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"A birthday is indeed a special occasion" is one of those nothing lines that has nevertheless stayed in my head all these years. There's a lot of overlap for this list and my Sci-Fi list later in the year

If any Godard film is a horror movie, it's Week End, though, right?

domino harvey wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 5:11 am If any Godard film is a horror movie, it's Week End, though, right?

That makes sense to me, but I’d still love to hear a defense of that. Guess it’s going on the rewatch list.

I mean, I'm not voting for it in a Horror List!

I’ve defended plenty of categorically non-horrors as horrors that I won’t be voting for, but fair enough - it was worth a try!

Ya got cannibals, ya got murder plots, ya got a crazed angel of death, ya got Tom Thumb

Plus really, really bad traffic

Boston's a horror movie?

Don't forget the senseless incineration of a Hermès handbag!

Lisa and the Devil: Going through Bava's filmography for this project, I still finding myself liking most of his work, but only one or two (if I can find room for Black Sunday) will make my list. This, however, is hands down my favorite Bava, and one I’m surprised isn’t hailed as such by more fans; easily in contention for my top ten. It’s arguably his most engaging narrative with the best use of surrealist mise en scene, creating a dream world that doesn’t just dress itself up to become a bold fantastical milieu like Kill, Baby, Kill! but accelerates the horrors of a lack of agency and groundedness to degrees where even we can’t grasp or explain the nightmare as it unfolds. It’s rare for Bava to provide such a generous pathway for the audience to unify with the protagonist of his stories, normally utilizing artifice as a binding force that allows us to separate enough to remain comfortably removed. But here there is a blending that forces participation and confounding dread. Bava has never been more creative or motivated to throw so many ideas at the wall to see what sticks and because of his mastery over the medium when he doesn’t hold back, even the elements that shouldn’t work (and don’t make any sense) become integral to the atmosphere of chaos and mystery. The intimacy of the camera on Lisa mimics the same attention given to objects she notices in hypervigilance, a merger of perspective from ours onto her to seeing through her eyes as her, a subliminal trick of the camera as bridge to ultrasensory experience; and yet there is still courtesy in allotting some objective vantage points floating into other characters' conversations. This gives us barely divorced viewpoints of Lisa and ourselves, or perhaps even an omnipresent force of an anxious God, unable to intervene or comprehend this fairy tale environment, lost just as much as Lisa. Fear, displacement, and wonder all comprise the experience of being lifted into a lucid dream where control doesn’t exist but intrigue and anxiety blossom in every color, finding a newfound freedom in the constraints of a milieu so exhaustingly detailed we are in our own (or Lisa's) state of hypervigilance. This sick, twisted, beautiful film is an unrestrained collage of ideas with the commitment and courage to forfeit rules of the game, and it’s a masterpiece.

Have you seen The Girl Who Knew Too Much yet? It's really great and probably the clearest predecessor to Argento for how it translates genre knowledge into magical fantasy.

I'm not sure actually, looking it up I think I did under its other title but since I don't remember specifics I'll probably watch it later tonight, thanks for the rec

therewillbeblus wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 9:21 pm Lisa and the Devil: Going through Bava's filmography for this project, I still finding myself liking most of his work, but only one or two (if I can find room for Black Sunday) will make my list. This, however, is hands down my favorite Bava, and one I’m surprised isn’t hailed as such by more fans; easily in contention for my top ten. It’s arguably his most engaging narrative with the best use of surrealist mise en scene, creating a dream world that doesn’t just dress itself up to become a bold fantastical milieu like Kill, Baby, Kill! but accelerates the horrors of a lack of agency and groundedness to degrees where even we can’t grasp or explain the nightmare as it unfolds. It’s rare for Bava to provide such a generous pathway for the audience to unify with the protagonist of his stories, normally utilizing artifice as a binding force that allows us to separate enough to remain comfortably removed. But here there is a blending that forces participation and confounding dread. Bava has never been more creative or motivated to throw so many ideas at the wall to see what sticks and because of his mastery over the medium when he doesn’t hold back, even the elements that shouldn’t work (and don’t make any sense) become integral to the atmosphere of chaos and mystery. The intimacy of the camera on Lisa mimics the same attention given to objects she notices in hypervigilance, a merger of perspective from ours onto her to seeing through her eyes as her, a subliminal trick of the camera as bridge to ultrasensory experience; and yet there is still courtesy in allotting some objective vantage points floating into other characters' conversations. This gives us barely divorced viewpoints of Lisa and ourselves, or perhaps even an omnipresent force of an anxious God, unable to intervene or comprehend this fairy tale environment, lost just as much as Lisa. Fear, displacement, and wonder all comprise the experience of being lifted into a lucid dream where control doesn’t exist but intrigue and anxiety blossom in every color, finding a newfound freedom in the constraints of a milieu so exhaustingly detailed we are in our own (or Lisa's) state of hypervigilance. This sick, twisted, beautiful film is an unrestrained collage of ideas with the commitment and courage to forfeit rules of the game, and it’s a masterpiece.

Oh it's gorgeous, a successful example of a movie that chooses to cohere symbolically and thematically rather than narratively. This gets claimed for a lot of Italian grindhouse horrors (eg. 80s Fulci) whose narrative incoherence is more down to indifferent construction than anything. But Bava's is the real thing. It was #5 on my previous list and will probably stay there.

Glad to know I’m not alone! I generally like even Bava’s lesser works (though a recent viewing of Bay of Blood didn’t hold up nearly as well as the first time), but I also find them on average less engaging on a level of pure enjoyment and rather due to intelligent command of form. Of course if I wasn’t entertained they would carry an emptiness so I won’t claim that deficit, but it’s not the overwhelming element that draws me in. Lisa fires on all cylinders though, and I can’t think of a horror movie that’s bursting more at the seams, overflowing all its stuffing of creative ideas and smart implementation of the possibilities of the medium to engage the audience so well.

colinr0380 wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2020 9:57 pm

Rayon Vert wrote:
Long Weekend (Eggleston 1978). (1st viewing) An Australian film about a dysfunctional couple who head off to an isolated beach for a short holiday, and whose lack of regard for the environment around them seems to trigger revenge on Mother Nature’s part. A special film because it’s not actually spelled out why everything happens, if it’s all coordinated, and what is exactly happening (unlike The Birds, an obvious influence, where it’s at least more clear the birds are out to get the people), and throughout there’s also this increasingly tense conflict between the couple that’s also somehow part of the equation and adds another dimension to the film. Really good photography conveying a sense of weird menace, and beauty, in the surroundings. Very likely to make my list.

I love this film, mostly because whilst there is that (rather unnecessary) scene of the husband stumbling across a previously ravaged campsite and its now ownerless pet dog, this really feels like a couple of awful people bickering whilst on holiday and getting their much deserved comeuppance! They feel more responsible than any character in The Birds for antagonising the wildlife (including shooting the large beached whale-like mass a couple of times for fun), and I guess the failing marriage is another example of the 'natural order' getting overturned as well. I really like that it does not feel underlined too much that this last holiday is a last attempt to rekindle things despite both members of the couple already having affairs with other people in the opening sequence! So this relationship has already almost completely collapsed as the film starts, only emphasised by its beautifully mournful dirge-like score with the sombre drum beat.

And really we don't particularly want the relationship to be rekindled either, as both members of the couple are pretty awful! This reminds me a bit of some of those couples you see in Stephen King stories (Children of the Corn in particular), who have antagonistic relationships with each other and since we are in a horror film world there is no reconciliation to be had! Though in Stephen King it is often worse as these kinds of couples often are dragging their children into their conflict (because they've put too much faith in having a child being able to repair their relationship), and damaging them in the process, whilst the couple in the Long Weekend only have a dog to fight over!

Spoiler

In fact really the natural world does not seem that bad until provoked! It just wants to get close to the couple wanting to 'get close to nature' only to find itself being violently rebuffed! In a way I think of this film a little like Godard's Weekend, in that we have a couple that seems to detest each other going on a final road trip. The male partner brings along a gun as well as a harpoon gun(?) which inevitably has to get used at some point, and I wonder if there was already a conscious plan there for one or other of the couple (or both?) to murder the other one during the trip! In a way the film underlines throughout, but particularly in the final section when the couple splits and have their own encounters with the natural world on their lonesome, that whatever the 'threat' they had to face was, they would probably have been able to deal with it better if they had been a functioning couple rather than a dysfunctional one. Instead they abandon each other, and pay the price.

I particularly like that whilst nature appears more and more threatening as the film goes on (though it has been provoked quite severely! Even just with the littering and constantly playing radio!), the film is at pains to make the final fate of the couple entirely brought about by themselves, as Marcia takes and then almost immediately crashes their jeep whilst Peter has a fitful night firing his gun wildly around the camp. Even at the birds! Even when one of them carries back Marcia's shoe and drops it at Peter's feet, he just chucks it in the fire whilst feeling sorry for himself, without even thanking the bird! And then when he runs out of bullets he inevitably only has his harpoon gun to fall back on and ends up shooting Marcia when she comes screaming back into the camp, sounding like a wild animal.

And I really like that Peter's death, being run down by a truck on reaching the road back to civilisation, is reminiscent of the same years death by truck on the highway sequence in Damien - Omen II (though the birds are a bit more responsible for the the death in the Omen film! Though I think I remember that a bird distracts the driver at the key moment in Long Weekend too!). Though I think it also bears comparison with the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as well, especially given that the truck that hits him is carrying livestock, presumably to the slaughterhouse!

I didn’t like this movie nearly as much as this back and forth conversation between Colin and RV, especially the Godard’s Weekend comparisons and the idea of a nature rape revenge movie. I thought a lot about The Birds but if we completely aligned with the birds as the protagonists, because each member of the couple is so horrible it was painful to sit with them for this long, especially given the slow build before any action happens. The final shot is terrific and I loved how the street was pasted, very raw. I appreciate the analysis to Australia specifically too, it’s all just more interesting than the movie was to watch.

It was painful to sit with them, I had strong negative feelings about the film during the start because of that, but in the end I felt that was possibly part of the point, given that the film is kind of a critique of people as a species! Misanthropic perhaps, but arguably valid, especially from today's vantage point. Aside from that, the slight weirdness of the film for me created a level of enjoyment.

Oh it was absolutely the point, and I did enjoy seeing them sweat. The bizarre elements worked for me too, I guess just too little too late, but it’s always refreshing to read from those who got something out of it I didn’t and definitely makes me appreciate the film more

There were quite a lot of 'nature fights back' films in the 70s (I guess partly due to ecological concerns and partly the influence of The Birds, maybe also with a bit of the disaster film trend mixed in) from Grizzly (which was probably more influenced by Jaws), Phase IV (along with Bug and Empire of the Ants) and of course the wonderfully goofy Day of the Animals, which is the film where Leslie Nielsen plays a completely monstrous bad guy and gets to wrestle a bear to the death in the climax! The problem with a lot of these films is that there is a really fine line between scary and goofy (the killer bunnies in Night of the Lepus arguably take it too far!). Compared to those films Long Weekend manages to walk that line a lot better between creating a tense atmosphere of watchful nature surrounding and 'reacting' to our main characters, without it seeming entirely unbelievable that its not all just something that our main characters are bringing down upon their own heads!

Incidentally the straggler of this bunch, Grizzly 2 from 1987 which was never finished and made the rounds under the radar as a workprint has apparently now been finally completed and is about to get some sort of official release! It seemed that most of the film was actually edited until the final climax of the bear attacking the rock concert in the woods (because that's a good place to hold a rock concert ) at which point the footage degenerates into rushes and outtakes in preparation for special effects that never got filmed. In spite of, or perhaps because it was never released, the film is most famous because of having a single scene of three expendable campers meeting the bear played by George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen all on the cusp of stardom (though of course Laura Dern had already been in Blue Velvet around that time), all of whom are completely wasted in standard slasher victim roles wandering around in darkness until the bear mauls them. However I would love to have had some back story on how those three disparate individual characters got thrown together on a backwoods hiking trip!

colinr0380 wrote: Fri Feb 28, 2020 8:03 am There were quite a lot of 'nature fights back' films in the 70s (I guess partly due to ecological concerns and partly the influence of The Birds, maybe also with a bit of the disaster film trend mixed in) from Grizzly (which was probably more influenced by Jaws), Phase IV (along with Bug and Empire of the Ants) and of course the wonderfully goofy Day of the Animals, which is the film where Leslie Nielsen plays a completely monstrous bad guy and gets to wrestle a bear to the death in the climax! The problem with a lot of these films is that there is a really fine line between scary and goofy (the killer bunnies in Night of the Lepus arguably take it too far!).

Saw Squirm -- wherein a downed power cable electrifies one town's earthworms on a mission TO MURDER -- at the impressionable age when such a line cannot trip one up (10-ish, it was edited for broadcast TV) and it was such an effective experience I've never wanted to revisit it. It has been on MST3K, which doesn't testify to it as quality work. There's a logic-defying -- unless Waterpik has a model that would allow fat, hungry worms to pour through it -- shower scene that may have been desperate exploitation but it affected me far more than Psycho's. And at odd moments I remember some yawning "human worm" moving along with a river of the things. I'm suspect it's horrible, I'm glad it exists.

Don't think I could ever bring myself to watch Long Weekend as I accidentally saw Nature's Grave, the remake starring Jim Caviezel. It made the idea of being stalked by a manatee corpse very, very funny.

knives wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 9:38 pm Have you seen The Girl Who Knew Too Much yet? It's really great and probably the clearest predecessor to Argento for how it translates genre knowledge into magical fantasy.

Well I’ll eat my own words since this was one of the more purely engaging movies I’ve seen in a while. I agree in its encapsulation of the materials of Argento and beyond in a framework structured like the yellow paged mystery novels come to life, but to me this owes just as many of its strengths to the expansive adventure suspense films of the 50s and the noirs of the 40s. The Big Sleep’s layered construction and North By Northwest’s spiraling narrative of escapades both came to mind, and when the action does halt to meditate in place there are some strong nouvelle vague riffs on that playfulness especially involving private moments of feminine empowerment, as well as in its editing techniques.

This film is so visually arresting that I had to rewind the first ten minutes several times to marvel at Bava’s skills and then bought the Arrow blu ray from a third party seller before continuing, as even if the rest didn't live up to the beginning it would’ve been worth the money to just watch those ten minutes of craft over and over. Thankfully the whole movie is mostly great, gorgeous, and exactly the kind of murder mystery I want to see, filled to the brim with other creative choices that I never expected to witness in a genre entry. I wasn’t crazy about the finale but the suffocatingly close camera placement coupled with some uncomfortable direct eye contact made for an unsettling mood to save any apathy in the narrative reveal. Thanks knives, it’s a bit early to declare it but this is right up there with the best of Bava, even if Lisa still serves as the better 'horror.'

You're welcome. I don't know if it has been transferred over, but the commentary from the old Anchor Bay disc covers a lot of the ground you seem to be invested in.

Unless Tim Lucas recorded a second commentary for the Arrow edition it appears to be the same one ported over, so I'll definitely check it out

By the first 10 minutes, do you mean everything leading up to the hospital scene? If so, I agree. I am not as enamoured as you with the movie as a whole but the entire sequence from her aunt’s apartment to the piazza I have watched multiple times!

Haha that is exactly the stretch of what I’m talking about, nitin, the hospital is the moment I bought the disc

In the spirit of a recent conversation in the Don’t Look Now thread on genre requirements, I’m curious: Do people think Persona is a horror film?

It certainly fits with the idea of disorientation around, and perhaps theft of, one’s identity without one’s consent or awareness, as has been discussed re: Upstream Color and is presented in quite a frightening way around this terrifying concept, but I haven’t seen it mentioned yet.

therewillbeblus wrote: Sat Feb 29, 2020 9:24 pmThe line between thriller and horror is often subjective too. Should a film like Detention, which is basically a genre blend and primarily a comedy, be admitted to the genre because a serial killer is involved somewhere in the mechanics of the plot, while a film like The Trial, a likely orphan, should not even if the latter is actually terrifying from a philosophical space through surrealist psychological manipulation in both narrative and technique?

I think the line between thriller and horror isn't always easy to trace, and there will always be limit cases, but ultimately I don't think it's a subjective call. I think the call comes more in terms of what elements constitute horror and if there's enough in the specific movie instance to make it fit the genre. I haven't seen Detention, but reading up on it it sounds like a typical horror comedy, which is a recognized subgenre of its own (both within horror and comedy).

On the broader question of whether a serial killer's presence in a film makes it a horror or a thriller would I think depend on what the treatment of the subject is like. (Which I recognize in certain cases can get blurry.) Giallos are called horror films, just like slashers, because the presence of the killer comes with certain other horror tropes (gruesomeness of the kills, blood-gore, moments that create shock in the usual "horror film" genre convention). I would argue, on principle, that films that treat the presence of a serial killer in a more merely dramatic or suspense mode without those elements are not horror. (Spike Lee's Summer of Sam perhaps being an example of a more dramatic mode, I can't think offhand of a suspense example.) Psycho is a horror film and not just a thriller not just because there's a serial killer, because there's all those other horror tropes - the gruesome kills, the shocks and intent to scare, the Gothic elements, etc. etc. I haven't seen Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which most often is categorized as a horror film in the literature, so can't speak about it (I don't know if we see kills, or how gruesome they are), but my impression of it through reading about it is that it's probably an example of where the grimness is so dark, whether or not it excludes many usual horror tropes, that it winds up being considered, at least by many, as entering the category. But a film that just chronicles the story of a serial killer, fictional or not, something like Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile about Ted Bundy for example, which I have seen, clearly is not a horror film, but a crime drama.

In terms of films that really walk the line and could go either way, I think The Silence of the Lambs would be one. My personal impression is that it doesn't contain enough horror elements to be called a horror film, but it seems to contain enough for many viewers and academics to include it, and so it's acceptable to me. (Compare with Hannibal, which clearly more partakes of the horror conventions, and therefore at least is more of a solid blend between a crime thriller and a horror film.)

I don't see any serious argument as to how The Trial could be considered a horror film using what the usual conventions and definitions are. Experiencing "terror because of a philosophical space", taken by itself, really isn't what is usually considered to fit the horror genre, in the same way Kafka's novels don't get categorized as horror even though reading them we may experience a sense of moral repulsion or existential anguish. We'd probably have to define what goes into those different senses of "terror" and "horror" to tease out the differences that likely also go to explain why horror books, films, etc., get categorized the way they do, and why others don't even though we may experience some kind of "horror" in them also, most likely in a different way. "I'm horrified that Trump will be reelected", for example, isn't the same sort of "horror" that we usually talk about in horror films.