House of Whipcord (1974) dir. Pete Walker

Logline: A young French nudie model working in England (Penny Irving) is tricked by a mysterious and dour man (Robert Tayman) through the front doors of a secret correctional institute for morally corrupt girls. Run by a ruthless trio of matronly wardens (Barbara Markham, Sheila Keith, and Dorothy Gordon) and presided over by a decripit former judge (Patrick Barr), this illegal prison turns into a house of casual sadism, in which its nubile prisoners learn that the second infraction against good behavior earns one a whipping and the third earns one a hanging.

I think Pete Walker is a fibber. In a recent video interview included on Redemption Films' snazzy blu-ray boxset of four of his films (House of Whipcord included), Walker claims that he stands by the old adage that a filmmaker "must never let [his] audience know which side [he's] on," lest he become too preachy or inadvertently simplify the ambiguity of his characters. And yet, the allegiance of the minds behind House of Whipcord is apparent from the film's opening frames. Boisterously, with a touch of irony as tender as the crack of a whip, the film opens with a dedication of itself "to those who are disturbed by today's lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment." In no conceivable way do the film's unending scenes of horrific torture and murder in the name of moral decency support this dedication as an earnest one. Rather, the film is-- much like Walker's previous effort, The Flesh and Blood Show (1972)-- an exaggerated, hysterical dramatization of what would happen if the looser, sexier England of the 1970s were to all of a sudden revert (at least in the eyes of the law) to a rigidly conservative moral code. Under such an archaic code, flagrant offenses like modeling for nude photographs in a public park (an action unthinkable and unconscionable in the truly conservative society of England's jolly old days) would need to be met with punishment pious in its intent and extreme in its severity-- bordering on the barbarous-- in order to attempt to cleanse the sin from the hopelessly corrupt criminal.

Once again, Walker is pitting the older and younger generations against one another in mutual misunderstanding and intolerance, breeding violence. Neither generation can comprehend the actions of the other: the older sees the younger as reckless heathens decaying the fabric of society, while the younger sees the older as a group of ruthless, stuffy sadists upholding a fruitless and unjust system of yore. In that same video interview, Walker claims that in contrast to what most of his critics read, he has put no conscious themes of the "suppression of the young by the old" into his films, and in fact identifies himself as a conservative (though in what sense a conservative he fails to elaborate). Either Old Pete is being disingenuous with these statements (not terribly unlike House of Whipcord's opening dedication) or he fails to realize the power with which he condemns the conservative moral authority. House of Whipcord's younger generation may be vapid and slightly debauched, but such attributes come nowhere near to approaching the deplorable lows of the older generation's hypocrisy, repression, and sadism.

And what is at the root of hypocrisy, repression, and sadism, you ask? The patriarchy, of course! House of Whipcord equates ultra conservatism and patriarchal authority (an apt maneuver), and then demonstrates how they are used to suppress female identity, sexuality, and independence. In line with Walker's belief that sides shouldn't be too clearly drawn or freely sympathized with, the film's attack of patriarchal authority stems from its trio of female villains rather than its male villains. The off-the-grid prison institution is run by three elderly matrons-- Mrs. Wakehurst, Walker, and Bates-- who don themselves in grey, put up their hair, refer to themselves by their masculine last names, and whip poor young liberated women half to death. They do this with the hope of curing "depraved females of every category," though their "cures" and "categories" are awfully loose. In a moment of angry passion, Walker (Sheila Keith) spills the beans to the imprisoned French model concerning their true motives when she snarls, "I'm going to make you ashamed of your body." The three matron wardens, made to be ashamed of their own bodies, seek to violate and harm the bodies of those women who aren't, those who are free (relatively speaking) from the old patriarchy's sway. 

Because Wakehurst, Walker, and Bates all very much subscribe to the notion of a controlling patriarchy, they are restricted (at least formally) from enacting this violence independently. They require male consent before taking action against their prisoners, not because it's lawfully required (their institute is basically structured vigilantism) but because they have been culturally indoctrinated to believe that they require it*. Consequently, the three women require the constant presence and notarization of a resident senile judge, Justice Bailey, before they commit any of their evil deeds. In a curious twist, Justice Bailey (while still complicit in the forced imprisonment of innocent women) is oblivious to the violence and murder, believing as he does that their prisoners are being rehabilitated and released. The point being: even "benevolent" patriarchal authority causes damage and violence to women, if by no other way than altering the way women see and treat themselves and each other. 

To conclude, it's worth noting that House of Whipcord is essentially a Women in Prison film (all the rage in 1970s exploitation cinema) that becomes a horror film merely by twisting a few knobs and turning the Gothic sadism and blood up a tad. There's no need for monsters or the supernatural with a situation as horrific as the one presented here. And despite very definitely being concerned with staging a social critique, it's not all dour and self-important-- for giggles, there's an amusing instance of ice cube sadism and the mindbogglingly stupid "Mark E. Desade" false identity employed by one character-- but any moments of levity are countered by the bleak, nihilistic streak that runs underneath it all. As long as the patriarchy continues to hold court, society's escape from the House of Whipcord seems unlikely.

*The most illustrative moment of the matrons' bowing to male authority occurs during the film's resolution: Walker and Bates are attempting to flee the prison in a car after everything has gone awry but are thwarted, rather easily, by a police officer who merely raises his hand and commands them to stop. From their patriarchy-infected viewpoints, the notion of disregarding a symbol of male authority and, say, running the defenseless police officer down with their running automobile isn't even an option.

The Flesh and Blood Show (1972) dir. Pete Walker

Logline: A tale of sex, madness, and murder in London's theatrical scene. A ragtag group of swinging actors are beckoned to an old, abandoned pier-side theater by a mysterious producer to begin rehearsals for a new show. Between all the squabbling and fornicating, is it any wonder that these hot singles start popping up with their heads lopped off? These murders set off an investigation that reveals the theater's bloody, histrionic history alongside the "pleasures of the third dimension." It's all enough to make you exclaim, as one of the film's victims does, "this bloody theater's got a feeling of doom and death!"

Well, it's certainly a Flesh Show. Pete Walker's second (and first genuine) horror film, The Flesh and Blood Show, is more beholden to his early days in cheeky skin flicks than you might figure. Once our assorted young and randy actors assemble at the creepy theater and realize there's no other adequate lodging in town, we are witness to much leering, stripping, undressing, heavy petting, caressing, fondling, and other sundry sexy stuff. In retrospect, perhaps my most perceptive note was "This is a film about the unclasping of bras." This isn't exactly a gripe, because the film is fun in the same way most of the tamer '70s sexploitation films are: it's a jovial celebration of nubile human bodies at rest, at play, and perpetually shirking bad clothing decisions. The horror elements, when they kick in quite a ways into the film, are far less developed and assured than in Walker's later attempts. All of the murders (and there aren't many) occur off-screen, and the aftermaths we witness are pretty far from gruesome. Again, it feels like Walker is testing the horrific waters, making an earnest go of the genre but not yet having a feel for its extravagant nuances. Nonetheless, the film makes up for this lack in sheer dopey '70s sleaze appeal. The film's best moments are the fleeting glimpses we receive of the gang's avant garde theatrical improv sessions in preparation for their big London opening, one of which is best described as "a caveman dance party" and another as "an erotic yoga workout." One honestly can't find this sort of trash anywhere else.

As a mystery it's bunk, considering that the killer-- a local Shakespearean actor who has spent decades under the assumed identity of a solitary and overly friendly man named Major Bell (Patrick Barr)-- telegraphs his guiltiness early on by being the only possible suspect outside of the core group of actors and spouting out Obvious Psychopath give-aways like his comment that the town sure has been "cheered up by having young people" around. Yet, the film still manages to find some amusement in this clunker of a reveal by coating it with a thick layer of recursive winking-at-one's-self-in-the-mirror shenanigans. Once the reveal happens we're treated to a black and white flashback (in 3-D, no less!) in which Bell-- then a famed actor named Sir Arnold Gates-- takes his coal-faced, full-garbed rendition of Othello backstage by attacking (and eventually "Cask of Amontillado"-ing) his adulterous wife and her lover after a performance in which they all starred (they having literally stepped out of their costumes as Desdemona and Cassio for a post-curtain call tumble in the old dressing room). So, that's a cute little nugget of self-aware, metatextual goofiness, as are the repeated fake-out death gags in the first half and this beauty of a line uttered by one of the survivors during the exposition overload that serves as the film's resolution: "if it wasn't so bloody tragic and horrible it could almost make a movie script (wink)!"

In another bit of metafictional self-evaluation, our killer's motivation and the film's tacit refusal to affirm that motivation help illuminate the uniquely supportive appraisal of sexual freedom that's being presented here in re: the film and stage productions of a sexier, more loosely censored 1970s England. Major Bell has orchestrated the events of the film in order to take revenge against a group that he sees as a wealth of cultural "scum," "excrement," and "sex-crazed jackanapes": namely, actors. His actress wife's infidelity has led him to extrapolate her actions and come to the conclusion that "all actors are lecherous harlots" who can be found "flaunting their thighs and breasts" without moral qualms. To be sure, there is much flaunting of thighs and breasts to be found perpetrated by the actors of The Flesh and Blood Show (both from a fictional standpoint and from our voyeuristic perspective as viewers), but does the film's sexually liberated La Ronde-style liaisons have an honest-to-goodness detrimental effect on the world, either within the film or outside of it in reality?

The characters seem to have a jolly good time sleeping around with one another and we (the audience) enjoy the harmless ogling. Things only get prickly when a stodgy old man from a previous generation catches wind of the "the temptations of the flesh" being presented on stage and, failing to recognize that the cultural values surrounding sex have changed, starts up some murderin'. But he's not a hero for this: he's a lost and befuddled geezer, stuck in the long-gone past and easily bested by his own faultless victims. The film aligns itself with the actors, who are not the transgressive teens deserving punishment of countless future moral slasher flicks, but consenting young adults living their considerably more liberated lives for our vicarious enjoyment. Considering the film's penchant for internal metacommentary, it would be easy enough to read its events as symbolic of the BBFC's cultural war against nudity and sex in the cinemas. It's a hysterical dramatization of everything the censors feared: seeing flesh will make us crave flesh, and possibly cause violence in order to acquire it! Making the flesh-affected person in question not a participant or audience member (Bell never sees their production) but a person equivalent to a moral censor deflates any such claims by demonstrating that the only people harmed by all that sex on screen are those people fretting over it to begin with. Although flesh and blood were to be increasingly aligned over the next two decades in film (particularly in Pete Walker's own work), it remains true that Flesh need not beget Blood. The Flesh and Blood Show's structural overemphasis on the first component might be one bit of evidence that Walker and his film believe that being audience to a little more erotic yoga than gruesome decapitation is basically good for the soul.

Die Screaming, Marianne (1971) dir. Pete Walker

Logline: Marianne (Susan George), a psychedelic suntanned bikini dancer, has spent the last six years fleeing across Europe in order to evade her father, mysteriously known only as The Judge (Leo Genn), and whatever nefarious plans he has for her and her approaching inheritance. When she shacks up with her new accidental husband, Eli (Barry Evans), and finds that her association with him is putting his life in danger, Marianne resolves to confront The Judge and her estranged sister, Hildegarde (Judy Huxtable), at the family estate in Portugal. But Marianne must take care, for someone there wishes to see her die screaming...

English director Pete Walker's first hesitant toe into the pool of horror cinema, Die Screaming, Marianne has the lousiest reputation of any of his major films. Scouring the web for reviews leaves one with the general consensus  that it's a bore, a thriller minus the thrills, and a creaky bit of mod sexploitation. Honestly, the film fits that consensus, but not necessarily to its detriment: sometimes gazing at a weird, snail-paced moddish thriller is precisely how one wishes to spend one's lazy afternoon. And it's not as if the film is a chore to sit through, coming equipped as it does with whiffs of style (split screens! those opening credits!), scenic location shooting (beaches! canyons!), and some competent and appealing acting (particularly from a young and ever-feisty Susan George, though Judy Huxtable-- as Marianne's smirkingly deranged half-sister-- is no slouch either). Moreover, to focus too much attention on those perceived flaws of Die Screaming, Marianne is to ignore its intriguing code-switching between genres and its atypical construction of its female heroine.

The abrupt, muddy transitions between genres throughout are the film's defining characteristic. Marianne neither sits still nor focuses on any one genre in particular over the others; it seems as if it would rather have them all in equal measure. A woman-on-the-run thriller cuts to a swinging '70s sex comedy which then bleeds back over into a thriller (with assassins!) before becoming a romance and then an incestual family inheritance drama and then eventually settling in as a sort of coastal Gothic suspense film. The film shifts between these different genres (and their attendant tones and styles) as if it wasn't asking much of the audience to follow along. It's a wonder that the film feels as unified as it does; usually, these sort of shifts leave the audience feeling disconnected and adrift from the main narrative. The presence of some strongly realized characters helps anchor us, of course, but probably a bigger factor in our continued engagement in the film is Walker's clear skill in employing each of these genres. Though you'd imagine them being weird thrust up together (and they are weird, sort of), disparate scenes coexist peacefully because Walker directs and edits with the confidence that they will. Some small moments, like Marianne's not-quite-bashful flirtation with her new husband and Eli's slow realization that the men in his apartment are there to kill him, are fantastically crafted and hint that Walker would have been equally adept in genres outside of horror. (Early in his career, Walker did in fact experiment with other genres like sexploitation and crime, in films such as School for Sex (1969) and Man Of Violence (1971), before dedicating himself wholly to horror. Having not seen any of these early oddities, I can't comment upon whether or not he pulled off their respective genres with grace, but Marianne certainly suggests the possibility.)

But more so than its unlikely coherence, Marianne is the film's main appeal. She's not the usual sort of heroine that you find in ostensible thrillers like these, which generally feature multiple parties conspiring to kill or drive crazy a helpless innocent female who is severely limited in both the available thought and action open to her. Take for example, the young heiress of two film versions of The Cat and the Canary (1939; 1978) that I watched recently: in both, the heroine sat by, meekly, as all the film's men either tried to kill her or save her. The same cannot be said for Marianne. Upon her first recognition that her father and sister were up to no good with regard to her future and inheritance, Marianne split and spent the next six years on the lam, providing for herself while depending upon no one else (especially men) for anything other than small favors. Marianne displays a fierce independence throughout the proceedings, like when she refuses to be tied down in marriage to the weaselly Sebastian (Christopher Sandford) when he insists by intentionally screwing up the marriage license and quickly moving out when he gets angry, offering him some choice words in return: "Look, mate, I've looked after myself for the last six years, and believe me yours was the most amateur attempt yet." She chooses her own lovers, feels empowered dancing around in a bikini, and literally evades patriarchal authority personified in the character of her father, The Judge, a figure whose symbolic significance couldn't be more obvious if he'd been named, say, "The Man" instead.

Besides these welcome signs of a developed and complex female character, Marianne also fulfills the traditionally male role of rescuer at the film's climax: when locked in a deadly hot steam room by her wicked sister, Marianne is forced to rescue herself and gather enough strength in order to mount a final face off against the conspirators out to kill her (which she does, aptly, with a little help from a menacing butler). During her predicament, Eli-- her knight in shining polyester-- was off somewhere being a corpse and providing no help at all. Gender roles successfully inverted. However, the film isn't content to proclaim that Marianne's status as an empowered woman is unambiguously good for her: the film's bleak final message for Marianne (surrounded as she is by the dead bodies of everyone she knows) is that her independent lifestyle, though perhaps the only way to shield herself physically and psychologically from the sleazeballs and would-be murderers of the world, dooms her to loneliness. As the theme song says, "Love's not for you, Marianne," and that's unfortunate. 

April 2013's Footstones

Being a List of the Assorted Horrors I've Consumed During the Month of April, 2013.

The Lords of Salem (2013) dir. Rob Zombie

The amount of venom spat in Rob Zombie's direction these days by the notoriously fickle horror and genre cinema communities is enough to fill a few of the sort of dingy, leaky fauceted, mold-encrusted motel bathtubs you can easily imagine his characters frequenting after a long day of rolling around in dirt and corpses. For reasons rarely totally coherent, Zombie and his films rub people the wrong way. These detractors believe (erroneously) that he soiled their favorite horror franchise, or they're annoyed by his grimy heavy metal hick aesthetic, or they contest that his films are all flash and no substance. This last point of contention hits the M.O. of Zombie's filmography square on the nose, but the notion that this is in any way a bad thing is baffling. Zombie has based his personal image and the products of his dual careers on the recontextualization of horror film iconography. This is a man who's had the robot from The Phantom Creeps (1939) bobbing along with him on stage and in his music videos for decades. His first film, House of 1000 Corpses (2003), played around in Tobe Hooper's toybox (specifically Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 1 (1974), Part 2 (1986), and The Funhouse (1981)) while its sequel, The Devil's Rejects (2005), dumped the first film's rural carnival aesthetic altogether and adopted the attitude and thick-coated grime of '70s exploitation pictures. His Halloween films (2007-2009), while not the travesties that many of those aforementioned venom-spitters claim, feel disappointing and flawed because the cinematic touchstones are explicit rather than digested and internalized into the Rob Zombie horror machine. There are of course moments in both films that feel like outgrowths of Zombie's multifaceted-yet-singular vision, but on the whole one receives the sense of studio meddling (for evidence, compare the theatrical and director's cuts of Halloween 2, or sit through the blazing fast retread of Carpenter's original in the second half of Zombie's Halloween).

Now, it's pretty easy to note Zombie's use of the reconfigured situations, images, and characters of horror cinema's past and call him an unoriginal hack for doing so. But under this same logic, a filmmaker like Tarantino-- who pilfers the same from all corners of low-brow cinematic history-- is just as guilty, yet the cinema lovers attacking his films on those grounds are far fewer. (Though I do know a handful of those folks. Those folks are also wrong.) The Lords of Salem, Zombie's latest horror hodgepodge, is receiving a not unexpected amount of scathing criticism from certain sectors of the horror community, and yet it's by far the most direct and unambiguous example of what he's been doing since the beginning with less success: bombarding us, relentlessly, with the visceral sights and sounds that only horror films can create. The story and characters here are kept to an absolute minimum (and what's there is essentially-- indeed, recognizably, perhaps for ease of immersion-- Rosemary's Baby (1968)). But this narrative lack exists because those aspects of  visual storytelling are pretty clearly not what The Lords of Salem is all about. This is a film about wallpaper. 

More importantly, it's a film about how fucking terrifying wallpaper can be when knowingly presented through the lens of a camera wielded by a filmmaker who wants to create horror. It's a film about ambient noise, seething creatures in the corner of the frame, heavy breathing, the menace of opulent architecture, and droning scores that chill one to the bone. Zombie has fashioned a film that exists in the same nightmarish dream plane as those of Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981) or Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) (the latter of which having a direct influence on about a third of the film's visual style: check out that framing). But (it must be stressed) just because the film earmarks The Shining and Rosemary's Baby as influences doesn't render it a pale imitation by default: The Lords of Salem takes those rather subtle, creeping approaches to the language of cinematic horror and refashions them as an assault on the senses. It has the verve (and the style) of a mid-'90s heavy metal music video (see: the demonic, partially-animated fantasy in which Sheri Moon Zombie's character rides a horned goat in slow motion and gets her hair licked by a guy face-painted up like Sting). 

The cumulative effect of the visual and aural onslaught on the viewer is much like the responses that the film's characters have to the music contained on the mysterious vinyl record composed by the band The Lords: it might make you laugh, leave you entranced, creep the hell out of you, or give you a splitting headache. If you're properly attuned to the film's frequency, you'll feel all four responses. The Lords of Salem exists as an experience of horror, a distillation of everything that makes the genre's undead heart tick. It's not thematically deep, and it's only major flaw is relying a bit too heavily on exposition concerning its minimal plot when none was necessary. If, as has been reported, Rob Zombie has given up making horror films, it's certain that many will cheer it as a victory, though what it really means is that horror has a lost a filmmaker without scruples. Enjoy Paranormal Activity 5, everyone.

Ghoulies (1985) dir. Luca Berocovici

Though to a lesser extent than other slimy '80s puppet horrors like Gremlins (1984), Critters (1986), and (heck) even Munchies (1987), the Ghoulies series of films was nonetheless on constant rotation in the VCR of my childhood living room. The films' (um) stark and iconic toilet-centric box art appealed directly to my poor taste and pulled me in for multiple rentals of each at the local video store. One can hardly imagine what the clerks must have thought about my upbringing. Anyway, it's nearly twenty years later and in the heat of one afternoon moment I decided revisiting the first three back-to-back-to-back was a swell idea. If nothing else, I was right about the swelling. The vantage of time has left me able to appreciate the film's as if for the first bewildering time, with only bits and pieces of each returning to me through memory. Apparently I remembered next to nothing about the initial Ghoulies. By the time I've arrived at the juncture where our possessed hero, an Eric Roberts stand-in (Peter Liapis), summons a couple of chrome-skulled dwarves to do his bidding, I begin to feel as if the Ghoulies of memory and the Ghoulies of reality where switched in the VCR at birth. Though certainly bizarre, the film eschews the forthright humor of the later entries and dedicates most of its cinematic energies to its light demonic horror. It's a featherweight possession comedy that is paradoxically too serious and too silly to work on either level. In fact, the ghoulies themselves are hardly in the thing, pushing their precious puppet faces into the light only on occasion. Unarguably, the best scene in this first film is one in which a large group of party guests is at dinner, wearing sunglasses and laughing like maniacs while the ghoulies pop out of the pot roast. Oh, time, if only I could shove my hand up your puppet-hole and retrieve my fond reflections now lost. Director Luca Berocovici's other claim to horror "comedy" fame is 1990's teenage virgin vampire musical, Rockula, which--had my store carried it-- I'm certain would have wound up in heavy rotation too, considering posters with a whiff of cheese were the gateway to my heart (and my mother's pocketbook).

Ghoulies II (1988) dir. Albert Band

Forty minutes into Ghoulies II, and it's apparent that this one is where most of my affectionate memories for the series originate. It's not a good film (in fact, it's pretty much a bad one) but it contains an ample supply of all of the elements that set my young brain (and now slightly older brain) into a tizzy: a deliciously grody carnival setting, a prominently featured haunted house attraction, a smug yuppie villain, mild gross-out humor, a plethora of puppet mayhem, and a dollop of man-in-suit mayhem. It's a good deal more fun and chock full of goofy humor than the previous film, which helps. Case in point, at one moment an assorted crowd of onlookers cheer on the ghoulies and their destructive antics by chanting "Rats! Rats! Rats!" Though, the implication that demonic influence is the only way to ensure the survival of a small business enterprise threatened by the profit demands of a soulless (and smug!) controlling entity is as depressing today as it was in 1988. My memories aren't in tatters, but this hunk of juvenile toilet-fodder remains a largely disposable film. Ghoulies II was directed by Charles Band's dad, Albert, and it features an original score composed by a man named Fuzzbee. So there you go.

Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College (1991) dir. John Carl Buechler

Ghoulies III is Rock 'N' Roll Community College Meets The Three Ghoulie Stooges. In a word: unbearable. My brain was fried twenty minutes in. Now here's the thing: I love childish campus sex comedies, and I love dumb child-skewing puppet monster movies, but the combination of the two (if this film can be said to represent the combination's full potential) is an abomination from birth, seething and writhing in its endless agonizing death throes across the quad of our enjoyment. It's not fun, it's not funny, and it's not enjoyable to pity; it takes abrasive idiocy to staggering new heights and seems too thick to take pride in itself over even that slight accomplishment. How veteran actor Kevin McCarthy was wrangled into this one to play a dean burgeoning with homicidal intent (a role that he really puts his all into, despite the anti-illustrious pedigree of the series) is beyond me, but if anyone else working on the film possessed a fraction of his energy maybe things could have turned out differently. Because it's more-or-less geared at children, the college atmosphere sits uncomfortably: the usual panty raids and raging parties are replaced by toothless Prank Week shenanigans, but the film still engages in light sex and nudity, so who is the intended audience for this again? I'd suppose pre-teens who wanted to sneak one past their parents or young adults with the psychological maturity of toothpicks. Either way, I can't imagine anyone being thrilled after hitting the rewind button on this schlock back in 1991. Every film in this gonzo series has been totally different from the last, and besides the tonal tweaks the most noticeable added feature in Ghoulies Go to College is voices for the ghoulie trio, who apparently have been Larry, Curly, and Moe reincarnated this whole time (who knew). Some changes are better left unchanged. Director John Carl Buechler also helmed the worst Friday the 13th sequel (Part VII: The New Blood (1988), as if you needed me to tell you) and the original Troll (1986), a film with the distinction of being outlasted in the public's consciousness by its train wreck of a sequel. You'd have to pay me in head trauma to sit through Ghoulies IV (1994) any time before another twenty years are through.

The Cat and the Canary (1978) dir. Radley Metzger

One not-so-stormy but assuredly dark night this past month I watched two film versions of the 1922 old-dark-house theatrical murder mystery The Cat and the Canary, the first being Elliott Nugent's from 1939, starring Paulette Goddard and Bob Hope, and the second being Radley Metzger's from 1978, starring quite a few people but most significantly Honor Blackman, Olivia Hussey, and Wilfrid Hyde-White. I don't have much to say about the 1939 version other than to note that it was sufficiently charming and that Bob Hope (while certainly not a bucket of laughs) played an interesting male lead in that his character's defining features seemed to be his decidedly nebbish and milk-livered nature. In contrast, I found the 1978 version of the tale to be of quite high interest, especially to the genre fan of eclectic tastes. Chief among these points of interest is the idetity of the film's maker: Radley Metzger, the 1970s porn chic auteur of such moody, artistic, and emotionally affecting films as Score (1973), The Lickerish Quartet (1970), and The Image (1975). The 1978 Cat and the Canary is one of only a couple films outside of erotica and pornography that Metzger ever made, and the mere fact that he-- a director with an established adult film career-- could wrangle together the cast and budget for this (relatively speaking) classy affair is an accomplishment akin to some lucky chap's tale out of a ten-cent Horatio Alger paperback, with blowjobs in the place of rags. And Metzger handles himself admirably. This is a stylish and clever take on the story, replete with amusing pitch-black humor and a pinch of sadism. Though torture, murder, cousin-on-cousin incest, and lesbianism are all key elements of this Gothic stew, they're implied rather than made explicit. This restraint is bound to bore some horror fans, as there's no murder to this murder mystery until after the halfway point, but the snail's pace lends itself well to fashioning the biting character moments and subtle atmosphere that are this film's proverbial bread and butter. Wilfrid Hyde-White's performance as the cranky patriarch whose inheritance everyone is scheming over is by far the highlight of the proceedings as he communicates from beyond the grave with his assembled guests (and the filmgoing audience!) through deliciously meta prerecorded film reels. It's nowhere near the charming, erotic, and harrowing psychological heights of Metzger's singular career in filmmaking, but The Cat and the Canary remains an amusing and little-seen curiosity that's well worth the footnote.

Meltdown 08.4: Francophilia Part 4

Count Dracula 

(El conde Drácula) 

(1970)

What begins as a slavishly faithful, po-faced, and stylish adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel eventually devolves into something, well, less than that, but for a movie that credits its editing to Bruno Mattei, hey, we're lucky it even resembles a motion picture. Credit where credit is due: unlike any other adaptation up to 1970, El conde Dracula makes a serious go of adapting the source material with proper reverence (and it predates Coppola's "Bram Stoker's" label of "authenticity" by over two decades). These novelistic aspirations are most noticeable in the film's fantastic first act, which depicts in minute detail Jonathan Harker's visit to the Count's castle in Transylvania (down to the baby-eating). Christopher Lee's performance of Dracula in this film is a wild divergence from his previous portrayals of the character in the series of Hammer films from decades previous. Here he's an intentionally isolated racist, lonely and angry at the world. He's defined through his hunger for power, even if that power can only be the small physical power he wields over those in his vampiric thrall, and not that power implicit in possessing the same mighty conquering military force of his ancestors. In this sense, this incarnation of Dracula is (much like the novel's, but maybe even more so than the novel's) a pathetic figure: dangerous-- surely-- but ultimately ill-equipped for the realities of the modern world. Moreover, he sports a killer 'stache. (Of course, Lee was still playing Dracula for Hammer at this time, so imagining this Dracula alongside the bloodsucker of, for instance, Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) is a draining mental exercise.) Otherwise, the cast is a Who's Who of European genre stars (Klaus Kinski, Herbert Lom, Paul Muller, Maria Rohm, Jack Taylor, Emma Cohen, and Franco's early muse-- Soledad Miranda-- in their first major collaboration together), and though they all do fine in their parts, the stoic tone of the film prevents all but Kinski from standing out. (Kinski is Renfield, naturally, and his mute scenery-chewing at one point earns him the title of "Soup Bowl Pollock.") 

Once the film exits back through the Borgo Pass and returns to London, the adaptation starts playing fast and loose, and this is where the film probably becomes problematic for most viewers. While some changes make sense in light of a need to condense narrative (the collapsing of Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris into one character) and others are most likely due to actors' availability (Van Helsing's "slight stroke"), still others appear arbitrary and so less meaningful (like Dracula's death by torch rather than by bowie knife to the heart). Unarguably the most arbitrary and absurd moment in the film is when Van Helsing, Seward, and Morris enter the Count's home with some slaying in mind and are confronted by a room full of snarling, sentient taxidermied animals. It's a more of an, uh, intense stare-off with constant quick edits and zooms, but it's an enlivening dose of batshit Franco spectacle in an otherwise perhaps too staid film. Being Franco, the film does make sure to put extra emphasis on the erotic component of Dracula's vampirism (an emphasis easily conveyed by Soledad Miranda's constant subtle expressions of ecstasy), but-- more interestingly-- it also highlights the unnerving near-glee that our would-be vampire hunters take in bloodily slaughtering sleeping vampire brides (their once beloved Lucy included), adding layers of gender dynamics and human barbarity into the picture. Count Dracula is a fine film earnestly made, but not at all what the typical Franco admirer would expect, nor exactly what the admirer of standard issue classic horror would hope for. It's an unloved mutt, stuck somewhere between past cinematic horrors and the erotic brew that Franco was soon to stir, with no clear place in the world of its time. Kind of like the Count himself.

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein 

(Dracula contra Frankenstein) 

(1972)

Call me batty, but I find Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (perhaps more commonly known by the literal translation of its misleading original Spanish title, Dracula vs. Frankenstein) to be a fascinating exercise in updating the performance style and visual language of classic silent horror filmmaking for the 1970s. Moreover, the film simultaneously expresses a cynical contempt for its audience that's unmatched in Franco's filmography. If Count Dracula was an earnest but flawed attempt at portraying a classic literary monster on the silver screen, Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein messily demonstrates how dissatisfying those same monsters can become when commodified as defanged puppets in money-grubbing Hollywood monster mashes. Of course, that's precisely what happened with Universal's stable of monsters when its members were demoted from starring in the artistic successes of Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and James Whales's Frankenstein (1931) to kindergarten cash-ins like House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), and the unabashed farce of Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). I can only speculate, but the notion that there might have been commercial pressure on Franco to produce a monster team-up film after the success of Count Dracula doesn't seem unreasonable. And if that was the case, it's easy to read the resulting film as a visual essay on exactly how lightweight that concept is. After all, how powerful, how menacing are our cinematic monsters when they're teamed up like superheroes and expected to execute pratfalls? 

Not very, is what Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein posits. Its monsters are mind-controlled, blank-faced props, mutely enacting the bidding of Dr. Rainer von Frankenstein (Dennis Price). At the climax of the film, when Dr. Frankenstein has decided he no longer has any use for them, he slaughters his primary monsters with nary a tussle: Dracula (a perpetually snarling Howard Vernon) fails to stir from his slumber as he's staked, and Frankenstein's Creature (Fernando Bilbao, in a Boris Karloff costume less convincing than the one your dad wore when you were seven) meekly and willingly shuffles into the electricity-producing box of his doom. The film's title and opening text almost guarantee a monster brawl, but the film seems pleased with itself for almost completely denying any such thing as it wraps up. Besides the anticlimactic deaths of its main baddies, the only monster-tussling provided is a brief scrap between the Creature and a Wolf Man, who enters the film out of nowhere and just as soon departs from it. Did the Creature kill him? We're neither told nor shown, and so again the film is rubbing our faces in what it sees as juvenile expectations for cross-monster encounters: they fought, you got what you came for, does it honestly matter who won? The film's cynicism materializes through both its critique of these sort of commercial horror ventures and its self-awareness of its own production of pure, incompetent schlock.

One might argue that the incompetence of this schlock was not at all a desired feature, and, sure, that's possible, but underestimating Franco always seems a losing proposition. As it so happens, Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein is fascinating on a technical level, despite whatever intentional or unintentional narrative deficiencies it possesses. It's virtually a silent film, with almost no dialogue whatsoever in its opening twenty minutes and very little after that (so little that it all could have easily fit on a few intertitle cards). The narrative is communicated through the actors' broad performances and the emotional tenor through its orchestral score (like the score for Count Dracula, another Bruno Nicolai effort) and ADR'd sound effects. This stylistic choice is pulled off with surprising skill (no other film of Franco's feels quite like this one) and creates the curious juxtaposition of a trite commercial horror premise in the mode of a film from horror's silent, earnestly horror-minded origins. It's as if the film is trying to show us what it would be like-- and how dreadful it would be-- if halfway through Nosferatu (1922) a Wolf Man jumped out of the bushes and clawed at Count Orlok's elongated face.

Daughter of Dracula 

(La fille de Dracula) 

(1972)

If I were told I was the last living descendant of Count Dracula, I know I'd probably spend my undead afterlife rolling about all day and night with the lovely Anne Libert and her massive hair, much like Britt Nichols does in this film. Released in the same year as Dracula, Prisoner of Darkness, the more typical Daughter of Dracula falls in line with Franco's other erotic lady vampire films like Female Vampire (1973) and Vampyros Lesbos (1971). While failing to create the stylish and melancholy excellence of those superior films, Daughter of Dracula nonetheless survives with the help of a bleeding vampire heart of its own. The main narrative (when the film chooses to stick with it, which is not all that often) concerns the jealous, possessive love that our Dracula daughter, Luisa Karlstein (Britt Nichols), has for her adorable and devoted cousin, Karine (Anne Libert), which evolves into awkward passion before exploding into if-I-can't-have-you-then-no-one-can vampire violence set to a second cousin of the Merrie Melodies tune. Karine's tragic fate (she wasn't even considering leaving the irrational Luisa!) provides a coherent emotional anchor for the film, but even then its often crowded out by all the other stuff going on over the film's brief running time. There's a police investigation (naturally), an occult expert,  the nearly inexplicable basement appearance of the stone-stiff ancestral vamp, Count Karlstein (Howard Vernon, reprising his non-performance from Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein), and a series of voyeuristic (read: eyeball zooms!) stalkings and slashings by a giallo-esque killer. That last bit is especially odd:  for reasons entirely unclear, most of Luisa's vamp attacks occur when she's decked out in a fedora and trenchcoat. This visual association with the giallo film-- at its peak in 1972 and always resplendent in leering, maladjusted peeping toms and janes-- lends some emphasis to Luisa's psychosexual issues, but it also results in the film feeling confused: our villainess trades out a straight razor for a pair of fangs, and we haven't a clue as to why. But this one's undeniably a quickie for the exploitation crowd. Not convinced? Peep the conclusion of Karine's emotional death scene, in which the camera, nonplussed, pans from a close-up of her lifeless face to a close-up of her pubic hair. Classy, Jess.

Revenge in the House of Usher 

(El hundimiento de la casa Usher)

(1988)

Well, one supposes Franco's declining reputation in the 1980s wasn't spurred for no reason whatsoever, and Revenge in the House of Usher is pretty good reason. Though purporting to be based upon the similarly titled E. A. Poe novella, the film is nonetheless another thinly veiled Orloff variation set in a house that crumbles at the conclusion. Howard Vernon returns to familiar territory as Dr. Usher, a hermetic mad scientist with an assistant named Morpho and a daughter with a bizarre, incurable disease named Melissa. Melissa's affliction has led Orloff to commit sundry murders in her name, as the only temporary relief from her debilitating illness comes from complete neck-to-neck blood transfusions by way of nubile lasses. Unlike the Orloffs of past films, Dr. Usher displays a certain intriguing uniqueness by admitting that he's an unremitting sadist who discovered that he enjoyed every scream that his killing for "a larger purpose" produced. This is an explicit dimension of the Orloff personality only hinted at in previous films. Previous films like, say, The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962), which Revenge in the House of Usher helpfully reminds us of by dedicating its entire second act to replaying the greatest hits from that landmark film. Yes, unfortunately, this film is one of those lazy footage recyclers, in the tradition of spendthrift classics like Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (1987), Boogeyman II (1983), and much of Jim Wynorski's filmography. It's a shame, because what's here apart from the roughly twenty minutes of padding is a moderately intriguing film that interests not due to the ways in which it adheres to the Orloff formula, but rather through its divergences (like the icky ghost of Usher's dead wife who haunts him and desires to drag him down to hell with her; Lina Romay's devoted assistant character, who appears to be supernaturally trapped by the house and who messily makes out with a member of Menudo; and of course the crumbling Usher mansion, the shaky existence of which is tied to the grim fate of its owner). Alas, all of this original material plays a far too minor role in what emerges as a basic retread with rotted foundations begging to give way.