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While we're on Argento, I'd like to recommend his first film, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. It's not only one of the best giallos ever made, it's also Argento's quintessential film, containing all of his themes in their most direct and explicit form. It's a great text from which to analyse his later work since it offers so many clear examples of things he would later expand on and complicate. He had almost totally formed his peculiar style; there are some lingering traces of Antonioni that would later fade, but everything, the mind-screens, the vision metaphors, the tricks of memory, the fetishistic camera and loud colours, it's all there. The best of his animal trilogy, which declined in quality with each entry.

knives wrote:My personal favorite is Opera, but I suspect I'm insane on that one

His last great film. The immense strain of making it seemed to have damaged his gift, as his movies just haven't been the same since. It's not my favourite Argento (that's Tenebre), but I do think it has the single most beautiful shot of his career, where the camera roams through the heroine's house to the rhythm of Verdi's MacBeth before rising up to the ceiling and blending seamlessly into the next shot which begins in the conductor's box and spirals outwards to the strains of the live orchestra, taking in as it moves the ravishing architecture of the opera hall.

I haven't seen enough Argento films to really choose a favorite with anything close to respectability, but Opera is my favorite thusfar, absolutely.

What I find most well done about the film, and Sausage hints at this, is how perfectly it works musically. In general I find Argento to be a director through music and the sudden shifts and rhythms that go through the music perfectly dictate the image. In one sense it perverts the clean classical style of the opera as it begins to represent the already dead with the hard screeching metal bringing about cause. It's such a wonderfully ugly thing to witness.

domino, if you are interested in that gorgeous Italian lady who plays the schoolteacher in a couple of scenes, Dalila Di Lazzaro, she is probably best known for her role as the female creation in Flesh For Frankenstein. I also suppose the cesspool in Phenomena is an appropriation from the swimming pool in Poltergeist.

I, as always, agree with Mr Sausage on Argento - my absolute favourite Argento is Tenebrae, closely followed by Inferno (whch I feel is a wonderfully baroque, gory version of The Seventh Victim!) but I think for the full impact of those two it is worth seeing the (just as good) Deep Red and Suspiria first!

Although I would slightly disagree about Bird With The Crystal Plumage being the best giallo ever made - I think it is tied for that honour with Aldo Lado's Short Night of the Glass Dolls, i.e. the film where a paralysed chap is thought to be dead and wheeled ever closer to his autopsy while working out the murder mystery in his mind in flashback! (That one also has a great Morricone score full of strangled gasps and heavy breathing!) Which in a strange way works really well in a double bill with Eyes Wide Shut, almost like a murder mystery version of it! It also features a nice role for Ingrid Thulin near to the end of her Bergman period - though Cries & Whispers came right after this, and After The Rehearsal was still ahead in the 80s.

I also like Opera, though I have a hard time watching it due to my eyeball violence phobia! (Watch out domino for the bizarre last minute swerve into Phenomena 'for the love of nature' territory!) In addition to the shot Mr Sausage notes, I also like that opening sequence which plays out from the point of view of the prima donna opera singer storming off the stage because of the raven's cawing at her, following her through the lobby ranting all the way and then there is an abrupt cut to her falling (or being pushed by the crowd?) under a car just outside the front entrance of the theatre! I like the way that this immediately brings in the stage show cliches of the 'veteran has had an accident and now we need to bring the understudy in' and rushes through them as quickly as possible in a novel and nicely mysterious way!

Although after having seen Opera, it does make his 'official' version of The Phantom of the Opera made in the late 90s feel even more unnecessary.

knives wrote:What I find most well done about the film, and Sausage hints at this, is how perfectly it works musically. In general I find Argento to be a director through music and the sudden shifts and rhythms that go through the music perfectly dictate the image. In one sense it perverts the clean classical style of the opera as it begins to represent the already dead with the hard screeching metal bringing about cause. It's such a wonderfully ugly thing to witness.

Great statement. I think it one of Argento's most savagely gruesome films, and I almost felt dirty while watching it, but there is something fantastic about it all the same. Before I saw Opera I thought Fulci had cornered the market on eye trauma, but Argento goes infinitely squickier (and smarter) with the eyes here. Making our eyes Betty's, complete with the lashes fluttering frenzily above the needles, is one of the most ingenious shots in Argento's entire filmography.

colin wrote:Although I would slightly disagree about Bird With The Crystal Plumage being the best giallo ever made

I don't necessarily think it's the best giallo ever made, just one of the best. It has some stiff competition.

LQ wrote:Great statement. I think it one of Argento's most savagely gruesome films, and I almost felt dirty while watching it, but there is something fantastic about it all the same. Before I saw Opera I thought Fulci had cornered the market on eye trauma, but Argento goes infinitely squickier (and smarter) with the eyes here. Making our eyes Betty's, complete with the lashes fluttering frenzily above the needles, is one of the most ingenious shots in Argento's entire filmography.

Spoiler

Admittedly I've gotten more squeamish as I've gotten older, but those eye shots have always made me put my head in a pillow. The man knows how to take an innate fear and exploit it for all it's worth. An other thing I find interesting is how the ravens are the only ones to harm the true villain of the piece. It's clear what they represent and I think it's an interesting way to make the movie's ultimate killer (because who can escape death) a feminine presence like in Argento's other films at the time. When I first watched it it always struck me as interesting that the killer was a man, a route if I remember correctly he didn't go back to until The Card Player, when so much of his style is dependent on feminine imagery. The raven's allow him to keep that at least somewhat while sticking to the love angle of the novel (though I wouldn't be shocked if he contemplated making the killer a lesbian). To highlight that hierarchy even more the ravens are the only ones to harm the villain throughout the picture.

Re: Opera.

Spoiler

Remember, tho', that while the killer is male, he was (and in a way still is) the pawn of his female lover and her deranged lusts. His method of forcing Betty to watch his murders is an attempt to reenact the sexual games Betty's mother forced him to play. Each one of his murders is, actually, a symbolic rape, and the narrative becomes the heroine's struggle to free herself from the perverted and destructive sexuality of her mother which continues to haunt her. In struggling to free herself, she is also struggling to assert her own sexuality, which is tied not just to her individuality, but her artistry as well. The demands of her artistry threaten her sexual autonomy, as she is told in a crucial conversation that opera singers are well known to be sluts. So she has to struggle with a sexual identity imposed on her by her art/profession in addition to the one imposed on her by her mother and the killer. It is implied that fully giving oneself to the audience in an artistic performance is equivalent to, and therefore engenders, the desire to give oneself fully to many sexual partners. Argento then links this idea to the madonna/whore complex of art, where the madonna of artistic purity is also the whore using art to make money (this is paralleled further with the subplot of the populist genre filmmaker attempting to direct a product of high culture, opera). Betty's struggle is to maintain a purity in her art and have success in her career without accepting an external sexual role that will fracture or reduce her individuality.

Both strands, to conform to the standard sexuality of the prima donna, and to conform to the perverted sexuality of her mother and the killer, are resolved in the (wacky but symbolically appropriate) ending where Betty assumes her mother's role as a ruse to lure the killer into capture. By taking on this role and then revealing it is fake, she is able to admit that she is free of it, and she triumphantly screams at the killer that she is free to be whoever she wants now--she can be a singer for both herself and an audience, and she can have sex both for herself and for another. That is to say, she chooses to be whatever part of the madonna/whore complex she wants, both in art and in her sex life, because it's not a real divide, it's an external construction, and she is free to disregard it now that she is secure in what she wants.

Opera is sorta, kinda a feminist movie. I hedge that comment because I don't think it is really interested in making any social observations. It's just that Argento's fascination with the way gender and sexuality work within extreme situations, coupled with the Phantom of the Opera plot, kind of landed him with a character at the mercy of other people's conceptions of sexuality (like Christine is pulled between the Phantom's idea of love and her own, with her career mixed in there), which makes it feminist. But he also combines that feminist theme with other themes, such as the art/trash theme, the confusions between art, sexuality, and voyeurism theme, the sight/sightlessness theme, ect. Sex, art, and gender are all bundled up together in this movie, but they are all resolved simultaneously in a declaration of individuality. It is feminist while also being a declaration of aesthetic autonomy on behalf of Argento. Opera is, then, a natural close to his career, so perhaps it's not surprising that it ended up being his last great movie.

What a great reading of Opera, Sausage! What are your thoughts on The Stendhal Syndrome, which feels as if it tackles many similar themes of re-enactment and struggling to free yourself from constraints of art and particular gender roles but from a much darker and more futile perspective in which the traumatised heroine regularly seems on the verge of losing her identity and/or getting subsumed in artworks (or in the final image, ends up embodying them)?

colinr0380 wrote:What a great reading of Opera, Sausage! What are your thoughts on The Stendhal Syndrome, which feels as if it tackles many similar themes of re-enactment and struggling to free yourself from constraints of art and particular gender roles but from a much darker and more futile perspective in which the traumatised heroine regularly seems on the verge of losing her identity and/or getting subsumed in artworks (or in the final image, ends up embodying them)?

Stendhal Syndrome (along with Giallo and Phantom of the Opera) is one of the few Argento films I've yet to see. I'm planning to get around to it for this project.

I've actually heard some nice things regarding Giallo as long as you don't look at it as such.

Love this genre, and for those who don't think there are quality films of the franchise I only say look harder. This is a subject matter that has survived and been built upon for 100 years.

Anyways I'm going to start off with my top 25 zombie films.

28 Days Later (2002) - their is much conflict on what is or is not a zombie film, many strictly stick with the reanimated dead people. For me this is a huge mistake, Zombies were generally originally alive merely hypnotized such as the classics I Walked with a Zombie and White Zombie. For me 28 Days later is an example of a modern masterpiece, the scoring, set design and performances are exceptional. The film plays with the logical notions of the outbreak but never slows down the momentum.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) - This is one of those 70's arthouse experimental films that features amateurish acting weak fx and irritating characters. Bob Clark of Chirstmas Story and Black Christmas fame takes a simple subject and with a lead Alan Ormsby just hammers it to death. It's almost admirable how Ormsby developes into a Kinski-esque over the top ness that really makes the film worth a viewing.

Dawn of the Dead (2004) - decent enough remake, nothing to say you don't already know.
Dawn of the Dead (1978) - classic no need to rehash
Day of the Dead (1985) - another Romero classic, if you are in this thread you've likely already watched it

Dead & Buried (1981) - Another one of the "smart" zombie horror films. This is the story of a town of zombies and the poor sheriff who doesn't realize it. What makes this film so good is that you know these people are monsters from the very beginning. The film takes the Columbo approach to Zombie ideology where we are just waiting for the police officer to get it.

Deadgirl (2008) - Deadgirl may just be the darkest Zombie film ever made. Passolini would be proud of what was done with this film. The story revolves around two friends who end up in an abandoned insane asylum there they come upon a very attractive, very dead, and also very alive nude girl. The entire film is basically about the spiral these boys go through till we get our climax which is equally depressing and evocative.

Dead Snow (2009) - Scandinavia is a treasure trove of horror classic's one of the best and best looking is Dead Snow. Dead Snow takes the Sam Rami approach of cabin in the woods crazy gross out gore and pushes it up a notch by making it more action oriented. The idea behind the film is that five friends come across Nazi gold which animates a legion of Nazi zombies to attack. In particular their is a great scene scored to the song Min Dag that will stick in your head long after the film ends.

Deathdream (1972) - Another one of those social consciouness Zombie films this one centers on a young man murdered in Vietnam but returns to his parents after his mother makes a wish. The story takes liberally from the classic Monkey's Paw. The film takes itself a bit to seriously at times and Andy sort of is a blend of Vampire/Zombie but it's a compelling B film and if you are a fan of the Grindhouse era of cinema this is worth the watch.

Devil's Playground (2010) - A British Zombie film that takes the novel approach of going into and dealing with the outbreak as it happens rather than jumping ahead till the Zombies are already walking around. The horror is well made and it feels like a quality "action" picture which I enjoy.

Doghouse (2009) A group of men travels to a remote village in England for a 'boys' weekend'. Upon their arrival, they found out that all the women in the town had been transformed into some kind of man-eating (literally so) cannibals. A Shaun of the Dead ripoff that is wonderfully misogynistic and goes all out. Several moments are laugh out loud hilarious while the actual countdown of the characters was fairly original.


Evil Dead I & Evil Dead II - Yeah Yeah Yeah I know Necronomicon blah blah HP Lovecraft whatever, I consider them to be Zombie films.

Grapes of Death (1978) - AkA Les Raisins de La Mort is to my knowledge Frances only quality Zombie film, and it's a very French film. It centres on a young woman who becomes trapped in a village where a dangerous pesticide has turned the residents into zombies. The zombie turn is slowly which allows for the characters to reflect on what is happening to them. It's sort of out part outbreak one part Dawn of the Dead. The film features some tasteful and typical french nudity.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943) - The first of the great Zombie films, this is a Val Lewton production that uses shadow, atmosphere and quality acting to overcome budget short falls. The film is sort of a take on Jane Erye, with a strong mix of Voodoo. It's likely my favorite horror film from the 40's.

Night of the Living Dead (1969) - classic
Night of the Living Dead (1990) - a worthy remake of the original

Omega Man (1971) - Early 70's horror films are a treasure trove of social consciousness horror films. This is one of three adaptations of the Richard Matheson story I Am Legend. Omega Man features the elusive "smart" zombie people who have become luddites waging a war against technology and trying to bring about a return to the dark ages. The set design is great, the Price version I felt was a bit to small budget while the Smith version was way to CGI...I mean Lions really. This film sort of strikes the right cord Charlton Heston feels like a man who lives alone and isolated from the rest of the world. The action is great Anthony Zerbe plays a very convincing leader of the Zombie movement.

Rabid (1977) and Shivers (1975) - David Cronenberg started his career making two very dark and very gross Zombie films. Once again Cronenberg doesn't treat his subjects like the undead but rather the infected. In Rabid it's a penial type thing attached to the body of a porn star, in Shivers it's a slug. Both films are very difficult to watch while eating and are clearly NC-17 but they are well made and great viewing for people who are looking forward to the future of Cronenberg's work.

Return of the Blind Dead (1973) - The second part of Amando De Ossorio's Zombie epic is in my opinion his best. The events of the first film are generally ignored though you now understand the rules which makes the film flow better. The plot revolves around a town celebrating the 500 year anniversary of a Templar massacre. What makes this so great is that you get the actual battle of townspeople vs Zombies and then the subsequent hiding of said townspeople from zombies.

Return of the Living Dead (1985) - The first in a long line of horrible films starts off with the best of the Reagan era horror formulas. It's hard to pinpoint what makes it so good, I think it's mostly the execution. This is a movie with a sense of humor but it also doesn't give the fans the same typical stuff you expect from horror films. The ending is surprising and I think that goes a long way in making a horror film good.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) - pretty sure everyone knows about it or saw it.

The Stuff (1985) - The Stuff is one of those 80's films you either love or hate. It's comical in it's anti-commercialism yet it still sort of falls into the tired tropes of the Reagan years. It's a film that you love one minute and hate the next for how it hammers you over the head with it's political dogma. But when it's good it's really good and for that it makes my cut.

Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) - Before the Da Vinci code Amando de Ossorio made the Templars iconic villains in this first part of a four part Zombie epic. The first installment is 99% atmospheric joy. See these are special Zombies, for one they are blind, for two they are noctural, for three have zombie horses, and finally they carry swords. The end sequence features an amazing train sequence that just builds and builds and builds.

Next up for me will be my top 25 Slashers, a much maligned genre which if you look close enough you can find some wonderful treasures.

How in the world is not one of those Dead Alive?

A very interesting zombie rundown (though I agree with domino that Brian Dead/Dead Alive should definitely be considered one of the seminal zombie films!), and hopefully we can have some debate about the following:

Siddon wrote:Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972) - This is one of those 70's arthouse experimental films that features amateurish acting weak fx and irritating characters. Bob Clark of Chirstmas Story and Black Christmas fame takes a simple subject and with a lead Alan Ormsby just hammers it to death. It's almost admirable how Ormsby developes into a Kinski-esque over the top ness that really makes the film worth a viewing.

This is certainly a 'unique' film! Am I right in remembering that Bob Clark was looking to try and remake it before he died? This is one of the few films that, like Romero's The Crazies, I could see being remade on a more 'professional' level without losing too much and perhaps even gaining something in the process. The original film is unfortunately technically rather problematic, with it being rather difficult to see and hear what people are saying throughout (though this may just be the fault of my VHS tape, I don't think the tape can entirely be blamed!), and you have to be in the correct mindset to fully appreciate, or endure, Ormsby's incredibly irritating lead performance. He is meant to be irritating as the head of an expedition to an isolated island who decides to indulge in a little grave robbing, corpse defilement (everything short of necrophilia, though he does get married and share a double bed with Orville!), and general catty put downs of his companions, but even if the annoyance is intentional, it is still annoying!

It is of course all to remove any shred of audience sympathy from the characters in preparation for the dead to rise up and settle a few scores, with Orville in a way prefiguring Bub in Day of the Dead in getting the major setpiece of that revenging. That final sequence is a really effective one (even the murky cinematography works in its favour here!), but it is an extremely long slog to get to it. If you can cope with the 'comedy' in the trailer you might be able to last the hour and a quarter before the film gets exciting.

Black Christmas is certainly the Bob Clark horror film that I would recommend without reservations as an absolute classic of the genre (I'm starting to even slightly prefer it over Halloween). Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, as arch as its title, is the one that I have the impression would send most casual viewers screaming for the exits even before anything horrific happens! I would probably recommend Death Dream/Dead of Night, the third Bob Clark directed horror film (which like Children was written by Alan Ormsby) as the medium between the two - not as impressive as Black Christmas but not as actively irritating as Children, and it does feature amazing glittering eyeballs of the zombies, looking like headlights in the darkness.

As well as being a great adaptation of the Monkey's Paw, Death Dream/Dead of Night is also interesting as another one of those horror films dealing with the fall out from Vietnam (along with Jacob's Ladder and, maybe, Cannibal Apocalypse). Plus it features John Marley and Lynn Carlin from Cassavetes' Faces as another (or the same?) couple still trapped inside a disintegrating marriage!

Night of the Living Dead (1969) - classic
Night of the Living Dead (1990) - a worthy remake of the original

I of course agree with your estimate of the Romero film, but have serious problems with the 1990 Savini remake, which seems to have taken criticisms about Barbara being catatonic for much of the original film to heart and tries to turn her into an action heroine, no matter what collateral damage that does to the characters surrounding her. The remake is perhaps interesting as a cataloguing of horror tropes of the late 80s and early 90s, as horror was still trying to incorporate the action woman from Aliens into its characterisations (they were still trying with the Snyder Dawn of the Dead remake, which I think is slightly more successful seen as a film in thrall to Aliens than to Romero's Dawn film. But I digress!), which unfortunately turns Ben in the remake from the practical if naive hero to full blown delusional on a par with Harry presumably in order to show that all men, whatever the colour of their skin, turn into blustering blowhards during a crisis.

The remake also unfortunately flubs one of the most shocking moments of the original film. The trowel scene murder of the mother in the remake is far tamer (surprising since presumably one of the reasons for remaking is to show off advances in special effects) and much, much shorter than it is in the Romero film, making it far less harrowing to watch.

Return of the Blind Dead (1973) - The second part of Amando De Ossorio's Zombie epic is in my opinion his best. The events of the first film are generally ignored though you now understand the rules which makes the film flow better. The plot revolves around a town celebrating the 500 year anniversary of a Templar massacre. What makes this so great is that you get the actual battle of townspeople vs Zombies and then the subsequent hiding of said townspeople from zombies.

This is definitely the best of the De Ossorio Blind Dead series (though Night of the Seagulls is the most atmospheric with its coastal setting) - who could forget a film in which the "boo-hiss" bad guy actually has the gall to use a young child as bait for the zombies!

Return of the Living Dead (1985) - The first in a long line of horrible films starts off with the best of the Reagan era horror formulas. It's hard to pinpoint what makes it so good, I think it's mostly the execution. This is a movie with a sense of humor but it also doesn't give the fans the same typical stuff you expect from horror films. The ending is surprising and I think that goes a long way in making a horror film good.

This is a really excellent film (I've never seen any of the apparently terrible sequels), one of the few films to effectively mix horror and comedy together in just the right proportions. Who could forget the tar man zombie; Linnea Quigley's nude dance scene ("Trash is getting naked again!") on a tombstone while her friends act as lighting technicians around her; and especially the wonderfully hysterical performances by Clu Gulager, Don Calfa, James Karen and Thom Matthews (the latter two acting out a surprisingly moving, and painful seeming zombie transformation) as everything they do to contain things just ends up making things worse! They really should have known they were in for trouble whenever this music started to play!

At the very least it should be noted as the film that introduced the phrases "More Brains!" and "Send...more...paramedics" into zombie lore!

By the way I would highly recommend the excellent in-depth documentary on the making of this film (and the first two sequels) - it is as entertaining as the film itself!

domino harvey wrote:How in the world is not one of those Dead Alive?

Because it's not a very good movie. I have it at #45 of my list of #50 zombie films, and I look forward to the day I can bump it off. It has some of the most annoying unbearable characters I have ever seen. And while I can understand if you like the over the top gore from that era to me I just don't care for it.

26. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
27. Night of the Creeps
28. Zombieland
29. Zombi
30. Wicked Little Things
31. Rec
32. Pet Sematary
33. Fido
34. Ghost Galleon
35. Crazies
36. Land of the Dead
37. Quarentine
38. Rec 2
39. Planet Terror
40. White Zombie
41. King of the Zombies
42. 28 Weeks Later
43. Cemetary Man
44. Night of the Seagulls
45. Dead Alive
46. Pet Sematary II
47. I Sell the Dead
48. Diary of the Dead
49. Dance of the Dead
50. My Boyfriend's Back

I can't even fathom watching it for characterization, much less grading it on that curve-- it's to my eyes the funniest, most endlessly creative and imaginatively fertile horror films ever made. I suppose anything/everything truly is subjective, but wow. Nice to see My Boyfriend's Back sneak in at the tail-end there but what, no Ed and His Dead Mother?

domino harvey wrote:I can't even fathom watching it for characterization, much less grading it on that curve-- it's to my eyes the funniest, most endlessly creative and imaginatively fertile horror films ever made. I suppose anything/everything truly is subjective, but wow. Nice to see My Boyfriend's Back sneak in at the tail-end there but what, no Ed and His Dead Mother?

I think humor is very subjective, I think I have six or seven horror comedies on my list and most of them are parody. Dead Alive is one of those films that always tries to top itself, and the Uncle and Mother in that film were so annoying I expected Eddie Murphy or Robin Williams to pop out. I will give Ed and His Dead Mother a shot though because I hate the idea that their is a zombie film I haven't watched.

Plague of the Zombies doesn't even crack your top fifty?

Mr Sausage wrote:Plague of the Zombies doesn't even crack your top fifty?

Or Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. There's also The Last Man on Earth, although the creatures are described in the film as vampires.

Cash Flagg wrote:

Mr Sausage wrote:Plague of the Zombies doesn't even crack your top fifty?

Or Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. There's also The Last Man on Earth, although the creatures are described in the film as vampires.

I didn't really care to much for Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (the American title), and I consider The Last Man on Earth to be Vampires which is a great film, and when I do a top 25 vampire one it will rank. Plague of Zombies, I believe I watched it and found it forgettable, I'll give it another viewing.

domino harvey wrote:I can't even fathom watching it for characterization, much less grading it on that curve-- it's to my eyes the funniest, most endlessly creative and imaginatively fertile horror films ever made. I suppose anything/everything truly is subjective, but wow. Nice to see My Boyfriend's Back sneak in at the tail-end there but what, no Ed and His Dead Mother?

I actually prefer the very similar Cemetery Man. The humour and sense of exaggeration is very similar, but it's fascinating on more levels than that too. Though in general I think Jackson started at the top with Bad Taste and quickly ran to the bottom.

Just a heads up, but found out by accident that the Optimum release of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (there's no US release) despite artwork is R0.

knives wrote:Just a heads up, but found out by accident that the Optimum release of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (there's no US release) despite artwork is R0.

Which is a beautiful film btw

I'm slowly making my way through the Jeonju Digital Project box and have found a contender in Shunya Tsukamoto's Haze, which is either a must-see or a must-not-see for claustrophobes and aichmophobes (and whatever you call people who get driven up the wall by metallic grinding sounds, especially dentally-oriented ones). The Jeonju version runs 29 minutes, but I see there's an 'extended version' that runs 43. I have no idea how the extra time would play, but the imdb description makes it sound quite different and somewhat more ordinary. With, you know, a plot and stuff.

I also watched John Krish's ghastly The Finishing Line, which, despite a few genuine I-can't-believe-they're-going-there climb-behind-the-sofa moments probably won't make my list, but it reminded me that I should probably be considering Apaches for inclusion, since it's even more effective in the 'dread and wincing' stakes. Is anybody else in the same boat? It's available on YouTube, but in rather crappy condition. Far better to t5rack it down on the BFI's Stop! Look! Listen! COI collection. The film is fascinating because it does what a lot of the most vicious horror movies do, but much more effectively: serve notice that all bets are off and that the filmmakers' cruelty will be extreme (although obviously to entirely different ends). But then, rather than narrowing everything down to herd the characters into baroque sadistic set-pieces, John Mackenzie et al. keep things open as long as possible, so that the audience is way ahead of the film and its characters in terms of seeing everything they encounter as a potential deathtrap. It's a strategy that serves the material brilliantly, but it's also one that would work like crazy in a more traditional horror film, if the director only had the confidence to go with it.

Can a documentary be a horror film rather than just horrifying and what boxset were you referring to with Haze?