Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) dir. Terence Fisher

Logline: Baron Frankenstein returns as a benevolent freeloader working on the transference of souls. His first successful experiment places the soul of an executed man into the body of his female lover. Gender-bending mayhem ensues.

Note: This entry is the opening section of a much larger paper on sex, gender, and the female Creature in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Therefore, it's not the usual type of analysis I do here (it also necessarily eschews much of the film), but I think it's fine enough reading nonetheless.

Of the sundry adaptations and reinterpretations of the Frankenstein myth, one of those most deserving of feminist critical evaluation is the 1967 British film Frankenstein Created Woman. Produced by the renowned Hammer Film Productions and directed by Terence Fisher, Frankenstein Created Woman is the fourth Frankenstein film of the seven that Hammer would create between 1957 and 1974, and—significantly—the only to feature a female Creature. This Creature, named Christina (played by Susan Denberg), is an intriguing and ambiguous figure, simultaneously monstrous and sympathetic (much like Shelley’s own Creature). For the film’s first hour, Christina is not yet the product of the experimentation by Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), but a hideously scarred and disfigured young woman, the daughter of an innkeeper, working at the inn that they maintain together somewhere in 19th century Europe (probably Switzerland). In her naturally scarred and disfigured state (although we are not given the cause of her deformities, we are informed that they were present from birth), Christina presents a sort of monstrous corporeality that others find repellent. Tellingly, a group of three foppish Dandies, who represent the film’s materialization of institutionalized culture, cruelly torment her with teases and insults concerning her natural visage. Although her appearance is the product of natural processes, the manufactured society that the Dandies represent will not accept her: Christina does not adequately fit the role of what a “natural” woman should look like. Instead, she is the result of actual nature at work, with all of its inconsistencies and abnormalities. Nor does Christina act as society would have her. She is loyal to her father out of love, but is not afraid of disobeying his orders. She is sexually liberated, sleeping with the man whom she loves, though they are not married and her father forbids their meeting. Moreover, she makes the tragically autonomous decision to take her own life after her lover has been wrongly executed.

It is at this point in the film’s narrative that Baron Frankenstein’s revivifying, unnatural science steps in to rectify Christina’s unfortunate situation, making of her a “healthy young woman.” Through unknown means, Christina is brought back to life and, more notably, cured of her physical deformities through Frankenstein’s surgical knowledge. She emerges from her bandages as a make-up caked bombshell (a blonde one at that, Frankenstein’s science having also somehow cured her of her naturally auburn hair color). As an aesthetically “natural” member of society, Christina has been robbed of her outsider status and the liberties it afforded her, leaving her permitted to do little more than stay indoors and prepare Frankenstein’s breakfasts. But it is this permutation of Christina, not the one who looks monstrous, that becomes the monster as she embarks on a crusade of vengeance against the three Dandies who wronged her executed lover. Fittingly, she destroys them by first seducing them, turning the more broadly accepted sexual import that has been implanted into her back on society. The Dandies find the artificial woman that Christina has been warped into utterly irresistible, failing to discern that she is the same woman they mercilessly mocked. She murders them all, and—her mission completed—reasserts her own autonomy however fleetingly by again throwing herself off a cliff into a rushing river in order to drown. We plainly see that her enculturation has gone awry: the “natural” woman of society that Frankenstein’s patriarchal science has made of her stands in direct opposition to the true processes of nature (those of Christina’s original body and unrestrained, independent female identity). She becomes a strictly codified and delineated female body, which her true feminine nature rebels against. Unfortunately, she cannot rebel through a refusal to acquiesce to male demands, but only through brutal violence. Christina is a tragic character and Frankenstein Created Woman is a tragic film, one that appears to lament the expectations society places on women, forcing them to act and appear totally against their own natures in order to appear “natural.”

Nightmares Come at Night (1970) dir. Jess Franco

Logline: An exotic dancer moves in with her biggest fan and begins having nightmares that she's murdered someone. All well and good except for the fact that she's waking up with actual blood on her hands. Gasp!

At this point it feels safe to call myself more than a casual admirer of the cinema of Jess Franco. Franco, that excessively prolific Spanish wunderkind, has directed (as of 2012) nearly 200 feature length films, the best of which all fall under his unique brand of erotic horror. His low budget productions are often criticized for their lack of quality control, stylistic flairs, thematic impenetrability, and pandering to exploitation markets. Personally, I feel that any sort of close scrutiny of his corpus would reveal precisely the opposite: Franco is the closest horror cinema has to a poet outside of anyone besides Jean Rollin. Where Franco has the slight advantage of Rollin is in his sheer quantity and breadth of genre exploration (which of course may be part of the problem in re: the general conception of Franco--how can someone who produces so much so quickly possibly be any good? For an answer, look towards Fassbinder), but also in the chasm in-between their respective approaches to filmmaking: Rollin knows he's crafting poetry, while Franco is creating cinematic visions closer to abstract jazz. Some of his best films (A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Eugenie de Sade, Succubus, Venus in Furs) all operate on this basic level of free-wheeling experimentation and improvisation, becoming all the more hypnotic for it. When he's really on the mark, it becomes difficult to look away from a Franco film--his best bewitch and ensnare the viewer with their sensuality and psychoanalytic fervor.

Nightmares Come at Night is not a film produced at those same heights of profundity, but it's an intriguing picture with enough elements to recommend it. Filmed in the same year as Franco's Vampyros Lesbos, Eugenie de Sade, and She Killed in Ecstasy, it is decidedly the lesser entry of the bunch, possessing neither the intense focus or beguiling eccentricities of any of those films. It's not even much of a horror film, though it finds some touchstones in the contemporaneous Italian giallo movement and the wonderful Gaslight-inspired thrillers. What the film does have is a lot of style: a crafty, foreshadowing still frame montage credit sequence; scenes of eroticism filmed in extreme close up, falling out of focus to capture little but entwined limbs; cutaway shots of parrots flapping around; fascinating play with light and shadows; a truly magnificent and eclectic score by Bruno Nicolai; a few all too brief scenes with the late Soledad Miranda, the most entrancing woman ever captured on celluloid. The film's highpoint occurs in flashback, as the nightmare-inflicted protagonist recounts (and we become visually-privy to) her old strip routine at the nightclub she used to work at--it's more than 10 minutes of lazy seduction as she performs what may be the slowest and least active striptease ever captured on film (the majority consists of her laying down, caressing a feather boa, and shaking off a slipper). A scene like this captures our attention not simply because of its titillating content, but because it allows us to become the actual audience referred to, lingering and enjoying the deferral of completion that the voiceover explains. It's a cheeky interlude with an ever cheekier conclusion, and it boils down to a fine mush one of the aspects that makes Franco's films so eminently watchable--they're a knowing tease.

The thematic content is nowhere Franco hasn't been before. We see abusive and destructive dependent relationships leading to betrayal and personal cataclysm, half-baked into a convoluted crime plot about stolen money and murder that, in all honesty, I could hardly make sense of much less follow. Not that it matters much-- Nightmares Come at Night, like most Franco, is an experience rather than a linear narrative: a free-form assemblage of sights and sounds that is as likely to unnerve as excite.

The Asphyx (1973) dir. Peter Newbrook

Logline: After the accidental boating deaths of his son and lover, melancholy scientist Sir Hugo Cunningham extends his research into immortality. Aided by his futuristic inventions and his adopted son Giles, he begins documenting, capturing, and containing the ancient Greek spirit known as the "Asphyx"--the ghostly, unseen apparition that leads the dying to the underworld. As long as the Asphyx is contained, Sir Hugo discovers, a person will never die. This known, he desires to ensure such a fate for himself and his loved ones, whatever the cost...

Peter Newbrook's 1973 production The Asphyx (his first and only as a director, after a long career as cinematographer and camera operator in England) is an engrossing variation on the Frankenstein mythos. In this version, we see the doctor and his creation blended into one: Sir Hugo becomes his own experiment in the attempt to halt the progress of death. Such an adjustment leads to all sorts of internal pathos as those two aspects of his character battle it out within him. His ambitions lead him to forcing immortality on his family, and when his attempts come to a disastrous end, he both feels and is responsible for the deaths of his loved ones-- simultaneously embodying the narcissistic creature and the mournful creator (or is it the other ways around?). Putting both Frankenstein and his creature into the same body leads to a fascinating conclusion where, in a parallel with the voluntary sojourn to the Arctic, we find the immortal Sir Hugo retreating into poverty and homelessness over the decades, as Victorian London morphs into that of 1972 and he becomes a grotesque yet invisible part of the setting. We read such self-enforced punishment through solitude even more ambivalently here because of Sir Hugo's crystal-clear status as a tragic hero. And although ostensibly a morality picture, the thematic message is also pleasantly murky. We receive a bit of notice for the perils of technology (hammered home by the film's magnificent closing image of Sir Hugo and his immortal guinea pig being crushed (ineffectually) between two cars in a head-on collision), but also for the perils of ambition (Sir Hugo's daughter, Christina, warns that humans "are merely creatures of God, not God," but this is shortly before she volunteers to be mock-guillotined and made immortal, so, perhaps she's not the finest judge).

More importantly, we notice that the film is clearly not totally condemning technology once we observe how much darn fun it has with it. The period setting is rife with anachronistic equipment, luxuriating in Sir Hugo's many steampunk inventions (moving picture cameras and projectors, light boosters, containment units, plus an electric chair and a gas chamber). These elements are absolutely fascinating to observe. For instance, the initial capture and containment of a guinea pig's Asphyx is the film's most gripping sequence and one that we're glad to find the frame lingering on--it's a bit like what we might imagine a Victorian Ghostbusters would resemble. Also neat is the implication that Sir Hugo's many inventions would have been introduced into our society way back in the nineteenth century (and, consequently, altered science and modern existence quite drastically) if not for his downfall. Of course, this realization adds to another theme reinforced by that final image: the sentient, marching progress of dangerous, destructive technology continues even with the truly irresponsible inventors taken out of the equation.

There's a lot to like here. A strong script is bolstered by inordinately good performances from Robert Stephens and Robert Powell (Stephens especially dominates his many later scenes). Set design is impeccable, with Sir Hugo's inventions taking the crown--almost wouldn't have minded if all the film showed was their inner-workings. Moreover, The Asphyx features a peculiar and unique visual style; in almost all instances (excluding a well-filmed fluid P.O.V. shot), the cinematography treats the action in the same flat and static manner as we often see with filmed stage plays. This isn't necessarily a detriment, as the film uses the style to its advantage, allowing us to gaze undisturbed at all those wonderful mechanisms and enlivened performances.

The Blu-ray from Kino Lorber's Redemption label is very nice looking. The print is clean, detail is high, and movement within the frame adds some nice depth. Audio is quite clear but about as unspectacular as these 70s productions go. Sadly, I discovered only after the fact that the disc contains a composite extended cut of the film with over ten minutes of additional material spliced in from a low quality print source. I'll certainly need to revisit this version at a later date.

Jason Goes to Hell (1993) dir. Adam Marcus

Logline: Jason Voorhees is dead. Unfortunately, his double-sized demon heart (almost at nice-Grinch levels!) lives on and is possessing random strangers, making them carry out the normal shenanigans.

Jason Goes to Hell presents certain problems to any fans and admirers of the Friday the 13th franchise, foremost among these being that in no way does it resemble a Friday the 13th film. Gone are the summer camps, teenagers, camp counselors, and creative machete techniques of yore, replaced by body-hopping demon slugs and jokes like the one plastered on a banner in front of Crystal Lake’s most popular diner: “JASON IS DEAD 2 FOR 1 BURGER SALE!” We can note this fundamental shift away from the series’ typical focus as early the film’s first scene: zombified Jason falls victim to the old defenseless-showering-woman-is-in-actuality-a-military-operative-leading-you-into-an-ambush-ploy, and is promptly exploded to bits. This is an unexpected and intentionally humorous turn*, but one that sets us up for what will play as a tonally irresolute slasher. And that’s a problem, too: we can’t even call Jason Goes to Hell a proper slasher. Instead, it’s a comedy horror with fantasy overtones (and we’re talking Masters of the Universe level fantasy here)—it’s an uninspired knockoff of The Hidden with Jason Voorhees bookends.

Reconsidering, perhaps it’s unfair to call the film uninspired; Jason Goes to Hell’s whole M.O. is to introduce new elements into the series. Unfortunately, these sparkly features display little understanding of the appeal of a Friday film and, perhaps more importantly, no sense of where horror films were in the early 90s. Parts of this thing feel so much like a corny magical, supernatural action-adventure from the mid-80s. We’re presented with a sketchy quasi-mythological background for the Voorhees family and Jason’s revivifying powers that doesn’t make a lick of sense (for instance, why does a normal knife turn into a ceremonial dagger upon the moment Jason’s cousin grasps it in order to slay him?). We see things like cheap, orange CG-orbs circling Jason’s body and a cadre of giant sand arms pulling him to hell. Most ludicrous of all: Jason is fully reanimated into his pre-exploded form at the film’s climax by way of the demon slug carrying his soul crawling into the womb of his dead half-sister. One moment we’re watching the demon slug’s frantic P.O.V. journey back to the womb and the next we cut to a fully-grown (and, strangely, burned and zombified) Jason bursting out through the door of a house to attack the survivors. Director Adam Marcus and company not only understand biology, but they incorporate it with class.

Jason Goes to Hell also attempts a bit of ham-fisted satire of early 90s media culture and its eponymous killer’s entrance into the popular canon (after all—and regardless of the rights snafu that left this unbranded as a Friday—the film was marketed on Jason’s name alone). The former is tackled through a rather superfluous side-story concerning the host of an exploitation television news program entitled American Casefile, who plans to stage a story about Jason’s return by stealing a body from the morgue, stashing it in the old Voorhees stead, and catching its reveal on tape. This storyline goes nowhere (the TV host is possessed by Jason-slug immediately after revealing the plan), so it would be a stretch to make much out of it other than “gee, what won’t those media hounds do for ratings?” Slightly more interesting is the latter issue of Jason’s status as a pop culture icon, but even this seems to be only cursorily addressed. That Crystal Lake diner sells hockey mask-shaped Voorhees Burgers and Jason Fingers on the menu, and everyone in the region seems to be (finally) aware of Jason’s mounting body count, but this is by no means a clever critique/rejuvenation of the popular character à la New Nightmare (again, Jason is barely even in this thing). No, what it truly is becomes clear in the film’s final shot, when Freddy Krueger’s glove shoots from the dirt to pull Jason’s abandoned mask underground: a teaser trailer of sorts for another lousy movie to be released ten years hence.

*and it’s not as if humor fits the series poorly—Parts III-V have their own goofily charming moments, while Part VI—the series’ first thoroughbred comedy—in not entirely unsuccessful in that aim.

Play Misty for Me (1971) dir. Clint Eastwood

Logline: Playboy radio deejay Dave Garver wants to retire from his womanizing ways and settle down with his estranged girlfriend. Unfortunately, an obsessed listener is inserting herself into his life in uncomfortable and eventually frightening ways.

Play Misty for Me was Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut and the progenitor of the psychotic lover subgenre of thrillers, best typified by Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction. But while the creaky morality (don’t cheat on your wife) and reactionary gender role stereotyping (strong women be crazy) of Fatal Attraction has always sat wrong with me, I was pleasantly surprised to find in Play Misty for Me a more nuanced if still flawed presentation of the situation. The film seems to me more a direct condemnation of Eastwood’s character Dave than a vilification of Evelyn (Jessica Walter), the psychotic lover who plagues him. But, unlike the later Fatal Attraction, this film doesn’t condemn Dave for his initiation of an affair with Evelyn in the first place (unlike Michael Douglas, Dave isn’t married and, in fact, his girlfriend has already left him because of his incessant lapses into temptation), but because of his inaction in all the events following. As Evelyn’s erratic behavior increases and eventually passes into dangerous territory, Dave does little to rectify matters. He instead continually defers the confrontation—he’ll place her in a cab, drive hurriedly away, or—in some early cases—even sleep with her rather than deal realistically with the situation. These deferrals only exacerbate the psychological experience of a clearly damaged Evelyn—she becomes more hysterical when he continues to cave to her demands while clearly investing none of his emotional self in them.

The film’s most striking scene comes after Evelyn’s attempted suicide. She wakes up from a nightmare in Dave’s bed while recovering and asks him to hold her and not let go. Although he’s planned a date with his girlfriend Tobie, Dave silently acquiesces to Evelyn’s desire—he sits with her curled against him, the camera slowly zooming in on his face, chillingly colored with no emotion at all. In this moment, there is not a trace of empathy discernible in Dave—he seems like the sociopath. Yet the scene continues: the extreme zoom transitions to the exact shot but several hours later. The sun has fallen, and as the camera pulls back out we see that Dave’s face has evolved into an expression of disgust and barely-concealed rage. His inaction has not only intensified Evelyn’s behavior but has slowly bottled up his own frustrated feelings. When Dave does perform a genuine action in order to end the relationship, the result of his prior concealment on this action is devastating—the hatred is transmuted into violence, as one punch sends Evelyn crashing through a window and down a cliff face. It’s a horrifying end to the film. We cannot call it a victory or a moment of relief, but a tragedy. The feeling that the situation could have been resolved differently, more pleasantly, pervades. Three quarters of the way through the film, after Evelyn has repeatedly slashed Dave’s housekeeper with a knife in a fit of jealous rage, Dave comments to the police sergeant on the scene—as if the thought had just occurred to him—that “what she really needs is a psychiatrist.” The sergeant’s sardonic reply (“Really?”) mirrors the audience’s own—in Dave we are presented with a character living an entirely internal and selfish existence, unable to anticipate, feel, or respond to the emotional lives of others. We can’t help but wish he were a little quicker on the uptake. In this light, the film's horror derives not from the machinations of a psychotic stalker, but from the complete disconnect we witness between the emotions, intentions, and mutual regard of the two people embroiled in the human relationship at the film's core—a relationship producing little else but madness and violence.