THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME – Jess Franco often made cameo appearances in his films but here he takes the lead, playing a defrocked priest with a stabby dislike of anyone having too much of a good time. Much of TSOND shows him hanging out on the fringes of the Parisian demimonde, looking on lugubriously from the shadows at orgies in full swing. The drab palette of Old World back streets smears an already grotty picture where voyeurism, here personified by the director himself, lends a weirdly personal and slightly suffocating air to proceedings. TSOND is quite downbeat compared with the likes of ‘Bloody Moon’, ‘Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein’, or other examples of Franco in party mode, but the constantly seamy ambience coupled with the imagery of majestic but semi-derelict cathedrals is compelling.
STANLEY – ‘Nam survivor Tim, out in the Everglades where life is just one massive swamp, finds that humanity just isn’t where it’s at anymore. Snakes though, there’s a species you can rely on. I actually don’t get the whole ‘primal fear’ thing of snakes at all really, nor for that matter the widespread dislike of spiders, who always seem unjustly maligned. It’s more worms, slugs, maggots that get to me. Yeah, f*ck them. Anyway ‘Stanley’, which is close to the likes of ‘Willard’ in that it melds inter-species relatedness with ‘revenge of the downtrodden’ tropes, is groovily in step with its early seventies provenance and is full of fascinating little swirls and diversions, none of which hide the fact that it’s overlong and frequently clunky as hell. There are a lot of things this film could say about Native Americans, PTSD and alienation, but ‘Stanley’ no sooner puts these issues out on the table than skirts around them. OK, it’s an exploitation / horror flick first and foremost, but it comes on then blows cold on some pretty interesting themes. On the other hand, scenes of Tim expounding his philosophies and getting down and relating to his pets are very endearing, and some of the images are indelible – watching snake guy toss his serpents in repetitive slow motion upon a couple as they writhe, scream and die does something to me. The less obviously entertaining, but more interesting, half of the recent VS double with ‘Horror High’. Hypocrite alert (and I level this at myself) – after bestowing a quantity of praise on this film I should point out that it features some unconscionable acts of violence towards the slithering ones, which is one thing I can’t condone.
FEARDOTCOM – One of my favourite horror movie ‘things’ is the pairing of heightened visual style and dramatic incompetence – at least some of the world must be with me on that, otherwise there’d be no money in Euro horror for a start. Anyway, lush imagery and shit narrative are trapped in a desperately unhappy marriage in ‘Feardotcom’, a film I’ve avoided up till now as I believed, erroneously, that it was one of those found footage disasters (aesthetically, it’s the opposite). I’m not stupid, but I couldn’t understand what was going on at all. I might start by telling you that it involved the website of a ghost of a little girl with a white ball who can make people’s eyes bleed, but even a little time spent pondering the finer points of this mess would cause my own eyes to weep crimson, and maybe yours too. There a potentially interesting Cronenbergy but then somehow J-Horror supernaturalism type thing going on with it maybe, but it’s buried beneath a thick layer of cruddy incoherence… but then it all looks so nice done out in wonderful post-Mann ‘Seven’-esque shades, a perpetually rainswept carnival of grim neon and night. And the names – Stephen Rea, Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone , Udo Kier… well, I guess they all have a bit of trash floating around at the bottom of their resumes, as does Herbert West, here seen chain smoking and swearing a lot but still only capable of looking like a bitter nerd (only kidding Jeff, you’re one of my faves). Objectivity is always a strain when it comes to any art form, but, no matter what the critical framework might be, I’m pretty sure ‘Feardotmcom’ cannot be thought of as a good movie. Ever. Does it matter, though? Does it entertain, does it interest? ‘Feardotcom’ is a reeking pile of utter bollocks, but I really liked it!
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