The Cabinet of Caligari (1962): or, Crazy, Baby

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 27!

Jane Lindstrom (Glynis Johns), a free-spirited and adventure-seeking young woman, is driving her little sports car through a mountainous stretch of countryside when her tire goes flat, forcing her to seek shelter at the palatial home of enigmatic Dr. Caligari (Dan O'Herlihy). After an extremely odd and disturbingly insinuating conversation, the doctor instructs his assistant Chris (Constance Ford) to prepare a room for their new "guest." As it turns out the Caligari estate is full of guests, each one more eccentric than the last and none of them in a terrible hurry to leave. As Jane's stay stretches from hours to days, she discovers weirdness upon weirdness: the doctor's study has a glass revolving door behind its ordinary wooden one, the gates are locked and electrically charged at night, and the doctor seems inordinately interested in Jane's early sex life.

Things go from strange to threatening when Jane sees a leering face in the skylight window above her bathtub, and later watches Caligari's henchman David (Lawrence Dobkin) beat lovable elderly nutcase Ruth (the show-stealing Estelle Winwood) to death with a cane! Despite the reassurances of kindly old codger Paul and periodic visitor Mark (Richard Davalos), Jane grows more and more frantic to escape Caligari's sinister clutches--and then a shocking revelation sends her into a tailspin of phantasmagoric madness from which she might well not recover...

Until director Roger Kay's 1962 flick The Cabinet of Caligari showed up on my "suggested for you" queue, I had no idea the film even existed. (The only other version of the 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I knew of was the psychotronic brainfuckler Dr. Caligari, made in 1989 by Stephen Sayadian). I'm glad I gave this one a chance, because Kay (working from a script by Psycho author
Robert Bloch) delivers a neat update on the German-Expressionist classic, with beautiful black & white cinematography, bizarre and entertaining dialogue, and some truly odd images that will stay in your mind for quite a while.

The differences between this movie and its inspiration are significant. Here Caligari is a controlling Freudian madman, keeping Jane against her will and taunting her with scarcely glimpsed perversities. Kay and Bloch do away with the somnambulist Cesar and the carnival setting, focusing instead on the implications of the earlier film's ending. But while the majority of the action seems much more "real world" than in Weine's film, the climax in which Jane descends fully into madness is a real stunner. One particular sequence in which Jane sees a baker pulling loaves of bread shaped like infants out of a blazing oven even seems to prefigure David Lynch's Eraserhead in both theme and imagery--in fact, I would not be surprised to learn this film was a direct influence on that one.

The actors seem to pitch their performances to match the strangeness of the material. O'Herlihy, best known among horror geeks as the sinister Samhain stealer Conal Cochran from Halloween III, delivers his lines with such an odd accent and cadence that he seems almost like an alien from another planet impersonating Bela Lugosi. Glynis Johns's voice sounds like that of a particularly fluffy kitten that wandered into Dr. Moreau's transformation room, and her dreamy, high-pitched delivery never lets you doubt she's not entirely anchored in the real world. And Robert Bloch's dialogue--poetic, unnatural, and just plain weird--somehow manages to fit in perfectly.

Fans of the silent film by Robert Wiene--indeed any student of horror films worth his or her salt--will not be surprised by the explanation for the strange happenings at Chez Caligari. Nonetheless, The Cabinet of Caligari is a deeply odd and beautifully made film, and one that fans of the classics would do well to rediscover. 3 thumbs. 

"It will be morning soon. Halloween morning. A very busy day for me."

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Dreamaniac (1986): or, Pour Some Caro On Me

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 25!

Heavy metal musician and songwriter Adam (Thomas Bern) is housesitting for a friend, spending his days smoking cigarettes, ironing his Def Leppard t-shirts, and researching new lyrics in his large library of occult grimoires. It seems that despite having a smokin' hawt, punk rock riot grrrl girlfriend in Pat (80s porn legend Ashlyn Gere, here credited as "Kim McKay"), he still wants more carnal satisfaction--which thanks to his researches soon arrives in the form of small-chested, blood-spattered succubus Lily (Sylvia Summers). As Adam battles his disturbing sex dreams and struggles to find a rhyme for "METULL," Pat and her mousy sister Jodi (Lauren Peterson) prepare for a rockin' house party--the kind of Gathering of Stereotypes that only happens in 80s movies.

On the guest list are rich snob Francis (Cynthia Crass), who has designs on Jodi's out-of-her-league football player boyfriend Brad (Brad Laughlin); Valley Girls Jan and Rosie (Linda Denise Martin and Lisa Emery); specs-wearing nerd Jamie (Bob Pelham) and skinny Jughead-style glutton Foster (Matthew Phelps). Don't get too attached to any of them though--Lily's crashing the party, and is thirsty for sex and blood, not necessarily in that order.

"An original made-for-video feature film" produced in 1986, Dreamaniac is cheap, stupid, and a whole lot of fun. This is perhaps the most awkward house party in the history of partying, possibly because each of the attendees is the only representative of his or her clique and would never associate with any of the other partygoers in their natural high school environment. Things heat up as the night wears on, though: either due to the influence of an ancient sex-demon or else good old teenage hormones, sooner or later most of the girls and guys get undressed and do that horizontal bop. Director David DeCoteau (Creepozoids,  Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama,  The Brotherhood) is clearly more interested in Man Meat than girlflesh, though, so there are plenty of gratuitous butt-shots for the ladies...and dudes too, for that matter. There's also more than one illustration of why you should never accept a blowjob from a demon, a BDSM scene that leads to a package-jiggling electrocution, a final showdown in which Jodi and Pat must fight their way through the reanimated zombie corpses of their friends to get to Adam and Lily, a decapitation by power drill (wha?), and a "stinger" ending that makes almost as little sense as that of Pieces.

The acting is all broad, high-school level, as the cast is full of first- (and only- ) time actors. The notable exception is Gere, who perhaps unsurprisingly gives the most natural, engaging performance in the film.The fashions and set design are almost a parody of the movie's own era--watch particularly for Francis' amazing knit sweater and Jan's side-ponytail and skin-tight yellow jumpsuit. Dialogue is bad but in a strangely charming way, and the gore is mostly of the caro-syrup variety. DeCoteau's direction is competent, though he does rely rather heavily on slllloooooowwww pans and tracking shots, especially early on.

In my youth, when I would load up on VHS rentals every Friday, snatching anything off the shelves that looked even remotely like a horror flick, Dreamaniac would have been just the kind of fun, goofy ride I was looking for. Your enjoyment will depend on how well you like your DTV cheese. For me, 2 thumbs.

"OK, Jodi--you know the drill."

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Inferno (1980): or, Death is a Mutha

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 24!

Poet and antique book aficionado Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) finds an enigmatic tome entitled The Three Mothers in her local junk shop in New York. The book is the autobiography of an alchemist-cum-architect named Varelli who claims to have built three houses for the titular creatures--malevolent, mythological beings like the Fates, who poison the air and bring destruction to everyone around them. Unfortunately for her, Rose's apartment building just happens to be the home of Madre Tenebraum, the Mother of Darkness. After exploring the building's flooded basement and discovering proof of the Madre's residence (not to mention a very clingy drowned corpse), Rose decides she needs to call in some help.

That help is thousands of miles away in Rome, in the form of her brother, musicology student Mark (Leigh McCloskey). Upon receipt of his sister's letter detailing her troubles, Mark begins to experience strange phenomena himself--a mysterious green-eyed woman (Ania Pieroni) sits in on class, causing freak windstorms while stroking her big furry pussy...cat. Mark's friend Sara (Eleonora Giorgi) reads Rose's letter and goes to the local library to pick up a copy of The Three Mothers, only to be menaced by a bookbinder, picked up by a sports writer, and then stabbed in the spine by a scar-handed killer. Mark beats it to New York, where in the meantime his sister has been offed by another shadowy figure with the same sinister psoriasis. He befriends weirdo neighbor Elise (Daria Nicolodi) and journeys deep into the bowels of the Mother's abode, which as you might imagine stirs up all kinds of fragrant, freaky shit.

I've always been lukewarm on the work of Dario Argento--I mean, I appreciate his importance and his vision, but I've never been the raving fan of his stuff that others--notably his corpulence the Duke of DVD--are. Still, even a jaded critic like me has to admit that Inferno (1980) is absolutely stunning stuff. The director's trademark use of color, particularly his strong use of red and blue gels, consistently wows the viewer and lends the whole film a weird, dreamlike beauty. The opening scene with Rose swimming through the flooded subterranean ballroom is simply amazing. Stylistic camera placement and frame composition abound--in a favorite scene of mine, the camera seems to float on a breeze into the lecture hall where Mark is reading his sister's letter. The whole movie is just gorgeous to look at, and proves just how powerful Argento's vision can be. And the gore scenes, particularly the death of Sara's ill-fated pickup, are fantastic.

Story-wise, this is one of my favorite of Argento's films, perhaps only slightly behind the glorious MADness of Phenomena (1985). The middle of the Three Mothers trilogy, this one cements the supernatural mythology of the series and effectively conveys the vast power of these forgotten goddesses, or demons, or whatever they are. If there's any criticism to bring to bear, it's that at times the movie seems to lose its focus, jumping from Rose to Sara to Mark to Elise without ever settling fully on one protagonist. However, this could as easily be counted a strength of the film, whose real star is Argento's camera and the labyrinthine, expressionist nightmare that is Madre Tenebraum's house.

In short, wonderful stuff from an artist near the peak of his powers. 3 thumbs.

Significant Stroking

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TerrorVision (1986): or, Quite the Dish

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 23!

In the days when "satellite TV" meant having a dish the size of a bisected Volkswagen in your backyard and access to NASA-level array-control technology, Stanley Putterman (the inimitable Gerrit Graham, "Bud the CHUD" and The Phantom of the Paradise's Beef himself ) installs a "Do-It-Yourself 100" dish in the hopes of opening a new world of entertainment possibilities. This meets with the approval of his wife Raquel (Mary Woronov of Eating Raoul, Silent Night Bloody Night, and Chopping Mall), daughter Suzy (Diane Franklin, of the superlatively MAD Amityville II: the Possession) and son Sherman (Chad Allen, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman). Even military-minded Grandpa (Bert Remsen) is down, excited about the possibilities for monitoring enemy troop movements.

However, when a sanitation worker from Planet Pluton accidently beams a dangerous piece of garbage--a slavering, amorphous mutant called a "Hungry Monster"-- into the Puttermans' new dish, what started out as a nice night in front of the tube becomes a fight for survival and the future of the human race. As the monster crawls out of the boob tube to munch on its new hosts, the Puttermans' "swinging" guests, and Suzy's punkish boyfriend O.D. (Jon "I'm a Wolfman and I've Got Nards" Gries), Sherman makes desperate calls for help, first to the police and then to late-night horror hostess Medusa (Jennifer Richards). Meanwhile, O.D. and Suzy try to train the beast, which goes well until the Pluton Sanitation Department shows up to try and correct its error. Then things get a little messy...

Produced by Charles Band and directed by Full Moon Pictures-mainstay Ted Nicolaou, TerrorVision (1986) is an energetic, broad parody of everything 80s that, like many a fine cheese, has only grown more delicious as it ages. Viewers of a certain age will recognize a lot of the period piece details, from Raquel's Jazzercize obsession to Suzy's Cyndi Lauper fashions to Medusa's Elvira-esque show and costumery. Graham is hilarious as always (what an underrated performer this guy is), and Gries steals the show in a role that prefigures Bill and Ted by three years. The effects are goopy, practical, and disgusting, and the monster design is gross but strangely adorable. (In a standout scene, the monster uses its mimicking ability to morph several appendages into a slime-covered orgy involving the Puttermans, their guests, and even Grandpa! Must-see.) The music by Richard Band is as good as you'd expect.

TerrorVision is nothing but OTT fun from one end to the other. Even those born in the era of dinner plate-sized satellite dishes should find this blast from the past enjoyable. 2.5 thumbs.

"Don't wait up! I've heard these Noam Chomsky lectures sometimes go long."

Bonus: The awesomely 80s TerrorVision Theme song!

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The Strangers (2008): or, Don't Be Home

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 22!

After a friend's wedding reception, hopeless romantic James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) proposes to his chain-smoking girlfriend Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler). Unfortunately she is just not ready for marriage and shuts him down hard, which turns the elaborate romantic weekend James has planned at his parents' isolated summer cabin a real Olympics of Awkwardness. Soon they have bigger fish to fry, however, as a mysterious girl keeps knocking at their door, at 4 am, asking for "Tamara." Later the knocks become loud bangs, the chimney gets blocked off, and someone not only cuts the phone line, but sneaks in and steals Kristen's recharging cell. As the creepiness and hostilities escalate, James and Kristen find themselves fighting for their lives against a trio of implacable killers whose motivations are as inscrutable as the faces behind their creepy, old-fashioned Halloween masks...

The Strangers (2008) does exactly what I believe it sets out to do--to unsettle the viewer, ramp up the tension, and send you home determined to buy new deadbolts for all the doors in your house--and does so very efficiently, with very little extra narrative fat. After a Laroquette-ish opening voiceover and a flash-forward "discovery" scene, we're thrown right into Kristen and James's uncomfortable arrival at the cottage, and from there things just get more tense. Tyler is a gifted actress, and brings her talents fully to bear on the role of Kristen, both in her sad, emotionally-troubled opening scenes and in her terrified, fighting for her life scenes at the end. Hoyt is fine as the shell-shocked beau suddenly called upon to protect the woman he loves. It's a testament to their skill as actors and the skill of director Bryan Bertino (working from his own script) that, despite being largely a 2-character piece, the flick kept my interest and never felt boring.

The trio of Killers are extremely creepy and menacing, at times seeming almost supernatural in their machinations and ability to walk in and out of the house at will, despite James and Kristen's best battening-down efforts. (In fact I was wondering for a while whether they were some kind of supernatural beings, but the ending has little in it to support that idea.) Their nightmare-fuel masks and the sing-song voice of Dollface, the only one who talks (Gemma Ward, I think) are sure to produce shivers. And Bertino's decision never to show their faces--even when they unmask themselves to James and Kristen--hammers home the idea of them as something more than run-of-the-mill psychopaths. They're almost symbols of all senseless violence and murder. When Kristen asks Dollface the usual question--"Why are you doing this to us?"--the killer's answer is chilling: "Because you were home."

A very creepy and well-made home invasion flick, The Strangers is not the feel-good flick of the year (though its ending is happier than it could have been, in a way), but it's definitely a tension-filled ride. 2.75 thumbs.

"I'm going to ask you this one more time: WHERE'S THE GODDAMNED BATHROOM?"

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The Last Exorcism (2010): or, He Puts on a Hell of a Show

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 21!

Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), former child preacher and the last in a long line of evangelical exorcists, invites a film crew along to document all the hocus pocus that goes on behind the scenes. It seems the good reverend has lost his faith--while he still believes he provides a service for his flock, giving them the mystical experience they psychologically crave, he does not see himself as anything more than a showman and second-tier magician. Picking a letter at random from his pile of requests, Marcus and crew go to rural Louisiana to help Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), whom her widowed and Bible-obsessed father Louis (Louis Herthum) insists is possessed by the Devil. Marcus gives the yokels the whole show, and seems to cure Nell's ills. But soon the preacher discovers that there might be something to all this exorcism business after all...

The Last Exorcism (2010) does a lot of things I liked, and does them very well. The set-up of a revivalist preacher documenting his own hokum is taken directly from Marjoe (1972), the fascinating documentary about child-preacher and later B-movie star Marjoe Gortner.* Certain early scenes and even some of the dialogue seem to be direct quotes of that movie. Director Daniel Stamm lets the mystery of what's happening to Nell unfold slowly, rushing directly to the neck-snapping exorcism business, but still dropping enough clues and stingers along the way to keep the viewer engaged--unlike some recent horror flicks. The script by Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland is intelligent and intriguing--and I don't want to spoil the ultimate solution to Nell's troubles, but it was shocking in a way that still made sense with what had come before, and sent me into the end credits with an appreciative smile.

*And a highly recommended viewing in its own right.

The acting is great from top to bottom. Fabian plays Cotton Marcus as a charismatic, sardonic but lovable rogue, a man who knows he's full of it but nonetheless genuinely seems to care about the people who come to him for help. Bell's Nell (ha!) is wonderful--all fresh and innocent and giggly at the beginning, throwing her later sinister turn in stark relief. (According to imdb trivia, Bell also did all the amazing, poster-spoiled contortions herself, without the aid of special effects.) Herthum makes a great menacing, possibly not so well-meaning dad, and Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class's Banshee) gives a nice performance as Nell's brother.

Put simply, The Last Exorcism is one of the best recent horror films I've seen in a long time. A fresh look at the "possession" subgenre--a stylish, entertaining and even frightening film. 3 thumbs. Recommended.

On third and short, the Devil shows Blitz.

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Paranormal Activity 2 (2010): or, Wake Me When It's Haunting

October Horror Movie Challenge, Day 20!

In the months before the events of the first movie, new mother Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and husband Daniel (Brian Boland) bring their infant son Hunter home from the hospital to their palatial mini-mansion in the suburbs. All is happy days and lollipops for a while, until one day the couple finds their house completely trashed, apparently by vandals who had the courtesy to lock the doors behind them and not steal anything of value. Being the wealthy, proactive father he is, Daniel has surveillance cameras installed so that they can monitor all nocturnal goings on in the house. But the footage thus captured doesn't reveal bored teenagers emulating their favorite MTV shows--rather, it's g-g-g-ghosts!

The strange happenings escalate--pots fall from kitchen racks, mobiles spin by themselves over Hunter's crib, the automatic pool cleaner inexplicably removes itself from the pool, and strange knockings are heard. As the frightened young parents try to make sense of things, they discover a dark secret in their family history that will threaten not only their own safety, but spill over into the lives of Kristi's sister Katie (Katie Featherston) and her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat)--the protagonists of the first film, whose own subsequent travails are a direct result of what happens here.

I was a bit lukewarm about Paranormal Activity (2007)--I thought it had some unsettling imagery and well-executed, totally legit scares, but found the main characters annoying and their actions more than a little contrived. I also felt it was a bit too light on explanation for the haunting, and the pacing much too slow. Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) does a bit better on the first count, proposing a Faustian bargain in the sisters' family history in which a first-born son was promised and must now be delivered, since Hunter is the first male in the line for a few generations. However, it does even worse on the second count. There are a few scare scenes in the flick, but you have to sit through more than an hour of fairly boring "found footage" before you get to them--by which point, if you're still awake, you might well wonder if the payoff is worth the wait.

The acting is okay, and the "reality" filming is done pretty well, but in the end there are few things more boring than watching someone else's home movies, particularly when you don't know or care about the people involved. While a little restraint and deliberate, slow-boil reveals are usually a good thing in a haunted house flick, I felt director Tod Williams went a little overboard here--when you're more than an hour in and the scariest thing that's happened has been a CG shadow disturbing someone's nap, you run the risk of trying your audience's patience.

Once we actually reach the climax, it's pretty good stuff--nothing we haven't seen before at this point, but well executed nonetheless--and I appreciated the creepy little tie-in to the ending of the last film. But after enduring an hour and fifteen minutes of only occasionally-broken boredom, I felt it was too little, too late. 1 thumb.

"Screw this, I'm outta here."

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