28th January 2012, 09:12 PM
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 | Cultist on the Rampage | | Join Date: May 2011 Location: Leeds, UK | |
WITCHFINDER GENERAL - A re-visit, although the last time I saw it was years ago. Probably its harsher edges have been dulled by the onslaught of cinematic nihilism it arguably helped to unleash, but I still found it pretty bleak - particularly the ending. I liked the desolate vistas of English countryside and the 'Civil War Western' type theme. Lovely cameo by Wilfred Brambell brought a comedic twinge, easily countered by a stern as marble Vincent Price though.
HOTEL - Absolutely wonderful, easily the best film I've seen in about a year. Almost ambient cinema, with an atmosphere far in excess of the narrative that contains it. I'm not surprised to hear comparisons to Lynch and Polanski - the Lynch references are pretty explicit and obviously deliberate, but it also put me in mind of J G Ballard and folkloric imagery, a pretty weird combination. All I can say is, I found this film to be utterly entrancing and, despite the fact that nothing really happens in it, I could watch it endlessly.
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) - Another re-visit. Actually, I'd forgotton how much I like this film. The first thirty or forty minutes are a master class in the evocation of paranoia, with a wealth of incidental details steadily building an atmosphere of hostile unreality. After a certain point I felt this rich portrait of cloying alienation seemed to give way to a more standard sci-fi / action / chase dynamic but still the oddness and grimness did't let up. And that ending - really upset me when I was a kid, and still gives me the jitters these days.
COLD LIGHT OF DAY - Yet more alienation and claustrophobia, this time of a dreary Brit kind rather than San Fran Hyper-real. Made in the late 80's and based on the Dennis Nilsen murders, this film by Fhiona Louise is still pretty obscure but seems to have just been released on DVD (think previously a VHS was avaialble in the 90s). Although it's not quite an 'Angst' or a 'Schramm', its bleak vision is certainly deserving of a wider audience and in some ways it could be seen to have set the pace (or at least provided a context) for the kind of downbeat realist squalor exemplified by 'Tony' etc. The first half hour plays like a minimal, depressing soap opera before unravelling into a series of dream-like recollections, painful stangulations, harsh interrogations and neon-lit wanderings. The framing seemed really odd in places, but I thought some visual cues seemed to indicate that this was deliberate. Also, the aspect ratio struck me as a bit strange, but maybe it was down to my primitive TV set up.
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