The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Kamikaze 1989 (1982), directed by Wolf Gremm

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: 'White Eagle' by Tangerine Dream

       Originally this spot was going to go to a film by Werner Herzog, but in terms of this blog he’s in much the same predicament as Dario Argento. Arguably even worse, as Argento is known primarily for his horror films, while most of the Herzog films I’ve covered on this blog have a loose connection to genre films, if at all. Still we’ve still got a couple of his films to go before I consider retiring him, I definitely want to see Fitzcarraldo at some point, so in the meantime I’m going to tackle another German film that I’ve had my eye on for a few years now.

       Released in 1982, Kamikaze 1989 was directed by Wolf Gremm, written by Gremm and Robert Katz, and produced by Regina Ziegler, based on the 1964 novel “Murder on the Thirty-First Floor” by Swedish author Per Wahloo. It is the far-flung year of 1989, and West Germany is the richest country in the world. There’s no energy crisis, no pollution, no poverty, and all forms of media and entertainment are concentrated into a single place, known as the combine. A place that’s just received a bomb threat, threatening over 4000 employees. Enter Lieutenant Jansen (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), a loose cannon cop on the edge who never fails to get his man. Only there’s no man to get, the threat was just that. Or was it? As Jansen delves deeper into the mystery of this would-be bomber, the weeds just grow thicker and thicker. Assassination attempts, state secrets, underground comic books, and a secret 31st floor of the combine that may or may not exist. It can never just be a bomb threat, can it?

       A better writer than me could probably write about this film without making comparisons to Blade Runner, so I’ll go ahead and do it. Both films released in ‘82, both science-fiction films taking place in a futuristic dystopia (disguised as a utopia in Kamikaze’s case), both plots involving corporate greed and corruption, both protagonists being police officers, both have synth-heavy soundtracks you can see where I’m coming from right? However, while Blade Runner is a classic, at least the versions after the theatrical cut, Kamikaze 1989 doesn’t elicit the same kind of feelings. Rather its schizophrenic tone prevents me from taking any attempt at serious pathos seriously, and I’m finding it difficult to piece together what exactly the whole mystery and conspiracy was even about in the first place. An endorsement for multiple viewings I suppose, but if I didn’t like the egg salad the first time then I’m not going to order it for lunch the next day just to give the mayo a fair shake.

       I will give props to the world building and visual design, which like many sci-fi films is charming in the way that it covers for its shortcomings. The bizarre outfits like Jansen’s leopard-print suit, disturbing TV shows like a laughter competition that feels like a precursor to Robocop, the symbol of the police being a thumbs-up, it all speaks to a world that that has spread a thin veneer of progressiveness over a facist hellscape. There may be no pollution but no one really seems happy, so much as they are putting on an act of happiness. The opposite of Blade Runner in that regard, which was a world that looked miserable and had the population to match. A loud world filled with quiet desperation is Kamikaze 1989, a world that would make for a great running segment in 2000AD or Heavy Metal.

       Ultimately though I’m not giving Kamikaze 1989 the recommendation. I’ll concede that this could be a movie that gets better on repeated viewings, but it took me a while just to get through the one. Watch at your own discretion, but if you do be sure to take some notes. There’s definitely some kick-ass Halloween costumes sprinkled throughout.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - '"Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

       Here’s another film that’s been on the queue for years, and yet always managed to escape the list. Unlike with Wages of Fear however, we’re not dealing with an unknown here; This is Fritz Lang, director of Metropolis, also known as the film that I end up comparing every silent movie I’ve ever reviewed against, as well as Destiny, which wasn’t as good but still had moments of inspiration. Many directors go their entire career without making one film on the level of Metropolis, but just as many readers likely don’t realize that Metropolis was just one part of Lang’s storied career. A career which spanned several decades, continents, and genres, from the early days of silent film through the Golden Age of Hollywood all the way to the 60’s. In fact as much as I praise Metropolis, it’s arguably not Lang’s most lauded, most celebrated, most fondly remembered film -- this one is. So if I want to win any of those arguments, I better check it out for myself and see if that hype is real. Also I’m probably not actually going to argue, I just want to watch a movie.

       Released in Germany in 1931, M was directed by Fritz Lang, written by Lang and Thea von Harbou, and produced by Seymour Nebenzal through Nero-Film A.G. There’s a child murderer (Peter Lorre) loose in the streets of Berlin and the public is in an uproar. Accusations are thrown, people are being accosted and attacked on the street, and as usual the police’s way of handling it is heavy-handed and completely ineffectual. Well that’s not quite true, as the near constant bar raids and night patrols do raise the ire of Berlin’s criminal population. With their livelihood on the line the heads of the various syndicates decide to set up their own investigation in tandem with the police. As both sides of the law create a city-wide pincer movement it seems that the killer’s day are numbered, but you don’t become a serial killer in pop culture without being hard to catch. Moreover, if he is caught, who’s gonna get to him first?

       Film began as a principally visual medium, and Fritz Lang understood that better than most filmmakers. We can see that quite clearly in Metropolis with its elaborate effects, but we can see in M the kind of visual storytelling that Hitchcock would utilize in his thriller films. The scene of little Elsie Breckmann bouncing her ball against a pole where a notice of the murderer is posted, only to see that same ball roll slowly roll out a bush later on, a sign of the grisly act that has just taken place. Or during the scene where the murderer is running from his pursuers, and rather than making that shot look smooth the camera jostles as it races after him, coming to a stumbling stop as he turns towards us, compounding this atmosphere of panic. Hell, even the visual of the M, the brand which marks the killer for what he is, is a deceptively powerful look for how simple it is. While the film does have sound there’s a lot of it that is done in complete silence, and it really shows just how much a director can convey without saying anything. Not as dynamic as Metropolis, but powerful nonetheless.

       That’s not to say that the inclusion of sound here is just a gimmick, as it seemed to be in some early ‘talkies’, as Lang uses it quite distinctly in M. Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, originally written for the Henrik Ibsen play Peer Gynt takes on a sinister second life as the murderer’s favorite tune, and of course you couldn’t do Peter Lorre’s final speech justice without sound. It’s a bit strange that, rather than just having scenes being done without talking and leaving natural sound they are done with sound removed entirely, I don't know if that’s a matter of how it was preserved or what but it works. There’s not a wasted syllable in the bunch.

       Speaking of Peter Lorre, he is undoubtedly one of the highlights of this film. This was only his third ever film role, second ever credited, and he hits it out of the park. People talk up Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector, for good reason but I don’t know if anybody has ever embodied the concept of creepiness like Peter Lorre. You see him in M and you see on screen what you picture in your mind when you hear the words ‘child murderer’. The way he looks, the way he talks, how he smiles, Lorre’s every move and gesture arouses this feeling of anger in the viewer as naturally as blinking. His final speech is a powerful bit of acting, catching the viewer between the two extremes of pity and disgust. It’s no wonder he became a Hollywood staple for a couple decades after this, everything about him is iconic. That’s not to say that the rest of the cast were bad, there’s not a bad one in the bunch, but I don’t know if this film would be as strong as it was without the casting of Peter Lorre. It was a star-making kind of film and he was the star. 

What kind of film is M, though? I personally see it as a transitional film for Lang, between the German Expressionist movement that he helped to establish and what would become film noir. M’s subject matter is rooted in the underbelly of modern society, a film about criminals tracking down an even worse criminal, but there’s an aura of the bizarre about it that calls back to Fritz Lang’s origins. The directness of the visuals, the overpowering silence (intentional or otherwise), the weird little bits of humor the overwhelming weight of Lorre’s insane compulsions, while it’s not as out there as nightmarish as Expressionist classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari there’s still a surrealism that covers the film like a blanket. It’s a film with its feet in the past and the future, and you can see in it a throughline to Hitchcock and Batman and countless other pieces of art and media.

M receives the recommendation. While crime thrillers aren’t exactly an uncommon sight in film, it takes skill and vision to do it well, and Fritz Lang proves here that he is a skilled craftsman. While it’s not the grandiose cinematic experiment that Metropolis became, it’s a classic in its own right. Be sure to check this one out this Halloween if you’ve got a chance, it’s definitely worth the time. Maybe pair it with Psycho or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, make it a really wild night. I don’t know if it’d be fun, but it would be memorable.

Reelin' In The Years -- Tartuffe (1926), directed by F. W. Murnau

A Trailer (not THE Trailer)

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The Appropriate Tune: "Hypocrite", by Cage the Elephant

So far the Reelin’ In The Years tour has provided me the perfect opportunity to finally cross some things off of the old cinematic to-do list. I finally covered another Fritz Lang filmm I got to see what the big deal was with Buster Keaton, and now I finally cover the works of Freidrich Wilhelm Murnau. In the days of early cinema there are few directors who are as well-regarded on a critical level as F. W. Murnau, which is certainly saying something considering just about the only surviving films left from that time are from the best of the best, and yet for a long time he existed (much like Buster Keaton) as some vague name that I heard sometimes in passing. In fact, when I first watched Nosferatu years ago, I don’t even know if the fact Murnau directed it even crossed my mind. Not a huge deal, especially for the more casual movie fan as I was at the time, but when the idea of covering all the gaps in the timeline came to me, it only seemed right to finally get him in here. He has a film archive named after him, but I’m pretty sure this is a greater honor.

Released in 1926, Tartuffe or Herr Tartüff, was one of the last films made by Murnau in his native Germany before moving to the United States to work for Fox, the future home of his critically-acclaimed masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Written by Carl Mayer, based on the play by the French satirist Moliere, it tells the story of a house worker (Rosa Valetti) engaged in that timeless get-rich-quick scheme: slowly poisoning the old codger (Hermann Picha) you’re working for while manipulating him into signing over his fortune to you. When the grandson of the old gentleman discovers that his grandfather has been set against him, even being barred from the house, he decides to use his acting training to adopt the persona of a traveling cinema presenter, which is apparently a thing that existed at the time. The film? Tartuffe, the story of a man named Orgon taken in by a saint named Tartuffe, who isn’t as saintly as he appears to be, and his wife Elmire (a returning Lil Dagover), who’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect her husband. How apropos to the current situation that the people watching the film find themselves in.

  There’s something of a tragic irony in a German film that warns against blindly trusting people, especially those in positions of authority, because they might not have your best interests at heart, especially the church in Tartuffe’s case. The metanarrative of watching a film that’s largely about people watching a film is kinda fun, and we even have a moment where the 4th wall is broken and a character addresses the audience. I’ve never seen a silent film do that before, so points to Murnau for that.

Tartuffe is also a neat little showcase for Murnau as a visual storyteller. There’s a real visceral quality here; you see that clanging bell and you can feel it your bones just as the murderous housekeeper did. You see Tartuffe slowly marching around Orgon’s manor, clad all in black, his face contorted in a mask of judgment and disapproval, leering at Elmire’s body, and you can feel the bile rise in your throat. There’s a certain presence to the characters here, this exaggeration that feels right in line with Nosferatu’s emaciated vampire, and yet at the same has none of the trappings of the German Expressionist style that film was made under. Honestly my major criticism with the movie is that Murnau does too well at conveying the context of the scenes visually that the dialogue cards sometimes feel excessive and disruptive to the flow of the scenes. Which I can’t tell is a pro or a con for Murnau, considering he’s adapting a play here, and you’d think the dialogue would be pretty important.

Nothing to say about the choice of score this time around, it does its job. The picture might be a bit fuzzier compared to what we’ve seen before as well, which is either due to the realities of film preservation or perhaps this was an earlier release by Kino Lorber before they really started digging into those high-quality restorations. Anyway, Tartuffe gets the recommendation. I feel like I’m giving Murnau a bit of a short thrift here, but it almost feels like trying to review a fable or a fairy tale. Like it works, it captures the spirit of Moliere’s satire in an elegantly simple way, and then it leaves without a fuss. As a proper introduction to the works of Murnau Tartuffe has gotten me very interested in exploring the rest of his filmography, those that have been recovered at least, and I think after watching it you’ll feel the same. 

Reelin' In The Years -- Destiny (1921), directed by Fritz Lang

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Bring Me To Life", by Evanescence

       Is there any filmmaker that has gotten so much praise for so little (on this blog at least) as Fritz Lang? I mean I covered a single film of his, Metropolis, six years ago now and yet it feels like he’s constantly showing up in my name dropping sessions? Got a silent movie? Fritz Lang comes in. Science fiction movie? Fritz Lang. Movie that has even a hint of inspiration from German Expressionism? Fritz Lang. The man had been a filmmaker for over ten years before Metropolis and would continue to be one for decades afterward, as much as I loved that film it’s not necessarily indicative of who Fritz Lang was as an artist and filmmaker. Nor would it be for anyone, besides those folks who only ever did one movie I suppose. Conveniently enough, rectifying that problem also coincides with the kickoff of our unofficial Reelin’ In the Years Tour, and you better settle in because there’s a lot more silent black and white movies to come.

We begin our journey in 1921 with Destiny, or Der müde Tod, written (along with Thea von Harben) and directed by Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang, this being his eighth time in the director’s chair. Described as a ‘German Folk Song in Six Verses’, the film centers around a young couple who meet a mysterious stranger while taking a carriage ride into an unnamed village. When they stop off at the local inn the young woman goes off to play with some cats, and when she returns she finds her fiance gone, along with the stranger. Given that he resides in a vast walled structure without any windows or doors next to a cemetery, it should come as no surprise that this stranger is actually Death, and yet this doesn’t stop the young woman from pleading for her lover’s return. So Death gives her a challenge: if love really is as strong as death, then he’ll give her three chances, three lives of different lands and times, in order to prove it. If even one manages to succeed, then her fiance’s life will be returned to him. If not, well, better start making the down payment on that casket. But as long as it’s not chess, it’ll probably be fine.

Our leads here are Lil Dagover (who you might recognize from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), Walter Jannsen, and Bernard Goetzke as the Young Couple and Death respectively, as well as characters within the 3 lives segments. They’re...okay. Lil Dagover does most of the heavy lifting, which makes sense as she was the protagonist as well as the most famous actress in Germany at the time, but there’s not much to lift as they’re all rather simple characters. They try a little bit of comedy in the China story, which has a bit of charm to it. Mostly it’s weird, especially the kissing scene. I’m not sure who thought that looked good.   

       Where the film really shines, setting the stage for Metropolis a few years later, is Lang’s ambitious eye in regards to visual and set design. Not only do we get some nice looking shots in the village, like Death’s vast wall and the room of men’s lives, but then Destiny goes the extra mile and presents us with Renaissance-era Venice, Imperial China and the Ottoman Empire, filtered through the lens of German Expressionism. Lots of large spaces, interplays between light and shadows, warped scenery, and surprisingly not quite as culturally insensitive as you might expect from a bunch of German in the 1920’s. The most intriguing is arguably China, which in Lang’s hands becomes this strange, Carrollesque wonderland of wizards and storybook landscapes, as if you tasked someone to recite Marco Polo’s travelogue from memory while intoxicated.      

The only thing that I would consider enough of an issue to bring up would be the score, or rather how they use the score. It’s very basic, keeping in line with what you expect silent film music to sound like but not always to the context of the scene. The music during the scene where people are celebrating Ramadan, for example, feels very dour compared to the excited atmosphere that the visuals present, and scenes that would expect to be dour, like talking to the personification of death, sound vaguely cheery. Not really the movie’s fault so much as it is the distributor, Kino Lorber, but they’ve done good work in the past so we’ll call it a mulligan. Plus it’s a silent movie, so if you wanted to just hit the mute button and see if you can sync it up with Dark Side of the Moon there’s nothing stopping you. 

In the end, Destiny starts our Reelin’ In the Years tour off right with a recommendation. While I wouldn’t call it an extraordinary film, a solid B in even more solid filmography at the time, it’s an entertaining little tale with that now familiar Fritz Lang flair. Those entering into the world of silent film or love that tasty Expressionist style will find this an easy watch. Those who aren’t can stick with their regular, non-cinematic German folk songs. We won’t judge.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Die Farbe, or The Color Out Of Space (2010), directed by Huan Vu

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Colors in Space", by Explosions in the Sky

       While the works of H.P. Lovecraft have been enormously influential on a good portion of the world’s pop culture, inspiring comics, cartoons, novels and the occasional anime, it’s never had as much like when it comes to cinema. There’s been many a movie that’s made the claim to ‘Lovecraftian’, it’s true, but many of those movies only go as far as the body horror or fleshy tentacles before they grab their ball and go home. Even Re-Animator, a movie I’ve heaped no small amount of praise over the years, is guilty of this to a degree, although the sequels take it to another level. They’re all so obsessed with bringing visuals to indescribable beings that they forget the essence of Lovecraft’s work. The paranoia, the feelings of absolute despair and isolation, the inability to trust one’s own senses, that’s just as important to the idea of ‘Lovecrftian’ fiction, if not moreso, than a giant frog with an octopus head. Which conveniently enough leads directly to our film today. Who would have thought?

       Known in its native country of Germany as Die Farbe, Huan Vu’s The Color Out of Space is an adaptation, naturally enough, of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic short story of the same. A search for his missing father leads up-and-coming scientist Jonathan Davis to a small village in Bavaria's border. While there, he meets a man named Armin who has in fact seen his father; Not as he is in the present day however, but as he was during his days in the U.S. military during the postwar period. Quite a coincidence, and yet that coincidence was merely a part of a much larger tale. A story of a meteorite that crash-landed on a farm not too far from the village they’re in now. Not just a rock from the heavens, but one with the texture of plastic, the ability to endlessly generate heat. A rock that holds deep within its core a color. A color unlike anything ever seen on Earth before, one that grows brighter and brighter as everything around it withers into ash. Plants, animals, people, nothing is safe. Nowhere is safe.

       The Color Out of Space has been one of my favorite of Lovecraft’s stories for a long time now, and I think a part of that was due to its seemingly unfilmable nature. The scares in this scary story don’t come from a horde of rats scurrying about in the walls after all, or some giant monster rising from the sea. They come from a color, something natural and yet completely alien, and the things that happen to people and the world just by being close to it. The horror is in how non-discriminatory it is, extremely malevolent and yet seemingly as neutral as the sunset. In a world familiar with nuclear fallout, pollution and other such silent killers it hits much closer to home than it did in the time it was written. It’s also the only bit of horror literature I can recall that’s ever significantly unnerved me, so that’s another reason I hold it in such high regard. 

       Luckily, Huan Vu seems to be coming from the same direction as I am, as he treats the story with great care. The slow build from curiousity and confusion into despair and their ultimate fates is done quite well, I’d say an equal balance of show and tell. I also think the choice to film in black & white was also the correct choice. Not just in the fact that you’re covering a story from the 20s, but it gives the titular Color that much more prominence when it finally appears, even if pink isn’t a color that is inconceivable to the human mind. It’s also rather subtle, but I like the way the Color’s influence works in black and white as well, from the dark grey of life to the dusty, almost white grey of death. In look and tone, Die Farbe gets Lovecraft right.

       That being said, I found myself not really caring much for the Jonathan Davis plot, which never breaks from feeling like it was bolted onto the story in order to give an excuse for why the story is taking place in Germany rather than America. There’s also some prominent examples CGI near the end which brought me out of the film a bit. Now of course practical effects can be a strain on time and budget, and is useful for things that would be extremely difficult or impossible to do otherwise (such as the climactic last scene with the Color), but when I see something on screen that’s running at 1080p while everything around it is 720p so to speak, then I am divorced from the reality of the scene. I am made aware that this is a film, that this is an actor pretending to be scared of an empty room, and the fear and tension of the film up until that point is seriously diminished, if not killed outright. You could argue that practical effects wouldn’t look much better, but the point is that there’s a difference when something has ‘weight’ and when it doesn’t, it comes through in the performance and and ultimately in the way that the mind processes it. In my opinion anyway.

       Ultimately I did enjoy Die Farbe/The Color Out Of Space though, in spite of the times the seams were showing. The films looks great, as you’d expect from rolling countryside, the music is haunting, even overwrought at times, the cast does well (special props to the guy who plays Past Armin, as he does much of the heavy lifting), and as I said before the tone is captured right, so there’s no choice but to recommend it. Human powerlessness and insignificance in the face of an uncaring and dangerous might be a myopic and perhaps defeatist worldview, but it does make for some spooky stories as it turns out, and if that’s what you’re in for this Halloween then this is the right film for you. And remember to always stay hydrated.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), directed by Werner Herzog

     

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Nosferatu Man", by Slint

     Out of all the monsters on this list, all the aliens and zombies and lovecraftian horrors, there is one creature who stands above them all as the absolute king of the creeps: Dracula. Often based on the historical figure Vlad III or ‘Vlad the Impaler’, the infamously brutal ruler of Wallachia in what is now known as Romania, the king of the shadows first appeared as the antagonist in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Even though Stoker’s novel was not the first to feature vampires, nor was it all that successful when it was released, Dracula has gone on to become of the most significant pieces of horror literature of all time, and the Count has been propelled into pop culture stardom. And all without sparkling in the sun like some kind of asshole.

      Although the Dracula novel is obviously quite important, there’s no doubt that a lot of the popularity for the character came through film. The 1931 Universal Dracula starring Bela Lugosi is by far the most iconic form of the famous vampire with the 1958 Hammer Films Dracula starring Christopher Lee coming close behind, and he’s been in hundreds of movies ever since, including one that came out recently known as Dracula Untold, which has been rumoured to be the beginning of a monster equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (not sure how that would work, but whatever). With all these movies, there are so many different iterations of Dracula that films that address the original story are probably in the minority. So in the spirit of Halloween, I’ve decided to honor everyone’s favorite corpse by making the last film on my Long Dark Marathon of the Soul one all about Count Dracula.  Because why the hell not?

      Directed by Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man), Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht comprises the entirety of Herzog’s feature-length foray into the horror genre. Though several things are altered from the original book (the film takes places in Wismar, Germany rather than London, Harker’s wife is now Lucy rather Mina and there are no ‘Brides’), the basic premise is the same: Jonathan Harker is sent by his employer to Transylvania to meet one Count Dracula (Herzog regular Klaus Kinski, whose design in the film closely resembles that of Max Schreck in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu), who is looking to purchase a house in the area. While there, Jon and Dracula have several incredibly awkward conversations about the night and the inevitable passage of time, and Jon suspects that this deathly pale man with long claws and a bat face might in fact be das vampyr. Jon’s suspicion turns to fear when Dracula discovers a picture of Lucy and becomes enraptured by her beauty, which is not the kind of attitude you want for a guy who lives next to your wife. He tries to escape but fails, and Dracula makes his way to Wismar. How will Lucy and Jon contend with the forces at the night nipping at their heels? Will Dracula feast upon the blood of the living? That’s for fate to decide.

      There are some interesting twists to the Dracula story here in Phantom der Nacht. Kinski’s portrayal of the vampire as a monstrous, miserable wretch rather than a suave seductor is a nice change of pace. Vampirism is supposed to be a horrible curse after all, not ‘free super powers and immortality at the cost of a tan’, and if people wanted to bang corpses so much they should go to the morgue. I also found that it interesting that about halfway through the movie Lucy becomes the protagonist, rather than Jon. Lucy is the one that Dracula wants to bang after all, so if anyone would have an issue here it would be her, but it’s a nice change of pace when you see the woman in a vampire movie that isn’t a damsel in distress or a vampire herself. Definitely one of the more dour movies on the list, and I can’t tell if it’s because of all the dead people or because it’s directed by Werner Herzog. Probably Herzog.

      Are you a big vampire fan? Do you have an unhealthy obsession with Germany or the German people? Then why not put on Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht on your television/computer screen this Halloween. It won’t make you scream in fright, but it will make you have long bouts of introspection on the nature of life and love, and isn’t exploring one’s feelings something which all men fear?

     There you have it, 31 movies that I watched this October, and perhaps some you might want to watch as well. For those who did read through all this crap, I hope you found some movies that you really enjoy. For those who didn’t, it’s pretty weird that you would read the last paragraph in a multi-page list and skip the list itself. But before we go, there were a couple of films I tried out for the marathon, but they were just too damn bad to go the next round:

The Hills Have Eyes (1977), directed by Wes Craven

 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre earned its place in horror movie history for its incredibly visual imagery and disturbing atmosphere, so it’s only natural that the crop of imitation films that came after it would try and copy that. Films like The Hills Have Eyes, which replaces a backwoods hick family with a backwoods hick family, essentially a lateral change, and still manages to fuck it up. No likable characters on either side, crappy story, unimpressive action, and a dog with a higher body count than the murderous hillbillies. Good thing Craven went on to do Nightmare on Elm Street, because sitting through this crap was a chore.

Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1991), directed by Kazuki Ohmori

 I love Godzilla. I’ve loved Godzilla ever since I was a kid. I own almost every Godzilla movie (including the ‘98 Tristar film), I’ve watched the animated series, read the comics, played the video games, owned the action figures, etc. etc. I got that Godzilla shit on lock down. But HOLY SHIT is this movie a pain in the ass. Getting to see the 90’s badass Godzilla fight his greatest enemy? Awesome. Sitting through the hour or so of confusing time travel bullshit that makes no fucking sense at any point to get to that fight? Not awesome and frankly not worth the effort for those few minutes of greatness. There are better Godzilla movies out there.

Flesh for Frankenstein (1972), directed by Paul Morrissey

Produced by famous artist Andy ‘Soup Can’ Warhol, Flesh for Frankenstein is the shitty movie that high-minded art snobs have been waiting for. In the film, Baron Frankenstein is a fascistic Czech nationalist living with his sexpot sister/wife (who looks like a goddamn lizard person) and his two creepy mute kids in some castle presumably in Czechoslovakia. Frankenstein is an ardent believer in the idea that pure Czechs a descendent from the Ancient Greeks, and he plans to use his power to create a master race that will eventually dominate the world (sound familiar?). Bad acting, bad accents, unlikable characters, and Frankenstein fucks a corpse in the gallbladder. No amount of ultraviolence can stop this shambling trainwreck of a movie from pulling in to shit station, and good fucking riddance to bad rubbish.







Happy Halloween!

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Heart of Glass (1976), directed by Werner Herzog

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Der Ruf", by Popul Vuh

       Well now, here’s a director that’s slowly racking up the appearances in the Marathon: Mr. Grizzly Man himself, Werner Herzog. Herzog first appeared way back in 2014, when an interest in German actor Klaus Kinski (brought upon by the documentary My Best Friend) and the connection the infamous silent film classic pushed me to throw his film Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht onto the completely meaningless number one spot that year. It was an okay film from what I can remember, which admittedly isn’t much, but that was that. Life moved on, and there were plenty more movies to see.

Fast forward to 2017, and suddenly Herzog shows up again, with the absurdist comedy Even Dwarfs Started Small. The choice of doing another Herzog film wasn’t a whim, a streaming service I often use had a slew of them, but the choice of which film I believe was likely down to last minute decisions. Given that I had the choice of famous films like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre and I ultimately went for the one where a bunch of little people get into shenanigans, it’s once again an example that the Monty Hall problem doesn’t work in the case of movies. Not the best movie I had ever seen, but we got through it, and life moved on.

Now it’s 2018, and since we’re revisiting the foreign last 10 movies angle, that means that Herzog is squeaking by with yet another one. You have to admire his tenacity, managing to worm his way to an entry not once but twice, where his other colleagues may falter. He may not be the highlight of any Marathon that he shows up on, but he’s still in there. You don’t have to be the MVP to get a Superbowl ring, you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

       Heart of Glass is not the hardest-hitting movie in the world when it comes to story, but I’ll tell you what I can. A few hundred years ago there was a small German village, we never learn its name, that was known for one thing: Shimmering red glass more popularly known as Ruby glass. However, the secret to making Ruby glass was known to only one man, Mühlbeck, and when he died he took the secret with him. Deprived of their source of livelihood, the village falls into a deep depression, as if they are sleepwalking through life. A depression which will become even worse, as Hias the herdsman has predicted that at nightfall the factory will burn, that the villagers will run into the forest and turn to stone, and that everything in the village will perish. The beginning of the end as the kids say, and Hias’ predictions are never wrong…

     There are two main selling points when it comes to Heart of Glass, the first being the use of hypnotism. Aside from Hias and a couple glassblowers (kinda want your wits about you when working with molten glass), every character in every scene was placed under hypnosis, with only minimal direction by Herzog when it came to dialogue. Occasionally you might even notice it, but then there are moments where you can’t do anything else. People mumbling their lines with blank expressions on their faces, characters suddenly laugh or scream for no reason, scenes that you would assume to be boisterous and noisy taking on the aspect of the grave, and so on. It’s intensely surreal and unsettling, uncontrolled, in a way that similarly strange films can’t quite replicate. If nothing else, the fact that this movie runs as smoothly as it does with all these tranced out zombies stumbling around doing scenes together is definitely worth a feather in Herzog’s directing cap. I don’t think many other filmmakers would want to put up with it.

       The other main selling point is that most of the music is done by a band, German progressive rock band Popol Vuh. It’s not an uncommon practice, Michael Mann contracted Tangerine Dream to do the music for his film Thief, not to mention Dario Argento’s many collaborations with the band Goblin, and props to Herzog using local music. Popol Vuh’s music is exactly the right feel for what Heart of Glass is; majestic when taking in the beautiful vistas of the Bavarian countryside, turning almost menacing when turned towards the villagers. It conveys aurally the emotion the scene is trying to convey visually and it does it well, which is what you need in a film score. Also you should check out Popol Vuh, they’re pretty damn good.

       Those two points aside, I’m struggling to find much to say when it comes to Heart of Glass. It’s one of those movies where things seem to just happen, which is appropriate for a village of ‘sleepwalkers’, with a lot of time dedicated to Hias and his strange prophecies. All of which likely holds great significance when you understand the meaning of the film, something like ‘certain against fate is ultimately pointless’ or ‘pessimists will always prove themselves right’ or even ‘make sure you write things down’, but which is otherwise comes across as inscrutable and perhaps even pretentious to those in a sour mood. Which is okay, I just got done talking about how I enjoy unpacking films in the last entry, but it’s also not really a film that leaves you on the edge of your seat in suspense. It’s a lot of sitting and thinking while watching a bunch of people sit and talk, set to the sounds of German progressive rock. Not quite everyone’s idea of a good time, I suspect.

       In the tradition of Herzog films in the Marathon, Heart of Glass isn’t the most exciting film that I’ve covered this year. However, it certainly wasn’t the worst either, and it was a unique gimmick for a film at the very least. If Even Dwarfs Started Small didn’t interest you then it’s probable that you won’t be interested in Heart of Glass either, but if you’re building a list of trippy, weird movies to watch this Halloween, then you might like throwing this one on the queue. You don’t even need to be hypnotized to do it! Although it might help.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - Even Dwarves Started Small (1970), directed by Werner Herzog

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Nobody Spoil My Fun", by Dwarves

     Because of the nature of the Marathon, and my own rather hectic schedule, it’s rare that I get to take in a movie by directors like Werner Herzog. I was familiar with his work prior, the infamous documentary Grizzly Man, My Best Fiend, detailing his tumultuous relationship with actor Klaus Kinski, his little moments on Metalocalypse, and so on. As far as actually covering his films on the blog however, the only one that seemed appropriate at the time was Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, his interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Operative words being ‘at the time’. It’s a new time now, and since the tide has turned towards nostalgia and sentimentality, it seemed right to pull out another Herzog.

     And no, that’s not sexual innuendo.

     Related to us via a flashback at a police station, Even Dwarves Started Small brings us to a remote institution in the German countryside, populated by little people, or ‘dwarves’ in the context of this film. When the head doctor leaves for the day to get groceries, the dwarves, left to their own devices, decide to take over the joint. They destroy private property, steal the doctor’s things, kill and torture animals and the handicapped (a couple of the patients at the facility are blind) and generally lay waste to the place which has been their home and apparently their prison for so long. A lone instructor (also a dwarf) tries desperately to maintain a shred of order in the chaos, even resorting to taking one of them hostage within the administration building, but his demands fall on deaf ears. The inmates are running the asylum now, and they’re going to have the times of their lives.

     I’ve read that this film is meant to be an allegory for the dangers of a total liberation of the mind, which sounds Teutonic enough to be Herzog, and I’d say that theory makes sense. The dwarves act more like children and toddlers than the grown adults they are, completely self-centered and with the impulse control to match. No action or thought is considered more than once, moods and whims change at the drop of a hat, and it is done with a glee that borders on the perverse. A never-ending, anarchic quest to feed the id, in any way possible. In practice, it feels less like you’re watching a film and more like you’re suffering through a fever dream: A gaggle of middle-aged little people shouting at each other like 5 year olds, giggling constantly, as they burn trees and look at nudie magazines and tie monkeys to a cross while mariachi and African folk music plays in the background. The exact same thing you expect to see when you take exactly too much acid, or the exact right amount of magic mushrooms.

     Therein lies the major issue with this film though; It’s literally an hour and an half of watching a group of little people breaking shit and other random events. There’s not a coherent plot, little to no characters with a strongly defined character (most of the folks you see on screen don’t even have names, far as I can remember), and the soundtrack consists of two that are constantly repeated throughout the film. I’m a guy who has exposed himself to a lot of weird movies over the years so I had no issue, but I imagine this is one of those motion pictures that would be downright insufferable to those who aren’t used to it. Hell, despite my tolerance even I felt a little bit impatient during the seemingly endless variations on the ‘dwarves break stuff/instructor looks on awkwardly/music plays’ structure Herzog has built his movie on, and I’ve sat through Flesh for Frankenstein AND The Amityville Horror, so you know it takes a certain kind of mood to get into it.

     If you’re the type of person with relatively tame or modern tastes, or if you’ve tried tried watching movies while high, then you might prefer to skip over Even Dwarves Started Small this Halloween. Those fans of the weird, or 80s music videos, will likely have a better time of things. Just remember to not have too much fun though. And be kind to animals too folks, that’s just the right thing to do.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), directed by Robert Wiene

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Song Without Words Op. 109", by Jacqueline du Pre

     In the years following World War I and prior to World War II, Germany was in a bit of a rut. The treaty they had signed was very, very clear on the subject of war reparations, and some countries (mostly France) were very keen on taking advantage of the now Kaiser-less nation. The economy completely tanked, partially due to the most industrious parts of their country having been taken away by the victorious powers, and inflation became so bad that a wheelbarrow full of deutschmarks was almost enough to get you a single loaf of bread, which doesn’t do much for that whole ‘paying off that massive war debt’. It’s hard to say whether World War II, Hitler’s rise to power and all that other heinous shit would have happened if the Allies hadn’t pushed the reparations thing as hard as they did, or if the German people were just primed for fascism either way. A question best left for Harry Turtledove, I suppose.

     As bad as that era of history was for Germany (then run by what is known as the Weimar Republic), it managed to produce some great works of art, including an influential genre of film known as German Expressionism. Though relatively short-lived in the grand scheme of things, it was already gone by the time talking and Nazis entered the picture, the echoes of G.E. have persisted in filmmaking decades after its peak. The surrealistic landscapes populated by deformed buildings, the manipulation of lighting and shadows, everyone that ever tried to make a dark and creepy movie, from Todd Browning to Tim Burton and David Lynch (although Lynch has stated he never watched an Expressionist films prior to the release of Eraserhead, I believe)owes F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang and the rest of those filmmakers a debt of gratitude. You can’t build arthouse cinema with a good foundation.

     Such is the case with the film we’re discussing today, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene and starring Conrad Veidt (who also starred in The Laughing Man, notable for being the design influence for DC’s The Joker). The film,in six acts, centers around Francis, who at the start of the film is sitting in a garden talking with an older gentleman. On a whim, Francis decides to tell the story of how things ended up the way they are. A story which centers around the annual village fair, the vile Dr. Caligari and his corpse like servant known as Cesare, and a series of mysterious murders that draws Francis into a life of death and madness.

     Much like it is with Nosferatu and most other silent movies, there’s nothing all that complex going on with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, aside from a pretty worthwhile climax. It has a story it wants to tell, and it tells the story quickly and efficiently. Part of that could be attributed to the fact that Caligari has lost some footage over the years, so the cut that we see has lost its ability to pad things out, but it’s also part of a fundamental difference in filmmaking in that era. After all, there wasn’t really the technology available to attempt anything too complicated, and the bar for film hadn’t really been set much higher than farce or melodrama. Which was pretty much what it was competing against, theater still being the biggest form of mass entertainment at that time.

     The major appeal of Caligari isn’t in the story itself, however, it’s the aesthetic. The deathly pale faces, doors and buildings set at strange, unnatural angles, one cannot help but feel a vague of dread and uneasiness (if not fear) that builds from scene to scene. I believe I used the descriptor word ‘surrealistic’ earlier, and watching Caligari the notion of being dreamlike, or nightmarish, does seem to be exactly what it is attempting. In that way it succeeds, to the point that it is so far removed from the normal frame of reference that it seems almost alien. Much like Metropolis, the thought that people sat down in movie theaters and watched this, when there were less movies in existence than there are pokemon today, is something that I can’t fathom. Did high-minded folks in that day watch this movie and throw around words like ‘surrealistic’? Did they make copious name drops to novels and plays to try to categorize it. Did your average movie goer even attempt to watch this, or did they ignore the critics and go see the new Buster Keaton flick instead? In a world of almost infinite variety, where everyone laments that everything has already been done, I can’t even conceive of being able to explore completely unknown territory, of being on the ground floor of reinventing a wheel that had barely even begun rolling yet.

     So as a piece of cinema history, I’d say The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is definitely worth seeing if you haven’t already. For those not interested in cinema history, I’d say it’s weird and entertaining enough to be worth a watch, with a short enough runtime that you won’t feel bogged down. If you’re one of those people who hate movies that are in black & white and can’t conceive of an entertaining film without people talking, then you might want to stick with the Transformers movies instead. Or anything that doesn’t make you confront ideas and directions that could actually challenge you and help to make you a deeper, more well-rounded person I guess.