BABYSITTER WANTED - I found myself wincing through the first half hour or so as the clichés mounted up to what looked like the point of no return - I hate, in particular, obvious music / sound cues - but I gave it a chance and stuck it out. I'm glad I did because, after the frustrating opener, 'Babysitter Wanted' swerves into more unpredictable territory telegraphed by a sinister kid and a 'House of the Devil' type feel. It's nowhere near as perplexing and atmospheric as the latter, but does deliver some OK gore and supernatural oddness. Not quite the sleeper I was hoping for, but worth a shot anyway.
SEASON OF THE WITCH - My fave Romero film after 'Martin'. It tones the horror down but somehow this just amps up the atmosphere in what's essentially a (maybe) quasi-feminist take on midlife angst in the early seventies. Perhaps it's that sense of the seventies that gets me. 'Season of the Witch' certainly has that free-flowing, naturalistic but abstract feel of seventies cinema and Romero of this period and, although the film is talky, it simmers with claustrophobia and a sense of imminent doom. Everything in it seems washed out, a little bit tawdry and broken.
THE LOVE BUTCHER - Staying in the seventies with 'The Love Butcher', a movie I have a real soft spot for. It's not flawless, but it's pretty snappy for its era and it works as a mean black comedy with sickly atmosphere. It feels more sleazy and violent than it actually is on an explicit level. Focuses on a disabled gardener who doubles as a misogynistic playboy serial killer (not a spoiler - revealed in the first ten minutes) and carries on the 'Psycho' derived themes of the director's 'Schoolgirls in Chains'. Code Red's new DVD is a real revelation for those used to the rubbish old version. If you like seventies trash you'll probably dig this (but then again, I'm a fan of 'The Forest' by the same director, which I've never heard anyone say a good thing about).
THE NIGHT OF THE DEVILS - Yet more seventies, this time Italian Euro-goth. Is it a lost classic? I'm no authority, but I wasn't all that into it. After an arresting opening sequence it kind of plateaus off into a 'house in a forest with some undead witches out there somewhere, better be careful' type scenario. This goes on for an hour, and could've been good if the atmosphere had been there. For me this was lacking. Different people pick up on different things particularly when it comes to the tone of a work - maybe the reviewers elsewhere who have lavished praise on 'Night of the Devils' were keyed into a whole different feeling than I was, but I wasn't sold. That said, the gratuitous last half hour is definitely worth sticking around for hour. Again, if you're into this era of genre cinema, you'll probably want to see it (and probably already have).
UPSTREAM COLOR - On with the good stuff. Wow, this was amazing. And just really baffling. Or maybe not, because it makes sense on some distant level. Reviewers have tended to put a kind of 'T Malick meets D Conenberg' type framework around it, which probably works. Basically, it's about a woman who is kidnapped by a man who inserts some kind of consciousness altering maggot into her, subjects her to some heavy psychological abuse, then uses her in a financial scam. He then passes on the psych-maggot to an avant-garde musician / swineherd who likes to infiltrate his livestock with said maggots which I guess imbue the pigs with some form of telepathic consciousness... the film follows the woman as she meets a man who has been through to the same process - both try to come to terms / understand what has happened. Yep, it's a bit of a mind-blower, although, as you sink into it, you adapt to its otherness quickly. It has narrative, obviously, but, cinematically we're in indie-experiental territory - it's not linear, and pushes forward by way of connections, parallels, intersections. Judging by the DVD box it's been marketed in the UK as a standard horror sci-fi thriller - it isn't at all, and such a move will only alienate those who can't put up with something so fiercely enigmatic. An odd move also, as the film has been extensively covered by the vessels of middlebrow culture - The Guardian, Sight and Sound etc. Anyway, if you like it strange then hopefully you'll love this elliptical piece of arch-weirdness.
TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE - Thought I'd got my hit of bizarreness for the month with the above, but it turns out I hadn't even started. 'Tales From the Quadead Zone' was made by the man who gave the world vid-cam epic 'Black Devil Doll from Hell". It features a similar aesthetic - bad, consumer grade tech. Affectless bontemi soundtrack. Living room interiors. Strange edits. Muffled voices. Things don't make sense. A mother reads horror stories to her son who is a ghost. The ghost son manifests as a breeze accompanied by sibilant chanting. The horror tales form a portmanteau sequence. The first involves a family who don't have enough to eat. They sit around their dinner table repeating the same meal time ritual three times over. In the course of this, some of the family are shot. The end. The next story features a dude who steals the corpse of his brother, dresses corpse as a clown, then dies at the hands of clown-corpse when latter comes to life with a bizarre sound-effect voice. The third instalment sees mother subjected to some horrible domestic violence (soundtracked by that keyboard music) which culminates in her committing suicide and joining ghost-son in afterlife. Utterly beguiling, from the hand-painted credit sequence on. Better than Warhol for off-hand, detached minimalism. Without doubt a total recommendation.
 |