Horror October 

From the Criterion Channel 70s Horror collection, and more...

Black Christmas (Bob Clark, 1974): 4/5

The first slasher movie, they say. It still works. Clark goes on to make Porky’s 1 &2, A Christmas Story and Stallone’s Rhinestone.

Deathdream (Bob Clark, 1974): 3/5

When people came back from Vietnam, they were pretty messed up/dead.

The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977): 4/5

The bad guy stuff is campy and fun in a deformity-representative-exploito way. Competent acting and excellent lighting contribute substantially to why it all works so well. Also, our protagonist is super-gay and repressed, which is interesting.

Season of the Witch (George A. Romero, 1972): 2/5

Unhappy housewife gets into witchcraft. Restrained.

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (John Hancock, 1971): 3.5/5

Zohra Lampert’s excellent performance as the titular Jessica anchors this film in almost Cassavetes-type realism, which really helps when the spooky stuff overtakes the more interesting relationship stuff. 

Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, 1978): 3/5

A couple breaks up over the course of weekend camping trip on a remote beach (where there’s also some desultory metaphoric nature-fights-back stuff.) This was when I started to just watch Bergman movies, where I could enjoy couples breaking up without the other stuff getting in the way.

The Beyond (Fulci, 1981):2/5

Someone built a hotel over one of the gates of hell. Fucking contractors. Bananas but boring anyway. 

Trick ‘r Treat (Michael Dougherty, 2007): 2.5/5

Pastiche of 80s horror. Skin deep but pretty fun.

Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008): 3.5/5

Part of the French extreme horror wave of the aughts, this is at times extremely hard to watch. A visceral experience, nihilistic and thrilling.

The Descent, rw (Neil Marshall, 2007): 3/5

This story of a caving expedition gone wrong was not quite as good as I remembered. I did turn it off half-way through (and returned to it the next night) but was it because I “didn’t like it” or because I couldn’t take the feeling of claustrophobia? I’ll never know.

Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964): 2/5

Painfully slow and long but at times worth it for the magnificently beautiful artificiality akin to Gene Kelly/Vincent Minnelli dream ballet sequences. Features a lot of that eerily slow Noh play-influenced stuff that shows up in a lot of Japanese cinema. Completely opposite feel from the director’s 10-hour trilogy, The Human Condition, (which I also watched: a 3.5/5) which is much more Western in its pacing, mise-en-scene and dramatic strategies. 

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Robert Aldrich, 1962): 3/5

As fan of John Waters and last year’s Feud, I can’t believe I waited so long to watch this. I was surprised to discover that the acting was quite good, especially from Crawford. I thought it would be grotesquery for its own sake—and it was—but it was more traditionally entertaining than I had anticipated.

And some horror and other stuff from 2020

The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings, 2020): 2.5/5

Surprisingly bland, coming from the writer/director of Thunder Road, which pushed the small-town cop plot in an idiosyncratic direction full of self-loathing and self-destruction.

Invisible Man (Leign Whannell, 2020): 1.5/5

Hate-watched the final hour. I loved the deadly-empty-room stuff, but the social politics was garbage—and I say that as someone who basically agrees with the filmmakers.

Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy, 2020): 4/5

Ben Mendelson and the rest of the cast are excellent. How do they keep making movies about teenagers dying from cancer? Still: Sob sob sob.

On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola, 2020): 3.5/5

I was charmed. Nice to see Bill Murray actually deal with a script and character—he’s really good at it. In a way, it’s another Sofia Coppola movie about a poor little rich girl who’s a prisoner of her privilege, but this one also offers Woody Allen-ish effervescence. 

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner, 2020): 3/5

I was amused. The satire could easily have been more specific, yet I kept being reminded of Blazing Saddles (highest possible compliment). If Trump wins tomorrow, I will personally throttle everyone involved for pre-celebrating.

Where All Those Horror Movies Pointed

This is not a particularly original observation, but I started to notice that many of these horror movies were essentially past-trauma, relationship-on-the-rocks movies that used horror metaphors and degenerated into besides-the-point bloody resolutions. If you throw out that those two latter elements, you get a Bergman movie, right? All these movies convinced me that Liv Ullman was one of the greatest of all time.

Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman, 1974): 4.5/5

I had to wait until I had some distance from my marriage and other relationship breakups to enjoy this. Not banal bickering, but instead adults changing over 10 years and really fucking having it out about things that are meaningful to them. Incisive and exact.

Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978): 3/5

In the movie’s central scene the daughter tells the mother exactly and at length what was wrong with her parenting. Harrowing. 

Shame (Ingmar Bergman, 1968): 4/5

Actually a pretty great war movie in the neutral, men-with-guns mode of The Red and the White. Plus, all the while, the story of a relationship coming together and breaking up. 

The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman, 1968): 4/5

Four psychologically rich and realistic characters full of philosophies and past traumas bounce off one another. Full of lovely, soft colors that contrast with the violence of the emotions on display.