The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[domino harvey]

The Rollin films are on BFI Player. Fascination is a fantastic film and will definitely be high in my list!

That was the first one I saw and I really enjoyed the vibe of it, but the more Rollin films I saw, the more I saw that it was just one of many buckets being pulled from the same well (albeit more effectively). I'm a little nervous to revisit it after my diminished returns with other Rollin films, but perhaps Satori's eventual defense will help me maintain my enthusiasm

[thirtyframesasecond]

The Rollin films are on BFI Player. Fascination is a fantastic film and will definitely be high in my list!

That was the first one I saw and I really enjoyed the vibe of it, but the more Rollin films I saw, the more I saw that it was just one of many buckets being pulled from the same well (albeit more effectively). I'm a little nervous to revisit it after my diminished returns with other Rollin films, but perhaps Satori's eventual defense will help me maintain my enthusiasm

I liked the Grapes of Death enough, but since I like my project lists to be diverse, I'm not going to prioritise the other Rollins, especially knowing they're only likely to be lesser films.

[knives]

Iron Rose is at least a must see. It's a simple film that really plays to his strengths. Arguably his best.

[therewillbeblus]

The Terror of the Tongs
This Hammer film took the greatest hits of the contrived ideas present in their formulaic mold and laid them on the table unapologetically. I had a blast with this one, to my own surprise - and slight embarrassment, for my enjoyment of Lee’s assignment to the role of a Chinese caricature. While this choice is problematic in theory, he portrays the character as an ‘evil Englishmen’ with limited stereotyping to the Asian, yet inverted stereotyping toward the Western English imperialist attitudes he exudes in character beyond vocals. The result is hilarious in its absurdity, and oddly poignant in its own reveal of prejudices of negative characters through role-playing, embodying them as the persecutor in spirit in the form of the persecuted, regardless of whether this was the intention or not (I’m guessing not). There is enough energy in the expected beats of this story to spare the audience of the dullness inherent in most Hammers, but treats the serious material of a crime syndicate dealing in murder and human trafficking, among other shady dealings, fairly by playing things straight yet with the breezy lightness the production team specializes in and treasures. These structural navigations by a character with thwarted belongingness into foreign systems have an almost noirish philosophy in concept, despite very little in execution. Needless to say, this is one of the better films I've seen across the Indicator sets with more hidden gems to unpack than there appear to be.

Yesterday’s Enemy
It’s an interesting idea to see a war film as a horror film, though I don’t really see this one trying for that (though I am wondering if there are any that will before the project's end). It’s a pretty good one though, and the ending is brutal in its choice of direction in how to end the story, especially the detail of the admiration of the Japanese captain following a heroic act holding no impact for the decision that follows.



The Haunting
I have always had a particular fondness for this Robert Wise film, and this watch only cemented by feelings. The choices in photography and editing are inspired, with dizzying angles, suspenseful chaotic rhythmic cuts during the supernatural happenings, and effective shaky-cam-type distortions of balance, which feel like innovate fun here before the technique became modernized. Of course the actual spooky content taken collectively wins me over every time, and I appreciate how Wise doesn’t spell out the connections occurring between the present and what we’ve seen at the start with the history of the house, allowing the last twenty minutes to sneak up the the viewer naturally, extra chilling as we make the connections gradually for ourselves. Oddly what sells this film the hardest for me is the sound design accompanying Nell’s internal thought narration, which contains a nervous echo as if signifying a conscience unhinged from safety even in the mind. It fills in the space of each break from the action with a deeply unsettling tonal consistency. This will likely place somewhere on my list, and is second only to The Innocents for gothic horror inclusions (though a very distant second).

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
The jury's still out on if I'll judge this to be a horror film by the end of the project (based on my ability to ignore the first half-hour in favor of the bulk of the film to follow), but if so it'll surely place on my list. Lynch shows no restraint in providing one of the best depictions of trauma as the epitome of real-life terror, something that the show tried (and succeeded, at times) to achieve and this film only amplified with a rigidly defined vibe that forfeited camp in favor of authentic horrors rooted in, and reflecting, truth mirroring the existence of such crimes in our reality.

Lynch is a curious director to assess in this genre, as something like Blue Velvet's power is based on the juxtaposition between the light bubbly surface and the horrific evil underneath, taking a noir approach to uncover such hells. Horror is spliced into that film, but more persistent in something like Eraserhead or Lost Highway, and even Mulholland Dr. has a more consistent feeling of unease barring a sense of safety throughout the dreamy positive moments, discomfort trumping the noir mystery. Inland Empire is the apotheosis of Lynch's wanderings into the anxiety of the bizarre, and the disturbance of the darkness within life's objective and subjective mysteries, including those of the individual's own reality orientation and dreams. Twin Peaks: The Return begs to be considered as well, especially that final episode, if only for the closing moment which has slowly become one of my favorite endings to anything, ever.

[nitin]

I too saw The Haunting yesterday and whilst some of the acting was a bit too over the top for my liking, the cinematography, editing and production design really do add up to make for a disorienting and eerie experience. I understand that the lens used by Wise, which distorts the image frequently, wasn’t necessarily by design, but it was used extremely ingeniously with the off kilter angles of the house.

[colinr0380]

The Haunting was most certainly the film that created a lifelong fear of wobbly spiral staircases in me! Just make sure to avoid the 1999 Jan de Bont remake! If you want another film in the same haunted house vein I would be quicker to recommend The Legend of Hell House, which fits neatly in between those films on the spectrum and while it does go explicitly supernaturally wacky, it is not quite to the extent of the Haunting remake and remains pretty creepy especially in its use of relentless time coded title cards breaking up the horror into discreet temporal chunks (and it is probably the originator of some of the images that Edgar Wright used for his Grindhouse "Don't" trailer!)

[Noiradelic]

Noticed a few people voted for Tetsuo II: Body Hammer for the first iteration of this list. I've only seen the original, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and was wondering if those folks (or anyone) feel the second film has more horror elements than the first.

[colinr0380]

They are about the same in terms of horror, though aesthetically quite different. And you don't need to have seen one before the other as these are really entirely different stories that are dealing with the same set of themes with the same actor (Tomorô Taguchi in the role(s) of a lifetime) in the lead and Tsukamoto himself playing the antagonist.

I still treasure first encountering Tetsuo: The Iron Man on a late night television screening without knowing anything about it, or where events were building to, and being pretty terrified by it all the way through because of that sense of how wild things were getting. A lot of the 'horror' of that film feels based on the black and white lo-fi junkyard look of the piece, along with the pounding soundtrack and editing as well. Revisiting it recently it is still powerful stuff, though after multiple viewings the comic aspect to the film comes through much more clearly. I don't know if that is just my becoming jaded or whether it is a film that evolves over many viewings to become more comic on its own, but I found it much more amusing the last time around!

Whereas Tetsuo II: Body Hammer is much 'cleaner', with its starkly beautiful images and a cold metallic blue sheen applied to the image, aside from the more viscerally sepia, only superficially idyllic, central flashback scene. Its more 'professional' and less 'DIY', which removes some of that sense of the 'fear of the amateur who could do anything to you' from it. It even has a score that involves more than banging metal against metal!

But I would argue that whilst Tetsuo: The Iron Man is so aggressively and punkishly 'in your face' with its transformation and mutation imagery (to the point of, again, black comedy in the phallic drill scene! And the Tom Jones-style 'seductive' eating scene turned queasy that leads up to it, with the inevitable sausage getting played with, but only making the partner who should be getting turned on by it sick to their stomach!), Tetsuo II is perhaps even more horrific and pushes a lot more disturbing themes at the audience.

Its all about force of will over others. About parents and children, especially parents failing in their duty of care to protect their children, and even worse their upbringing of their children seemingly allowing them the licence to 'experiment' on the new generation (often with the notion of trying to make them 'better'), often irreparably abusing and damaging them in the process. And in the end its also really about a battle between brothers for control: of each other, of their 'gang' (whether the heterosexual family unit or suspiciously homosocial bodybuilding club! Which is a theme that only gets more intensified in Tokyo Fist), and eventually of the direction of the entire world.

I mean this is a film where in an early scene the main couple's young son is kidnapped to test out our main character's transformative abilities after a thug seemingly just randomly targets the family in a shopping mall (by the way I love the cross cutting editing in this scene of the chase through the tunnels between the thug holding the boy, the wife running after them, and the husband who has been shot with the injection pistol stumbling after them all at a slower pace. That more than anything individualises each of the three characters in that situation far more than any dialogue could do. And in the way that the chase moves from the mall, in and out of a subway carriage, through underground tunnels, only to end up on the roof of the building is wonderfully geographically disorienting!) with the boy then used as a human shield on the rooftop by kidnapper only for our main character to lose control in his anger so much that he transforms and blows his child into pieces by accident instead! And that more than anything else naturally impacts on his relationship, as the central couple not only have to cope with having lost their son in a violent situation but with dad having played a pivotal part in having 'accidentally' shot him into tiny little bits as well!

Also that moment of all of the bodybuilders being systematically injected with the metallic transformation serum, only to find that they have a 'bad batch' of it and are all going to rust away just as the last guy is getting injected (only the original two brothers have been able to meld with metal successfully), is still quite intense. That is horror mixed with a bit of black humour too (though I find that moment much more horrific than I once did in the wake of that drug trial incident, where even when the first to be dosed were reacting badly to the experimental drug the staff still made sure to complete dosing all of the volunteers as fast as they possibly could to make sure that they could still get their data from the entire group! Real life is far more disturbing than fiction yet again!) and on that note if anyone does watch Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, watch out for that very amusing tiny moment near the end when as the main character is being pursued by his nemesis across the roof he desperately picks up a phone to try to call anyone for help only to have the phone box get shot apart. That leaves our hero just holding the detached receiver, which instead of just dropping he 'hangs up' neatly on a nearby pipe before crouch-waddling off in a hurry!

That central sepia flashback that gives us all of the information that we need to understand the backstory and relationship between the two brothers and is still astonishing and transgressive even now. From the children being given weapons and taught to kill by their father, to being experimented on by him (with one brother feeling qualms and not taking to being melded with a gun with as much alacrity as the other does. But which brother turns out to have been which?), to the sex scene involving a gun as sex toy between the parents (which ends the way it inevitably must, by violent premature ejaculation), to the final drawn out massacre of the parents by the brothers who have witnessed that act, there is very little else like it.

This is really the film where women start coming to the fore in Tsukamoto's work, as while the main conflict driving of the action of the film is between the brothers, really the heart of the film is the wife coming to terms with first the loss of the son and then what her husband is going through (Tokyo Fist gets into this even more, with the conflict between the two guys tussling over the woman going on without much attention paid to her, and the sense that they are pummelling away at each other in the boxing ring as a sort of sublimated attraction to each other more than for the girl that is the 'prize'. Whilst the ignored female character goes off on her own journey of masochistic body piercing and modification similar to the boxing but which appears to fulfil her a lot more). Much of the film is seen through her perspective as the one she loves is both losing himself and moving further away from her, whilst at the same time he is finally remembering his childhood abuses and reckoning with them in literalised form! Eventually he returns to her, but things will never be entirely what they were because they both have a new awareness of things.

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And of course there is that 'happy family' final shot of this localised, dualistic family drama transforming the world in its entirety (mirroring the rapturous and propulsive final moment of Tetsuo: The Iron Man of the antagonist and protagonist teaming up to take on the world in their new, disturbingly phallic, form) which is both incredibly bleak (for its implications for the wider world) and rather hopeful (for the reunited nuclear family striding through the devastation unaffected by it all) at the same time.

I have also always felt that the trajectory of Tsukamoto's career bears a lot of comparison to that of David Cronenberg, moving from external 'monsters' imposing themselves on 'normal' characters (as in Tetsuo: The Iron Man, though even there the 'normal characters' are really the bad guys of the situation getting their more than deserved comeuppance for getting turned on by their hit and run behaviour!) and eventually becoming more of an internal drive that characters have that pushes them into extreme behaviours, as if in doing that they will be able to understand themselves better. With that in mind Tetsuo II: Body Hammer is probably the closest film to Scanners in its brotherly conflict slowly emerging as the explanation for a lot of the action!

[therewillbeblus]

Night of the Demon

I have always agreed with the consensus that revealing the demon as real, especially at the start, deflated some of the power in the mysterious happenings that would have added to the suspense in this film. However, while this ambiguity would have been welcome for reasons of personal preference, I was struck this revisit how showing the monster services the central conceit in dividing the audience’s own attitudes towards the action. Andrews is a skeptic, a logical man of science, and doesn’t believe in giant demons or witchcraft - someone most of us can relate to, and we must because he’s our protagonist. The experience would be easy if we were only asked to go along for the ride in step with him. However, by showing visual proof that the demon does exist before Andrews even enters the film, we are offered an omniscient angle to the actuality of events, and contrarily tasked to identify with Andrews. As we are forced to believe the unbelievable, we want to shake Andrews awake from his skepticism, ironically a stance most of us would take if we were him despite the evidence. This conflicting state of being makes for a different type of investment than would occur had we been completely in his camp subjectively, rather than torn between the objective vantage point of our own knowledge and our subjective alignment with the main character. This splitting also pokes at that skeptic part in us that we don't want provoked, as if to infer that perhaps, just like blind faith, any devote mindset - including skepticism - is problematic.

I also love how this idea of faith in the unknown is touched on by different characters, all of whom are intelligent. Peggy Cummins boldly states that she is a true believer in these supernatural events, though her professional life is evidence-based and focuses on science too (psychology?) as are the various other scientific professionals we encounter, who slowly become less assured by their own limited stances of analysis of producing truth based on logic and direct observation - further emphasizing that abstract beliefs and empirical practice are not mutually exclusive perspectives to hold when one resists rigidity and moves towards open-mindedness.



Upstream Color

The first section of this film always terrified me as an aggressively disorienting metaphor for sexual assault, rendering a person defenseless and robbed of their ego functions to temporary and permanent degrees. The rest of the film never indicated a persisting sense of horror the first two times I saw this, but this last watch uncovered the ways in which it acts as a strange kind of horror movie that hits on the roots of terror omnipresent in life through surreal, fantastical expressionism.

For me, this film is ultimately about the individual experiences we have that evoke clouds of irresistible trauma as we live, lose, and become worn down by life’s pain and loss; mainly the struggles with identity and causation of life’s mysteries- the impossibility yet necessity in the attempts we make to bridge a total connection with another person and to find absolute meaning in the experiences that we can never actually comprehend objectively. Carruth pulls no punches in presenting his characters in a splitting act as relatable, authentic humans and yet isolating them as foreign specimens to one another and us, as well as to and from the world around them. He allows us such intimacy with them to provide deep affection and understanding but keeps them out of reach simultaneously, barring the drive to blend that we as an audience, and the characters themselves, have for one another. The editing and camerawork are so disjointed that causality and narrative clarity are suspended. This sparks a dreadful lack of mastery present in the viewing experience, placing us alongside Jeff and Kris as vulnerable vessels of the powerless and confused. In this way the film can be seen as the synthesis of psychosocial and existential horror, and perhaps it is, though there are so many blissful notes of acceptance in their beautiful moments together in nature (as well as, oddly enough, in their arguments), that I can’t say this critical sensation remained consistent. Perhaps that’s part of the genius of Carruth’s vague proposal, creating a bizarre mixture of metaphor and hyper-reality, providing some catharsis and acceptance, finding comfort in the uncomfortable, before snapping us back into the brooding horror permeating through our lives by the mere presence of the ‘social,’ particularly the uncontrollable, inescapable natures of love and connection, and the horrors of the limited perspective we have as subjective individuals, obstructing us from omnipotent achievement of the ‘actual.’ Will we ever truly understand another person, the factors that forge our identity and our circumstances in life, or even ourselves? Of course not, and how terrifying is that burdening truth when you strip away all the defense mechanisms that allow us to distract, rationalize, intellectualize, and accept such terms on a day to day basis.

Then there’s also mind-controlling bugs and psychic pig farmers bringing about the destruction of identity and reality, so perhaps the film’s criteria clarification for genre is not as complicated or debatable as my rambling suggests.



The Blackcoat’s Daughter

I really liked this the first time I saw it upon release, but watching it again and knowing the twists in advance paint the narrative, technical, and pacing choices as supreme strengths, hitting notes of mastery in the artistic process, for a film that appears familiar only to emerge as unique. The discussion in the film’s designated thread is incredibly insightful and I don’t really have much to add, other than to echo the praise for all three central performances and the confidence of Perkins in taking the time and space to develop the path to a union between allegorical visualization of normal human pain and genre construction (and, well, deconstruction). He achieves this vibe with a sense of control and understanding of his mise en scène, eliciting cold, desolate emotional deficits and gaps of need in his use of space, from the way the physical places are decorated and shot, to small details like the picture above, where Kat sits in the far end of the frame, an empty chair next to her in the center, accentuating her lack of supports and loneliness amidst the stale colors of the boarding school.

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The intensity present in the disturbance of loneliness, isolation, and a sense of thwarted belongingness is a manifestation of how these identifiable teenage markers fit into this exact kind of horror film, but inverted to expose an even more unsettling spin on the original allegory, as if bringing these fictional evils into a very realistic realm that are existentially repulsive to stomach. The way Roberts’ character is written mimics a pattern of very realistic trauma responses that had my partner (a lover of the horror genre) visibly distressed in a manner I haven’t seen before during even the most psychologically piercing genre entries. The sadness I felt for Kat during this last watch, as she touches the cold stove, before breaking down into tears for the final shot, contained more empathy than I can remember having for any mass murderer in a movie. How horrific it would be to find oneself completely and utterly alone. More than any horror movie, that’s for sure.

For what this film sets its sights on, and how it delivers even more than it promised itself in construction, makes it a perfect film.

[domino harvey]

I can see how Upstream Color as a horror movie may be a stretch to some, but I'd say much of the sci-fi trappings are just as easily read as horror. But beyond the more obvious elements, for me the most disturbing moment of the film is when the two lovers' symbiosis results in one sincerely appearing to have the early childhood memories of the other-- as someone especially drawn to works exploring identity or self (which might explain why I rate Single White Female higher than most), this kind of idea really freaks me out. We are the sum of our memories and experiences. Who are we if these aspects are now not only our own?

And Blackcoat's Daughter is easily somewhere in my top five for the list, so yeah, I agree, it's pretty much perfect

[Noiradelic]

They are about the same in terms of horror, though aesthetically quite different. And you don't need to have seen one before the other as these are really entirely different stories that are dealing with the same set of themes...

Wow! Excellent and comprehensive write-up. Thanks!

[therewillbeblus]

I can see how Upstream Color as a horror movie may be a stretch to some, but I'd say much of the sci-fi trappings are just as easily read as horror. But beyond the more obvious elements, for me the most disturbing moment of the film is when the two lovers' symbiosis results in one sincerely appearing to have the early childhood memories of the other-- as someone especially drawn to works exploring identity or self (which might explain why I rate Single White Female higher than most), this kind of idea really freaks me out. We are the sum of our memories and experiences. Who are we if these aspects are now not only our own?

Really interesting thoughts - by the same token that we seek connectivity we also seek individuality, identity as our own unique self as well as this self being significant in the presence of other people and worldly order. Your proposal seems to be an inverse to mine: how frightening is it to actually share our identity, and not be unique or isolated to some degree as a protected ‘self?’ I’d say the film explores both options as horror, for any extreme on that pendulum is psychologically unmanageable. But then, what is manageable? That which does not exist, or rather that which cannot be sustained - impermanent moments of serenity (as this film gives us beautifully, capturing all their wonder)? And so, where do we find peace? I think Carruth would laugh at that very question and direct us back to the film for an explanation.

[swo17]

So what, is Being John Malkovich horror too?

[therewillbeblus]

If Being John Malkovich was shot in a disorienting manner ungrounded from narrative stability that was as uncomfortable in form as it is in content, rather than realised as an involving dark comedy, then sure!

[zedz]

I think there are plenty of films that qualify as both science-fiction and horror (Alien, obviously), and the premise of Being John Malkovich could well have manifested as horror (though it wasn't). Actually, The Sorcerers by Michael Reeves comes pretty close, and that's another science-fiction / horror hybrid.

In terms of recent films, Amat Escalante's The Untamed (which I recommend), is a good example of a genre mish-mash that ends up firmly in the horror camp.

[therewillbeblus]

A good example is Raul Ruiz. Many of his films could function simply as inventive fairytales even with the specifics of the dark content, but he constructs them in a manner that elicits horror permeating throughout the fantasies. A film like Manoël on the Island of Marvels is a coming-of-age story, and a trifecta of childhood fantasy, but each story is filmed and filled with brooding music and surreal disorganization that induces discomfort through the bizarre disconnect in cause-effect patterns between Manoël and other people, as well as the world around him. Other childhood fantasy films hit on similar dark themes of identity, confusion over life’s mysteries, frustration with lack of power and control, and the anxiety of being expected to cope with change without possessing the skills, yet not always going the route of horror despite the inclusion of the same scary material (I would even say that Curse of the Cat People, a film that may be more prone to be read as horror based on its prequel, hits all of these thematic notes effectively without becoming a horror movie). One could probably make cases for a string of Ruiz films to qualify for this genre, as he’s so diverse in his comprehension of the world around him, which includes a meditation on the horrors, and is not only willing but interested in exploring these moods, down to their deepest extremities, as overlapping in his works just as they do in life.

But I also think Godard’s King Lear is the most thematically faithful film adaptation of Shakespeare, so I’m aware that my own flexibility in approaching genre can be controversial.

[colinr0380]

I would argue that Upstream Color can just as easily be bracketed with the recent Suspiria remake (and Climax) as 'horror films that are also modern dance films'! It starts sci-fi horrific, turns into an off kilter relationship drama and ends as avant garde modern dance where the placement and movement of bodies in space tells you as much about character motivations as any dialogue could. Language has been made to fall apart and lose all meaning in that film after the 'sampling process' at the opening that alienates the main characters almost totally from their world, something which contrasts it enormously against the never ending technical chatter in Carruth's previous film Primer.

And I agree with domino about the seeming sharing of memories and experiences between those who have been 'sampled', which also feels interestingly used as a kind of metaphor for how any couple falteringly begins to get on each other's wavelength in a relationship (which can sometimes grate on a couple as much as it can positively be about the joy of intimately sharing experiences together!)

[colinr0380]

Wax Mask (aka: M.D.C. - Maschera di cera) (Sergio Stivaletti, 1997)

"A fall from an over frisky stallion blinded me. The despair I suffered at first has receded with the years..."

Major spoilers:

This is an Italian film based on the same Mystery of the Wax Museum/House of Wax/Carry on Screaming material with a very strange production history. This was co-written by both Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci as part of their final reconcilliation with each other (according to Alan Jones on the Argento commentaries there was apparently a bit of a falling out between Argento and Fulci during their heydays because Argento felt that Fulci was too obviously trying to copy him), but then Fulci died in pre-production. Eventually the film became the debut feature for Sergio Stivaletti, better known as a visual effects artist and who had just worked on some of the (slightly iffy) CGI moments in Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome. Stivaletti would go on to do a lot of special effects on Argento's films after that: Sleepless, Mother of Tears, Dracula 3D and so on.

I have been curious to see this film for a couple of decades now but had not found the time to get around to it until Severin's recent Blu-ray release (which came with the fantastic score on CD). It is a really strange film, and a bit anticlimactic in a few telling ways, but I kind of like it. This is your standard plot of people getting kidnapped and turned into wax models whilst still alive, with the shifty owner of the museum coming under suspicion by his newly hired young ingenue costume designer, and everything leading to a firery meltdown climax. But all the little elaborations around that central plot keep adding bizarre elements to that well worn story. We get a New Year 1900 Paris prologue of a couple murdered by a masked figure with a metallic arm and superhuman strength (such that he can plunge his hand through a man's chest and the bed he is lying on and then back out holding the still beating heart!), with the inspector investigating the crime scene finding the young daughter of the murdered couple hiding away under a cupboard but in such a position to have witnessed everything and be traumatised by it in flashbacks even all grown up twelve years later.

This is Sonia who is our main character and who unfortunately (and seemingly entirely coincidentally! There was an opportunity missed to have her pursuing her own investigations) goes to work in the wax museum for the very people who murdered her parents all those years ago, with the owner immediately falling for her as a kind of embodiment of the beauty that he has long been seeking! She has a meet-cute with a photographer outside the building one day and they end up getting rather passionate together. These more staid scenes alternate with scenes of people (both children, in a novel twist) getting terrorised or killed and a more fleshed out subplot of one of the prostitutes at a local brothel first losing one of her favourite clients who dies of fright on a bet to spend a night in the museum, and who then gets lured into a liaison herself and made into a waxwork in the central scene of the film which takes place almost at the exact mid-point of the film.

There are some very vivid scenes in this early section, both of them involving pre-teen children. There is a scene played out in full daylight from the killer's point of view of them stalking a young boy, buying them candyfloss, rowing them out to a small island and then bringing out a large needle and proceeding to inject the boy, as the camera focuses on the candyfloss tossed into the water and floating away (I guess it is staged a bit similar to the first murder in M). This scene does not go anywhere in particular at all (we never even see the boy posed as one of the waxworks as far as I could make out, which would seem to be the necessary pay off for that scene), but the other scene is even more vivid and is probably the best scene in the film, as a young girl is lying awake in her bed in the middle of the night listening to her parents having a blazing row in silhouette just outside her door. Then whilst the row is still going on (seemingly played out for their child's benefit in the way it is staged!), the killer comes in through her window whilst she lies paralysed in terror and injects her, but luckily as she is about to be carried away her mother comes in, causing the killer to escape through the window leaving the girl lying there apparently dead from fright. That is scary enough but then we get a scene in an underground mortuary (with various mutilated bodies lining the walls, as in a crypt more than a morgue!) where the doctor begins an autopsy on the girl but luckily realises that she is still alive, though only after having made the first incision!

The scenes with the prostitute character are quite amusing, especially when the main villain goes to visit the brothel and watches her at work and whipping her latest client (who is actually the villain's assistant, who I like to imagine has been forced into having to go and hire the prostitute and pretend to enjoy being wanting to be whipped just so that his boss can scope out a potential new waxwork! Its just part of the job that an assistant to a madman has to be prepared to undertake, I suppose!) There is a lot of unabashed topless nudity in this film from the two main female actors, which works as its own interestingly disruptive element in some ways when set against the early 1900s prim and proper period setting and otherwise very restrictive clothing. Especially in the paired scenes in the mad scientists laboratory, where both Sonia and the prostitute are placed in exactly the same position, but also just in bedrooms in general outside of the museum. Though Sonia only starts getting topless and sexual with her photographer boyfriend in the second half of the film after the prostitute has been removed from the picture! Which might be an intentional parallelling of the two characters, but also could just be simply a practical thing for the film to continue to be able to have nudity in it!

The big special effect sequence in the middle of the film, after the required stalking sequence of the prostitute around a building after having been lured there (with a great creepy moment of her walking around the seemingly empty house where all of the mirrors have been smashed) that ends with her getting injected and paralysed in the same manner as the girl from earlier, is the detailed transformation of her into a waxwork. This takes the form of her being posed topless on a contraption that fixes her into the position she is to be cemented into and then through a combination of lights, electricity, dials and switches being thrown and various vials of liquids being injected, her blood is removed (turning her into a dried out husk in a slightly iffy CGI effect) and then pumped with searing hot wax (which somehow turns her back from husk into a waxwork rather than causing her to burst into flames!) Throughout we get frequent close ups of her eyes darting around, even post-husking, to show that she is still alive and conscious whilst all this is occurring. With the final finishing touch (and something that has to be an amusing nod towards Fulci's penchant for eye gouging!) being to cover over her eyes with fake ones getting glued on! Apparently turning people into waxworks works on everything but the eyes!

And the other seemingly blatant nod to Fulci (which I can only presume came about because he co-wrote the script, or was there for Fulci to have elaborated on had he made the film) is probably the blind and protective aunt of Sonia, who like the blind lady in The Beyond seems as if she holds all of the answers (and provides some of the backstory about Sonia's birth to the police inspector) but then ends up being killed off as just another victim! Though I really like that moment of her groping along the wall and across the series of wax masks of different characters that the murderer has made to wear in different situations just before she is killed!

The second half of the film involves Sonia getting more and more concerned about the people that she is working for, only made worse when the latest exhibit is revealed of an incredibly detailed recreation of her parent's murder! Why anyone would stick around after that is beyond me! Sonia does at least ask to go home early after fainting from the sight, but unfortunately gets kidnapped, tied to a stone in a pigsty, has her wrists cut and is left for the pigs to eat, in what might be the most elaborate attempted murder scene ever. At least until Hannibal successfully followed through on that premise! She is saved by the police inspector and they put in place a plan to try and get the wax museum owner to reveal his identity. That pretty much comes to nothing (although it allows for a great scene in the inspector's hotel room where he comes face to face with the killer, but they are wearing a mask of his own face in order to have made their way into his room, and so the inspector is stabbed by his own doppleganger! There is a great moment of the inspector falling to the floor next to the discarded mask of his own face), and despite everyone saying to Sonia that she should maybe leave, she goes back to the museum one last time. Whilst there after dark (like the man who died from fright at the beginning) and hiding away from the villain and his assistant she accidentally knocks the tube keeping the prostitute's body in 'stasis' and watches as she starts to decompose and the fake eye glued on slowly unsticks itself to reveal the darting back and forth real one (which is probably the best nod to Fulci eye gouging that there could be, and works as a very nice tribute to him!)

Then Sonia gets captured and after reporting her missing the photographer and aunt go to find her, save topless Sonia from getting turning into a waxwork at the very last moment and then the whole building goes down in flames. Although the film has one last bizarre twist to throw into the mix, as the film turns into The Terminator for a moment(!)

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Apparently the main villain and owner of the museum, Boris, was a kind of android all along. Which I guess explains(?) the mechanical arm that killed Sonia's parents and had stuck in her mind all of those years! So Boris's flesh melts off and he walks through the flames T2-style to try to grab Sonia, only to just get beaten down by one of the policemen! The twist on top of that however is that the assistant to Boris turns out to have been the mastermind villain all along, as he retreats into the burning building, removes his face and puts one of Boris on to stroll out of the film with a nod and a wink!

What a strange film! Or rather it has a really straightforward plot but all of the little set piece elaborations surrounding it (the child autopsy, the husking and waxing, the heroine being left for the pigs, Sonia's parents being murdered, the swerve into homaging the Terminator!) are so bizarre that it is constantly fascinating. There are also lots of vivid Argento-esque stylised colouring to certain point of view scenes involving red-tinged killer vision or sickly green in the flashback to our villain's creation story of his wife going off with another man and in the ensuing fight him accidentally falling into his vat of chemicals and being hideously burned.

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which gets married with the revelation by the aunt to the inspector that Sonia might actually have been Boris's daughter. Although the aunt suggests that her mother had Sonia with the man she had left him for. And that is what caused Boris (aka "Boris Volk") to murder the couple all those years ago. That also explains why Boris was so enamoured by Sonia and why he was constantly warning his assistant off from making Sonia into another one of the waxworks

I am not entirely certain whether all of the events logically hang together but, like the best Fulci films, they have a certain dreamlike continuity about them such that it does not particularly matter. Similarly I was absolutely fine with the English dubbing not particularly matching the mouth movements (which you have to be for Italian films in general, so that's nothing new). And whilst this film has apparently become notorious for employing 'bad CGI' at moments (the New Years fireworks over Paris in the opening scene; the husking and waxing of the prostitute; the final inferno wide shot of the museum with the curious crowd gathered around it), I did not find them particularly terrible, just unrealistic. Which is fine for a film such as this which is operating on a heightened plain of reality anyway! I found them rather charming actually!

If I have issues with the film it is really that if you are coming to it expecting a Fulci-style gore fest, there is nothing really of that type here. Indeed almost all of the scenes end in a way that suggests the need for a director such as Fulci to have pushed the horror into some sort of a climax. Such as the scene with the prostitute decomposing, which we seen happening a little bit in flashes but then she disappears from the film. Similarly the boy that gets picked up in the scene early on. I get the impression that if Fulci had not died that there would have been a version of this film with operatically vivid moments of gore to climax every murder rather than the relatively underwhelming climaxes to the scenes which occur here. There is a need for an extra heightening of the horror throughout that just never comes, and I wonder if that as much as anything caused some of the more negative comparisons to the previous works by Argento and Fulci at the time. The only real shock scenes are the ones in the mad scientist's lab, which feel so self contained as sequences in the film that it feels as if they were made that way to be easily snipped out by censor boards.

But that feels a bit unfair as, despite the couple of iffy CGI moments and the lacking of particularly gory payoffs, there is a wonderful atmosphere to this film, it looks gorgeous (the production is using a couple of limited set locations and outdoor period spots to the absolute fullest extent) and that score is beautifully operatic throughout, adding an extra touch of lushness to the action (though it also keeps coming to an operatic crescendo and then petering out without resolution, much like many of the scenes themselves, which is strange too!), and complimenting the beautiful attention paid to period sets and costumes. So its definitely worth a watch and there is a lot to enjoy about this film, especially for one that is coming well after the heyday of Italian horror's golden age showing that there was still at least some life to be found behind the frozen scream and glassy fixed stare of terror.

[colinr0380]

On checking on imdb what the actors have been in since Wax Mask it was interesting to note that the lead playing Sonia, Romina Mondello, was in Terrence Malick's To The Wonder! And she is also in the cast of Sergio Stivaletti's most recent (third) directed film, Dogman's Rabies from last year.

[zedz]

On checking on imdb what the actors have been in since Wax Mask it was interesting to note that the lead playing Sonia, Romina Mondello, was in Terrence Malick's To The Wonder! And she is also in the cast of Sergio Stivaletti's most recent (third) directed film, Dogman's Rabies from last year.

If that's a sequel to Matteo Garrone's film, it sounds like it's a lot more interesting that the original!

[therewillbeblus]

If you want another film in the same haunted house vein I would be quicker to recommend The Legend of Hell House, which fits neatly in between those films on the spectrum and while it does go explicitly supernaturally wacky, it is not quite to the extent of the Haunting remake and remains pretty creepy especially in its use of relentless time coded title cards breaking up the horror into discreet temporal chunks (and it is probably the originator of some of the images that Edgar Wright used for his Grindhouse "Don't" trailer!)

This was a lot of fun, thanks for the rec! I enjoyed the balance the film struck between the stereotypically serious, pompous British attitudes and complete off-the-walls zany camp in 70s psychedelia fashion. The title cards that break up the film almost serve as an in-joke to this type of horror as a series of creative horror scenes operating around a plot that matters less. The style becomes more intense as the film progresses and some (the dizzy spin that goes full dry cycle on us) is truly original and inspiring.

The Invitation: After a rewatch, I feel the same about this one as I did a few years ago: it’s not bad, but there’s little that’s special here aside from a terrific ending. The film has plenty of banal filler, and only succeeds at aligning the audience with the gaslit protagonist by creeping us out right there with him. None of the casual party guests are interesting or developed, though the cultish members, including our hosts, shine at exhibiting effectively disturbing behavior. There’s also the (semi-)noteworthy dual plotting in which

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Will is both right and wrong in his assertions against the hosts. He is ultimately proven right in their plan occurring essentially just as he predicted after he found the poison, but he is also absolutely wrong in his accusations based on certain mysterious occurrences (i.e. the ‘missing’ friend who shows up) and this propels him to realize that he actually does need to process his own grief. A lesser film would have just used this error to derail us, and while this one does use it manipulatively for that purpose, it also utilizes such an expected genre beat to highlight Will’s own trauma and disturbed mental state. Still, Will isn’t exactly an attractively personable protagonist, and aside from some glimpses into his memories and jarring intrusive thoughts via choppy editing and sound design, we don’t really get to know him or his problems enough to care at this point. Also, despite servicing an aim beyond manipulation, this is still a redundant trick trying too hard to cloud the audience’s judgment, which is disingenuous and ineffective. The choice has potential in its conception but still lazily realised.

As for the ending,

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similar to how The Blackcoat’s Daughter twists its own genre expectations, this ending takes the ‘dangerous cult’ horror (with its terror emanating from the distrust of other people and the ability for people you thought you knew to become brainwashed enough to kill you!) and, instead of keeping the circumstance isolated and personal, this film expands the conceit to an infection that spans the population as far as the eyes can see. Here the emotional process of being alone and sane amongst the insane, questioning one's own sanity, and then validating the self to prevail, does not stop at this self-affirming stage, but ventures to the realization that these main characters are still the minority, and that the insane are the majority!

It’s a wonderful ending for a mediocre film, but enough so to make the film worth seeing.

Green Room: This may seem like more of a thriller, but the fear is so bareknuckling real here that I can’t help but feel more genuinely tense than most typical horrors. The characters make choices and act in a manner that’s realistic to their doomed situation, making it easier to align with them rather than yell at them to make better decisions from an objective distance. Moral drives take a secondary place to safety, flying out the window in certain scenes

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like when Imogen Poots Murders their hostage, knowing full well that he will kill them at the nearest opportunity.

Anton Yelchin gives as great a performance as anyone here, and they all sell their characters as honest depictions of people rather than genre archetypes. An all-around great piece of genre filmmaking that packs a punch and respects the realism of human behavior at the same time.

You're Next: I don’t know what attracts me to this movie, but it’s a kind of guilty pleasure. Perhaps I’m a sucker for a familiar movie not trying to reinvent the wheel but having a good time with little details and tweaks of mechanisms within that wheelhouse. Perhaps it’s the novelty of watching a mumblehorror (sorry) materialize precisely as banal and unspectacular as that sounds, but with a rogue central core in Sharni Vinson as a complete badass breathing life into every scene once the action kicks in (also her nonchalant reveal about her early childhood preparing her exactly for this narrative is self-aware genre gold). Perhaps it’s seeing fellow directors like Joe Swanberg and associated company members (including Ti West, whose The House of the Devil is criminally underrated) pop up excitedly, ironically as contrived characters who are thin by design, indicating an inclusive production of friends getting together to make a horror movie, like a pack of kids having fun, but with budgets and the means to pull it off [The dinner conversation where Swanberg (playing a total douche) taunts Ti West’s participation in “underground” film festivals before declaring “commercials as the height of the art form” is a kind of self-reflexivity that is so obvious it would be annoying if the movie didn’t know it was annoying and said by annoying characters in a satire of the genre dynamics to boot].

Or perhaps it’s just the animal masks.

Is deliberate anti-creativity a kind of creativity itself? This film doesn’t ask such philosophical questions, because it really doesn’t care.

[domino harvey]

Oof, that’s a rare big disparity in our tastes on that one. Here are my thoughts from elsewhere on the board

You're Next (Adam Wingard) Oh, I should have looked at the cast list first to see that this was going to be a Mumblecore slasher and saved myself ninety minutes and fifteen bucks. Seeing so many 80s slasher movies in such a small span of time has given me an appreciation of sorts for their structural riffing and economic perversity, but these constant contemporary throwbacks so rarely bring more to the the party than a rehashing of ideas decades past their sell by date. The best modern reduxes justify their existence by providing some form of genre or issue-related commentary via their existence: Sorority Row gave us an actual feminist slasher; the good Scream entries each had specific satiric targets and executed them and their victims with verifiable wit; and Final Destination 3 proved you could remove everything from a slasher movie but the victims and synthesize the function and meaning to a depressing elemental essence. This movie? This is someone who saw Home Alone, the Strangers, and Home Sweet Home (or any of fifty other slashers just like this) and decided if they just moved quickly, no one would stop to ask why this movie makes absolutely no logical sense, not even within the world of slashers. Everything about the plan at work is idiotic, and what's worse it completely misunderstands how these kind of films function by giving in to these plot maneuvers. What's left is sub-standard performers giving obnoxious line readings before or during their own demise, lots of arch superiority, and little to no actual entertainment value. This was suggested to me as an answer to my lingering questions re: the Strangers. The Strangers was a powerful, beautiful, tense, and effective film undone by an unchecked nihilism that derailed the whole endeavor. You're Next is all derailment.

[therewillbeblus]

Oh I don’t think it’s good (as I said, a total guilty pleasure) but it works for me because it seems so unconcerned with making a good horror movie, all failures are just as welcome as successes. This has no danger of making my list but I think it’s fun how the film seems to almost go out of its way to be unoriginal. There are a few cool deaths and otherwise totally vanilla. Once their masks are off, even the killers (literally!) shrug their way into their mission when they hear a sound in the other room. It’s one of those “it’s so bad it’s good” completely subjective wildcard picks.

[DarkImbecile]

I fall somewhere between you two on You’re Next, but I much preferred Wingard’s follow-up and Carpenter homage The Guest. If you haven’t seen it, twbb, I’d definitely suggest seeking it out; I found it significantly less guilty and more pleasure. I’ll need to rewatch it myself to see if it’s worthy of a spot on my list in 35-50 range.

[domino harvey]

That makes sense TWBB, but unfortunately I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, which means I have to just own up to liking something like Welcome to Planet Earth (if your library somehow has this then I think they probably really do have everything!)