Tag Archives: giallo

Queer Horror II: A Small Shudder Roundup

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Chasing the annual event calendar, I think I’m just barely going to slide in under the line to do a Pride Month post for June (though last week’s film did have a clear queer reading, so that’s something). I do try to mark occasions of note, and as discussed last year, I have an appreciation for “Queer Horror,” the argument easily being made that with its focus on the outsider/the abject/the other/the outré, Horror as a genre is usually fairly “queer” (both in the original sense of the word and as a self-identifier used by those who have historically been othered for their sexual/gender identity). That said, I must again admit that I am not of the LGBT+ community and come to this from without, using the term “Queer” with all intended respect in reference to a film classification, a body of theory, and an identity.

Historically, much of the canon, so to speak, consists of pieces with gay-coded characters, or from LGBT+ creators (who may or may not have been open about their sexuality) fueling queer readings of the films even when sexuality is not explicitly present, but I think in contemporary times, the work has really opened up – it’s easier to find explicit LBGT+ characters and stories, and elements of “queerness” have spread through much of popular culture (though I feel camp as an aesthetic is still pretty niche). So, briefly, this week I’d just like to go over a few films I’ve recently watched (one of which I’d seen before, but rather love and would happily watch again). Somewhat coincidentally, these are all on Shudder (I pay for this service and do try to get my money’s worth). They are, in the order of watching: Spiral (2019), Knife + Heart (2018), and Death Drop Gorgeous (2020). I rather enjoyed all of them (in sometimes very different ways), and I think they represent very different approaches to how a contemporary film might present as “queer horror.”

Spiral (2019)

On one level, this is a fairly rote supernatural thriller. Sometime in the late 90s, a couple moves, with their teenage daughter, to a small town where everyone seems quite friendly, but there is clearly a sinister plot at work under the surface. Odd, spooky things start happening which only one member of the couple is witness to. That one starts panicking that a nefarious cult is targeting their family and that they are in grave danger if they stay, but the other partner sees nothing wrong, and is even irritated at all the craziness. Finally, head swimming with conspiracies and threats, the first partner takes drastic measures, there is a revelation of occult shenanigans, and things go real south real fast, landing with a severe, downbeat ending.

This summation could surely be applied to countless films, but this one comes with one small difference – the couple are two men (crazy, right?). On paper, this choice seems like it could have come from a calculating studio exec, seeking to tap into the current moment and exploit the real life difficulties such a couple would face relocating to small town America, making easy emotional hay out of real traumas to which they might have previously been subjected thanks to their identity. And after watching the film, I read plenty of negative user reviews which said exactly something to that effect. However, I’ve got to say that for me, it really clicked.

We see in multiple flashbacks how Malik (Jeffrey Bowjer-Chapman, who’s great), the partner who sees the danger, was attacked for being gay when younger, seeing his lover murdered before him. This early trauma has shaped him in many ways: making him more of an activist than his current partner and possibly giving him an impulse to live more openly, proudly embracing his identity in defiance of those who would abuse him for it, but it has also disillusioned him of any expectation that others can be trusted, that he will ever really be safe. He knows that though some things have seemingly improved, the world is still the world and there are still people who hate him (because he’s gay, because he’s black, because he’s an outsider from the city invading their small, insular town), who would hurt him (or worse) and his family if given half the chance. His partner, Aaron (Ari Cohen), has just not had the same scarring experiences and thus plays the role of the disbelieving husband demanded by a film like this.

The supernatural-paranoia-cult movie of it all generally works fine (though I suspect some plot elements might not hold up well to scrutiny, and to harp on just one of my least favorite genre tropes, when oh when will helpful ghosts finally learn that the way to issue urgent warnings to a protagonist is not to jump scare out of the shadows, making a creepy elongated face, and shrieking? It. Is. Not. Helpful.), but the addition of the “gay” element really makes the whole film feel like so much more. Malik’s apprehension and dread is palpably grounded in the very realistic possibility that he/they are actually being targeted for being gay (and early on, he does have to deal with their living room being vandalized with homophobic graffiti). This social-emotional grounding lends weight to everything that happens, taking this straightforward cult movie and turning it into a social horror that feels like it’s “about something.”

But this doesn’t reduce the whole film to a mere drama. It is still a horror movie and Malik’s justified and understandable fear, informed by his own terrible experiences, really does make it all scarier, granting a kind of instant pathos as we feel how close these fictional creepy events could be to something all too real and terrifying, as well as giving his character realistic reasons both to trust his gut terror and to deny it, knowing that he could easily just be paranoid following his earlier trauma. Our viewpoint character, we are with Malik as he fears for his family in the face of this looming, mysterious menace, and we are also with him as he doubts his own senses, memories, and judgements – coming unmoored, ‘spiraling’ out of control. We have no better idea of what is real than he does, and his alarm is contagious.

In the end, we learn that they have in fact been targeted for being gay (though not hatefully as one would expect, so much as coldly and opportunistically), that there is actually a dark magic at work, and that Malik was both paranoid and right, and then the movie crashes to a close with a greater commitment to horror than I’d expected of it, both on the immediate, personal level and writ large.

From what I read online, I have the feeling that this one wasn’t super popular with audiences (which quite surprised me given how I’d taken to it), but I have to say it worked for me – both as a supernatural and a social horror film. Admittedly, the first half played better when I was still unsure what was going on and was quite pulled in by its emotional weight, but after growing somewhat shambolic in later scenes, in the last minutes, it stuck the landing. Also, I think this offers an interesting example of one way to do “queer horror” – a more or less by the book horror movie, following the tropes of its given sub-genre, but the central characters are gay, and that gayness is actually part of the plot and not simply incidental. This may still be a case of blatant opportunism following the success of a film like Get Out (I didn’t find much about Spiral’s development), but even if it is, I still found it quite moving, at least a bit scary, and consistently engaging.

Knife + Heart (2018)

Described as a French “neo-giallo,” this is a beautiful, erotic, brutal, confounding, hypnotic, peculiar film that is alternatingly blisteringly intense and dreamily hazy. It gets all the adjectives. Some adverbs too. Set against the backdrop of the French gay porn scene of the late 70s, we largely follow Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis), a director of low budget, but artistically ambitious, gay porn films as her actors start getting picked off one by one by a mysterious masked killer in often disturbingly sexualized fashion. It is all stylish and atmospheric as the day is long: moody scenes at night in the rain, neon lit discos, a constant play of light and shadow and color and sweat, and so, so many cigarettes.

Directed and co-written by Yann Gonzalez, this can be bit of a difficult film. Anne, and through her, we are led on a wild goose chase that takes some weird turns here and there (one key to her investigation turns on feathers found at the crime scenes that a bird psychic with a twisted claw hand identifies as being from the seemingly extinct birds of a forest out of an old legend where she then travels, wanders drunk into the woods until finding an expository graveyard, and learns the killer’s history – ok, sure, why not…) and furthermore, Anne, while magnetic on screen, is a hard protagonist to like. Much of the film revolves around her abusive, drunken, obsessive stalking of her ex-girlfriend, who still works as her editor and puts up with a lot from her. As a viewer, it’s difficult to process this often unpleasant person, so driven by want and artistic ambition, but also so clearly harmful to this woman she purportedly loves (and in one scene sexually assaults) and so coldly willing to exploit the deaths of her ‘friends’ as fuel for her filmmaking (as her co-workers are being hunted down, she begins making her new film – all about a masked killer stalking gay men, recreating the real life deaths of her employees and really upsetting some of the survivors in the process). She is a complicated person whom we spend the whole film with but who is always a bit unknowable. And she’s just not a ‘nice’ person.

Past that, as referenced above, this is a movie that in dreamy fashion is very willing to take its time. It has periodic bursts of violence and flashes of passion, but more often moves at a rich, molasses like pace. This is not to say that it is boring or poorly paced, but you have to be in the right mood to go on its particular ride (and the first time I saw it, back when it was released, I wasn’t quite there). Much of this plays out in Anne’s investigation, one feature that links this to the giallo genre – wherein so often an artist or writer finds themselves, for some reason, investigating a series of murders you might otherwise expect to be police business. In this case though, it is clear why it falls to her – the victims all gay men or trans women, porn actors and prostitutes, the police will not work this case. It’s a joke for them. And as the fear grows around her, Anne finds herself the only one who will make the journey into understanding.

All of that said though, I love it, and I’m so glad I watched it again for this post. I love any film that can so envelop me in its mood, in its setting, in its vibe – however ambivalent that might be. I love the places where it touches horror – there are some absolutely top shelf sequences and we’ll deal with them shortly. I also love a quality here that I’m having trouble putting my finger on – though it sometimes feels like a long walk to get there and some character motivations and emotions feel obtuse, somehow it really got to me and in a final coda (featuring an impossible reconciliation and a loving warmth absent from much of the preceding film) I found myself in tears and not even really understanding why. It’s as if the gestalt of the film’s play of mood and look and mystery took me on an emotional journey more powerful than that of the plot or characters.  There is an almost subconscious emotion suffusing it all that I found very affecting.

But it is in the places that horror meets queer that this movie shines. Central to the killer’s story and motivation is a mixture of repressed homosexual desire, self-hatred, and resentment for those he lusts after, those who can live in the world, as themselves, without shame. Thus, all of the kills are infused with an erotic charge and also a deep emotional weight. Every kill is exciting and scary, as is fitting of a horror/giallo, but it is also terribly sad, a tragedy that does not go unmarked. Generally in your classic slashers, everyone died before the final girl had any inkling that anything had happened. Here, a community is threatened, and they know it. Their friends are dying horribly, and there is room for mourning and dread (though not so much room that Anne can’t take advantage of the tragedy to inspire her new pornographic opus, “Homo-cidal”).

Two deaths bookend the film, making such a deep impression at the beginning and the end that I’d probably love it regardless of whatever else happened between them. Early on, we see a young man in a dark, seedy club, the music pounding, half-heartedly dancing with a couple of guys while he makes eyes with the mysterious figure across the room in a kinky leather mask. He goes with the stranger into a back room and there is a frisson of want, desire, and risk – the thrill and alluring sexiness of putting yourself in the hands of a stranger. He finds himself stripped and tied down to a table, still unaware that anything is awry, so turned on, so up for the sexual adventure. And then it all goes wrong and as he’s being savagely stabbed, the sounds of his dying bring tears to the eyes. Trust given is betrayed. Desire led to vulnerability led to death. It is rough, violent, and sexual; and it just breaks your heart.

All of the intervening deaths have a similar blend of horror and eros, need and trepidation, beauty and tragedy and it is really something special. This leads (via a long and winding road) to a final death, the dispatching of the killer in a porn theatre, where he had been stalking his next victim in a dark room in the back. Having finally unraveled the mystery of who and what and why he is, Anne identifies him and the men in the cinema close in. This is the killer who had been terrorizing their community, and knowing how the police had been so uninterested in offering protection, they move to eliminate the threat themselves. It’s not important that they understand his internalized homophobia, that they sympathize with his childhood trauma and mutilation – they have to defend themselves and each other against those who would erase them from existence – and they do. Finally, one young man, similar in build to the first victim, picks up a knife the killer had dropped, approaches him, and tentatively presses the blade into his chest, before continuing to stab and stab and stab. As he kills the killer, the young man whimpers and cries, echoing the sounds of the first victim’s death. There is tragedy not only in the dying but also in the killing, in the horror he must carry out to know that he and his community will be safe, or at least safer.

It is just freaking gorgeous. And sad. And it sings with pain. And is just so very, very cool. Not all of it feels like a horror movie per se, but the parts that do are extraordinary, and the film as a whole is really special – a rich, sad, evocative piece that worked on me in ways I can’t quite puzzle out, but which left a deep and lasting impression. Beautiful.

Death Drop Gorgeous (2020)

On some levels, this has similarities to the previous film. Again we have a story centered entirely around a queer community, with both LGBT+ victims and killer. Someone is murdering employees and visitors to a drag club in Providence, Rhode Island, and no one knows who or why. But past that, these films couldn’t be more dissimilar. Whereas Knife + Heart is highly produced, artful, and deeply earnest in its emotion and weight, Death Drop Gorgeous is totally independent, low budget, enjoyably trashy, and entirely camp, which is more or less the opposite of earnestness.

From the Providence based queer gore film collective, “Monster Makeup,” this is real indie, regional cinema. Reportedly crowd funded and filmed over a year and a half of weekends, with the writers, director, editors, sound mixers, and producers all playing leading roles, thus minimizing costs, this is clearly a labor of love – it may be a bit rough around the edges and the performances may be broad, but in many ways, they are supposed to be. Plus, the filmmaking is quite strong (really, better than the trailer had led me to expect) and the camp of it all justifies any other apparent weaknesses.

Basically, in high camp style, this is a classic whodunit slasher, though in the final act it takes a turn for the supernatural. The kills are all executed at a high level, both in filmmaking and in practical effects, and they’ve got a surprisingly realistic, visceral quality that I hadn’t expected given the deliberate unreality of much of the rest of the film, making this a stronger slasher than I’d hoped for. In many ways, the kill scenes could have come out of any conventional slasher (but some of the content therein, such as a penis being thrust into a glory hole only to graphically get mulched in a meat grinder, might not be featured in more mainstream fare).

On the mystery level, we’re presented with loads of red herrings as to who the killer might be. Is it the aging drag queen, in danger of losing her edge, who feels pushed aside by a culture and clientele obsessed with youth, beauty, and novelty? Is it the young bartender with a short temper? Is the sleazy, coke pushing club boss somehow behind it all? Could it be the aspiring, but untalented performer who faces rejection at every turn? The movie does maintain a degree of suspense for quite a while, and my only real criticism is that I wish it had waited to reveal the actual killer a bit longer as I felt diminished tension from that point on.

But once we do know the identity of the murderer, the film shifts in surprising fashion, adding a kind of Elizabeth Bathory, drag-vamp note to the final proceedings, which also includes an extended fight scene that goes much longer than one might think, bringing to mind the alley fight in They Live. And when this happens, in spite of the inherent irony of the camp, there is a depth of feeling rooting the killer’s murderous rage. In fact, the film manages to drum up some legitimate emotion all along the way among its cast of comically overplayed queens, pushers, dreamers, and club boys.

Whereas Knife + Heart felt like it was recreating a real community in a time and a place (Paris, the gay porn scene, 1979), Death Drop Gorgeous feels like it comes from a real community in a time and a place (Providence, a group of queer artists, 2020). It may not be realistic in its presentation of community, but it feels truly rooted in the lived experience of its creators. And its ‘faults’ make it all the more lovable. The presence of so many ‘non-professional actors’ (a term which, as someone who has long worked in a kind of pro-am theatre scene, kind of irks me) brings an amateur charm (by which I do not intend  ‘unprofessional’, unskilled, or untrained, but rather, following the etymology of the word, from the Latin “amator,” or ‘lover,’ from “amare,” ‘to love,’ I mean to say one who does an activity for the love of that activity as opposed to purely for a profit motive). Though charm is also brought by the surprising cameo of 80s horror mainstay, Linnea Quigley (who’s brief presence really took me by surprise).

There are also other elements that could seem like a fault, but learning more, just give the film more character. Notably, as so much of the drag performance involves lip syncing, I was puzzled at first that the sound seemed out of sync a number of times during the drag shows (and at no other times) – weird given that it makes it seem that the performers are not lip syncing particularly well – and then I read that the performers had done songs they didn’t have (and couldn’t afford) the rights to and that the filmmakers had to record new songs to match their lips as best they could – which is rather a loveable element that I enjoy more than perfectly synced lips (necessitated creativity more interesting than boring perfection). Also, there are precious few “death drops” in the film (a move from ballroom voguing involving the dancer falling back very suddenly, which should apparently more accurately be called “dips” but come on – “death drop” works better for a horror title), but the one that occurs earns its name.

In the end, this is a fun, personal, idiosyncratic movie that manages to deliver some emotional heft through the campiness. Furthermore, that camp offers value in and of itself, bringing a stylized-vulgar-comic-grotesque-fabulous and inherently queer aesthetic to the film which, regardless of how much more common LGBT+ characters have become in popular media, is still rare and characteristic. This film is all the way over the top, embracing every flaw as a feature of high art. And finally, it really does commit to the horror, going for the gore, for the intensity of the kill in a variety of inventive, gruesome, and delightfully cringe inducing ways.  It’s a good time.

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And so there – I’ve caught up with a few films from the “Queer Horror” collection on Shudder. And there are many other titles there worth the watch, some of which I’ve already discussed here, such as Daughters of Darkness and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary. I also recommend there After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (an odd French sci-fi trip), Demons of Dorothy (also French – very campy short), Hellraiser (a classic though I think mainly considered “queer horror” due to its maker), All About Evil (a fun quasi-John Waters-esque romp starring Natasha Lyonne), Tammy and The T-Rex (a surprisingly gory kids movie), and Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl (an intimate chamber piece of modern gothic). It’s a good collection and there are others I still intend to check out one of these days.

Also, I’ve managed to publish this while it’s still June – so hey, good for me. Now to figure out what I’m writing about next…

Fulci in the 70s: A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Don’t Torture a Duckling, and the Psychic

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The last month or so, I like to think that here on ye old blog, we’ve gone in some interesting and different directions. I went into some small detail on the Halloween performance I was recently involved in which, while not exactly “horror,” certainly played with horror elements. I dug into my own personal history with the genre, trying to reconstruct the stepping stones that led me here. I took a look at a little seen Romero gem with occult overtones. And before that, I finally got to tick one more film off my (admittedly pretty short) list of Polish Horror movies. But something all of these posts share is that none of them really tackled a bona fide “Horror Movie” with a capital HOR. Something to make you shiver with fear or retch with disgust, something to crack the brain open with the unbearable weight of its sheer awfulness. And so, I think it’s a good time to examine the work of a director who really did his very best to do exactly those things; let’s spend a bit of time with Lucio Fulci.

That said, my exposure to his work has been somewhat limited. I absolutely love the grotty, doom infused, shark fighting, tropical holiday of Zombi 2 (1979) (which I wrote about here). I appreciate the sleazy, lurid, violent charms of The New York Ripper (1982) (which I’ve touched on briefly before). And what horror fan could resist the atmosphere, the grotesquerie, the nightmare logic, and the ‘oh-dear-god-how-is-he-doing-that?!?’ gore of his Lovecraftian Gates of Hell Trilogy: The City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981), and The House by the Cemetery (1981)? But those five movies, all of which have made a deep, lasting impression on me, only represent less than a quarter of his horror movies (to be fair, they are also counted among his best by many fans – and I’ve heard pretty bad things about what some consider his worst). Still, I’d like to use this week to expand my knowledge of this idiosyncratic Italian who made some of the most effective, difficult, and really creepy films of the genre.

Working chronologically, I’m going to focus on his earlier works from the 70s, three films that I’ve long meant to see. As far as I can tell, they all come recommended, but I must admit I’m going in somewhat blind. And so, without further ado, let’s get into…

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)

After that introduction, it seems ironic to start by saying that this early thriller is not exactly a horror flick. Rather, Fulci really embraces the slick, stylish, bold film making of the giallo and this film bears more resemblance to Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark (especially with the spooky dream sequences) or The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (both also from 1971) than to Fulci’s supernatural horror work in the 80s. It’s worth noting that over the course of his career, he worked in many genres; about half his films were horror, but he also made more than 30 westerns, sci-fi movies, musicals, erotic thrillers, and sex comedies. Still, this one is a vastly enjoyable, captivating piece; I think you can find seeds here of the kinds of films he would later create; and while it is not a horror film exactly, it does contain some startling or unsettling moments. Also, it’s got a great score by Ennio Morricone.

Very briefly, the film follows Carol, a rich but repressed upper class woman who is haunted by disturbing, sexual dreams of her wild, free-loving neighbor, Julia. It’s unclear whether she is offended by the other woman’s libertine ways or jealous of them, but she is certainly agitated by Julia and the wild parties she often throws next door. Finally, in one of her dreams, as they make love, Carol stabs Julia repeatedly in the breast. Of course, it’s soon revealed that the dreamt of neighbor has actually been murdered in just such a fashion and it’s off to the races to ferret out who the actual killer was. In its plotting, this is very similar to other gialli I’ve seen – there are twists on top of twists on top of twists and by the end of the movie, it’s easy to get lost in all of the betrayals and revelations. But I really don’t think you come to a movie like this for the story.  This is an audacious, stylish piece, and with its constant blurring of the line between dream and waking life, it seems right in Fulci’s surreal, unsettling wheelhouse.

Much time is spent in the beginning with Carol’s dreams, dwelling alternatingly in the erotic and a sense of dread or terror: she pushes her way through a crowded train, running from or toward something, the other riders sometimes simple commuters and sometimes naked in a white room, partaking of an orgy; Julia’s bed is a blotch of red in an inky abyss; two naked hippies with white, pupil-less eyes watch and laugh from the balcony; a giant swan chases her across a field; her dead and rotting family track her progress. But even after the dreams cease, Carol still inhabits a hallucinogenic space, and it’s not always clear what is happening or why. The camera offers surprising views, shooting from odd angles and frequently playing with focus, forced perspective, and framing. The editing can be similarly intense, in one moment rapidly cutting back and forth in an almost strobe-like effect between Carol trying to escape a room and a door on the other side being kicked in.

Everything is infused with unreality. Is she actually being chased in waking life by a figure from one of her dreams?  Did she commit a murder and not remember it? Why on earth is there a lab in the peaceful mental facility where she awaits trial in which they are experimenting on dogs like something out of Return of the Living Dead Part III, their torsos cut open but their visible hearts still pumping? (apparently, Fulci was arrested on charges of animal cruelty and his special effects artist had to bring the dog puppets into court to demonstrate how this had been filmed.) Real horrors of the waking world can thus be more horrific than her dreams. And they go just as unexplained.

Don’t worry – they’re puppets!

While the mod stylishness is certainly foregrounded, as it often was in other gialli, and the plotting is kind of standard for this kind of movie, the sometimes nightmarish dreamy quality of the proceedings, accompanied by some gory or just bafflingly strange moments, really points to the interest in horror that Fulci would later pursue. The balance of surreality and tactility, the abstract, showy film making (including a De Palma-esque split screen sequence), and the totally visceral fleshiness all contribute to an uncanny viewing experience such that I was both pulled into the twists and turns of the story and periodically a bit unsettled. It’s a really engaging example of the giallo thriller and I think it’s fascinating to view in the context of Fulci’s larger ouvre.

Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)

No ducks were tortured – just a Donald duck doll.

This is referred to as a giallo, but while it does follow the typical pattern of murder investigation and red herrings, it feels really quite different. Set in a dusty, remote Italian village, this purported thriller-horror-mystery initially seems to have more in common with Fellini’s Amarcord (1973) than with anything Argento, Bava, or Martino were doing at the time, that is if Amarcord had been full of child murder and witch abuse. The filmmaking is still striking in its intensity, its sharp angles, its creation of a mood, but long gone is any stylishness of setting, costume, or character. We start the film following three young boys as they mischievously get into whatever trouble they can in this small Italian town under the view of a modern highway, the temptations of the modern world out there, but out of reach. One by one, these boys, and then a few others, all end up dead: strangled, smothered, and drowned.

A massive police case gets underway; the press descend on the village; and most significantly for the story, the population of this quaint little town all turn on a few outsiders who are, one after another, blamed for these deaths: the town simpleton, a witch who lives on the outskirts, an old hermit. Interestingly, all of the child murders take place off screen, but the violence done by the townspeople is genuinely horrific, and I feel like that is rather the point. Much of the film feels less like horror than a dramatic crime story about a series of killings tearing a town apart, but one scene stands out, cementing the film in the genre with what I understand is Fulci’s first foray into explicit gore.

Also, Fulci really likes close ups of eyes.

Perhaps this is a good point for a spoiler warning – if you think you might want to watch the movie, go do that now – it’s streaming free on Tubi.

Magiara (Florinda Bolkan, Carol in A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin), a witch who lives on the edge of the community has been seen throughout the first half of the movie engaged in some kind of black magic with an infant’s bones, wax figures representing the three boys who are killed first, and voodoo-esque pins. After the police suspect she may have something to do with this, they chase her down with dogs, and question her. No interrogation is needed as she readily confesses to killing the boys with witchcraft in revenge for them disturbing her child’s grave. Convinced of her actual innocence (magic not being real, of course), the police release her, only for her to be immediately attacked in the cemetery by men from the village. They brutally beat her with sticks and chains, tearing her skin, rending her flesh. The makeup effects are deeply affecting – for all that Fulci’s films would go on to be favorites of gorehounds, there is nothing fun here. The severity of the violence done on behalf of the village to Magiara is hard to watch, ugly, and depressing. After they leave her for dead, she crawls to the side of the highway, and cars speed past as she collapses on the side of the road. If she isn’t dealt cruelty, she is met with indifference.

And while the film started lightly with the playful troublemaking of the three boys, it becomes clear that this is not a good place and these are not good people. In fact, one of the protagonists of the movie, Patrizia, is a drug addict and seems to be a pedophile, having been introduced nude and teasing/tempting one of the boys. Later she offers to pay another boy (soon to be a victim) with a kiss, and we also see her aggressively dragging a young, developmentally disabled girl, screaming across the town square so she can buy her a new doll. Much of this may exist just to make a red herring of this otherwise attractive young woman, but really, she seems potentially dangerous.

In the end (again – this is a film that really can be spoiled), it turns out that the killer all along was Don Avallone, the kindly, young, handsome village priest who has shown real care for the boys in his parish. While this does culminate in a deliriously crazy clifftop priest fight as Avallone does his level best to drop his final victim (his young sister) to her death, and when he finally goes over the edge, there is cringe inducing fun to be had in the way his face hits every possible sharp rock on the way down, the end of the film also lands with a surprising depth of feeling. This also distinguished it for me from much of the giallo pack.

A personal criticism of some gialli is that the plots can be so convoluted that at a certain point, I sometimes lose interest in following their permutations and rather just go along for the cool ride. It’s rare that the final revelation really touches me – these movies are all about the journey, not the destination. However, Don Avallone’s madness was pitiable and thematically consistent with what had been shown throughout the movie. He had such a whammy of “SIN” put on him by his religion, and the society surrounding him is obviously so mired in sordid, petty, meanness. The only way he felt he could care for his flock was to murder them while they were still “innocent” (and from what we saw of the boys, they weren’t even that).

When his motivations are revealed, it is sadly chilling, and the film ends with much more weight than I’d expected. It still doesn’t feel exactly like a “horror movie,” so much as a heartfelt, horrific, momentarily gory, atmospheric murder drama, but I think it is worth viewing for genre fans open to such things, and I’m enjoying my continued tracking of Fulci’s trajectory.

The Psychic (1977)

So, funny fact: I set out on this project, intending to really get into some “legitimate horror,” but in my ignorance, it seems that I chose three of Fulci’s thrillers from before he started making horror films proper (one book I checked last night after watching this third film lists Zombi as his first). Though all of them feature horrific elements, and one can find roots of his later work in them, none are entirely, unqualified “horror films.” Still, all of these are significant, impressive pieces of work and I’m really glad to have finally done this very satisfying homework. Case in point, The Psychic (also released as Seven Notes in Black or Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes – a very giallo title) still retains many elements of his early thriller phase (which began in 1969 with Perversion Story, an apparent forerunner of Basic Instinct/Fatal Attraction-esque erotic thrillers), but for the first time introduces a supernatural element, and along with it, edges towards the doom-laden mood he was soon to capture two years later with Zombi (between them, he directed his final Spaghetti Western, Silver Saddle). 

And I have to say, I loved it. The Psychic is a gorgeous, somewhat gothic, and even surprisingly classy supernatural horror-thriller (“classy” being a term I don’t often associate with Fulci, though I’ve long respected his artistry). There is a thick, nigh-viscous atmosphere of inescapable fate, the feeling of the screws tightening, of a trap slowly closing around the protagonist over the course of the whole film, and there are a couple of just gleefully intense sequences of terror along the way, often underscored by the absolutely simple, haunting, unsettling theme that Fabio Frizzi contributed (and Tarantino later repurposed in Kill Bill – which, for my money, may be the greatest horror theme I’ve yet heard). As is often the case with Fulci, there is a pervasive dream-like quality to this tale of a woman whose psychic flashes haunt her with visions of murder and calamity. We’re not necessarily slipping in and out of a dream state as in some films, but the way her flashes of psychic insight impinge on her daily existence does contribute to a destabilization of confidence in the reality of the senses.

And at this point, I must say that if you think you might like to try this one out, go do it now (if you’ve got a US library card, it’s on Kanopy – otherwise you can watch it with ads on Popcornflix). There is really no good way to discuss this movie without touching on the ending. It was sadly spoiled for me and though I still enjoyed it, it would have been nice not to have had the (probably obvious, but still chilling) turn of events given away in advance (though also, to be fair, one poster I saw absolutely spoiled the ending – geez…).

Ok, so for those choosing not to heed my advice, a brief synopsis: Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill) has been shaken by psychic visions her whole life, since, as a child, she witnessed a vision of her mother committing suicide a thousand miles away. To help her process her visions, she now retains the services of a parapsychologist (played by Marc Porel, the priest in Don’t Torture a Duckling). Having recently married a dashing Italian gentleman, she’s rocked by a vision of an elderly woman with a gushing head wound, a magazine, a red room, a broken mirror, a yellow cigarette in a blue ash tray, and being walled up by bricks like something out of a Poe story (apparently Fulci was quite a fan). She visits a palazzo owned by her husband, now gone to seed and recognizes a room from her vision, leading her to take a sledgehammer to one wall and uncover the skeleton hidden within. As her husband is arrested under investigation of murder, she starts piecing together the elements of her vision to uncover the true killer. But, as becomes clear over the course of the film, she had not actually seen a vision of the past, but rather, her own future, her own murder.

I appreciated how this realization doesn’t drop as a final scene twist. Rather, it’s more of a water torture situation. There is one small piece of evidence after another that points her in the right direction and that leads her to her final understanding, all functioning as a vicious puzzle box which she is compelled to open, only to find herself, in the end, closed within. At a certain point, it feels as if she understands what she’s hurtling towards but has no power to stop it, and O’Neill’s performance is pitch perfect – balancing a tragic drive to uncover the truth and the sense that her sanity is hanging by a bit of twine and each new revelation cuts another thread. She continues to try to “solve the murder,” pushing away the awareness that she is actually inviting her own.

I think in this way, for all that it still carries the typical giallo trappings of a murder mystery, a series of plot twists, and heavy doses of style, I think it is fair to count this one an actual horror. What is more “horror” than the dawning, terrible realization of an inescapable, awful truth? Additionally, the supernatural motif adds a certain flavor: a dread that is more than mere psychology, a delicious suspense that pierces like a needle. Much of the film may operate as an almost stately mood piece, but when it kicks into high gear, it sings.

The high point of this may be a late sequence when, chased by the man she thinks is the killer, Virginia hides in a church under renovation. Echoing a similar moment in A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, while hidden on the scaffolding, the alarm in her watch starts to sound a tinkling version of Frizzi’s theme and the man sees her. A hunt ensues up ladders and across precarious planks as the full theme blares. It is a gloriously tense episode and it is reflected in the final, eerie, unresolved moments of the film, once the masonry work has been completed and Virginia’s fate has run its course. 

—

And so, those are three early Fulci thrillers. It’s been a pleasure to learn a bit about his earlier work and all three were clearly proficient and effective films in their own right beyond the fact that they each imply something of where he would later go. It is interesting to see a progression from the showy style of the first film, in which the camera rarely deigns to shoot anything straight on, to the confident, masterfully constructed third film, which is much less ostentatious, and yet no less stylish or effective. It’s been great to expand my understanding of an appreciated director whose work I’d only scratched the surface of (though I don’t think I’m going to take a deep dive into his non-horror/thriller work – but who knows, maybe How We Robbed the Bank of Italy or his adaptation of Jack London’s White Fang are worth checking out). But, since I’m still itching for some crawling, goopy, mind-cracking horrors, I think I’ll stick with old Lucio for another week, so watch this space for a heavy dose of messy doom next time.

Argento and Aesthetic Terror: Inferno, Tenebrae, Phenomena, and Opera

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Recently I was down in Italy for a bit and, as mentioned in my last post, a highlight was getting to visit Profondo Rosso, the book/memorabilia store co-owned by Dario Argento and Luigi Cozzi. Obviously, I’m a fan of Argento’s work or it wouldn’t have been such a must-see, and yet, in one year of writing this blog, I’ve not yet tackled any of his films. How could this be? Perhaps he’s just loomed so large that it’s been intimidating? Perhaps, while I’d torn through his most acclaimed works when I was first really getting into horror many years ago, and he made such a deep impression, I haven’t necessarily returned to him with great regularity over the years, and it just hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind. Perhaps I just loved the sometimes maligned remake of Suspiria so much that, out of a kind of loyalty, I wrote about it before the original. I don’t know, but in any case, it’s time to remedy this fact.

It’s common to view his output in a few stages. The first consists of his “animal trilogy,” his first three gialli, all with some animal title: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Cat O’Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Black Velvet. Of these, I’ve only seen the first. The second stage could be deemed his “golden years,” spanning from Profondo Rosso in 1975 until Opera in 1987. And then things start going downhill. There were still occasional flashes of brilliance in the next decade (The Stendhal Syndrome has its moments and I’ve read that Sleepless is worth the watch), but they were found among considerably less inspired work, and for the last twenty years, there has been little to recommend, hitting a nadir in 2012 with the unfortunate Dracula 3D (but I am holding out hope for his new film, Dark Glasses (coming this year) – it’s never too late for a return to form). Today, in order to paint a picture of this idiosyncratic, characteristic artist, I’d like to look at four works from his golden years: Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), and Opera (1987). Though these films are very different from one another, there are clear artistic preoccupations and practices that run through them, and taken as a whole, I think they offer an interesting portrait of this influential film maker. And someday I’ll tackle Profondo Rosso and Suspiria, each of which probably merits its own post.

Also, for a change, I’m going to be good about spoilers here. Coming out of the Italian giallo tradition, these films all turn on late plot twists and they really can be spoiled.

Inferno (1980)

A follow up to Suspiria and a continuation of the “three mothers” mythology of that earlier film (there being three ancient witches ruling the world), Inferno is a wild, fevered, occasionally brilliant, generally shambolic ride. In many ways, Argento takes many of his own tendencies to their logical extremes, both to good and ill effect. He doubles down on the bold, non-realistic use of saturated color that served him so well in Suspiria, lending the proceedings a surreal air. The kill scenes are all tight as a drum: suspenseful, creative, scary, and weird. The story is secondary to an ominous mood of being observed, hunted, and manipulated by powers beyond your ken and there is a threatening sense that no one is safe as each person who might be the protagonist is dispatched until only one remains, and that is probably just because the film had to end sooner or later – if it had been longer, he probably would have died too, to be replaced by yet another potential victim. It is mysterious, unpredictable, captivating, and a little difficult to hold onto.

The story, such as it is, is spare: a woman in a striking old New York building falls down a rabbit hole of three mothers lore (and down a literal hole, into a flooded, sub-basement corpse ballroom) and writes her brother in Rome, begging him to come to her, which he does. Everyone who seems interested in understanding the power of these three witches is hunted down and killed in spectacular fashion. Finally, the brother finds Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness, in the basement, leading to a fiery, if inconclusive, conclusion. But more so than any other Argento piece I’ve seen, Inferno is disinterested in narrative. It is a film of moments, of uncanny, intense sequences which you have to be in the right mood for; if you don’t think too much about the plot and just go with it, you will be taken to some crazy, intense, glorious places (but that lack of a narrative center can also make it a difficult watch – I must say, it’s not my favorite). In this regard, it brings to mind Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy, but whereas Fulci prioritizes the horror of nightmare revulsion over narrative, Argento leans into the thrill of nightmare style. But they’re both more nightmare than story.

A woman dives into a flooded ballroom to retrieve her keys and is startled by the corpses that float into view. Desperately, she escapes them (though they aren’t actually moving or doing anything, it feels like they chase her, as if they will reach out and attack). During a seminar, a music student reads about the three mothers and looks up to see a mysterious, beautiful woman holding a cat, staring him down and intensely speaking something unheard as the wind blows the windows open and the room feels full of magic and power and danger. A woman enters a library seeking forbidden knowledge and other patrons watch her slyly as if they’ve been waiting. Book in hand, she ventures into the basement where she stumbles upon a demonic book binder in a hellish workshop who tries to catch her and steal the tome (though until ten minutes earlier, he could have just gone upstairs and taken it from the shelf). Scared to be alone, a woman invites a stranger into her apartment to wait for a friend. She plays a record and tells him of the dark forces she fears. Suddenly the music and the lights start cutting out and flickering on again. The tension is ratcheted up as the stranger makes his way to the fuse box, ignoring her plea not to be left alone. Out of sight, he carries on a conversation with her until, after one moment of silence, she finds him with a knife through his neck. In his death throes, he falls upon her, pinning her down and dooming her to a similar fate. When the friend arrives, she falls right through a thin fabric wall (who built this apartment?) to reveal the horrors that have occurred. It goes on and on.

There may not be a protagonist. There may barely be a story. But every 10-15 minutes, there is a fresh, beautifully and suspensefully staged phantasmagoric crescendo. Often when people reference Argento, they talk about the colors (mainly because of Suspiria), and they are on display here, but the thing about him is that all this artfulness is in service of effect. There may be themes and imagery that run through his work (close-ups of eyes, voyeurism, identity, doubling, questioning the veracity of seeing, etc.), but it’s never art for art’s sake – it should thrill/terrify most of all – and look really cool while doing it.  Inferno delivers that.

Tenebrae (1982)

Whereas Inferno was a hyper-colorful, supernatural, gothic nightmare, with Tenebrae, Argento goes back to his roots, making a tight, twisty giallo thriller. There’s nothing supernatural; just a twisted killer hunting down pretty girls and the American crime author-cum-investigator who gets pulled into the stylish mayhem. Also, as a change of direction, it is all so white. Filmed in a modernist, brutalist, uncrowded Roman suburb, everything is sunny, out in the open, and exposed. And you just know that if a room is all white in a movie like this, sooner or later, it’s going to get painted red with an arterial spray; and when it does, it is truly a sight to behold – gruesome, gorgeous, terrifying and without warning.

The title references a pre-Easter church service in which the lights are extinguished one by one until there is a piercing sound, symbolizing the “total loss of god’s presence.” With this film’s religiously motivated killer, it is a fitting match. The film begins so bright, so stylish; and it is so much fun. The first kill sets the tone – the whole film is a flash of a blade in the dark, a slick, surprising, sometimes funny, sometimes scary romp. Throughout, there are moments of lightness and comedy (see John Saxon and his miraculous hat), and playful jump scares and plot twists. But by the end, the lights have all gone out and we are alone, screaming in the rain, having witnessed deadly art (literally – a very pointy statue plays a role).

A great example of this open and sunny, yet tense, vibe is the death of the main character’s literary agent, Bullmer, played by John Saxon. This is a unique set up – there’s no chase and the victim is taken completely by surprise, but for the viewer, there’s a fascinating, growing sense that something is wrong – something is going to happen – but what is it? Where will it come from? A series of innocuous images come together to imply danger in this open, “normal” space:

We see Bullmer standing in a modern piazza. It’s all concrete and right angles, suggesting open space and passages to other areas. He goes and sits on a bench in the center of the square.  People are going about their lives. A boy chases a bouncing ball. An old man greets a woman at a café, kissing her hand. A young man shouts at his girlfriend. Some punks stand outside a shop window, looking shifty. He takes in the life all around, enjoying it, but checking his watch; he’s waiting for his lover (who received a mysterious gift of red pumps in the previous scene). A droning, apprehensive bit of music begins, accompanying a series of short cuts: The young man yelling at his girlfriend and storming off. Bullmer looking concerned, but also like it’s not his business. The crying girl now walking in his direction. Bullmer rising and some people bumping into him. The crying lady still approaching. His face watching her – then a shadow falls over him, and he turns. He looks surprised, then happy. A blade in front of his abdomen. His face, concerned. Stab in the belly. Face in pain. Another stab. Another reaction. We see the ground and then his beloved hat falls onto it. We see him collapse in front of the bench. Crying lady approaching – she hasn’t seen anything yet. Shot of him as her legs enter the frame – he reaches out to catch her dress. Her face looking down – scream. On him, her legs, more legs run in. A crowd has formed around him. The red pumps walking, entering the crowd. Shot of him from above, dead. The red pumps back away, exit the scene.

There are much flashier kills in this movie, but this is such a masterful exercise in building tension out of nothing and it’s put together with such a confident hand that I can’t be the first to liken it to Hitchcock’s “shower scene.” There’s really no reason to be scared, but the tension builds, culminating in a brutal murder in broad day light in a populated area where no one sees a thing. No place is safe. And no time.

Add in the famous, gratuitous, because-we-can, long crane shot, the psycho-sexual-repression fueled violence, the meta-play of the film containing both a book called Tenebrae, which the killer bases his crimes on, and a character getting killed while listening to the record of the Tenebrae soundtrack, both giving the sense that Argento is looking directly at the viewer and his critics (mirroring himself with a horror writer who uses his artistry to manipulate), a rockin’ Goblin soundtrack, and some real narrative surprises and scares that deliver searing cinematic pleasure, and you’ve got a little masterpiece.

Phenomena (1985)

This next one is pretty strange, but for whatever reason, it holds a real warm spot in my heart. Jennifer Connelly, just before Labyrinth, plays Jennifer Corvino, a young girl with a psychic connection to insects, sent to a strict Swiss boarding school while her famous actor father is off filming a movie. Unfortunately, there is a vicious killer on the loose, targeting girls her age. So it’s up to her, a friendly entomologist played by Donald Pleasance at his warmest, his helper chimpanzee and Jennifer’s army of creepy crawlies to save the day. This is all accompanied by Argento’s usual visual flair, some of the spookiest music Goblin ever produced, and some oddly placed excerpts of heavy metal which often feel completely out of place.

An element I love here is the atmospheric use of nature. Set in a part of Switzerland (referred to in the film as the “Swiss Transylvania”) where the wind coming off of the mountains drives people mad, the supernatural vibe is rich. It all feels other than human, bigger, alien, and yet it is just the natural world in a very “civilized,” populated area – this is not the wilderness, but this totally normal, natural world is made to feel uncanny, weird, and threatening. The trees are always creaking, the wind never stops howling, and Jennifer’s insects are always on the move. It really creates a mood, an enveloping horror atmosphere in which I just love to dwell.

Also, I expect that the fact this was filmed right before Labyrinth (which I watched with great frequency when I was younger) lends it a strong taste of nostalgia even if I didn’t see it until my early 20s. Connelly delivers a similar, if perhaps more impassive performance, and she serves as a strong center around which the story can revolve. She is of course sometimes upset, vexed by the bug eyed murder visions that haunt her dreams, the teasing at school, the being kidnapped, drugged, and dumped in a rotting pool of human compost, but she is also often quite placid, at peace with the swarm outside the window, linked to a nature that buzzes gently without great emotional disturbance.

Finally, what makes this film so lovable is how utterly crazy it is.  It is filled with odd choices from top to bottom that just shouldn’t work (and sometimes, to be fair, they don’t), but usually do. And its execution of those weird choices sings with Argento’s usual sensory bravado, taking a plot description that could apply to an odd, charming, so-bad-it’s-good B-movie, and instead offering up a wild, glorious, so-weird-it’s-great powerhouse. I mean, at a key moment, the chimp shows up out of nowhere and attacks someone with a straight razor! How could anyone not love this oddball little movie?

But, as I said, not everything works. I think anyone who enjoys Argento, and Italian horror in general, knows that sometimes you just have to accept some things. It will always be dubbed, poorly, and the dialogue that makes it through will always seem strained and unnatural. This is no exception. Most of the characters speak in a stilted, on-the-nose fashion that can be laughable. But you can laugh, and love it, and go along for the ride, which is worth it (and in this case, having Connelly and Pleasance in such prominent roles, dubbing themselves, means that they can bring something slightly more natural to their text, so that’s nice). Also, as mentioned above, for the first time, Argento used modern music not composed for the film – it seems that he’d just gotten into Iron Maiden and Motörhead and had to include them…it doesn’t work. These are bands I like – I sympathize, but Argento just doesn’t stick the landing with matching the sound to the picture. But I’ve heard that while we may respect someone for their strengths, we love them for their faults, and that is clearly the case here. Somehow, all of the little things that don’t work, or the big things such as these music choices, just make me love the movie more – not in spite of its mis-steps, but because of them.

This, and all of Argento’s classic work, is clearly the product of an auteur – it always seems like one creator’s vision: sometimes peculiar, often intense, never dull. These are clearly not studio pictures with dictates from a group of risk-averse accountants. Argento takes big swings – and sometimes he doesn’t connect, but other times he knocks it out of the park. In Phenomena, everything is of a piece, from classic giallo kill sequences and plot twists, to the balance of beautiful, atmospheric original music and thrashing guitars, to the wind rustling the leaves and the chimp wielding a razor, to the juxtaposition of Jennifer’s peaceful communion with the insects and those insects tearing apart one who tries to harm her. It is a unique film, and one which I always find great pleasure in.

Opera (1987)

Considered by many to be Argento’s last great film (though others have said the same about Tenebrae or Suspiria or Profondo Rosso, so who knows…), this is a tight, often horrific thriller about a understudy thrust into the lead role in an avant-garde production of Verdi’s Macbeth, hounded by a killer who ties her up and tapes a row of needles under each eye to force her to watch the murders he commits. It is filmed with Argento’s characteristic verve, and it balances his visual creativity with a narrative that really holds together, even with its classic giallo character reversals and shocking twist revelations.

If anything, though there are really striking images (such as the needles under the eyes) and wild, propulsive film making (notably, all of the scenes of the opera in rehearsal or performance, or the raven eyed shots employed in the final act), this is the most conventional of all of the films we’re looking at today (possibly forecasting the direction he’d go in the next decade). Sure, there are still crazy moments, and funny character beats, and some really horrific sequences, but it feels more like it exists in our world. The stylishness is restricted to the work of the camera, the editing, and the scoring, but the people and fashions and locations (with the exception of the opera setting) all feel more “normal,” like they could fit in with any late 80s/early 90s crime thriller. Furthermore, it’s painted in much a more muted palette: murky beiges, tans, and browns.

But I don’t want to undersell its thrills either. From the opening shot of the opera house reflected in the eye of a raven, you can tell you’re in for something special. However murky this world may be, the cinematography is dazzling. The camera swoops like a bird. It creeps into places it shouldn’t be able to. It is constantly switching perspectives. Now we look through the eyes of the raven. Now through the eyes of the diva who refuses to sing with the bird and storms out of the opera house to get hit by a car. Now through the eyes of the killer. Now through the eyes of Betty, the young understudy who’s made to watch all the blood being shed. It even hides inside a door peephole, seeing the barrel of a gun, and then a bullet flying towards it, cutting away just in time for that bullet to fly out the back of a victim’s head. Argento has often circled the issue of seeing – witnessing – watching. Eyes have always been a preoccupation of his. The truth of what has been seen has regularly been called into doubt (see the late revelations in Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Profondo Rosso, and Tenebrae). In Opera, from one moment to the next, we’re not always sure what we’re watching: is it concurrent action, a memory, or a dark fantasy?

When the killer makes Betty watch, tied up, a victim of sight, Argento takes a sadistic pleasure in doing the same to us. And the violence here feels more realistic than in previous films. This may just reflect advancements in film technology that had taken place over the course of the decade, but I feel it’s an artistic choice. Just as the colors are less vibrant, so too is the violence less artificial and more grisly. The two elements are of a piece.

Then, the film ends on a peculiar note. Having been chased out to a rural landscape like something out of Phenomena (and actually, I’d misremembered this and thought it had actually been the final shot of that earlier film), Betty finally overcomes the killer and after a short interchange with the police, lies down in the tall grass and wildflowers to look at a lizard and disappear into the natural world. After the gloomy tones of the majority of the film, suddenly everything is so vivid and green. In voiceover, she speaks of how this will be her beauty now. She is done with “art,” of watching and being put on display, of human machinations and creation.  Was Argento communicating the same? I mean, he’s continued making films for another thirty years, but maybe he was just in a bad place – he’d just broken up with long time romantic and artistic partner Daria Nicolodi (who had been in almost all of his films since Profondo Rosso and sometimes shared screenwriting credit), who begrudgingly agreed to be in this one because her death scene was going to be so spectacular, and apparently the inspiration for the film had been Argento’s own artistic failure of directing Verdi’s Macbeth himself.

Argento: a style all his own

These are four strikingly distinct films, ranging from a nigh-abstract, supernatural, technicolor dreamscape, to a blindingly white, crisp psycho-thriller, to a nature infused insect-girl/razor-ape flick, to a psychological, gory horror show that problematizes watching, that questions art. And yet, each so clearly feels like it is from the same creator. The particular flourish with which he films what is often nonsensical or insane, the care taken in crafting the aesthetics of each piece, the recurring key images or themes, the maximalist glee with which he throws everything and the kitchen sink into a film to create an overwhelming sensory experience, and the freeing extent to which he just doesn’t give a damn about things that aren’t interesting to him (logic, how operas work, why things blow up or don’t, how dogs protect territory and don’t hunt girls endlessly for no reason, what Rhode Island looks like; this list could be its own post) – all this comes together to make a film feel like his and no one else’s. And isn’t the world more interesting, more delicious, more exquisite for it?

Roots of a Genre – and Questioning Genre

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Happy Friday the 13th! (At least, that’s the date as I sit down to start writing – we’ll see what day I actually post – ok, now it’s Sunday) Whether or not one is a fan of that particular series, this always seems like a little horror holiday, worthy of some manner of observation.  Furthermore, these days summer is coming on, everything is in bloom, and there is this atmosphere redolent of the end of school, of vacation, of coming freedom. And so, I think it is appropriate to take a filmic holiday to a beautiful wooded hideaway, next to a serene body of water, where thirteen people happen to get skewered, hanged, speared, decapitated, burned, and just generally knocked off in all manner of gruesome ways. But today we’re not actually going to Crystal Lake (I’ve already covered my favorite of the F13 movies, part II); let’s take a little trip to Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood. Warning – there are many twists that could be spoiled, so enter with care.

I imagine that this will also be a jumping off point for a few other things I’ve been thinking about, so please bear with me.

A Bay of Blood (1971)

Bava’s film was also released as Carnage, Ecology of Crime, Chain Reaction, Blood Bath, The New House on the Left, and the most excellently titled Twitch of the Death Nerve. Quite shocking at its time, I think its violence holds up pretty well today and can still elicit some real gasps from a viewer. Solidly within the giallo tradition, it also went on to deeply influence what would become the American slasher, most notably the first two Friday the 13th movies (which draw on its location and atmosphere, and even directly recreate a couple of its kills), and subsequently, their imitators. There had certainly been juxtapositions of the beauty of nature with human violence before, and I can’t say for sure that it’s the first “body count film,” but Bava does it so well here as to effectively codify many of what would go on to become the slasher tropes, just as Carpenter would further do seven years later with Halloween.

But it is a bit of an odd duck. At only 84 minutes, it is a tight little thriller that races along at a clip, but it’s also sometimes languid and pastoral. It is quite bare bones, more interested in setting up murder set pieces than fleshing out any of its characters, but it is also surprisingly complex, requiring the viewer to really pay close attention (there are at least six different killers, each working separately and at cross purposes). It relishes in mutilation and gore, but it is also beautifully filmed and artfully composed. The acting is stilted, the writing is strange, the dubbing is terrible (typical for Italian films of the era), but it is also captivating and exciting, and it still somehow comes off as a kind of masterpiece, superior to many of the copycats that would follow in its bloody wake.

The story, while riddled with double crosses, reversals, and shocking revelations, focuses on a simple MacGuffin: the property around a bay which could be developed at a profit, or preserved in its natural beauty (an interesting note on the nature – the filming location had only a couple of trees and they needed a forest, so Bava reportedly just bought some branches at a garden store and had them held in front of and behind the actors – and it’s totally effective – you’d never know it from what’s on screen). The film starts with the old woman, the owner of the land in question, being killed and her suicide faked, and then it’s off to the races with everybody and their surprise step brother killing each other to acquire the inheritance.  In fact, as soon as this matriarch is dead, the film delivers its first big twist. You might expect that, having seen the black gloved hands leave the fake note, that killer would slink back into the shadows so we might wonder at his or her identity for the rest of the film. You’d be wrong. We pan up, see his face, and then immediately see him stabbed in the back.  All apparent rules are out the window – anything can happen – anyone can die, and almost all of them (13 out of the 15 people that appear on screen) do.

While story is decentered, the rest of the filmmaking is creative, propulsive, and endlessly stylish, circling a visual theme of pristine nature balanced against avaricious humanity, corrupt and murderous. People don’t come off well here at all. If they aren’t egoistic killers, they are generally ineffectual, shrill, greedy specimens who will go wholly unmourned, the only exception being some young people who have the misfortune of happening upon the property and getting killed on the off chance that they might stumble onto some kind of evidence (but even there, just the two girls seem kinda decent – the guys, not so much). This pessimistic view of humanity is nicely encapsulated in a dialogue between Paolo, who collects and studies insects and Simon, who criticizes his hobby:

Simon: I don’t kill as a hobby like you do.

Paolo: Good lord, Simon. You make me feel like a murderer.

Simon: I’m not saying that, Mr. Fossati, but if you kill for killing’s sake, you become a monster.

Paolo: But, man isn’t an insect, my dear Simon. We have centuries of civilization behind us, you know.

Simon: No, I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

In all fairness though, I’m pretty sure that Paolo kills no human beings in the film and Simon is responsible for at least 5 deaths (maybe 6), so his moral superiority comes with a grain of salt. Regardless, neither of them are particularly nice guys. It is to Bava’s credit that the film can hold attention so well in spite of being peopled almost exclusively with unpleasant characters.

Perhaps this is the origin of horror films filling their dramatis personae with irritating, disposable youngsters who only exist to satisfyingly die (a trait I’m rarely a fan of – I rather appreciate when they avoid this very thing, but it works here). An effect of this is that the murders don’t horrify so much as thrill – they startle, they impress with their ingenuity, they attain a visceral quality, but it’s all in good fun and there is a streak of black humor running through the whole affair up to, and particularly including, the very last moment before the credits roll.

This is but one of the many links between this influential giallo and what would later become the slasher. We also have the degree to which it structures itself specifically around the kills, then showcasing the gore to the best of the effects artist’s abilities (sometimes with more success than others). Bava even has a group of young people with absolutely no connection to the plot show up just so that someone will go skinny dipping and the body count will be that much higher (and it’s their deaths that get directly borrowed in the first two Friday movies, notably the couple speared together while in flagrante). We even have the scene in the final act when a girl walks into a room only to find all of the people who had been murdered earlier horrifically arranged. This is all extremely familiar but is housed within the work of a giallo director working in high cinematic style.

For a fan of the genre, it’s really worth giving it a view. So much is clearly in its debt.

A Crisis of Genre

This preoccupation with genre (horror – thriller – giallo – slasher) brings me to a topic that’s been on my mind of late. I haven’t personally had a chance yet to see the new Dr. Strange movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but I would like to. I enjoyed the first one and hey, Sam Raimi is directing (of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Darkman, The Gift, and the first three Spider-Man movies, among many others). In the lead up to its release, it was promoted in some circles as being Marvel’s first foray into horror. Tellingly, in other circles, it was not. And now that it’s out, it is being met with a) mixed reviews (too bad, but not what I’m interested in here), and b) a small crisis of genre classification.

I’ve seen a fair amount of headlines questioning whether it is horror or not and whether it’s too scary. Not having actually seen it, I don’t exactly have an opinion of my own, but I think the debate is interesting in terms of who makes which case and what their stake is in the matter. I think Disney is trying to both have and eat cake here. Before release, this was going to be a horror movie – the novelty was a selling point; after release, and being criticized, of course this isn’t a horror movie – you can bring your kids, fun for the whole family! There are plenty in the horror sphere making the distinction of ‘containing horror elements, but not being classifiable as a horror movie.’ Possibly when I finally see it, I may fall in this camp, but in such things, I always hesitate for fear of falling into a kind of snooty gatekeeping. Personally, Silence of the Lambs, a movie I really like and respect, doesn’t really feel like horror to me (as I wrote about here), but who am I to tell someone who considers it their favorite horror movie that they’re doing it wrong?

Most tellingly for me, a kid that I teach (English as a foreign language) saw it a few days ago and was fuming to me about it afterwards, during our class. He did not appreciate the horror of it. He had gone to a comic book movie and was angry at having been scared. He didn’t want to watch a horror flick and was offended at the intrusion of a genre he doesn’t like into “a cartoon for kids.” I’m not going to venture into whether it’s too scary or not (again – haven’t seen it) and I remember plenty of pretty horrific stuff from PG movies that I loved when I was little and really not into horror (the face melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first ghost in the library in Ghostbusters, all of Gremlins, a movie that I LOVED). But it seems to me that if he and other young viewers receive it as horror, that’s what it is. Dismissing their experience seems inexcusably presumptuous. In a similar vein, a podcast I follow, Horror Queers, just did an episode on Who Framed Roger Rabbit – when I first saw that, I was puzzled, but both hosts remembered being disturbed by it when they were little in a way that felt just like a horror film – both by the rather intense and gruesome content of its climax (when the judge is slowly crushed by a steam roller, screaming till the end) and its simple, inherently uncanny mix of animation and live action.

Horror is a tricky thing to pin down. Is it about a set of featured tropes? Which tropes? How many? The net will inevitably be cast too wide or too narrow. Is it just about being horrified? That doesn’t work – a holocaust drama probably shouldn’t be thus classified. To be a comedy, it’s easy; a movie just has to make you laugh. With horror, we might not be able to do better than Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity (“I know it when I see it”).

To a large extent, genre is just a marketing tool allowing producers to target sales of a product to the consumers who will most want to buy it. For academics, it can be an important tool for focusing a subject of inquiry, contextualizing it in terms of the history and features of similar works. For the rest of us, why is it at all important how we classify Doctor Strange or Silence of the Lambs or anything else? Are we just hungry for categorization? Is it an aspect of how we form our identity? I am the kind of person who likes these things and doesn’t like those things. I am different than the person who likes those and doesn’t like these. If I don’t know what kind of thing this is, if it can’t be clearly labeled, how can I use it to understand and thus, enact the kind of thing that I am?

This may be overreaching – I doubt that loads of people are thrust into existential crisis because they don’t know if Marvel just released a horror movie or not, but the fact that there is any controversy at all over something so seemingly trivial seems to reveal an investment in the matter that may speak to deeper significance.

But people are somehow still arguing about which two colors that dress was – so who knows?