Tag Archives: Psychological Thriller

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: SISTERS (1972)

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DIRECTED BY: Brian De Palma

FEATURING: Margot Kidder, , , Charles Durning, Lisle Wilson

PLOT: A reporter witnesses a murder through the window of a nearby apartment, but her investigation leads her to a mysterious pair of conjoined twins with a dark and disturbing past.

Still from Sisters (1972)

COMMENTS: Brian De Palma loves Alfred Hitchcock. Everyone knows that. Sure, he’s capable of turning a Stephen King novel into a horror classic or an old TV spy show into a -led blockbuster, but one thing we know for sure is that, once he got over his reputation as a comedy director, there’s nothing he’d rather do than a slavish impersonation of the Master of Suspense. Want proof? All you need to do is look at Body Double. Or Blow Out. Or the twisty thriller that made his name, Sisters.

The thing is, when you actually watch Sisters, what quickly becomes apparent is that De Palma is in conversation with Hitchcock as much as he is in thrall to him. Alfred Eaker compared De Palma to “a free jazz artist, filtering, reworking, improvising, and expanding on a body of filmmakers, which includes Hitchcock (among many others) to craft postmodern compositions that often are warmer and (as blasphemous as it may be to some) more startlingly original than the master.” Eaker also calls Sisters one of the best films of the decade. High praise, but quite defensible given the genuine shocks, eerie backstory, sprinter’s pace, and uncomfortable laughs the film still delivers. In the great tradition of low-budget horror flicks that rise above due to their cleverness and wit, Sisters is a welcome surprise.

Sisters does wear its forebears on its sleeve, with allusions to Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo among the most recognizable (to say nothing of the unmistakable sounds of Bernard Herrmann, who De Palma lured out of semi-retirement to lend his trademark screeching violins to the soundtrack), but the student demonstrates more facility with modern sensibilities than the Master, with powerful insights into racism and misogyny, comfort with sexuality, and  willingness to indulge the supernatural. Most notably, he’s found a subject that would absolutely appeal to Hitchcock, turning the true story of the conjoined Krivoshlyapova twins into Kidder’s pretty girl with a very dark past. Where Hitchcock made do with doppelgängers and confused identities, De Palma uses a genuine medical curiosity as his launchpad.

Mind you, none of this theft homage would mean a thing if the film didn’t work on its own terms. De Palma opens with a classic bit of misdirection, aping a “Candid Camera”-like show to introduce our charming hero couple, coquettish Kidder with her Québécois accent and babe-in-the-woods demeanor and the charming, unsuspecting Wilson. Their romantic whirlwind occupies the first third of the film. Wilson is an almost perfect gentleman, while Kidder tries to explain away her unusually possessive ex-husband (Finley, whose Slugworthian vibes never let up). If De Palma steals anything from Hitchcock, it’s the value of a full-blown paradigm shift that justifies admitting no one after the first act.

The film sputters a bit in Act II as the baton is handed over to Salt, who is a fine heroine but suffers from the script’s need to isolate her by setting her adrift in a sea of backstory and mansplainers. (Fun Easter egg: the headline of the news clipping from her column adorning her back wall reads, “Why We Call Them Pigs.”) It’s the final act, when she finally discovers the strange truth of Danielle and Dominique’s unusual condition and upbringing, that pays off in the form of the one scene that owes nothing to Hitchcock: a nightmare sequence in which Salt imagines herself as Kidder’s conjoined twin and gets the scoop on just what screwed up the twins so many years ago. It’s a moment that DePalma gets to claim all for himself.

It’s hard to deny that Sisters is De Palma doing Hitchcock. The parallels are just too obvious, right through to the final joke of the unclaimed MacGuffin. The truth, though, is that he does Hitchcock extremely well, with a freshness and modernity that the Master’s later works struggle to capture. If this is mere copycattery, audiences were right to demand more of it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“From start to finish, Sisters is weird, but it rarely feels like it’s just for the sake of being weird… the story is infused with so many off-kilter details that even when you know what’s going to happen, you can never predict how you’ll get there.” – Jenna Stoeber, Polygon (Blu-ray)

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

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Sisters (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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    It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: WAKE IN FRIGHT (1971)

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    DIRECTED BY: Ted Kotcheff

    FEATURING: Gary Bond, ,

    PLOT: A  teacher in the Australian outback plans to visit Sydney for his New Year’s holiday, but bad decisions and wild instincts take the lead instead.

    Still from Wake in Fright (1971)

    COMMENTS: The “Australian New Wave” occurred from the early 1970s and the late 1980s. Heavily inspired by the structure, transgressive nature, and aesthetics of New Hollywood and American cinema in general, these films found a solid fan base in the United States. Though made by a Canadian director, Wake in Fright, based on the titular novel by Kenneth Cook, is an excellent case study of how the Australian New Wave draws formal inspiration from genres and styles associated with American cinematic and literary traditions, starting with the opening 360° shot revealing a vast deserted landscape straight out of a Hollywood Western.

    Our protagonist, a teacher in the middle of nowhere, feels trapped, but finds a glimmer of hope in the idea of visiting Sydney for a few weeks during the New Year holidays. However, nothing goes according to plan, and he finds himself trapped once again in a neighboring small town. This isn’t your typical Kafkaesque nightmare of absurd, never-ending entrapment and paranoia, however. The style is realist, reminiscent of a Southern Gothic adapted to the outback, with a similar aim of using its oppressive atmosphere to depict real social horrors. The Australian countryside here is a hellscape peopled by barbaric eccentrics. But they are not the real villains. They play the role of corruptors, but it’s our protagonist’s own deeply hidden passions and desires that push him over the edge. His own mistakes make him unable to leave this town, at least for the time being. But in the meantime, he discovers friendship and an escape from societal norms among a group of local outlaws.

    The strangest of them all is Doc Tydon, an alcoholic doctor and self-taught sage who lives like a bum. He awakens the violent monster lurking inside our humble teacher through a series of violent initiation rituals culminating in a sadistic kangaroo hunt. Let it be noted that the kangaroo hunt is real, and may prove upsetting to animal lovers. On the other hand, this rawness offers a naturalistic, almost documentary-like feel.

    Our hero’s journey brings him face-to-face with his inner self, in a transformation that verges on self-destruction. In any case, it isn’t a ian, surrealistic tale, even if the premise suggests something along these lines. It’s about real horrors and the way our instincts make a fool out of us. It is, above all, a psychological odyssey with a few sociological elements. A dark transgressive masterpiece, but not exactly a weird one.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “…this strange and beguiling film (served with a tangy chaser of black humour) has been given a thoroughly welcoming digital spruce-up…  an absolute must-see for fans of cult, off-kilter cinema.”–Adam Lowes, HeyUGuys (Blu-ray)

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    Wake In Fright [Limited Edition] [4K Ultra

    Wake In Fright [Limited Edition] [4K Ultra HD]

    • After a bad gambling bet, a teacher is marooned in a town full of drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.

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    Apocryphally Weird

    70*. CURE (1997)

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    “I sometimes wonder if I could go back to that era now… I have the will to try to go back, to do only what I truly want to do, to not think about anything. It might end up the worst thing ever. But that’s OK if that’s the case. Because 25 years from now, putting aside whether I’m alive or not, they might say ‘What a weird movies this is.'”–Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2022

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    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , Masato Hagiwara

    PLOT: Takabe, a Tokyo detective who spends his spare time caring for his mentally ill wife, investigates a series of ritualistic murders committed by seemingly ordinary people with no apparent motive. It emerges that what the cases have in common is that all of the perpetrators had recently encountered Mamiya, a mysterious man who appears to have no short term memory. Further investigation leads to discovery of an old pseudo-occultist mesmerist technique, and Mamiya emerges as more aware than he initially seemed, while Takabe’s wife’s condition continues to deteriorate.

    Still from Cure (1997)

    BACKGROUND:

    • Kiyoshi Kurosawa cut his teeth in V-Cinema (direct-to-video features), mostly pink films, yakuza movies, and horrors, with only a few of his creations actually getting a theatrical release. After more than a decade of paying his dues, he had proven his commercial bona fides and was finally given creative control, along with a bigger budget and a bankable actor in Kôji Yakusho, to make the movie he always wanted with Cure.
    • Originally titled Missionary (or Evangelist, depending on the translation), the name was changed to Cure to avoid religious connotations after the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attacks.

    INDELIBLE IMAGE: A desiccated monkey corpse tied to a shower rod, arms crossed.

    TWO WEIRD THINGS: Fumie’s non-suicide; cloudy bus to asylum

    WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Presenting as a police procedural with paranormal elements, Cure is actually a psychologically rich exploration of the search for identity and the battle with the impulse to evil inside each of us.

    Restoration trailer for Cure

    COMMENTS: In my original Cure review, written after a first viewing, I somewhat presciently wrote “Cure does seem like a movie that Continue reading 70*. CURE (1997) →

    Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

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

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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.) 

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    The 4th Man (1983)

    The 4th Man (1983)

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      List Candidates

      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

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      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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