Category Archives: Review

One Exorcist Too Many

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So, I had all sorts of ambitious possible plans for this post: maybe watch a set of the Polish horrors I’ve collected that don’t have subtitles and give my first impressions based on my imperfect understanding of the language, perhaps dig into a series of short stories that had been instrumental in my getting into horror about 25 years ago and examine my particular journey, maybe explore the differences between some book and its filmic adaptation, but somehow I just haven’t had the power. Certain geo-political events occurring in the country next door have been weighing heavily on me and it’s been difficult to focus my mind towards personal projects such as this; it’s been difficult even just giving full attention to anything really.  The other day, I watched the first thirty minutes of three different films I’ve been really wanting to watch before giving up on each (two of them, I’m sure I’ll return to).

In a time like this, I think it’s rather hard to get into something new or challenging, and it can be a comfort to just return to something familiar, so finally, that’s what I did. Now, after last week’s explication of my dislike of the exorcism film, this movie may seem an odd choice, but it could be argued that today’s film was never actually intended to feature an exorcism, and while I’ve only seen it twice before, it’s richness of character offers a kind of idiosyncratic, puzzling, atmospheric, and weird warm blanket, so let’s take a look at…

The Exorcist III (1990)

William Peter Blatty’s follow up to The Exorcist is a deeply flawed, deeply compromised film. The initial concept is already pretty strange, it features some extraordinarily random elements that can really leave you scratching your head, and following an overwhelming degree of studio interference, its ending strikes a discordant tone with the rest of the film and forces the introduction of a character and storyline that have nothing at all to do with the film around them. In Blatty’s original book and script, there hadn’t been any exorcism at all. The studio saw the first cut and was like, “how can we sell a movie called Exorcist III without an exorcist or exorcism in it?” Blatty was like “Well, I didn’t write a movie called Exorcist III, I wrote a movie called Legion, but fine, I’ll add one” – 4 million dollars later – increasing the budget of the film by almost 50% – there is a really tacked on, totally out of place, special effect laden exorcism and an exorcist who doesn’t interact with a single other character, and just shows up out of nowhere to perform said tacked on exorcism. It is gloriously weird.

But the thing is that, in spite of all of this, it is still such a personal, specific, and unique production – and somehow it really works. It just has so much character and the characters (excluding Father Morning, the random exorcist) themselves get so much room to breathe, to feel, to have significant relationships with each other, that it grounds everything else that happens in the film, however odd it may be. It has endless atmosphere, from its muggy, spooky nighttime scenes on the streets of Georgetown, trees buffeted by the summer wind, to the cold, institutional vibe of the hospital setting in which so much of the film takes place. The story is interesting and different – a strange murder mystery more than a possession story (though possession is an important element). And it is scary, featuring what many consider the best jump scare in horror cinema (it is pretty great).

 In short, the story follows Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott), a friend of Father Karras (the exorcist who died at the end of the first movie). Fifteen years have passed since both his friend’s death and the execution of ‘the Gemini killer,’ a serial killer whose case he had worked years back. And now, a series of mysterious, religiously themed murders, bearing signs of the Gemini killer pull him into an emotional, personal investigation in which he seems to find his dead friend alive and possibly possessed by a serial killer in the mental wing of a local hospital. By the end of the film, dear friends have been murdered, his family has been threatened, and he has to make a terrible sacrifice. It is affecting and intense, and for all of the heightened drama, the performances are so nuanced and solid that it never becomes melodramatic – really, the emotion lands.

And this commitment to character is present from the get go. Much of the first act splits its time between Kinderman investigating the gruesome and mysterious murders and establishing and exploring his friendship with Father Dyer (Ed Flanders), another old friend of Father Karras’s. We see them meeting on the anniversary of Karras’s death, each convinced that it’s his duty to cheer up the other every year on this sad day. They go to a movie together and talk about candy. They go for a cup of coffee and debate how a good god could allow such suffering. Kinderman complains about his mother-in-law, specifically how he can’t go home because she has a carp swimming in the bathtub, and he hates it (making me wonder at her ethnicity as keeping a carp in the bath for the couple of days before Christmas is a very Polish tradition). The fact that this sometimes genuinely scary film allows so much time for such a quirky rant (he really hates the fish) speaks to its investment in character. And it pays dividends – I believe in these people and their very sweet love for one another, and I feel for them when truly horrific things happen. And the film is so patient in letting the actors really do their work.

That patience is also key in this film’s success as a scary movie. Blatty has a good eye and is willing to let the camera sit, utilizing the long hospital hallways to great effect. As mentioned above, there is at least one great scare here and it works because so much suspense can be built when you’re willing to have so little happen for a few minutes. I won’t describe it in detail as it was spoiled for me before I first saw it, but it is a study in great horror film-making. If you’ve already seen the movie, I recommend this fascinating break down from the Rue Morgue Magazine Youtube channel of why the scene plays so well.

While most of the interference from the studio sticks out like a sore, poorly thought out thumb, one thing really works. Originally, Blatty had cast Brad Dourif as “patient X” (who may be Father Karras and/or may be the Gemini killer) and he gives a blistering showcase of a performance, all of which was filmed for the original cut. However, the studio really wanted Jason Miller (who had played Karras in the first film) to have the role and ordered all of the scenes reshot with him instead. Sadly, Miller was struggling with alcohol at the time and had trouble with the long, intense monologues, so Blatty found a strange but effective solution – he used both. It is startling the first time we cut from Miller to Dourif, but after a moment, we adjust and we get the sense that Kinderman sees the possibility of both men before him. He sees his friend. He sees the killer. He doubts them both and they are both present. Even what is seen with his own eyes cannot be taken as objective truth. It is very, very strange, but the effect is uniquely compelling. And I think it may be the one improvement over Blatty’s original cut – it is good to see Miller’s face. It helps us to see the man, the old friend who is suffering here, who we know to be dead. And it is so important to use Dourif’s performance as it is award worthy in its histrionics.

In 2016, Shout Factory released a director’s cut of the film using newly rediscovered footage. They were able to reconstruct Blatty’s original vision, and by all accounts, it’s great. But I haven’t seen it. And while I would love to do so one of these days, on Friday, when I wanted some comfort food, it was such a pleasure to return to this deeply flawed version. Somehow its imperfections increase its charm. I feel I can see Blatty’s intentions beneath the studio mandated surface, and I somehow also really enjoy some of the strangeness resulting from those mandates. In what he had wanted to film, there is already some deeply weird stuff (I haven’t even mentioned the heavenly dream sequence with Fabio the angel, a Jesus statue whose eyes open in shock when it gets windy, the old lady crawling on the ceiling, or the head of the psychiatric department who is clearly crazy himself), and I feel the studio demands probably add to the oddity, thus contributing to the overall, distinctive surreality of the whole affair. I expect the director’s cut is a better film, but I kind of love this one, warts and all.

And following up on my previously discussed distaste for the possession-exorcism narrative (of which, The Exorcist is certainly the ur-example), besides the fact that the exorcism scene herein can be ignored as a totally alien addition, the possession story is so specific and has such a different character than that of any other possession film I’ve seen. Notably, the possessor is not a demon, but a man, though one who was a monster, and his interlocutor is not a man of god, not a priest or an exorcist, but rather a detective and a friend. Kinderman’s horror is not anything to do with the dawning realization of devilish evil – he knows evil already. He sees the horrors humans do to each other every day. He experiences them himself. We have little impression that he ever had a rosy view of humanity, whether in seeing children brutally murdered, or in seeing his own police officers half ass a particular investigation because the victim was a black boy. In the end, he manages to save his friend, but at a cost, and we never really see him turn to a higher power for help. There is a clear supernatural element to the possession, but this is a human story and it turns on human acts.

In its inherent humanity, in its total weirdness, in its expertly crafted tension and release, this is a film that it is easy to return to, to dwell in for a time, to have a laugh and shed a tear with. And for me, it really gave some comfort during a trying time.

Polish Horror Series # 3 – Mother Joan of the Angels

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So I am continuing my journey through the horror output (or more frequently, as is the case today, horror adjacent output) of this country in which I’ve made my home (you can check out the first two films here and here). It’s an interesting process, bringing a number of films to my attention I might never have otherwise encountered, and today’s entry really justifies doing a project like this. I’m sure some English speaking cinephiles will know this one (I read that Scorcese is a fan), but I had never heard of it until I started this series and asked some Polish friends for recommendations. The world is so wide and there is so much to discover when you start digging in any one place. As a caveat, this can only barely be considered a “horror movie” but it is pretty amazing. If you want some gore, check out last week’s entry on Zombie. So, without further adieu,…

Matka Joanna od Aniołów (1961)

While Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s film may not exactly be horror, it does include enough elements to justify consideration here: mass demonic possession, a double axe murder, a surreal, uncanny setting that feels out of place and time, the lingering horror of witch burnings, and an intense struggle with the demons within – with the dark drives that one may be drawn to, defined by, and drowned in, losing all sense of self.  Also, it dovetails so perfectly with another not-quite-horror-but-still-dealing-with-witch-trials-and-mass-possession classic, Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils. They are both based on the same historical event, the witch trials of Loudun, France in 1634, with The Devils culminating in the burning at the stake of Father Grandier and Mother Joan being directly preceded by this event. Only in this case, following the novel by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, the action has been moved to Poland, removing the political issues inherent to France at that time (Richelieu and such), and thus shifting the theme to something both more personal and spiritually allegorical.

And what a visually striking piece. The cinematography is so stark, so spare; the blacks are deep and inky and the whites almost hurt the eyes. The landscape surrounding the convent where all the action takes place seems somehow lunar – rocky and sandy, devoid of life, pitted with craters. It feels like we are out of the world – in an other space where these questions of self and desire and good and evil and love and life can play out, free from the minutiae of living. References are made to a forest, but it is never seen, never felt – and it seems almost impossible to imagine someplace green and dark and wet from the vantage point of this barren space. I suppose that is fitting for the convent – a place that is meant to be a retreat from the world.

The story centers on a priest, Father Suryn, who has come to help with the exorcism of the Mother Superior of the convent, Mother Joanna (the same part played by Vanessa Redgrave in Russell’s film). The impression is that as leader of the convent, the other nuns follow her lead and are only as possessed as she shows herself to be. Interestingly, I feel that the film never declared with certainty whether anything supernatural is actually happening here. Is Joanna, as she declares, possessed by eight powerful demons, and by extension, are the other nuns possessed as well? Is this a kind of mass hysteria? Is this a kind of liberatory performance, allowing these cloistered, repressed women the freedom to act out – to be wild, to be angry, to be silly? The film even seems disinterested in tackling these questions – I don’t think it’s really the point.

It doesn’t matter what is true – it only matters what people do in their present situations. Perhaps there really are “demons” but they are merely the oft-denied aspects of human nature which, under sufficient repression, must finally explode and reassert themselves. What the characters do with these impulses and how they interact with each other – torment each other – seduce each other – love each other – or rob each other along the way is really at the heart of the piece.

And there is real contrast between the main players here. When we first meet Father Suryn, as played by Mieczysław Voit, in a local inn across from the convent, he is shown against the backdrop of a collection of villagers and others who have travelled from afar to see the spectacle of the possessed nuns (though one bemoans the fact that they never take off their clothes and complains that they should have gone to see a tightrope walker instead).  All of them are so folksy, earthy, grotesque and funny – everything that he is not.  He slices his bread as thin as paper so as not to partake in gluttony and he seems to own only one possession, his cat o’ nine tails, with which he self-flagellates.  On his way to the convent the first time, he talks with the local priest who now cares for the illegitimate children of Father Grandier, a priest who really lived in the world. Near the ashen stake on which Grandier had been burned, a striking black structure standing out in this white expanse, Suryn asks the priest to pray for him before he must do battle with the “evil one.” Shrugging, the father makes a half-hearted sign of the cross and calls the kids to go home, leaving Suryn kneeling alone. His world is not one of dark spirits and grand meaning – there are children to feed and care for, and beer to drink.

Suryn continues to the convent and in this moment, we have a touch of horror. The place is ominous. He is clearly frightened. And the mood of the whole piece is tense and overpowering. And then he meets Joanna and there is a kind of spark. Intelligence flashes in her eyes – whether that of a good soul beset upon by evil forces, or an alien awareness housed behind her own, or the light of independence and defiance; she captivates him. Lucyna Winnicka is quite magnetic here in the title role, lightly dancing between a sweet young girl in need of help, a demonic, sweaty, rough talking visage of evil, and a powerful woman, certain in her powers, satisfied with her choices, defying the world, and proud of her apparent “sin.”

We then see her in relation to the other nuns who seem to model their on plight on hers. A key scene takes place about halfway through the film when some visiting churchmen (whose presence has preceded Suryn) lead an exorcism mass in the church. First we see in close up, one by one, the line of nuns making their way to the service – on each face, we can read different emotions – anger, sadness, fear, confusion, and one of them just keeps spinning in circles. They enter the church and spread out in a kind of phalanx behind Joanna, and it is an intimidating image.  The priests chase them around with holy water and they shriek and hide, all but Mother Joanna standing rebelliously before the altar, and one nun who has been unaffected by the possessions – Sister Małgorzata, to whom I shall return in a bit. The focus then shifts to Joanna. They pray at her; they tie her down and shove crosses in her face, commanding her various demons to vacate the premises. In turn, she gives no ground.

She occasionally plays along, at one point, leading the rest of the sisters in an odd dance of hysteria, in which you can so clearly see how they are watching her and trying to copy, however imprecisely, her movements. At one moment, she reaches her arms up as if in prayer, only to bend over backwards into a bridge, and a horror fan has to wonder if this moment was directly stolen by Friedkin for the Exorcist “spider-walk” twelve years later. At the end, a temporary peace is achieved as Joanna leads the others in prostrating themselves on the ground, lying face down, arms out in prayer. It’s an evocative image, but what has happened? Is this an act of submission or subversion – even in apparent defeat, exerting her influence over the other women of the convent?

Following this outburst, Joanna is separated from the other sisters and their condition seems to immediately improve. Much of the rest of the film consists in private scenes between Joanna and Suryn as he determinedly seeks her “salvation” whether this is something that interests her or not. It’s noteworthy to me that for a film this visual, I felt compelled to transcribe a lot of the dialogue as, even in translation, it is thought provoking and stirring. We get a sense of how this possession frees her, gives her life, makes her special:

“Who am I? A poor servant of the lord – who worships him in a remote convent? I am just a nun. Even though my father is a duke, our family is impoverished. He stays in the Smolensk marshes and nobody knows him. Who am I? A poor nun. And yet eight powerful demons possessed me.”

As a nun, she is already outside of the world, and possessed, she is free from any expectations or restrictions that would remain to her. She loves her devils, her freedom. She takes pride in them, in it. In this sense of liberation, I had another modern resonance, namely of Eggers’s The VVitch. I think Joanna perhaps “wouldst like the taste of butter.” In a later scene, she declares how “this possession gives [her] joy” and lashes out at Suryn who would seek to steal it away from her:

“You only want me to calm down, to become grayer, smaller, to be exactly like all the other nuns.”

Her plight is somewhat reflected in the story of Sister Małgorzata, the one nun unaffected by all of the apparently spiritual activity. We first meet her as she’s slipped out of the convent to visit the inn and gossip with her friend. She is joyful, in the world, and full of life, and she doesn’t need demons to be self-possessed. In the inn, she drinks some vodka with the villagers and meets a handsome visiting noble, here to view the local sensation. Coquettishly, she sings a sweet song about how ‘she would rather be a nun than to have a brute for a husband who would beat her black and blue with his stick because he thinks she needs a beating, no, she’d rather be a nun.’ But obviously, she wouldn’t. She is stuck here at the end of the world and craves love and life, and she feels she has found her way out in sweet flirtation with the nobleman. Sadly, by the end of the film he has had his way with her and escaped before dawn, leaving her “ruined.” Even still, she declares that she will not return to the convent. She does not want that, even after her recent love lost.

Love, or something like it, is also in the air for Joanna and Father Suryn. There is a clear attraction, a chemistry, between them. In one scene, having relocated their private exorcisms to an attic space, divided by white habits hanging to dry, they both whip themselves, scouring the flesh to purify the spirit, or possibly just finding physical and emotional release together in the only acceptable fashion available to them. Afterwards, they dress and exit the attic together shyly and sweetly, like first time lovers. Then Joanne takes it a step too far by trying to kiss the priest’s hand and he flees (his own desires as much as hers).

And there is much talk of love as we reach the climax of both the possession story and their emotional journey. (A warning – while this film is not primarily a vehicle for plot, this next part is certainly a spoiler) Claiming to be motivated by love (for her, for God, for “the good”), the priest takes her demons into himself (again, presaging the end of The Exorcist) and falls down the stairs. Everyone now knows that she has been freed of her affliction and that the demons now reside in a new host. To be sure that his new infernal residents will never leave him, Suryn goes on to brutally murder two servants with an axe while they sleep among the hay in the barn. The film doesn’t show us the actual violence, but rather the reactions of two horses who watch in terror. It’s an effective choice.

But what was this love? Did he really feel for her (maybe he did) or, for all that he had berated her for the sin of pride in loving the attention that she received thanks to her possessed state, has he demonstrated himself to be even more proud, claiming for himself the ultimate mantle of both suffering and heroism, and in the process, stealing from her that which she cherished most? There had been a real impression of connection between them, and in this act, he has robbed her of his intimacy and affections, as well as her freedom. Perhaps that was his intention – if he has the demons within (either spiritual or metaphorical), she cannot; she must be saved, whether she wants it or not.

Either way, we do return to some solid moments of horror in the killing, in Małgorzata discovering him holding the axe, and in a final moment of the Sister and the Mother weeping together as the churchbell (meant to call to lost travelers, wandering in the forest) rings, but while we may see the bell, the soundtrack is only their cries; no traveler is saved – all must wander still.

It is quite a piece, and one which lends itself to multiple readings. I feel I come to this from a modern perspective and in it see a story of frustrated liberation, of joy in defiance, of a claim of love which is actually greed. But I have read an interview with the director in which he indicated primarily a love story. How would this have been received in 1961 in Catholic Poland? (Apparently, the Communist authorities were fine with it, but the church decried it as ‘anti-clerical.’) Is it more of a horror story (or more of a love story, for that matter) if you actually believe in demons? In any case, the style feels so symbolic, so poetic, that it feels truly open for interpretation. We are free even if poor Joanna, ultimately, is not – free to find what meaning we will, or lack of meaning, as the case may be.

A Tropical Feast

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So lately, I’ve covered some pretty classy fare: 19th century historical dramas that are somewhat horror adjacent, works of personal depth and serious scholarship, mildly theoretical discussions of films that seek to challenge the audience’s complacency in viewing horror content. But it’s been a while since I really just dug into a work that is clearly and unabashedly Horror with a capital H.  Something that makes up for what it lacks in class with eyeball trauma and shark fights. It’s not so plot heavy (I mean, technically, there is one), but there will be spoilers if you want to avoid that sort of thing.  Also, it may get a bit gooey.  We’re heading into zombie country.

Zombi 2 (1979)

Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, aka Zombi 2 (the original Italian title, where it was marketed as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead, which in turn had been released as Zombi ), aka Zombie Flesh Eaters, aka Nightmare Island, and many more, is really an exceptional, gory exploitation flick with no pretensions of artistry or polemic, but truly delivering everything it sets out to. It is a simple, plot-light B-movie that is scary when it should be and filled with a great sense of mounting dread, while pulling out all the stops when it comes to some absolutely cringe inducing gore set pieces. It features a couple of really impressive how-did-they-film-that moments; its score, from frequent Fulci collaborator, Fabio Frizzi strikes the balance of creepy and groovy that you want from a late 70s Italian horror movie; and even the camera’s leering gaze when it comes to some particularly gratuitous nudity (do women really go scuba diving in nothing but a string thong – don’t the tank straps chafe?) is somehow charming (if no less exploitative). This movie has no illusions of being high art – it knows exactly what it wants to be, and it achieves it spectacularly.

As I said, the plot is bare bones: a boat drifts into New York Harbor with no visible crew. Some police investigate, meet a large, moldering, peckish fellow who bites one of them before being shot into the water, and bring the boat in to dock. Peter, a newspaper reporter, and Anne, the daughter of the boat’s owner (who had mysteriously disappeared months earlier), begin an investigation that brings them to the Caribbean where they enlist a young couple on vacation to take them to Matul island where doctor Menard has been studying an illness that seems to be reanimating the dead. Zombies attack. The cast is picked off one by one, until all are dead but Peter and Anne, who escape on a boat and plan to return to New York with a bitten friend for the good of science. However, they soon turn on the radio and discover that New York is already overrun with zombies (presumably originating with the bitten police officer). Their friend growls below deck, now a zombie. All is doomed.  The final shot is of the Brooklyn bridge overrun with the undead (I said there’d be spoilers).

Like I said, not much plot, but it gets the job done.

I was sure I’d seen this before, but I think that may just be due to a number of iconic images and scenes, much reproduced across horror journalism and fandom. Happily though, when I finally sat down to watch it, I was met with something fresh and suspenseful, totally new to me, delightfully awful, and giddyingly bleak.

Any viewer more familiar with Romero’s ouvre may expect some degree of social commentary from a zombie narrative and I feel that is all but lacking here. I mean, being set on a Caribbean island, there are inescapable elements of race and colonialism, but while the film has some awareness of the obvious social and power dynamics, it isn’t particularly interested in exploring them, other than to suggest a kind of smug arrogance on the part of Doctor Menard. And even there, he isn’t made out to be some kind of monster, the true villain of the film, but rather just a stubborn figure of “western education” unwilling to accept that the locals, with their folk beliefs, might understand what he does not.  There is a fun interchange between him and his local assistant, Lucas, who describes how the locals believe that voodoo is somehow involved – either in bringing the dead back to life or in trying to forestall this plague. After Dr. Menard calls these beliefs “nonsense” and “a stupid superstition” (though by this point, he has seen his share of the dead rise), Lucas responds with withering irony, “Yes, you are right doctor. You know many more things than Lucas.”

But really, this is not the point of this film. This film cares only about effect. It wants to make you cringe. It wants to titillate. It wants to get under your skin and make it crawl. And it frequently does all of these in the space of one short sequence. One stand out scene features Dr. Menard’s wife, Paola, left alone after an argument in which she had begged to leave the island. First she has a shower, standing in front of a three sided mirror (because that’s a thing people sometimes do) before she gets the sense that someone is watching her (the shower is also right in front of a large window because that’s how buildings are usually designed). The audience sees a decomposing hand fall on the window but she is unaware. Shortly thereafter, she is screaming and running into another room where, after having difficulty closing the door, largely due to the rotting zombie fingers that she eventually manages to sever, she is grabbed by the hair and pulled forward such that her eyeball is slowly and graphically pierced by a large shard of the now splintered door. The whole scene is lecherous and tense, agonizing and really, really gross. As it should be. And while it is obvious when the film cuts to an artificial face and eye, it is no less effective in making even a seasoned horror fan flinch at its intensity – at least I did.

The most famous scene in the film apparently wasn’t even intended by Fulci but was added by a producer and filmed by a second unit director, and it’s so good that they did. I speak of course of the seminal Zombie vs Shark showdown. On the way to the island, Susan (of the vacationing couple) goes scuba diving.  She sees a pretty big tiger shark and hides among some sea flora. Suddenly an arm bursts out of the shadows and grabs her. There is a zombie down here (for some reason), and it is, as one might expect, hungry. After shoving some seaweed in its face (which is surprisingly effective), she escapes. The zombie tries to pursue but then the shark returns. Thus begins an epic struggle between the two creatures, each trying to devour the other. The zombie takes a bite out of the shark, but the shark bites off the zombie’s arm and swims off (and hey, since it was bitten, I guess it should become a zombie too?). In an era well before digital effects, this is an amazing feat of filmmaking. Apparently, the zombie was the shark’s trainer who had given it a big meal and a sedative before filming. He had to swim down (without a tank) so that they could film for 30 seconds or so at a time before ascending again for air. Thus, the whole sequence was shot. It’s amazing no one died.

And these are just a couple of exemplary samples. The whole film really works just as well. Beyond the great scoring, the sound design is so potent, often disquietingly ominous when it isn’t revoltingly squelchy with intermittent fly buzz. Also, the film, taking advantage of its tropical location, tends to be pretty gorgeous to look at. The azure waves, the palms blowing in a summer gale, mounds of earth being displaced by bodies as they surface – there is a real sense of location, and a hot, humid, breezy stickiness which helps maintain the putrescent atmosphere. Finally, the approach to the zombies themselves is striking and unique. Staci Ponder, co-host of the Gaylords of Darkness podcast, I think really put her finger on why – they are simply dead. Frequently, their eyes are closed – they don’t track their prey, but move almost without purpose until they have a chance to consume. They don’t even seem to relish in their feasting, but just chew mechanically – not ferociously. And there is something so unsettling and uncomfortable about this view of shuffling, mindless death. The less intentional it is, the more unstoppable it somehow feels – like real death – just an unthinking force of nature.

And what a tremendous ending! I know that it’s supposed to be a bleak sucker punch, but as they heard the news of what had happened to New York, I just wanted to stand up and cheer, and not because I have anything against the Big Apple (I rather love NYC). It was just such a great shock.  The groundwork had been laid.  We had seen the bite and we even saw a twitch of movement under a coroner’s sheet, but that had been more than an hour earlier; in the meantime, the story had moved on, and I at least had completely forgotten. It was just so much fun to actually get surprised. As the undead shambled across the Brooklyn bridge, I was just elated with the grand scope of the twist. The film had been so contained, but in the end, it was positively apocalyptic.

Past that, in its low budget glory, the film has endless B-movie charm. Being an Italian genre film, it has terrible dubbing, the dialogue is sometimes endearingly on the nose (e.g. “What is all this about the dead coming back to life and having to be killed a second time? I mean, what the hell is going on here?”), and there are some editing snafus that it’s hard not to love – there is a late sequence when zombies are attacking the missionary hospital. The living have prepared Molotov cocktails in defense and bottle after bottle is thrown at the advancing horde, exploding on impact. The only thing is that each time a new bottle is thrown, I’m pretty sure we see the same, repeated shot of it landing and bursting into flame. It’s as if right after each explosion, all of the fire goes out, the zombies all take two steps back and we go again. This happens perhaps five times. It’s an economic choice that may not quite work for the action sequence, but pays dividends in comic value.

Sometimes you don’t really feel like thinking so much. Sometimes, you just want a horror film that, you know, horrifies, and in which you have fun getting horrified – and this is such a film. It’s not one for the weak stomached or those who can’t put up with bad dubbing, but if you enjoy being made to squirm in your seat, if you appreciate the obvious joy that goes into really pulling off some disgusting effect, if you can vicariously get a kick out of a director doing everything in his power to get a rise out of you, this just might be a film for you.

Polish Horror Series #2 – Lokis

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OK, so since starting this series two weeks ago, I’ve had little time to take in more films on my list. Finally this weekend, trapped by howling winds without and ill health within (yup – it’s our turn to stay home with Covid – but so far, we’re more or less ok), I had the chance to sit down and have a viewing of another new-to-me Polish horror film. Ok, it might not exactly be horror, but it is Polish, it is a film, and it certainly exists in a degree of dialogue with other examples of Folk Horror. It is also quite a fascinating little flick, and possibly includes a touch of arctothropy (which I may have just made up – it’s my best guess for the bear based counterpart of lycanthropy). For the time being, it’s streaming on Shudder. Before I get to writing about it, I do want to say that the film looks fantastic but that the stills I’ve found online don’t do it justice and getting screenshots from Shudder doesn’t work well.  Imagine a far more visually striking film, won’t you…

Lokis – Rękopis profesora Wittembacha (1970)

Another piece set in the 19th century, this time in what is present day Lithuania, Lokis – the Manuscript of Professor Wittembach is an interesting, little, mildly-horror-adjacent piece, written and directed by Janusz Majewski, adapted from the novel by Prosper Mérimée, the French author upon whose novel the opera Carmen is based. While it is not strictly (or, really, at all, a horror film) it does follow so many of the patterns of one model of folk horror (which is why it is included in the boxed set, All the Haunts be Ours), namely, the “civilized” protagonist venturing into a more rural – wild region and taking in its folksy charm, peculiar superstitions, comical local characters, and the foreboding sense that there is something to the old stories and that the world is a more unknowable, threatening, and simply odd place than previously imagined.

We start the journey with Professor Wittembach, a German pastor and ethnographic scholar who is journeying to the wilds of Lithuania to study local languages and customs.  He begins this sojourn on a train and, set to some really striking and ominous orchestration from Wojciech Kilar (who genre fans will be most familiar with for his score to Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula), the opening credits roll to an evocatively symbolic image. The professor has taken off his glasses and left them next to the window of the train. As the vehicle moves east, all is obscured, except that which is viewed through the lenses of modernity, of reason (either that, or perhaps it refers to the limits of his perception-it could go either way, but it does look meaningful and it does look cool).

He reaches his destination, the palace of Count Szemiot, a mysterious, mercurial, and sometimes quite inscrutable figure who is first glimpsed spying on the professor from a tree. In a tower of the castle, the Count’s mother is locked up, shrieking, calling for her son to be killed for the monster he is. The Count’s doctor (when he isn’t treating the mother for madness by dunking her in water between bouts of folk songs) eventually recounts to Wittembach the local tale of how the Count’s mother was abducted and raped by a bear, and that the Count was the result of this assault. Whether or not this implausible story should be given credence, the film suggests its possibility, without ever explicitly establishing the truth.

While I don’t think it could be argued that this is really a horror film, there is an interesting balance struck between the comic specificity of the many odd characters the professor comes across (drunk, superstitious, crazy, or just plain weird), and a real sense that he has come to a dangerous place and is among unstable people (who are drunk, superstitious, crazy, and just plain weird).  Additionally, there is a feeling of the uncanny, a kind of unreality, in the proceedings– at least for the professor, and, through him, the viewer; for most of the locals, the folk beliefs are taken more on face value and are generally unquestioned.

For the Count, around whom the action turns, objective truth seems beside the point as he is focused on more philosophical-poetic issues of “man’s dual nature,” of the line (if it exists at all) between civilization and animal barbarity, between the human and the bestial. In a telling moment, he explains to the professor, “I have no love for animals. They’re no better than people.” The film, I think, shares his focus, and his dim view of humanity, juxtaposing the laughable though often lovely beliefs, dances, and reactions of the common people with the cruelty of the lord of the manor and the cold detachment of the educated interlopers (the doctor and the professor).

All in all, the film features many captivating elements. The cinematography is adroit – full of gorgeously filmed landscapes, cleverly framed shots (lots of reflective surfaces here), and seventies-tastic snap zooms. Again, please take my word for it, or watch it for yourself.  The pictures I’m attaching unfortunately ill serve the filmmaking. The score is rich, driving, and enigmatic and the production design feels lived in and complete – though I really can’t speak to its historical accuracy.

Most importantly, the nuance and charm of its characters mostly sustain it through its general lack of narrative drive, and it cultivates a rich atmosphere which even occasionally touches on the gothic, such as an early scene in a broken church, lit by lightning strikes and candle light, and housing a skeleton with suspiciously sharp teeth. In its specificity of character and place, it is also frequently hilarious. Again, the Count gets some of the best moments, such as when, to mark the occasion of his wedding, he “releases all of his prisoners.” This entails bringing a large cart into the courtyard of the palace and opening countless cages featuring trapped animals – hawks, cats, ferrets, foxes, and many others, before an old crazy witch woman who we had previously met in the forest climbs out and runs off jabbering wildly and cursing his name.  The bit with the animals was a little odd for his many guests, but the revelation that he’d been keeping this poor, mad old lady locked up with his trophy animals was truly shocking. He simply responds to his former prisoner’s curses with a disappointed, “that’s gratitude for you.”

Additionally, the little elements of folk culture shine: a wild group dance in a local village – a strangely expressive interpretive waltz performed by aristocrats, acting out a tale of Rusalki (water nymphs that lure men into the reeds and drown them) right before the doctor mirrors this by spying on peasant girls bathing among the reeds – the degree to which the story of the bear and the Count’s mother is accepted as fact, and even relayed with some erotic charge, an odd moment when, before entering the church, the bride to be is slapped so there could later be grounds for divorce if necessary. These details bring a lot of local color.

And the film is certainly about something.  The Count’s aforementioned trapping and later freeing of wild animals seems to reflect his own ambivalence towards the wildness of his own nature – restrained, denied, waiting to run free – wanting to strike out, to taste blood. Without going into details, the film ends on a bleak note, and this has less to do with a moment of final act violence than it does with a conversation between the doctor and the professor. The professor asks the doctor why, if he so well understood the many potentially dangerous problems of the Count’s family, he did so little to heal them. Basically, the physician explains that he hates them, as he does himself, as he generally does humanity writ large, and their suffering gave him some small entertainment. Then the doctor turns the same question on the professor – as a pastor, as a man of god, why did he do so little to comfort them? Wittembach has no reply. No one is actually good: man or bear, the cultured or the barbaric – he returns home having documented something of eastern folklore, but really bringing back an awareness of his own lack – of a void in his own center. There is a haunting quality to it all.

I will say, however, and I don’t want to fall into criticism, but I feel the film did miss a trick. While it all circles around a tension between the bestial and the human – reason and madness – passion (whether it be lust or rage) and sensibility, the piece as a whole is quite reserved, meditative even. There are small bursts of life, but I think it would have benefitted from giving in a bit more to the barbarity so often discussed by its inhabitants. Perhaps the idea was that, just as the Count imprisoned the animals, the potential savagery of the story was similarly restrained and restricted. While this may be symbolically and intellectually sound, I think the effect of the film would have been stronger with a bit more bloodthirstiness.  Maybe I wouldn’t have this note if I weren’t writing this for a horror blog – no one can say for sure – but I think I would. As it is, it was frequently quite watchable and even enjoyable, while revolving around interesting themes, but I would have loved it to have more fully embodied them. Still – an interesting and rewarding watch.

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As an aside, I was happy to have the Rusalki referenced, and the dance scene that does so is weird and wonderful. It seemed unfortunately misleading that the subtitles simply translated it to “mermaid,” which I think really gives a false impression. The Rusalka is a really evocative folk figure – capturing the allure and the threat of local nature – that comes up in a lot of other media. I probably first encountered them in the above painting by Pruszkowski (note the one victim trampled on the ground and the next watching them through the reeds) and more recently, there’s a really fun Decemberists song about a Rusalka. Just wanted to share.