The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - Witchfinder General (1968), directed by Michael Reeves

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Witchfinder General", by Witchfinder General

     Grab any newspaper, or more recently a webpage from a news site, and you’ll find stories that are far worse than any horror movie you’ve seen before. Ghosts and vampires and space aliens are certainly spooky, but the fact of the matter is that they’re fictional, i.e. not real. Our fellow human beings are real, depending on your level of solipsism, and the things that they do have a tangible effect on the world. Murder, torture, rape, bigotry, all the ills of society that we so despise we bring upon ourselves. Sometimes it is used an fuel for reform, sometimes it is ignored or even encouraged by those with their own agenda, but no matter what it seems determined to stick around.

     Oh, and it makes for some great movie material.

     Witchfinder General, otherwise known by the awesome but otherwise inaccurate title The Conqueror Worm, takes place during a particularly violent and hate-filled time in the world: 1645,in the midst of the English Civil War. Ol’ Albion is split roughly in half not only on political lines, Oliver Cromwell and his supporters on one side and the monarchy on the other, but on religious ones as well, with Catholics and non-Catholics squaring off against each other as well. Law and order has fallen to the wayside leaving chaos and misery in its wake, and from that chaos comes a popular new form of paranoia and prejudice. The villages of East Anglia are apparently infested with witches and witchcraft, driving its people to ruin with their satanic practices, and it is up to the Witchfinders, those paragons of divine virtue to root them out and take care of them. Through torture and executions, of course.

     Yeah, there’s a story here, an army captain wanting revenge against a corrupt witchfinder, but presumably that’s not what movie audiences were into in the late 60s. They want the violence, and Michael Reeves piles it on like a fat man putting cream cheese on a bagel. Frequent, brutal torture scenes, agonizing drawn-out hangings, even a rape thrown in there for good measure, and you start to see where the term ‘video nasty’ got its start. Hell, if they didn’t use really obvious red paint for blood you might be forgiven for mistaking this as some kind of weird prequel to the Saw franchise. Both films play to the ‘brutality of man’ idea while ironically desensitizing you to violence by smothering you with violence, both feel overly pretentious (although WG at least masks it in a period piece), and both just kind of suck. They’re basically cousins!

     I originally picked this film for the Marathon because it featured Vincent Price (here playing the devious Witchfinder Matthew Hopkins), and I wanted to make sure I didn’t skimp out on the horror legends. While it is good to see Price getting work, I don’t think he changes expression even once throughout this entire damn movie. He’s menacing sure, Vincent Price can do that in his sleep, but it's such a bland, unremarkable form of menacing. Compare it to his work in Masque of the Red Death or The Abominable Dr. Phibes and you wonder if Vincent had swallowed a couple Valium before each take. Hopkins doesn’t have to be super melodramatic and theatrical to be a good villain, but at least make it so I’m just sitting around waiting for him to be killed off. I should be relieved that good has triumphed over evil, not that I can finally get on with the rest of my life.

     Witchfinder General, aka The Conqueror Worm is a mentally exhausting, ultimately miserable experience. What could have been a poignant warning on the dangers of mob mentality and bigotry is pushed aside for 70 or minutes of torture porn, which is uncomfortable to watch and that ends up feeling frustratingly pointless and nihilistic for the sake of nihilism. Unless you’re really into that torture porn stuff I’d say don’t waste your time, and even then there are probably more recent and more gory films to satiate your appetite. Or you’re throwing a Renaissance fair themed Halloween party/movie marathon and you’re desperate for material, but that sounds really dumb. Don’t do that dumb thing please.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Spirits of the Dead (1968), directed by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "A Dream Within A Dream", by The Alan Parsons Project

     If there are two things that you just don’t see all that often in movies nowadays, it’s Edgar Allan Poe and anthology movies.

     Now as far as film legacies go, there aren’t many American writers, especially horror writers, that have achieved the same level of success on the silver screen Poe. There have not only been scores of films based directly or indirectly on his work (The Raven from earlier in this list, the Roger Corman series in the late 60s), but even films based on Poe himself (anybody remember that one movie with John Cusack?). That being said, there hasn’t really been anything Poe-related out recently, and it doesn’t seem like there’s as much of a outcry for Poe than there was in the past. Is America just not in a mid 19th century mood anymore, or are we just not interested in things related to books anymore? Who can say?

     In the case of anthology films, or films comprised of separate story segments (occasionally directed by separate people) compiled into one artistic piece, well those have never been all that prevalent in general. I can name drop a few, The Twilight Zone Movie, Creepshow, Black Sabbath, but it’s a pretty underused framing device that emphasizes brevity . Hell, even anthology TV shows are rare, despite the incredible pedigree that it has garnered for the horror and sci-fi genres (the Twilight Zone of course, the Outer Limits, Tales From the Crypt, Night Gallery if you’re being generous). Has modern America become so obsessed with the idea of continuity and arcs that we’ve killed off episodic storytelling? Should shows stick to 6 episodes if they’re going to stretch one story arc over an entire season? Who can say?

     For those who love the works of Poe and anthology films, look no farther than Spirits of the Dead, otherwise known as Tales of Mystery and Histoires Extraordinaires, starring Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda and Terence Stamp, among others. From the U.K. we have Roger Vadim with “Metzengerstein”, a story about a beautiful and sadistic Countess, her cousin, and a mysterious black horse. From France we have “William Wilson”, directed by Louis Malle, about a sociopathic young man who is stalked by another man who just so happens to also be named William Wilson. Finally, there’s “Toby Dammit” by Italian director Federico Fellini, detailing the tragic downward spiral of an neurotic, alcoholic actor who’s arrived in Rome for an awards ceremony. Fun fact: Only the first two parts of this movie are actually based on stories found in the Poe collection Tales of Mystery & Imagination, which is the name it first released under in the U.K.

     Out of the three, I found that it was Fellini’s contribution that stood out as the most interesting, both narratively and creatively speaking. Vadim and Malle’s stories are entertaining enough, and they stuck to the Poe identity much closer than Fellini, but there’s something so… ‘of the times’ about them that keeps them from standing out. The extensive use of colors, the cheesecake eroticism, the way the camera lingers on certain things to make sure you know they’re important, it all feels like something you’d see in, say, Corman’s Masque of the Red Death or a late era Hammer horror movie. That’s not to say they’re bad of course, but you know what you’re going to get with those stories, and they run on just long enough that you’re relieved when they finally decide to wrap up.

     “Toby Dammit” however, despite having the least in common with it’s source material, seems far more unique and prescient even today. It’s a surreal, kaleidoscopic mix of paranoia and self-destruction from beginning to end, and only rarely does it seem like we as the audience are going to be let in on what’s running through the titular Toby’s mind as stumbles madly to his inevitable conclusion. In that way, I think that Fellini manages to capture the sense of ‘fear & loathing’, that infamous state of mind coined by the great Hunter Thompson, better than any other filmmaker I’ve seen yet. Even Terry Gilliam, the man who directed the excellent Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, never quite reached the frenetic rush of anxiety, self-hatred and dissociation as “Toby” manages to achieve at its climax. It’s a question of pacing and it’s a question of brevity, and Fellini appears to feel more at ease with them than Vadim and Malle, who struggle at times in their sections to pad out their runtimes. Especially Vadim, who feels the need to stick a multi-minute long montage between a woman and her horse in the second half. And trust me, that’s not as interesting as the internet would have you believe.

     Vadim’s section is easily the weakest of the three, but I wouldn’t say it’s outright bad. Malle’s is rather predictable, which might be the fault of the author rather than the director really, although there is some worthwhile cinematography. Fellini’s is, as I mentioned, quite good. So overall I suppose it averages out to a pretty good movie, and I’d say it has earned a recommendation. If you’re working a very Poe-centric Halloween this, make sure you get this one in the queue.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), directed by Nicolas Roeg

I decided to spice things up a bit for the final 10, so from here to number 1 all the movies listed will be foreign films. By that I mean films not made in the United States, and of course preferably of the sci-fi/fantasy/thriller/horror genre.

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Starman", by David Bowie

     You know, I’m a huge fan of David Bowie. I love his genre experimentation, I think his fusion of theatre and avant-garde fashion into his music and performances helped push rock and pop to a level of artistry it had never reached before and rarely seen since, and from what I’ve read of him, he seemed like a charming and intelligent person. He wrote Mott the Hoople’s biggest hit, single handedly revived Iggy Pop’s career, performed with Queen, toured with Nine Inch Nails, and put out more amazing albums than most bands put out during their entire careers. So it makes sense that I would be interested to check out The Man Who Fell to Earth, the first feature-length film to star Bowie, and probably his most well-known role outside of his performance as the Goblin King in Labyrinth (and maybe Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, if anyone else has seen The Prestige). I mean, if the Criterion Collection felt it was worth adding it to their ranks, then it must be good, right?

     I wonder.

     Man, it has been a while since I’ve seen a movie that was so utterly, unavoidably and excruciatingly dull as The Man Who Fell to Earth. A movie that waits until an hour and a half in before it deigns to have anything slightly interesting happen, and then goes right back to doing nothing. A movie that seems primarily marketed to people who want to watch David Bowie drink things and watch television, since that’s the majority of what he does in this fucking thing. A movie that throws more boobs and bush (not to mention a couple dicks and asses) at you than an exploitation flick, in what I assume is a desperate ploy to keep people from wandering away from the screen. Which might work for a couple seconds, until it moves on to a scene where our protagonist does fuck all and it flies out the window. You know, there is such a thing as getting too close to real life.

     Yeah, I’m not really digging into critical analysis here (as if I was any good at that to begin with), not doing a plot summary and all that but it was such a tedious experience that I’m actually a bit pissed off. I mean you’ve got a movie where David Bowie plays a goddamn space alien, which is terms of casting is pretty spot on, and you have him do fucking NOTHING for 2+ hours. Sorry that’s not completely accurate, he drinks a metric fuckton of booze, screws a girl a couple times, watches TV and mumbles 99% of his lines. If this is supposed to be ripping Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”, how good people are dragged down by the shit of the world or people are assholes or whatever statement it is that’s trying to be made, why make it so your protagonist has so little agency. Why should we give a shit about his goals or whether he achieves them when the protagonist doesn’t seem to give a shit? I’d almost say it’s nihilistic, but that’s giving this movie too much credit. Soylent Green was nihilistic, John Carpenter’s The Thing was nihilistic, The Man Who Fell to Earth is a test of the audience’s patience, and mine started to give way about 15 minutes in.

     It’s similar to the way I felt about Coffee & Cigarettes, back when I watched it so long ago. The acting is decent (Bowie has about one speed, but at least you’ve got Rip Torn in there), cinematography is fine, music’s fine, but I can’t help but wonder why I’m bothering to watch, because it doesn’t seem to be doing anything to engage me as a viewer. Coffee & Cigarettes seemed content to play around in it’s own little world, dropping it’s own little in jokes, and fuck you if you weren’t cool enough to get it, and that’s the same kind of impression I get from The Man Who Fell to Earth. So fuck me I guess, because if these are the types of movies I have to watch to gain cinema street cred, I’d rather stay out of the loop.

     Not recommended, which I think has become obvious. David Bowie’s discography is always recommended though. I’ve got a soft spot for Young Americans and Station to Station, personally.