview with actress Iva Janzurová; “The Stone Forest,” a short feature about Pobiti Kamani, the Bulgarian shooting location; “Nightmares,” a made for TV “vampire rock musical” directed by Herz; and the short film “Rest in Peace,” made by Rachel Amodeo and Dame Darcy. The film is also available in a Region-free standalone Blu-ray from Second Run, and has been issued multiple times on DVD. There were no streaming options for viewing the film at the time this was written.

    House Of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection Volume 2 [Blu-ray]

    House Of Psychotic Women: Rarities Collection Volume 2 [Blu-ray]
    • Producer/curator Kier-La Janisse presents a new quartet of international classics that explores startling depictions of female neurosis on screen.
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