HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Random Acts of Violence (2020)

Our sponsors this time around is one of the true Power Couples of Comics, a writer and an artist who have united on several landmark characters in pop culture (there’s a certain version of Harley Quinn that I bet some of you crush on that’s all their work) and now work hard on some projects of their own over at Paper Films....namely Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner!  Please go over to their website and check out their upcoming projects and maybe pick up some merch!

Jimmy and Amanda have also had a hand in some film and TV projects, like today’s flick directed by Jay Baruchel, Random Acts of Violence!

Todd (Jesse Williams) is a comic creator well known for a very violent, graphic comic called Slasherman.  As he struggles to find the perfect ending for his series, he embarks on a road trip with his wife Kathy (Jordana Brewster), business partner Ezra (Baruchel) and assistant Aurora (Niamh Wilson) down to a comics convention in New York.  Kathy is presently researching a book on the I-95 Slayer, a serial killer who inspired Todd to create Slasherman...and a random encounter has apparently triggered a man (Simon Northwood) to emulate some of the more gruesome murders in the comic.

And that’s the premise, and there’s a bunch more in this film’s eighty minute run time.  Baruchel is interested in something a little deeper--something that actually makes what people would assume is an obvious reveal part of this film’s theme.  At its core, if we take away the gruesome set pieces (and trust me, some of this stuff is pretty gross, especially the third act), this is about the old school argument about whether art inspires violence or the other way around...and Baruchel’s answer is ‘yes’ to both.  This is why what people will assume is a twist that’s easy to see isn’t a twist at all; this film is an oroborous, telling us that there is no pat, easy answer to this question, that it’s not a cause-and-effect but a cycle, and trying to stop one will not stop the other.

I liked how Todd is portrayed by Jesse Williams and the script as being uncomfortable and conflicted with his creation.  In fact, I don’t think there is one person in our central quartet who is made out to be enthusiastic about violence; quite the contrary, they are justifiably horrified when real bodies show up...although for me, one of the most uncomfortable moments comes at a comic book signing, where a fan presents a model based on the comic--complete with victims--and starts raving about the comic being his life (I wonder if Baruchel consciously cast a redheaded actor in this role; we know from a previous scene that this isn’t the killer, but our director sort of knows in a conventional slasher he would be an obvious red herring); it’s the enthusiasm this fan displays that is truly sickening and not the decapitated heads or the Hannibal-style sculpture of dead bodies on the side of the road.

There are a number of good performances--I’ve always thought Brewster was a much better actor than the roles she ended up in gave her, and I was really taken with the slightly manic but grounded performance by Wilson.  I appreciate that the script gives us moments with everyone so that they’re not just volunteers for the body count--even a family about to be slaughtered is given a little silent tableau of harmony that says something about these future victims.  You’ll notice that one thing Baruchel does avoid is turning every character into a jerk...we feel the carnage because we don’t hate them, even if we don’t love them.  We know just enough to know they don’t deserve the carnage about to rain down on them.

My one fear about this film is that people will take it for what’s on its surface and not look at what lies beneath its celluloid skin.  It’s got something else on its mind and, as such, there’s more an emphasis on our main protagonist and what he and his friends are going through rather than the kills.  I think it works in a weirdly meta-way, and I would recommend it.

Well, as mentioned in earlier essays, Halloween Horrorfest Is Going Into Overtime for at least two more days, and our sponsor for tomorrow is our pal Mike Blanchard of Geekcast Radio, who has chosen for what would have been the finale, the Curtis Hanson cautionary tale for expecting rich jerks, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.  Then stay tuned to find out what horror film would be chosen by...my mother!

You can make things last beyond this Monday, folks! Just choose one of four options:
 
1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Another Kind (2013)

Our sponsor today...well, yesterday, since I’m a day behind...is one of my Domicile of Dread Patreons, a woman who I bonded with over Ranking Roger and I still suspect might be a blood sister who was separated from me through time and space by nefarious means, Angie Bulkeley!  Angie represents Horizons For Homeless Children, a Massachusetts-based organization that provides support, education and services to homeless kids and their families!

Angie chose a film from 2013 I had not heard of prior to her recommending it, Another Kind.

Patrick (Patrick Woodall) is a self-important hipster doofus who bullies his hipster doofus girlfriend Jamie (Jamie Law) and hipster doofus friend Nate (Nate Miller) and his girlfriend Laura (Laura Ramedei) into embarking on a weekend-long snowshoe hike around the Catskills.  Patrick doesn’t have to worry about the fact he hadn’t planned things out or didn’t bring a map; he’s got the best equipment.  But then Jamie takes off to a hotel--back in New York City, apparently--and then they get lost, and then strange lights start appearing in the sky, then Patrick ends up in a coma with a weird wound under his hipster doofus sherpa cap, and...well, let’s just say I was surprised that the closing credits didn’t reveal that the film’s real title was Another Cloverfield.

You know, I could just run you off a list of things this film did that you shouldn’t be allowed to do anymore in low budget ‘indie’ horror films.  You shouldn’t start with a big shock sequence, then followed with a title telling us we’re going back ‘___ hours earlier’. You shouldn’t give your characters the same first name as the actors to ‘increase veracity.’ You shouldn’t make all your characters annoying--except maybe one, who you know the director is going to assume we will assume will be the final girl when she’s not.  You shouldn’t have someone taking our cast into the woods not bother with something as basic as maps, and you shouldn’t have the rest of the cast go any further with him...especially since they outnumber that lead doofus three to one.  You shouldn’t have your cast’s cell phone work except, you know, when it’s convenient for it not to.  You shouldn’t drop little crumbs of weirdness without thinking how to draw those crumbs into a semi-logical whole.  You shouldn’t do found footage style shots even though the film is a conventional narrative.  Most importantly, you shouldn’t let your last survivor be one of those hipster doofuses (doofi?) that you hated and never explain what happened to the one character you didn’t hate.

Just like The Raven earlier, this film is a microcosm of what people thought would go over with the public at the time, only this time it’s low budget hipster horror instead of big budget blockbuster horror...and this one is better.  I mean, yes it annoyed the crap out of me to the point where I checked out very early, but at least it seemed sincere.  This felt like a story that director Jonathan Biltstein wanted to tell, not a story that he thought people would eat up...it’s just that I suspect he was influenced by the state of low budget filmmaking at the time.  You can see those echoes of found footage--we all seem to forget how hard it was to kill that cinematic fad back then--prompting Biltstein to make so many of the mistakes he makes.  As such, it emphasizes how little there is brought to the table in this story that’s not new; I did not make that Cloverfield joke lightly, folks.

Still, I think the film could have been salvaged if the actors rose above the material, but they can’t give the nuance needed to indicate to me they weren’t just jerks.  Laura Ramadei almost manages to do this, and Nate Miller tries in the final act, but they can’t get their characters out from under the shadow their first few scenes cast over them.  Jamie Law’s character is underwritten to the extreme.  I know this is not Biltstein’s fault, but the fact that Patrick Woodall looks uncomfortably like notorious alt-rock asshole David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven made it hard to even consider seeing things from his super-privleged point of view.

But at least the film isn’t bloated at an hour and sixteen minutes, and I got a thrill from recognizing that the footage in the first act was definitely shot on the New York State Thruway (I used to go to that rest stop when my family would drive up to Albany to see my grandmother!).  I can’t recommend this, but it’s far from the worst offender on this year’s Halloween Horrorfest Menu.

Our sponsor tomorrow/today is a man I’ve known for about thirty years and his wife, who together are one of the Power Couples of Comics, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner!  Jimmy and Amanda have chosen a film from this year directed by Jay Baruschel, Random Acts of Violence!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest.  Right now it looks like it’ll wrap up November 2nd....but I’m open to going longer if you want.  Just choose one of four options:
 
1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

(Psst...and don’t forget tomorrow to check out the Two True Freaks Network tomorrow to check out a special Halloween Treat from the Ocadecagonagon Theater Group, Public Domain Comics Theater: Monster of The Bayous!)

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Stuff (1985)

In an unprecedented move in the history of the Halloween Horrorfest, my beloved Patreon Sean Foster decided to sponsor a second slot...and good thing, considering the utter garbage I endured yesterday, because Sean chose a film from one of my heroes and featuring one of his collaborations with New York-based actor turned right wing wackadoo, Michael Moriarty.  So let’s dive into Larry Cohen’s 1985 flick The Stuff!

David ‘Mo’ Rutherford (Moriarty with a deliciously over-the-top southern accent) has been hired by a consortium of ice cream manufacturers to discover what the hell is going on with the all-natural dessert sensation called The Stuff.  Now, we saw in the opening teaser that this white, gloopy gelatin bubbled up from the ground in a mine down in Georgia and is instantly addictive...but what we learn alongside Mo, a young boy whose family has become ‘Stuffies’ (Scott Bloom) and the ad executive who put together The Stuff marketing campaign (Andrea Marcovicci), this ‘benign bacteria’ is anything but benign; it’s actually a parasitic organism that first takes over its host’s mind, then consumes it from the inside out.  

Even though Larry Cohen was one of the writers for what would eventually become Abel Ferrera’s Body Snatchers, this is his version of the Don Seigel classic. Just as Seigel used his monster to represent Communism and the Philip Kaufmann remake covered new age thought, Cohen’s chosen as his bugaboo...well, we could say ‘consumerism,’ but let’s be honest, we’re talking Capitalism itself!  Larry’s taking both barrels of his satiric mind on the corporate greed and dishonesty that dominated the Reagan era.  Throughout the film, Mo encounters different types who could have asked the questions he’s asking now but didn’t bother; all that they cared about was that people would buy it in droves.  The executive who manufactures The Stuff (Patrick O’Neal) even admits that the people who brought this substance to his attention were already too far gone, and only thought of the profits!  This is a story not about a killer yogurt, but about how willing we are to just take anything at faith about something we want if we’re told we want it enough.

I think that’s why Cohen pointedly does not reveal what the Stuff is or what it wants...or why it looks like a certain, ummm, biological substance common to humans, or why when we see its ‘source,’ it seems to coagulate into certain phallic symbols. It’s almost as if our entropic element is the ultimate avatar of the ‘subliminal advertising’ panic that gripped the country in the late 70‘s; it wants us to think of it as the ultimate sex symbol.  The way that the commercials seen throughout the film’s ninety three minute running time are all sort of sexually charged (well, except for the one with Abe Vigoda and Clare Peller that will not be comprehensible to anybody who didn’t live through the ‘Where’s The Beef’ fad) are just being blatant about what we should already know--Capitalism is more than willing to sell you something dangerous to you by telling you using it will make you hotter, sexier and more popular.

A word about the commercials.  You might think they seem a little...forced into the film, and there’s a good reason for that: Cohen never intended them to appear in the film.  The four or five clips were intended to be broadcast on TV prior to the film’s release without any word that it was connected to a movie, which would be revealed as the release date grew closer.  New World Pictures, who financed the production didn’t felt the public would be ‘too confused’ by this advertising campaign and nixed it, so Cohen put them in the film when he was ordered to re-edit it to make it less ‘philosphical and dense.’

This is the second time Cohen worked with Moriarty (Q The Winged Serpent being their first collaboration), and while I do think it’s not their best collaboration, I think Mo Rutherford is Moriarty’s best portrayal of the four he made in Cohen's films.  There’s a line of dialogue where Mo assures one of the corporate types who is hiring him that ‘no one can be as stupid as I seem,’ and that’s the key to this performance.  In this film, Rutherford is consciously counting on those around him underestimating him to get the work done, and his personality on getting him what he wants.  The fact that he basically convinces a psychotic militia leader (Paul Sorvino having a ball and a half) to help him, even gets him to allow a former African-American cookie magnate (Garrett Morris at his most Garrett Morris-iness) to testify on his right wing radio station in spite of him being not white is indicative of the charm.  After seeing it numerous times, I’m still not sure if Mo’s broad accent is real or a calculated affection to get people to lower their guard.  It’s a bravura performance, which makes it all the sadder that he has become such a gross person in real life.

The special effects are of their time, sometimes being truly spectacular in their grotesqueness (the post-Stuff broken apart bodies are truly icky), sometimes being regretfully dated (some clumsy green screen effects), but mostly being...okay, I guess.  But then, the special effects are secondary to what Cohen has in mind; after all, if one of the people up the line questioned what the Stuff actually was, this film would never have happened.

For New Yorkers like me, there are a couple of surprising Easter Eggs, including an uncredited cameo by monologist Eric Bogosian (who goes on to star in my favorite Cohen film, Special Effects).  It almost upset me that so little of the film takes place in New York City, as Cohen was a New Yorker at heart.

I love this film like I love almost all of Larry Cohen’s productions, especially the ones set in our shared home town.  It may not be among his absolute best, but that great performance from Moriarty and the satiric grace notes make it more than viewable.  I recommend it!

Tomorrow, the last of my beloved Domicile of Dread Patreons to step into the spotlight, Angie Bulkeley, has chosen chosen for me the 2013 survival horror story Another Kind.  I know nothing about this film, so I am intrigued!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, and if you want it to go longer into November, there are other options besides becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon:
 
1) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

2) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

3) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Raven (2012)

I think we have found the one that broke me this year.  This is awful.

And to think it took almost the entire Horrorfest for me to want to tap out.

I’m serious.  I started watching this yesterday evening and got to approximately the 47 minute mark (right after John Cusask’s Edgar Allan Poe’s fiancee was teased with being buried alive by his serial killer nemesis...don’t worry, we’ll get to it), and I just couldn’t be bothered anymore; I turned off the film and devoted my energies to other, more significant actions...like lying in bed with my cat, Tabitha Da Movie Cat.

This is purportedly the story of Poe’s last couple of days, which ‘remain a mystery.’  Poe has just proposed to his rich-familied-girlfriend (Alice Eve) when he’s sent for by Inspector Fields (Luke Evans).  It seems that Poe’s fiction has inspired a serial killer, and said serial killer is fashioning his murder after mayhem in Poe’s stories, and Fields wants him to consult so they can catch the culprit.  Of course, once Poe’s girlfriend is kidnapped by the killer, the maniac forces the writer into a game--Poe has to decipher clues left for him on future bodies and print his efforts to unravel this mystery or his girlfriend dies.

This film may be set in the 19th century, but it is so 2012.  That drab-ass color palette, the ridiculously super-genius serial killer with unlimited resources and a really obvious red herring to hide behind, a minor-but-significant character whose only purpose is to be ‘shockingly’ killed at the end of the second act, a female lead who’s decorative but plucky enough to try and defy the killer, the weird lingual anachronisms (the killer is referred to as a serial killer in the headlines, even though the phrase wasn’t coined until the 1970‘s), the CGI blood and bullets whizzing towards the camera, even that last sequence that was obviously meant to run after the initial closing credits sequence featuring an abstract CGI raven and a pop song by UNKLE--it’s all of the time of its production.  Even though it’s meant to be Baltimore, the setting is generic ‘old-timey,’ with Serbia and Hungary subbing for Maryland.  I was never less than annoyed by this film, and frequently was actively angry at it.

I suppose I should mention John Cusack’s ‘star turn’ as Poe, which is...not good.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Cusack, particularly because he is able to appeal to both male and female audiences and is, at least according to Danny Trejo, a legitmate bad-ass who doesn’t feel the need to present as a bad ass.  But it might not be that he comes off as miscast as the script by Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare miscasts Poe as an action hero.  By the time this legitimate literary figure is riding a horse and engaging in a gun battle with the dark-garbed murderer, I was thoroughly checked out.  It’s a ludicrous portrayal, and it’s not over the top enough that I could laugh at it.

Oh, and the villain?  The villain sucks, a Jigsaw-manque who seems to have enough resources to build a freaking pendulum but is supposed to be a humble typesetter.

The worst thing about this is that the whole ‘serial killer inspired by Poe stories’ has been done several times, and every time these attempts have stunk on ice.  I point you to the low, low budget flick The Descendant, where the serial killer is played by Jeremy ‘Party of Five’ London and the heroine was a young Katherine ‘I Have A Stupid Face’ Heigl.  Yes, it’s just as bad, but it doesn’t pretend to be ‘lit’ry’ by setting it in period and has the good sense to be only ninety minutes--not this film’s bloated hour and fifty minutes!  Or I could point you to The Following, the ‘cult’ series that featured James Purefoy (who is Joe R. Lansdale’s Hap to me) as the killer and Kevin Bacon, wanting some of the television cash his wife got from The Closer, as the sad and pathetic hero....and that was created by Kevin Williamson, who mocked so much of the serial killer tropes he was using in that series in Scream.  Either one may be awful, but at least they’re honest about what they are....this, this is just pretentious emo doofus blockbuster shit.

I guess I’m particularly annoyed because this film was directed by James McTiegue, whose adaptation of V For Vendetta I loved.  I expected more from him, and got less...so, so, so much less.

Fuck this movie.  Just fuck it in whatever orafice would be the most painful for it.  It goes without saying that this is Not Recommended.

Our sponsor tomorrow is....well, Sean Foster bought me another Ko-Fi so I can watch a film from one of my true heroes, the great Larry Cohen.  I am so relieved that I will be watching Cohen’s second collaboration with Michael Moriarity, The Stuff...which, by the way, is the second film of this Horrorfest featuring Brooke Adams.

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, and not just because this fucking film screwed with me.  I’ll probably be doing this until November 2nd....and if you wish to make overtime longer, you have four options:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Vampyr (1932)

Our sponsor today is Rich Chamberlain, maintainer of KC Cinephile, although if you’re a regular listener to Dread Media, you’ll know him as Rich The Monster Movie Kid!  Go to his site to see his own October-long celebration of horror, focusing this year on horror radio programs (be sure to check out his entry for October 25th, which presents one of the goofiest horror programs ever made, ‘The Spawn Of The Subhuman’!).

Rich has chosen Susan G. Komen, conducting research into breast cancer and providing support and help for survivors.  If you donate to SGK within the next four days, your donation will be tripled by Komen's sponsors and partner--plus you get to extend my Overtime by one more day and choose a film I will be forced to watch (see below)...that's a pretty neat deal!

Rich chose a classic that I don’t think has been seen very much, the strange, surreal Danish film by Carl T. Dreyer, Vampyr!

Allan Gray (Julian West, who looks uncannily like a pre-War Oscar Issacs) is staying at Courtempierre during his wanderings while he studies the occult.  He is having some strange dreams which, among other things, includes a dignified old man (Maurice Schutz) entrusting him with a package to be opened upon the man’s death.  The man turns out to be the Lord of a nearby estate, where Allan arrives just as he is mysteriously murdered.  The package turns out to be a book on vampirism, and Allan begins to piece together the cause for one of his daughters’ mysterious illness as the work of a vampire and her pawns.

Now, I say Allan has a dream, but the fact is Dreyer seems to willfully want to obscure whether all or part of this film is a dream--and that might be the film’s strength.  The opening sequence features some strange images like shadows moving independent of the people that are casting them, but also features some scenes that Allan should not be privy to, even though he is undisputably our POV character.  And once we get into the meat of the story, Dreyer still indulges in strange images and sequences, especially one where we see Gray witness his own funeral--from the casket!  I almost want to say the entire film is a dream, but I just can’t tell.

Now I’ll let you know upfront that the reconstruction that Critereon cobbled together from pieces of other prints is...iffy.  There are scenes that are sharp and clear, and scenes that are muddy and blurry.  And those of you who complain about slow paced films you have to read, you might want to avoid this, as there is a large section of the film composed of people reading a book of vampirism.  But there is some wonderfully weird stuff hidden within Dreyer’s hour and a quarter.  Hell, I’m willing to bet this is the only film where you will see someone buried alive in flour.

While this is a foreign language film (I think it was shot in German), the dialogue is so minimal that you can follow the story by itself...well, save for those ‘let’s read all the background about vampires, maybe this particular vampire and how to kill her’ scenes.  It could almost be considered a silent film, and a silent film that is easy to follow.

I do like how the vampire in this film is just an old woman, totally removing the sexuality aspect.  All too often, people forget vampires are parasites because they’re hella hot.  I like my vampires savage, thank you very much.

This is certainly recommended for its bizarre imagry and storytelling.  It’s one of those landmark films that is so rarely seen.  It is certainly not for everyone, but those open to a more languid tale might be satisfied.

Tomorrow is the last day we’re without a sponsor, and The Randomizer, remembering you all like it when I suffer, chose for me 2012‘s The Raven, where John Cusack plays Edgar Allen Poe who teams up with a detective to solve murders based on his own stories--and it’s almost two. hours. long.  Expect me to bring up a nothing little film called The Descendant (starring Katherine ‘I Have A Stupid Face’ Heigl) when discussing this one.

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, as my mother made a request that I’ll be doing on November 1st....and if you wish to make overtime longer, you have four options:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Creeping Flesh (1973)

It’s the penultimate no-sponsor day, so the Randomizer decided to feed my enjoyment of films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing together.  Last year I was blessed with the viewing of 1972‘s Horror Express, and this year we travel forward one year for The Creeping Flesh....and, well....sigh....

Dr. Emmanuel Hildren (Cushing) is a Victorian-era scientist who has seen better days--his daughter Penelope (Lorna Heilburn) has had to reduce staff and cut corners to keep his home solvent--but has hope he will win the Richter Prize because of the gigantic skeleton he has found in New Guinea.  Judging from the strata in which it was found, this skeleton pre-dates neanderthal man...and yet apparently had a larger brain capacity than its descendant.  An accident involving water and some New Guinean folk tales leads him to believe that the creature this skeleton derived from is the source of all evil...and he can use the flesh that has grown on a portion of the skeleton to create an anti-evil vaccine.  Unfortunately, he acts rather impulsively when Penelope discovers the truth about her father, which leads to Emmanuel and his rival/half brother James (Lee) to cross swords over the ethics of science and the source of madness.

Now, that’s the bare bones, and it’s one of these films which leads us up to what it believes is One Great Scare.  But between that set-up and that ‘One Great Scare’ (notice the irony parentheses) there’s a lot of wheel spinning and pointlessness.  You have to understand that the early 70‘s was a time where the Golden Age of British Horror panicked to avoid its obsolesence while the...Bronze Age?...of British Horror, a movement embodied by people like Pete Walker, Gordon Hessler and Norman Daniels were rapidly approaching to eat their lunch.  Some of these attempts to revitalize the Gothic, Only Lurid Aesthetic of the Golden Age resulted in some truly remarkable results, like The Blood on Satan’s Claw and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter....but sometimes it resulted in some mediocre to purely awful stuff, and this is in the later category.  There is a rather clumsy attempt to inject (no pun intended) some extra sex and violence but it does not phase the main story at all.

It’s fairly obvious early on that the emphasis of this story is the Hildren brothers and Emmanuel making this discovery, abusing it for altruistic reasons, and James trying to exploit that for his ends.  But there’s this subplot about an escaped mental patient--James runs an asylum, you see--who, of course, is a sex maniac and his crossing paths with the now inoculated Penelope, who is just a maniac, that...well, goes nowhere.  It’s as if writer Peter Spenceley realized he was running twenty minutes short and made up this guy, Lenny (Kenneth J. Warren, who reminded me of a thin Buster Bloodvessel from Bad Manners) on the spot...or maybe he created Lenny just so we could see how morally evil Penelope has become (but then, considering she goes on to strangle a maid with her manacles, it’s a moot point).  Either way, it’s a waste of time.  

For that matter, most of the Penelope subplot is pointless.  Penelope’s mother Margarite (who I thought was also played by Heilburn, but apparently was played by Jenny Runacre) went insane--which really meant she liked to sleep with people who weren’t Emmanuel--so Emmanuel had her committed.  He gives her the anti-evil vaccine to Penelope because he fears she’s become ‘insane’ as well, which prompts Penelope to let down her hair, put on her mother’s red dress and act all maniacal.  I kept expecting this development to play into the larger plot, but it doesn’t really, save for a throwaway line of James blackmailing Emmanuel.  It’s just more nothingness in a film that needed to be leaner and meaner, even at ninety-one minutes.

I should also mention that this, like The Oblong Box, is another film from this time frame that teases we’re going to see two of The Titanic Three of the 70‘s acting off each other, yet Lee and Cushing only have two fairly brief scenes together, one at the beginning and one at the climax of act two.  I was very disappointed that these two amazing actors who had amazing chemistry through collaborating personally and professionally, didn’t get more screen time as a duo.

There is a ‘One Great Scare’ that the film teases throughout its first two acts, and it’s...okay, I guess...but it’s underwhelming because director Freddie Francis stretches. it. out.  We are fairly certain what’s going to happen once we hear the first clap of thunder, but what we’ve been promised doesn’t manifest until fifteen minutes later.  Instead we watch Lee escaping with the skeleton in a carriage, then Cushing following on horseback, then the carriage getting into an accident, then Lee running to his asylum for help, and on and on and on.  It is a definite ‘Get To The Fucking Monkey’ moment and I was profoundly annoyed by it.  I was equally annoyed by the twist in the tail that was telegraphed in the first scene.

The Creeping Flesh has a really intriguing idea at its core, but like other products from this time, it falls flat with an inflated balloon of an unnecessary subplot.  I can not recommend it.

Our sponsor for tomorrow--well, today, as this is being posted late--is Rich Chamblerlin from KC Cinephile, who also contributes to Dread Media under the name Rich The Monster Movie Kid!  Rich has chosen the surrealistic Carl Dreyer classic Vampyr!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, as my mother made a request that I’ll be doing on November 1st....and if you wish to make overtime longer, you have four options:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#687

Get ready to live through someone else’s eyes, as Des and Duane check out Brandon Cronenberg’s latest epic, Possessor.  Then Des comes back with a Dread Media Top Five of Films that influenced it!

The trailer is below, as is an interview with Brandon Cronenberg, Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott about the film, a speech on brain implants and mind reading, a documentary on corporate espionage, the Amazing Randi (RIP) discussing the debunking of the ‘paranormal’ and music from Possessor and Daybreak!

Listen to Dread Media #687 here

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Babysitter (2017)

Our sponsor today is an extremely generous old friend who has had an impact on helping a number of podcasters thrive--he designed the website for Better In The Dark, the movie podcast that ran for seven years and still apparently has fans and influence (it weirds me out when I hear some podcasters refer to it as a ‘first gen’ film podcast, and me as a ‘first gen’ podcast host), he got me a blu-ray player out of the blue, and presently he is the author of The New Olympians, a series of superhero prose ebooks.  Go check them out!

Kelly represents The Wounded Warriors Family Support.

Kelly has chosen for me a film that I’ve seen before, a film that cemented my super-crush on one Samara Weaving, the surprising McG-directed comedic thriller The Babysitter!

Cole (Judah Lewis) is, well, a nerd who is afraid of everything, probably due to having some serious helicopter parents (the father of which is played by The State’s Ken Marino!).  He is picked on by almost everyone, even the father of the neighbor girl he has a crush on.  He does have one exceptionally cool friend, though--Bee (Weaving), who is still babysitting him even though he’s fourteen.  Bee is super-hot, she seems to be into a lot of the same geeky things Cole is into, and she has his back.  When the neighbor girl (Emily Alan Lynd) dares Cole to investigate whether Bee is having boys over for sexy times, Cole does so...and finds out that his babysitter is the head of a satanic cult, and now he has to fight for his life.

Now, I will get to the absolute goddesshood of Ms. Weaving eventually.  But this rewatch--the first time I watched it since I saw it when it came out on Netflix--what struck me was how so many of the things that used to piss me off about McG in his earlier films were still there, but he was picking and choosing his places to use them much, much more wisely.  He’s not letting the tricks that he used to weigh his films down with (I’m looking at you, f’in Charlie’s Angels) interfere with telling a story anymore, and that makes for a better viewing experience.  The fact that it takes almost twenty minutes before we see that ‘fast ramp’ stuff he reveled in in the ‘00s allowed me to focus on Cole and Bee and their relationship, allowed me to recognize it as real, so that when the rug is pulled out on us shortly after, there is some surprise.

And that, besides her hotness, is what makes Samara Weaving so much the star of this film--she is able to skip back and forth across that line between good and evil effortlessly without making me question her character.  I never felt anything other than affection from Bee for Cole; the lengths she seems to go to fool him before ordering her cult-o-stereotypes to kill him seem like a legit attempt to keep him alive.  And the disappointment when Cole refuses to participate in one of their rituals in the third act is palatable.  

Not that there aren’t other stand-outs in this cast.  I would be a very, very poor critic if I did not praise Rob Ammell for his performance as the psychotic quarterback, almost perpetually shirtless Max.  The scene where Max stops literally choking Cole to death to pep talk him into a confrontation with his bully could have come off as ludicrous, but Ammell pulls it off.  I get the sense that Max kind of respects Cole after a certain act, and while he does want him to die, he doesn’t want him to die like a bitch.  While I also enjoyed some of the other cultists, Max is the stand out.

I do worry that some of the choices McG makes are so of the time--the titles during the story, the really obvious music cues, the knowingly sarcastic tone, the really awkward cutaway scene that not only comes out of nowhere, but serves to disrupt the until-then seamless focus on Cole’s story--that this film will age pretty poorly pretty quickly.  And that’s a shame, because there is so much to like here.  I don’t think there’s anyone in the cast that isn’t giving it their all, and I think the story arc for Cole is strong.  It is a genuinely good film, funny and gory although not particularly scary, and I do recommend it.

There’s no sponsor tomorrow, so the Randomizer has gifted me with another film teaming those two Titans of The Golden Age of British Horror, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, The Creeping Flesh!

There are No More Sponsorship Slots Left in the Halloween Horrorfest this year...but you can force me into overtime, continuing my Gauntlet of Ghoulishness into November!  You have four options if you wish to do so:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko'Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Man Who Laughs (1928)

No sponsor today (well, yesterday, as I didn’t get to view this until late last evening...but what’s a Halloween Horrorfest without a hiccup?), so the Randomizer decided to pull a fast one on me by giving me a film that’s not a horror film--but which has had some strong impact on pop culture, and which is frequently lumped into the horror genre due to its make-up effects, and ...well...fuck it, it’s a great movie and I want to write about it and said impact.  Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to discuss The Man Who Laughs.

In the 16th century, the son of a Duke is kidnapped by King James II, sold to gypsies, mutilated so that he sports a grotesque, perpetual grin and abandoned.  The boy, Gynplaine, finds a blind baby girl and both are taken in by the self-styled philosopher Ursus (Cesaere Gravina).  Both grow into adulthood, and this makeshift family becomes a profitable theatrical troupe--especially Gynplaine (now played masterfully by Conrad Veidt), who has become a famous clown.  But he is recognized and ends up a pawn in the former Jester Barkilphedro’s (Brandon Hurst) scheme to gain more power in the court of Queen Anne--and get revenge on the Dutchess Josiana (Olga Vladimirovna Baklanova), who was given the Duke’s estate and is abusing him.

Now this is a romantic adventure based on a novel by Victor Hugo.  One of Hugo’s other novels, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, had been adapted into a film that, due primarily to Lon Chaney Sr.'s make-up, is frequently referred to as a horror film...and Universal wanted this to be Chaney’s follow-up, but Chaney insisted on making The Phantom of The Opera instead.  So this role went to Veidt, and God Bless Him for being able to convey so much with his eyes, given that Jack Pierce make-up job that involved special dentures and hooks pulling back his lips.

(For that matter, God Bless all the actors from the silent era who went under make-up, frequently endangering their faces, their senses and their bodies in the service of cinema.  Now let me get off my soapbox)

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Roger Ebert’s quote ‘No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is too short.’  This is an hour and fifty minutes, and yet it feels like it flies along.  Director Paul Leni seems to know just how long we need for each scene, and the movie smoothly moves forward even when taking a brief break for comic relief--and I love the fact that Stuart Holmes’ Lord Dirry-Moir may be comic relief, but Leni delights in showing us he can kick so much ass.  Leni was a German Expressionist director, and his influence shows in some sequences; I was particularly struck by the sequence where young Gynplaine wanders through a hellish landscape of hanged men to find the baby Dea in the arms of her dead mother, and the ramparts and rooftops that occupy the final chase scene.  It looks unlike what it is, which is probably why we misremember it as a horror film.

Oh, and that pop culture influence--both Pierce and set designer Charles D. Hall were instrumental in shaping the Universal Monster Cycle of the 30‘s and 40‘s, a collection of films that helped codify horror as a genre until well into the 60‘s.  And there’s the fact that someone--I’m betting Bill Finger, although I’m sure both Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson would claim otherwise--was inspired by Viedt’s look to create The Joker.  I also think Stan Lee must’ve liked this film, because the relationship between Gylplaine and Dea has its echoes in The Thing’s affair with Alicia Masters.

This is a fun film, and I highly recommend you give it a watch.  Get those dang prejudices about silent films out of your head and just let the awesomeness overwhelm you!

Tomorrow our sponsor is the great Kelly Logue, who is responsible for fashioning the website for the ‘first gen’ movie podcast I was co-host of, Better In The Dark as well as the New Olympians series of super-hero prose ebooks.  His choice will allow me to indulge in one of my super-crushes, the McG-directed, Samara Weaving-starring The Babysitter! Kelly will be representing The Wounded Warriors Family Support.

There are No More Sponsorship Slots Left in the Halloween Horrorfest this year...but you can force me into overtime, continuing my Gauntlet of Ghoulishness into November!  You have four options if you wish to do so:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Thing (1982)

Our sponsor today is an old friend who, among other things, is a talented hip-hop performer and the godfather of Hyphen Universe, which provides great podcasts, music and other stuff, Kelen Conley!  If you want to download some of Kelen’s music, which he records as B Hyphen, check out his Bandcamp Page!  Kelen is representing The American Foundation For Suicide Prevention!

Kelen chose for me a true classic, John Carpenter’s The Thing!

It’s hard writing about a film like this, which is just so good you don’t know what you can say other than the same old things.  Yes, you all know the acting is uniformly strong.  Yes, Bottin’s special effects are truly uniquely astounding--and remember, folks, all those effects were practical, and I am positive they’re more effective because of this (More below).  Yes, the paranoia just ramps up at an accelerated pace.  Yes, that Morricone soundtrack is great, and manages to sound Carpenter-esque while also sounding uniquely itself.  Hell, this is one of these films that has soaked so deeply into the pop culture consciousness that I don’t even have to give you a plot synopsis.

I suppose I should mention now that there will be spoilers for a film that’s almost four decades old are below...but then, if you haven’t seen this film by now you should, so maybe you should stop reading this essay and watch it now.  I’ll still be here after you’re done.

Watching the film this time around, I was struck by how Carpenter almost gleefully indulges in the Romero Principle--namely, the cast of The Thing fucks it up for themselves.  There are many moments where the thing acts which are prompted only because someone makes a decision to do something--there’s a strong chance the alien would have remained dormant in Norris (Charles Hallahan) if Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) hadn’t tried to give him CPR, and if Macready (Kurt Russell) hadn’t come up with that wire-in-the-blood test, it wouldn’t have come out at that time.  One of the many, many strengths of Bill Lancaster’s script is that we never get a clear moment that explains what the thing is, what it’s doing...so for all we know it’s behaving like an animal, purely on instinct.  I wonder how much its motivations as we understand it comes from the panicking fear of the crew members, and what would have happened if they just decided to all stay in the same room instead of rushing about looking to put out both literal and metaphorical fires.

I was also struck by how great Wilfred Brimley’s performance as Blair is.  If we assume that Blair was taken over fairly early in the film and was focusing primarily on building a vehicle to carry him away, he is masterful at keeping his secret from the others.  Hell, we honestly understand his vehicle-destroying meltdown at first until we realize Blair is telling everyone what they want us to hear.

And about that special effects--I think this is Bottin’s masterpiece, and the proof is how this stuff holds up almost forty years later...to the point where it makes the CGI-based effects from that 2011 ‘It’s-not-a-remake-it’s-a-prequel’ look dated.  Because Bottin’s creations are both physical props and have very little touchstone to reality, they’re shocking even today...whereas the 2011 effects are dated because they overthink what to show us.  It also helps that Bottin’s work is carefully placed throughout the film--when it’s there, it is In Your Face, but it’s couched by long stretches of us watching men as their last nerves shred.  That’s where the tension and anxiety of the film comes from, not ‘look what we can do’ special effects.

One more thing--I appreciate how this film, like the granddaddy of the Romero Effect, Night of The Living Dead, doesn’t Explain Everything.  We are always aware of the entropic element, but we’re not sat down and told everything about it.  The closest we get in that brief computer simulation Blair runs, and that could be seen as covering his tracks for the theft of parts disguised as a rampage with an axe.  If this was made today, we’d get a scene where Macready and Childs (Keith David) confront the creature, who proceeds to have a lengthy discussion explaining where it came from, what its purpose is and what it plans to do, which would have annoyed me and taken up time that Carpenter respects us enough not to.

The Thing is essential viewing.  There’s not much else I can say other than, obviously, I recommend it.

Tomorrow there’s no sponsor tomorrow, so the Randomizer went back--way back!--to a classic silent film that had a major, major impact on pop culture.  Join me as I dive into the F.W. Murnau classic The Man Who Laughs!

There is One Sponsorship Slot Left in the Halloween Horrorfest this year.  To claim it, do one of four things:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

As with last year, if I end up with more sponsors than there are days in October, I will go into Horrorfest Overtime, which means Halloween goes into November for me--and you!

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Food Of The Gods (1976)

Our sponsor today finally is Brooklyn bonviant and author Nicholas Kaufmann!  Last year Nick tossed me into a pit of intellectual dread by making me watch The Intruder Within on his day of the Halloween Horrorfest.  Nicholas represents The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

This year, he has decided to unleash upon me one of the last well-known films (this guy was active until 2015!) by writer/director Bert I. Gordon, Food of The Gods.

Now let me state this up front: Bert I. Gordon is neither a good director, nor a good special effects producer...even though he most likely will tell you otherwise.  I always got the nagging impression that if William Castle was punching up trying to be Alfred Hitchcock, Gordon was punching up trying to be William Castle.  I don’t think there is a Bert I’ Gordon film I can point to and say is legitimately good, and this is not going to be the exception.  It’s terrible...but it has some real bright spots in its ineptitude.

Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) is a football player who’s given the day off before the big game--it is obvious that Gordon understands nothing about football--so he takes a trip to an island for some hunting.  When his fellow player dies, the corpse swollen and red, Morgan and his buddy Brian (Jon Cypher, a few years before he has a second career thanks to becoming a regular on Hill Street Blues) look for help.  What they find is Mrs. Skinner (poor, poor Ida Lupino), who has found what looks like Larry Cohen's Stuff bubbling up from the ground and has been feeding it to her livestock, resulting in giant animals.  Mr. Skinner has made a deal with Nasty McNastymean (Ralph Meeker; I know the character has an actual name, but I call ‘em like I see ‘em) to market the new goop, which is why Nasty McNastymean has brought along Lorna (Pamela Franklin, who never takes off her overcoat throughout the whole film) to verify the stuff before he buys it.  But since rats have gotten into the stuff--helpfully labeled ‘F.O.T.G.’ by Mrs. Skinner--and have now become a man-eating horde, the question is whether any one will get out alive.

Man, this film is so stupid.  It is painfully bad to the point where I can’t pinpoint what is the place in production where it went off the rails.  Yes, the script is awful, rife with cliched and wooden dialogue...but that could be solved with good acting, except the acting is led by the thoroughly stiff Gortner and a series of ‘Yesterday’s Stars Today’ who can’t be bothered.  But that could be forgiven if the special effects were truly amazing or the pace was breathless, but that ain’t happening unless you like real rats crawling over obvious miniatures, superimposed transparent wasps or cute rat head puppets.

Really, really cute rathead puppets.

And that’s where I found my joy in viewing this waste of celluloid.  Every time those rat heads showed up to chew on our cast, I gleefully cried out ‘rat puppet!’ and grinned.  About halfway through, when Gordon starts presenting us with ominous shots of a white rat that Morgan identifies as the ringleader of the Giant Rat Horde, I laughed.  The gratuitous shots of the ferry going to and from the island?  I was so tempted to start a drinking game.  Yes, there was nothing redeeming in watching this film, and yet I still enjoyed watching it.  In a way I appreciated it the way I appreciate the films of Phillipe Mora, only not as enthusiastically.

This film marked the last theatrical appearance of Pamela Franklin, and the next-to-last appearance of Lupino, and that saddens me.  Ida Lupino was a verifiable bad-ass both on screen and off, a true pioneering woman, and I wish she had spent her waning years continuing to direct some great crime films rather than appearing as a religious farmer lady.  And Franklin was something of a scream queen who I appreciated in And Soon The Darkness and The Legend of Hell House, and here she is playing fawning romantic interest for the lumpen Gortner, asking him to make love to her while shooting giant rats.  I had a theory that I could not confirm that the reason she is constantly wearing a shapeless beige overcoat in the film was because she was pregnant with one of her two sons, but I could not find any corroboration.  These two women were good to great in their own ways, and I hated seeing them going out like that.

I will also state that while I can see why people claim rats were actually shot with pellet guns in the ‘realistic’ special effects, I don’t see it.  I do see offscreen special effects people using an air blower to launch what seems to be red gelatin at them, resulting in the rats being stunned or running away.  There are shots where you can see the rats scurrying about or waving their little feet around, which is why I started referring to them as ‘stunt rats’ in my mind.

This is a very poor, very bad film.  Once again, I found myself reminding myself that it was a theatrical release.  But it’s one of those films that you can’t resent for existing.  While I would never say that Food of The Gods has charm, it is fun...and that might be good enough for government work.  I would recommend this not as a piece of art, but a piece of entertainment.

Our sponsor tomorrow is my pal from West Virginia, the man who gave the world all those wonderful theme songs for Better In The Dark and the kingpin of the B Hyphen Podcast Network, Kelen Conley!  Kelen has chosen the stone cold classic that is was part of a run of films by John Carpenter that was astounding in its quality.  I speak, of course, of 1982‘s The Thing!

There is One Sponsorship Slot Left in the Halloween Horrorfest this year.  You can claim it by doing one of four things:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

As with last year, if I end up with more sponsors than there are days in October, I will go into Horrorfest Overtime, which means Halloween goes into November for me--and you!

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Cure (1997)

There’s no sponsor today, so the Randomizer gave me this film written and directed (and based on the novel by) Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Cure.  I had a vague recollection of trying to watch this long ago on IFC back when I had cable, and not getting far into it before falling asleep.  However, given the reputation of the film--supposedly this was championed by, among other people, Martin Scorcese--I thought it deserved a reviewing.

And not only am I glad I got a chance to see this a second time, I now understand why I fell asleep during that first viewing.

Detective Takabe (Koji Yoshuko) is becoming incredibly frustrated by investigation a series of grotesque murders.  The victim and killer seem random, no connection between any of the cases save that the killers always carves an X over the victims’ chest in such a way that both their carotid arteries are cut.  Working with the psychiatrist Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki), he discovers--but not before the viewer does--that an amnesiac drifter (Masato Hagiwara) seems to be using a version of mesmerism to trigger these murders.  Takabe goes to great extremes trying to understand how and why this drifter carried these acts out, even as he begins to realize he is coming dangerously close to falling under the man’s sway.

This is an incredibly quiet movie--outside of a small clip of inappropriately peppy music during the shocking opening sequence, playing while the third killer is showering off the blood of his prostitute victim, I don’t think there’s any sort of soundtrack.  Kurasawa relies on ambient sound to score his film, allowing us to accept the groundedness of a film that shouldn’t be grounded much at all.  As such, we’re focused totally on Takabe, who is an....adequate cop whose nerves are being frayed by this drifter even as he deals with the increasing mental illness of his wife.  For the first two acts, Kurasawa does his scenes as long, unbroken shots, many times in long shot, forcing us to concentrate on what’s going on in the story over the artifice of telling it on film.  There are very few things that could be considered scares in an American movie, very sparse gore, so this police procedural with a hypnosis angle becomes....hypnotic.  Watching it in my old apartment in Ridgewood, with the lights off, one Saturday night, I’m not surprised I drifted off.

....until we get to what is a jump scare, a jump scare so bald-faced that it would be laughed out of a conventionally shot American film, that actually made me jump and was Kurasawa’s way of letting me know that we were entering a more supernatural territory and tipping us off to the fact that Takabe was brought under at some point during his interrogation of the drifter the police learn is named Mamiya.  It’s a small sea change, but it gives our writer/director permission to become more creative.  Suddenly, long static shots give way to a series of editing decision, and there are moments where I actively wondered if it was really going on or part of Takabe’s fantasy.  By the time we are let in on the film’s center conceit in a strange sequence where our two ‘heroes’ watch a video of some footage shot in the 19th century, we are far gone and realize the inevitable conclusion to this story.

There is one other thing that I thinks works overwhelmingly in this film’s favor, and I’m not sure if it was intended.  The print of this film I watched was not the best, but I swore at random times throughout this story’s hour-and-fifty-one minute running time that the film slows down just a tiny bit, just long enough that you notice that the actors are moving sluggishly, before returning to normal speed.  Because it’s used so sparingly, attention is not drawn to it--but it did make me feel uncomfortable.  I would like to think, given some of the other conscious choices he made, that this was Kurasawa’s intention, but I admit this might be just a weird case of serendipity.

As you gathered, this is a very long film.  I don’t think it feels long, and a large part of that is the shift in filmmaking Kurasawa makes at the film’s midpoint.  It is very deliberate, it takes its time getting to the point and may not be for everyone.  But I can’t help thinking that this was a pre-shock to the ‘Indie Horror’ we are getting here in the States, where a director doesn’t hold our hand and expects us to do a little work in getting that uneasy feeling.  I do recommend this.

Tomorrow it’s finally time for my second bout with Nicholas Kaufmann as I view his choice for this year, The Food of The Gods, a film by Bert I. Gordon (His initials are BIG!) supposedly based on an H.G. Wells novel and featuring former child preacher Marjoe Gortner and, making her second appearance in this year’s Gauntlet of Ghoulishness, Ida Lupino.  Will I reach a new level of suffering at Nicholas’ hand?  We’ll find out!

There are Three Sponsorship Slots Left in the Halloween Horrorfest this year.  To claim one, do one of four things:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

As with last year, if I end up with more sponsors than there are days in October, I will go into Horrorfest Overtime, which means Halloween goes into November for me--and you!