The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: Suspiria (1977), directed by Dario Argento

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'Suspiria (Main Theme)' by Goblin

       There’s probably a hard limit for how many times Dario Argento will keep showing up on this list. Not that we’re almost out of his films to cover, but despite giallo not being the most diverse subgenre in the world it still feels like a disservice to devote 90 percent of the attention towards only one artist. I’d feel the same way if the only westerns I covered were Sergio Leone or the only animated films I watched were Hayao Miyazaki, a man cannot survive on bread alone you understand. Fate willing we will eventually get through the entirety of his ‘classic’ period, but to use the vernacular of this blog Argento is not a Lynch or a Carpenter level director. And that’s fine, the opinion of this blog means jack shit anyway.

       Released in 1977, Suspiria was directed by Dario Argento, written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi and produced by Claudio Argento through Seda Spettacoli, based on the novel “Suspiria de Profundis” by Thomas De Quincey. Jessica Harper stars as Suzy Bannion, an American girl invited to join the prestigious Tam Academy in German, a ballet dancer’s paradise. Unfortunately she arrived at the peak of plot convenience season, as the night Suzy arrives is also the night when a former student of the school is horrifically murdered. She tries to go about her day in peace, only more and more strange things start to happen. Maggots falling from the ceiling, bizarre noises at night, a slight bleeding from every orifice in the face. What is going on at the Tam Academy and what happened to the murdered girl that passed by Suzy in the night when she arrived? Are the faculty oblivious, or do they know more than they seem? Against her better judgment, Suzy decides to investigate.

       Mysterious though it may seem don’t be fooled, as with the other Argento films we’ve covered on this blog the mystery is simply a smokescreen used to hide the juicy giallo core within. Gruesome, overwrought deaths, malicious, psychotic villains, virginal maidens, the works. Burgeoning cinephiles might be led into thinking that because these are foreign language films that they are more refined or thought-provoking, but that’s not really the case. Giallo scratches the same itch as a Texas Chainsaw Massacre or a Friday the 13th: pretty girls screaming while being murdered or trying to avoid being murdered. In the case of Suspiria it might even scratch harder; Argento sees a scene of a girl being stabbed to death and says ‘what if we had a part where the audience sees her heart beating in her mutilated chest cavity and then we see the killer stabbing the heart?’ It is the penny dreadful and the pulp novel set to motion, base entertainment that was later supplanted by the Jerry Springer Show and twitter drama wrapped up in a blanket of cinematography. Sometimes we want a steak, sometimes we want a burger, and in that case Suspiria is like one of those A-1 steak burgers.

       Suspiria is also the film that firmly established Argento’s reputation as a visual storytelling. The first comparison that came to mind was Corman’s Masque of the Red Death with it’s technicolor rooms (Suspiria was also filmed in technicolor), but if you ran that film through a Stanley Kubrick filter. Good lord does this film look good, the lighting, the use of color and location, it’s rare to find a movie where almost every scene looks like it could be its own painting. Argento has given the Zack Snyder’s Watchmen treatment to a comic book that doesn’t actually exist, and all without blue CGI penises.

       Music for Suspiria is provided by the band Goblin, which to me is a double-edged sword. I like Goblin, and I think at the right time their music combined with Argento’s visuals is a sensory overload akin to a bad acid trip, in a good way. Trouble is there are a lot of moments in this film where it’s not the right time. The soundtrack will make it sound like we’re in the middle of a chase scene, our protagonist only inches away from the killer, and yet on the screen it’s just a character walking slowly down a hallway. Which isn’t the band’s fault, fault lies with the filmmakers, and the filmmakers are very lucky they didn’t completely kill off the atmosphere they were trying to build by having Goblin full bore every five minutes or so.

       Suspiria gets an easy recommendation. While it doesn’t do much to stretch the borders of giallo, it is a master class on shot composition that is worth it to watch for the technique of it as much as for the entertainment aspect. If the endless reboots of Halloween and Hellraiser looked like this then their franchises might have never gone on life support. Burn a witch, toast some marshmallows, and sit down with Suspiria this Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Santa Sangre (1989), directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", by Black Sabbath

      In the pantheon of weird directors, your Monte Hellmans, your David Lynchs, perhaps no other director has so consistently struggled with motives that outstripped his means than Alejandro Jodorowsky. The most famous example is of course his ill-fated attempt to adapt Dune -- a 24 hour long film featuring the likes of Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali (before he outed himself as a fascist) and a young H.R. Giger, but even when we covered El Topo one could see him doing his best to not make just another western film. Perhaps I’ve said this before, but it makes sense that he eventually branched off from cinema in order to do graphic novels, where he was just as successful, if not more. Whereas films always deal heavily in compromise, the studio, the producer, the actors, the crew, in the world of comics Jodorowsky was unshackled from the chains of reality, free to tackle any idea that crossed his mind. All he really needed was someone to illustrate those ideas, which he did to great effect with his collaboration with Moebius. If you ever get a chance, you should try out The Incal or the Metabarons, it’s crazy stuff. 

We’re not here to talk about comic books though, we’re here for films. So if El Topo was Jodorowsky’s spin on a western movie, why not see how he tackles a thriller?

Released in 1989 though Mainline Pictures, Santa Sangre was written by Roberto Leoni, Claudio Argento (relative of Dario) and Alejandro Jodorowsky, one of the last films he would direct until his return to filmmaking in 2013. Alex Jodorowsky (one of several Jodorowskys who show up in this film) stars as Fenix, a young man living an animalistic existence in a mental hospital. Fenix lived a troubled life, as we soon learn: A boy magician in an traveling circus, his father was a drunk abusive philanderer and his mother a religious zealot who had a shrine built to a raped and murdered schoolgirl who ended up murdering each other as graphically as they could. Certainly traumatic for a young child, and of course since this is a movie that means Fenix ends up becoming a Norman Bates-style murderer. No woman in the whole of Mexico is safe from this dangerously oedipal killer, except perhaps for Alma (Sabrina Denison), Fenix’s childhood friend who was spirited away after the inciting incident. What are the chances that they would be in the exact same place at the same time though?

I’ve perhaps buried the lead somewhat, committed the faux-pas of spoilers but there’s not that much suspense and mystery in Santa Sangre when you get right down to it. Even the strange obscurantist symbolism is a little bit too on the nose for someone who has made it through most of David Lynch’s filmography. A woman passes by and an actual snake slides out of Fenix’s pants, Fenix feels remorse for what he’s done so he literally dresses up like Claude Rains from the Universal film while also directly referencing the film and its reason for inclusion. It feels so belabored, and drags down what is already a plodding, 2 hour plus film. Calling it a ‘thriller’ is ascribing to it a bit too much vitality.

What about ‘horror’ then? This is a movie about a mentally ill serial killer after all, and Fenix does get to some serialized killing throughout the film, but this being Jodorowsky it can’t just be murder, it’s gotta be weird. In fact I’m reminded of Italy’s giallo pictures, with its cartoonish depictions of violence, but is even less realistic. Like the very first murder involves using knives to slice a woman’s arms off in one clean motion, despite them only being sharp to stick maybe a quarter of inch into a wood board. Same goes for the second murder, where the victim is spraying blood like a water hose yet the actual stabbing seems barely more visceral than your average Doctor Who episode. We’ve seen from El Topo that Jodorowsky isn’t afraid of dealing in genres that deal in violence, so it seems like he’s trying to do less with more for whatever reason.

Speaking of doing less with more, what is the deal with Jodorowsky and women in this movie? Seems like if you’re a woman in Santa Sangre you’re either insane or a prostitute, and if you’re sexually active then there’s a good chance you’re gonna be murdered. The only one to escape that binary characterization is our female lead, Alma, and even she has to deal with an attempted rape and an attempted murder, and she just so happens to be a deaf mute who doesn’t have a single word of dialogue who ultimately helps Fenix out. So in the world of Santa Sangre, women exist only for the benefit of men, either to help out of problems or to take out oedipal-induced frustrations, and if we were supposed to be seeing things from Fenix’s perspective then Jodorowsky doesn’t convey it well. Both cis and transgender women get it though, in case you were worried about inclusivity. 

Acting wise I suppose Axel Jodorowsky isn’t bad, of all the Jodorowsky spawn in this movie he’s the best actor of the bunch. Blanca Guerra plays Concha, Fenix’s insane armless mom, and she plays an insane ghoul pretty well. Everyone else was everyone else, although I must admit I had no patience for the kid who played child Fenix. Lots of shots which emphasized his crying face and his big buck teeth, I kinda got sick of looking at him.

Music was done by Simon Boswell, and while I thought the score was good it seemed like there was a problem in how it was utilized. A suspenseful moment would have the appropriate synth noodling, but it would only last for like 5 seconds before an abrupt shift to a Latin folk song. A better use of that might be when a pimp takes some of the mental patients to the equivalent of skid row, where there’s colors and dancing and a saucy mambo number, and then we reach the corner and the fun stops. Not much else comes to mind about it.

      When I first placed Santa Sangre on this list I was excited to see Jodorowsky’s take on a horror movie, memories of his comics and films flooding into my mind and building expectations, but it was ultimately more mundane and less enthralling than I was expecting. Perhaps this year has just put me off the mood for movies. Still there’s certainly enough weird here to entice the casual horror fan, so I’ll let it pass with a mild recommendation. Pour yourself a nice glass of paint/blood this Halloween and see if you can’t have a nice evening.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Mondo Cane (1962), directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Il Cielo In Una Stanza", by Mike Patton & The Metropole Orchestra

      We’ve reached the summit folks. Every year for quite a few years now I’ve dedicated the month of October to something I call The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul. 31 days, 31 films, 31 reviews. At a time in my life that could be loosely described as ‘rock bottom’, at a time when the world seems to be doing the same, this shitty little collection of text and jpegs that no one reads has been one of the few bits of metaphorical solid ground I’ve been able to touch down on. A chance to flex my creative muscles, a place to work through my various episodes, all within the context of me complaining about somebody else’s work. Even when this blog has been all but dead, the Marathon has still persisted, beyond all sense of reason or the confines of Halloween. Maybe I can’t muster the will to let it go, or maybe deep down this is what I like to do, the source of my passion. Either way I guess I’ll keep going as long as I can.

      As has been more recent tradition, the last ten days of the month are reserved for foreign films, specifically those outside the U.S.A/U.K./Canada area. Today I thought I’d take a visit to Italy, a region which has been a consistent source of genre films for the Marathon over the years. For a while I was considering covering something by Lina Wertmüller, but given some other revisions we’ll be seeing in the future I decided to change things up. For the sake of variety and, as always, because I felt like it at the time.

      Released in 1962 through Cineriz, Mondo Cane was directed jointly by Gualtiero Jacopeti (who also produced the film and wrote the narration heard throughout the film), Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi. A documentary, Mondo Cane’s intent is to show off various aspects of human life from around the globe, in particular the enticing, the morbid, and the bizarre. Visit a village in Italy where the Good Friday celebration involves the priest leading a procession through the streets beating his legs with shards of glass. Take a trip to a restaurant in Taipei where dogs make up the menu. Try not to blink when passing by a village in Malaysia who’s main source of income is fishing for sharks, and they’ve got the bodies to prove it. It’s a wild, terrifying world we live in, says the minds behind Mondo Cane, and they’re giving you a front row seat to the show.

      The colloquial term for films like Mondo Cane would be ‘shockumentaries’; Films which deal in intense subjects, sex, violence, substance abuse, what have you, in order to draw the audience in. In the Italy of 1962 some naked breasts and an ass or two is as far as you get when it comes to sex, barely a step above cheescake Barbarella stuff, but they make up for it with plenty of violence and death. When they show a ceremony in Papua New Guinea involving a slaughtering and roasting of pigs, Mondo Cane leaves nothing to the imagination; You get to watch as tribesmen, armed with heavy wooden clubs, gather in circles and beat the brains out of the pigs before tossing their corpses on the fire. When we visit a shop in Malaysia that sells snake meat, we don’t cut to people enjoying a little snake curry, we get to see the butcher stretch that serpent out and slice it up the middle like a bit of shoe leather. Those out there with strong stomachs will be able to handle the more morose elements of the film, but if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to know how the sausage is made (quite literally in the case of the force feeding geese scene) or generally doesn’t like to see animals suffering then this is definitely not the film for you. Even as someone who has watched dozens of horror films over the years, I found some of the stuff in Mondo Cane rather gruesome.

      Of course there’s also the question of who Mondo Cane is geared towards. While it is true that this film is international, when it comes time to highlight the ‘weirdness’ of the world there is a definite focus on certain regions like Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, aside from its native Italy. The main thrust of Mondo Cane is in social commentary; at pointing out the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the world with an aloof, detached air, yet will quite often descend into chauvinism. Mondo Cane is quick to disparage and mock in a scene where American tourists visit Hawaii and take in hula lessons, making points that are quite poignant even today, and yet it takes a 180 in a later scene where a Papua New Guinean tribe is taking communion at a Catholic mission, describing it in sentimental tones as the ‘last bastion of civilization’ in that area. Not to mention several comments directed towards New Guineans, Chinese and other such peoples that could be taken as patronizing at best. Is it racist on the level of Birth of a Nation? No, but if my skin was the same shade as those being gawked at on screen I’d probably find it uncomfortable, and so it might be for others.

      If there’s one thing I’ll praise about this movie though is this music. It’s constantly switching up throughout the movie, from orchestral stuff to big band swing, to lounge jazz and even though the transitions weren’t always smooth I still found it enjoyable. The music was done by Nino Oliviero and Riz Ortolani, the latter of whom was a composer for over two hundred films in his career, particularly genre films, so chances are that we’ll be seeing him again in the future.

      Ultimately though, I don’t think I can recommend Mondo Cane. Putting the casual racism aside, I don’t think there’s that much, really, to drive a viewer’s interest these days. While there is this sort of Addams Family-style cheerfully macabre atmosphere that’s a tad infectious, the shock and awe tactics that worked so well back in the 60s have lost most of their luster in these modern times. There are hundreds of videos on youtube with people eating weird stuff for example, so half of this movie has become superfluous. It was popular enough to get a sequel a couple years later though, so maybe that film would be a more palatable Halloween treat than this one.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Nightmare City (1980), directed by Umberto Lenzi

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "City of the Walking Dead", by Black Hyenas

Second verse, same as the first.

Of all the monsters in movie history, none have become so tired and dull as the zombie. What things it was good for, social commentary, gorey special effects, have been done and what we’re left with is piles upon piles of cheaply made garbage that exists as nothing more than pornography that the folks from Doomsday Bunker use to satisfy their apocalypse fetish. If you’ve ever wondered why the Marathon hasn’t covered that many zombie movies over the years, that’s the reason why. Trash media that isn’t able to consistently elevate itself beyond that.

Today’s contestant that’s trying to prove the exception to the rule is Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City, or City of the Walking Dead as it was known in the US three years later. The film stars Hugo Stiglitz as Miller, a television reporter who is set to do a PR piece for a visiting professor investigating a radioactive leak at a nearby nuclear power plant, when a unidentified aircraft releases a plague of ghouls upon the city. Human in form, intelligent enough to operate machinery and firearms, but single-mindedly violent and with a hunger for blood. Which is enough for him to want to get out of dodge, but travel plans tend to go a little wonky when you’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Or at least a bloodthirsty radioactive humanoid monster apocalypse, which is close enough.

While Nightmare City’s take on the zombie feels relatively unique, reminiscent of the brain-eaters of Return of the Living Dead, that’s about where my interest ends. The special effects are obviously not on the same level, and attempts at replicating the atmosphere of apocalyptic chaos and existential terror of something like Day of the Dead falls flat as there’s no strong character-driven moments to drive it. There’s Miller of course, but he doesn’t really have anything resembling an arc, and all the other characters we happen to follow are irrelevant to the story. So what we’re left with is about 90 minutes or so of zombies killing nameless people, people with names talking about things that lead nowhere with the occasional tit shot and I absolutely cannot care about any of it. A feeling that is only compounded with the big reveal at the end, which I won’t spoil, but will say is about as satisfying as being locked in an airtight room with a flatulent steer.

Which is why this review is so short and why, quote unquote regrettably, I can’t recommend Nightmare City. Those interested in the idea of Italian zombie movies will be better off looking into the work of Lucio Fulci, in particular his film Zombi 2, otherwise known as Zombie, Zombie Flesh Eaters or Island of the Living Dead. In terms of story and special effects that might just be the film for you this Halloween.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Phenomena (1985), directed by Dario Argento

And another one Bites Za Dusto. You know this blog has been around for 5 years now and every year I think that this is going to be the time when I close up shop for good, and yet I keep pressing on. I don't know if it's determination or a paralyzing fear of what I would do with my time without it, but whatever the case it does give me an excuse to try out new things, and that's a crux of the human experience, right? I dunno. Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed the list this year, I hope that I gave you an excuse to try out something new as well, and I hope you join me again next year for another 31 days of scares and spoops. See ya then!

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Flash of the Blade" by Iron Maiden

       The last time we saw a film by Dario Argento on the Marathon (Tenebrae, back in Marathon ‘14), I started off the article by dedicating entire first paragraph to insulting the country of Italy. In retrospect this was probably not the best foot to start off on, but I suppose I did it because I feel a kinship with that Mediterranean boot. Both Italy and my country of of origin are nation stitched together by bloody conflict, after all. Both have an issues between the northern and southern halves. Both are plagued by fascists. Both love cheese. When I pointed a finger at Italy I was really pointing a finger at myself, as a first student psychology major would say. So to make it up to Italians everywhere it seems only right that 4 years after the first proper Long Dark Marathon of the Soul, 4 years after Tenebrae, that we return to the works of Mr. Agento with an older, potentially wiser eye. And yeah I could have done that with everyone on the ‘14 list but I didn’t feel like it.

       It’s once upon a time, as these stories go, and Ms. Clocktower herself Jennifer Corvino (played by Rocketeer actress Jennifer Connelly), daughter of the actor Paul Corvino, is being shipped to the Richard Wagner International School for Girls located near Zurich. This place, colloquially known as the ‘Swiss Transylvania’ for the eerie winds that come down from the Alps, has been terrorized by a mysterious serial killer who seems to only target teenage girls. Which doesn’t really bother Jennifer all that much, until during a strange sleepwalking session she happens to stumble across a murder taking place. She’s also not sure if the murderer, whoever they are, ended up seeing her that night, which isn’t the best position you want to be in when it comes to serial killers. But what can she, a young girl in a foreign land, possibly do? And where does her bizarre affinity with insects fit into it?

       Phenomena, is a giallo film, a term which in this neck of woods (ie wikipedia) refers to a particular type of thriller (with elements of horror and eroticism to taste) film that evolved out of cheap pulp magazines popular in Italy in the post-war period, much in the same way as film noir in the U.S. has its origins in the stories of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler. Jumping onto the film scene as far back as 1963, giallo could be considered to be an ancestor of the slasher genre, and much like slasher movies dominated the 70s and 80s before collapsing. Much in the same way as the arc of Dario Argento’s career if we’re being brutally honest, which began in the 60s, exploded in the 70s (1970 was the year of his directorial debut, to be precise), and in modern times is commonly associated with poorly made dreck.

       By 1985 Argento was around the tail end of his Golden Age, but in Phenomena you can see the elements of what made him popular. The bizarre and grotesque imagery, clear and concise editing, the beautiful scenery, expert shots and of course all of that over-the-top violence. While not as visually impressive as his film Suspiria (from what I’ve seen of Suspiria anyway), you still see in Phenomena a film that’s a cut above many of its peers in terms of cinematography. Which may not seem all that impressive on paper, but we’ve all seen movies, especially horror movies, where much of the time is spent trying to figure out what the hell is happening on screen. Simple and clean.

       As I said Jennifer Connelly is the star, her first starring role in only her second film. She does a pretty okay job for a 15 year old, although she does seem a bit wooden at times, whether from the direction, the language barrier or her inexperience it’s hard to tell. We’ve also got Donald Pleasence to take a break from doing Halloween movies to do some stuff here. He puts on a good performance as you’d expect, although ultimately doesn’t really get to do much, which seems a bit of waste. Everyone else I can’t really speak much about, although we do have longtime Argento actress/girlfriend Daria Nicolodi as the teacher Frau Bruckner, who does so little for so long in the film that I’m almost certain you don’t actually hear her name spoken aloud until the last 25 minutes, and even then only once. When she actually gets a chance to speak she’s one of the more expressive members of the cast, and that includes the ones being stabbed by a javelin.

       The problem I arrive at, however, is the same one I faced when it came to Tenebrae: it’s too silly. Giallo, from what little I’ve been exposed to is a film style built on big emotions, but Argento here seems to have taken melodrama and pushed it into the realms of absurdity. What starts out as a relatively normal mystery-thriller with slight supernatural elements and then gets increasingly more bizarre and chaotic, to the point where the climax of the film seems feels so random that it feels like it’s from another movie. No to mention all the odd character behavior, the assistant chimpanzees, the out-of-nowhere claim that insects have ESP, it’s such an overload that a sense of drama is lost. I mean if things are just going to happen with no explanation then you can’t really invest yourself in it, you’re just kind of stuck on a haunted house ride that doesn’t quite have enough material to last the time it takes to experience. Not that I could really empathize with a 15 year old rich daughter of a movie star with psychic bug powers anyway, but you get the idea.

       The eclecticism seems to have affected the music as well. We of course have Goblin, mainstays of film soundtracks, as well as cameos by Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and despite it being good heavy stuff it also lacks nuance. That pulse-pounding, heavy prog rock is perfect during the scenes where the killer is tracking their victims, but then they also have scenes where they’ve got a blazing Iron Maiden playing over Jennifer fiddling over a doorknob. Constantly. Compare it to the soundtrack work of people like John Carpenter, subtle and yet often iconic, and Phenomena feels like the audio equivalent of a drunk bull in a china shop. Heavy, but lacks nuance.

       Generally speaking though, Phenomena does its job of keeping you more or less entertained the entire way through, so I’m going it the thumbs-up for recommendation. It’s weird and silly, but weird and silly is what 80’s horror movies were built on, and at the very least Phenomena looks good while doing it. So if you were a fan of The Believers or Sleepaway Camp that we covered previously on this list then there is probably going to be something you like here. Grab some friends, grab some snacks and the movie and have yourself a fun time.


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Tenebrae (1982), directed by Dario Argento

  The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Tenebrae", by Goblin   

     Italy is a country with a lot of problems. The government is rife with political corruption, organized crime has a stranglehold on the economy and key business leaders, their army has only been occasionally successful in their short history (not successful enough to prevent several invasions on their own soil, regional attitudes have been consistently poor since the country’s rather haphazard creation, and they kind of invented fascism. Not what you might call the best track record, but as bad as Italy can and has been, the numerous contributions to the arts and sciences that have come from that region is undeniable. In the past it was artists like Michelangelo and Da Vinci, and in the modern age it is directors like Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone, with a fine collection of artists, musicians, authors and actors in between. I don’t know what it is about shitty places to live, but they always seem to produce the most interesting stuff. Look at New York in the 70s, or San Francisco at any point in history. The shittier your living conditions, the more people will like your art.

      Italy is no stranger to the horror genre, whether in film or otherwise. In fact the horror subgenre of giallo in Italian film was originally a literary genre, sort of like the pulp fiction novels of the American past, characterized by spicing up your normal mystery story with sex and horror. There have been many great giallo directors over the years, like Lucio Fulci (Zombie, The Black Cat) and Mario Bava (Black Sunday, Baron Blood), but for the purposes of the marathon I’ve decided to go with one of the most popular Italian horror directors, Dario Argento. Although his success in American theaters has been spotty at best, Argento forged a cult following through his frequent use of explosive violence and explicit sexuality in films that blurred the line between camp and horror. Plus he packed his soundtracks with Italian prog rock, which should be enough to get any music hipster at least marginally interested. You’d never see Cronenberg putting YYZ in one of his movies.

      A plane touches down in Rome. On it is Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa), a popular mystery novelist, whose latest book Tenebre was released a fews weeks previous and has been quite successful. The plan, according to his agent (John Saxon) and his personal assistant, is to do the talk show circuit as is expected and generally try to get some rest & relaxation in a foreign land. However, when a series of murders start occuring that fit the murders in Tenebre, every victim a young woman, throat slashed with a straight razor, Peter Neal is the first suspect. While a vicious killer stalks the streets of Rome for fresh victims, Peter Neal decides to start his own investigation to find out the answers on his own. Sometimes though, you’re better off in ignorance…

      Tenebre kind of feels like the Stephen King story that never was (although I guess there is a King book turned movie called The Dark Half which is sort of like this, so whatever), it’s suspenseful but still feels a bit too cheesy to take seriously at the same time.  That being said, Argento still managed to hold my attention throughout by crafting a mystery just bizarre enough that you wonder where’s he going next. The nudity and ultraviolence doesn’t hurt either. If you’re looking for a reason to avoid traveling to Rome this Halloween, why not try out some of Tenebre?

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

The Trailer
and
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.