TOP TEN DISCOVERIES: 2023 (Part # 2 of 2)

With apologies for the delay…

5. Je t’aime moi non plus 

(Serge Gainsbourg, 1976)

Venturing out to a cinema screening of this one, in honour of the late Jane Birkin, mid-way through 2023, my first reaction to the opening scenes was simply to marvel at what a confident, technically accomplished and beautifully composed movie this is, given that it was Gainsbourg’s debut as director.

A world away from the pop-art outrages and wacky satires in which he participated as an actor/composer through the ‘60s, ‘Je T’aime..’ feels closer to the aesthetic of the ‘New German Cinema’ of the ‘70s - specifically, the romantic/minimalist style which Wim Wenders would introduce to America in the ‘80s, and the emotionally wrought, outré subject matter of Fassbinder - as Gainsbourg painstakingly delineates a self-contained, somewhat unreal desert world which is not quite France, but never quite the American West either, in which taciturn, musclebound queer characters bestride heaps of mouldering garbage, their minds seemingly attuned to higher things than the brutish squalor which surrounds them.

With Serge at the controls though, story-telling remains direct and concise, and the film never veers into pretention, its somewhat meditative tone interwoven with fart jokes, overweight strippers, slabs of bloody horse meat, a mountain of abandoned toilets and a central narrative concern with the best way to undertake anal sex without upsetting neighbours/co-habitants, exhibiting a mixture of earnest, doomed romanticism and grotesque vulgarity which is frankly exactly what we’d hope for from a Gainsbourg joint.

As our leads in this strange and tragic love story, Jane Birkin and Joe Dallesandro are… well, I don’t know if there’s a way to put the effect of their screen presence into words without resorting to cliché, but both are simply stunning, let’s leave it at that; every moment they’re together on screen feels charged with an enervating, dangerous power.

It’s certainly by far the best, least wooden work I’ve ever seen from Dallesandro, whilst Hugues Quester (best known around these parts as the uncooperative male lead in Jean Rollin’s ‘La Rose de Fer’) also makes a strong impression as his cuckolded partner. Star of the show though is definitely Birkin, who - again, a million miles away from her usual, glamourous public persona - delivers one of those performances for which critics tend to use “fully committed” as a euphemism for frequently naked, cold, brutalised and involved in intensely awkward/uncomfortable situations, all whilst remaining fully in control of her character, and of the almost Zulawski-level intensity she manages to dish out to co-stars and audience alike. An incredible portrayal of a kind of lonely, displaced feminine anger which has never quite been given a name.

In its matter-of-fact portrayal of the relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, the film’s fluid and non-judgemental approach to sexuality feels startlingly ahead of its time. Unfairly overlooked and dogged by censorship upon its release, I think it’s fair to assume that ‘Je T’aime..’ would probably have swept the board at every festival across the globe had it been made in the 2020s, and justifiably so.

Certainly, viewed today, as the famous title song finally rises on the soundtrack during the pivotal scene in which an act of sodomy in the back of a garbage truck becomes a transcendent moment of divine love, it feels like the apotheosis of everything Gainsbourg was trying to communicate through his art across the decades; the sacred and profane singing in filthy unison. 

 

4. RRR 

(S.S. Rajamouli, 2022)

So, a year or two late, I finally got to see this one whilst staying at a Netflix-equipped b’n’b in early 2023, and, I mean, what can I say? It’s pretty incredible, right?

Of course there’s very little I can find to say about it which has not been better expressed elsewhere, but, given the frequency with which I champion an ideal of “pop(ular) cinema” on this blog, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge such an exhaustively epic expression of that ideal, existing on a plain which feels much closer to the exuberant, two-fisted spectacles of 60s/70s global genre movies than to the cynical, middle-brow self-awareness which suffocates most contemporary Hollywood product.

Naturally there are a few oddities here which feel rather uncomfortable when encountered in a mainstream/blockbuster context (such as the 20+ minute public torture sequence, and the excessive outburst of literal flag-waving nationalism at the end), but these are the kind of things I’ve learned to roll with during my limited forays into the realm of vintage Indian cinema, so they didn’t put me off unduly.

In fact, despite it being a long-time bugbear of mine re: Hollywood output, I even found myself coping ok with the super-human level of historically questionable individual exceptionalism around which much of the film’s action resolves, simply because, well… I dunno - N.T. Rama Rao and Ram Charan are just so darn loveable, I’ll allow those guys a bit of individual exceptionalism. I mean, talk about ‘star power’, jeez. Just the smiles on their faces in that big dance sequence, I can’t even…

ANYWAY. A few other quick notes;

1. Given that I’m the kind of viewer who tends to spit and leave the room when presented with a CG car chase, and finds all that Marvel crap unwatchable, how was I able to both embrace and enjoy the ludicrous, gravity-defying digitally rendered mayhem which comprises at least 50% of ‘RRR’s 3+ hour run-time, you ask?

The answer is - I really don’t know, but I can only assume that, when watching both this film and director S.S. Rajamouli’s previous works, I can latch on to the excitement of a filmmaker totally abandoning any pretence of ‘realism’ and just going hog-wild with the insane new possibilities of his multi-billion rupee digital playpen.

Since time immemorial for instance, filmmakers have clearly needed to be careful and considerate in their use of animals on-screen. But NO MORE, a film like ‘RRR’ tells us. Here in India in the 2020s, we can launch antelopes through the air, we can punch tigers in the face, fire them out of catapults or swing elephants around by their goddamn trunks, and no one in the audience is going to be stupid enough to believe that a real animal was anywhere near the film set, let alone being mistreated. Such freedom! [NB: I don't think any elephants were actually swung around by their trunks in ‘RRR’, I just put that in because I thought it would be funny.]

It’s the same kind of spirit you can see in the ‘70s/’80s Indonesian and Taiwanese fantasy films I love so much, in which imaginative ambitio proudly tramples any thought of realistic execution, yanked forward four decades and ripped through vast quantities of investment and processing power.

2. Doing for the enforcers of British colonial rule what ‘Raider of the Lost Ark’ did for Nazis? Yes please! Speaking as a suitably contrite British person, I’ve got to say, I was down with that, and that it’s about bloody time. An effective and long overdue bit of script-flipping for those of us who were somehow still allowed to grow up spending our Sunday afternoons watching heroic pith-helmeted Victorians strut around foreign climes in one televisual context or another, and props to the late Ray Stevenson for stepping up to portray one of the best moustache-twirling villains since Tod Slaughter trod the boards. 

 

3. The Iceman Cometh 

(Clarence Fok, 1989)

Liberally borrowing from Nicholas Meyer’s 1979 time travel comedy ‘Time After Time’ (and with no connection whatsoever to the Eugene O’Neill stage play, obvs), the high concept plot underpinning this ‘imperial phase’ Hong Kong belter finds morally upstanding Ming Dynasty-era swordsman Yuen Biao rudely awakened in ‘80s Hong Kong after he plunges into the depths of an icy ravine whilst engaged in a life-or-death struggle with maniacal rapist-murderer Yuen Wah - who, of course, also finds himself defrosted in the 20th century, ready to begin his rampage anew.

I went into this one cold (no pun intended), having never really encountered much enthusiasm for it amongst old school Hong Kong film fans/commentators, but, I needn’t have worried. Rather than the over-blown, headache-inducing farrago I was half expecting, ‘Iceman..’ is a blast in the best possible way, easily crashing straight into my hypothetical top five ‘80s HK action movies.

As per the template laid down by Meyer’s film, the psychotic Wah takes to the chaotic, over-stimulated environment of the modern day metropolis like a duck to water, installing himself as the machine gun-toting supremo of a violent criminal syndicate and wreaking shocking, Category III-worthy sadism upon anyone who crosses his path, whilst the chivalrous Biao meanwhile bumbles around in a state of fish-out-of-water confusion, eventually finding himself ‘adopted’ as a live-in man-servant / human curio by high end sex worker Maggie Cheung.

It would probably be an exaggeration to claim that ‘hilarity ensues’, but, this is still one of those rare HK action-comedies in which the comedic elements do frequently hit the right notes for me - largely thanks to the fact that all three leads are so relentlessly, almost preternaturally, charismatic.

Cheung in particular is a veritable human dynamo here, giving every impression of having a whale of a time with character whose wardrobe and behaviour seems cvlosely modelled on Madonna circa ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, whilst the details of her perilous and hap-hazard lifestyle as a prostitute/hustler are depicted in an interesting and unconventional fashion, even before the complication of a defrosted medieval swordsman gets thrown into the mix.

Meanwhile, those who recall Yuen Wah for his scene-stealing bad guy roles in films like ‘Eastern Condors’ and ‘Dragons Forever’ will be fully aware of how much ass this guy can kick, and in ‘Iceman..’ he turns it up to 11, transforming himself into one of the most gleefully terrifying villains in movie history - a lithe, hyper-athletic engine of omni-directional destruction who still somehow manages to look like the coolest motherfucker in SE Asia, resembling some kind of insane, Shaolin master version of Warren Oates in ‘..Alfredo Garcia’.

And, completing the central trio, good ol’ Yeun Biao just kind of does what he always does, which is to say - being absolutely fucking brilliant.

Amidst all the carnage, ‘Iceman..’ is also a beautifully directed film, shot with a rich, dark colour palette, slickly edited and betraying none of the ad-hoc choppiness which sometimes afflicts HK movies. One of the things I loved most about it though is the way director Clarence Fok manages to maintain a frantic, light-hearted action/comedy tone without downplaying the darker elements of the movie’s subject matter.

Although Maggie’s antics in the worlds of crime and prostitution are on one level presented as being pretty, uh... kooky?, her character is still constantly faced with threats of violence or abuse, maintaining a rough edge of realism and danger, especially when, inevitably, she crosses paths with Wah - who, as mentioned above, reinforces his full spectrum evilness by indulging in some jaw-dropping excesses of perverse brutality.

By rights, this should all feel completely out of place in a movie that’s liable to have you chuckling over some screwball shenanigans five minutes later… yet somehow, with typically mad HK movie magic, it all comes together just so.

Which is all well and good, but what about the action, right? Well, ok, I mean… oh man, it is so good. A central chase/fight set piece here involving a horse, a jeep and a shipping container swinging perilously from a dockside crane is absolutely one of the most astounding / unbelievable stunt sequences in HK cinema (which is saying something), and the extended final showdown between Biao and Wah - involving swords, gunplay, blasts of hair-frazzling electricity and (of course) a ‘power powder’-suffused hand-to-hand throw down of nigh-on superhuman agility - is as intense and imaginative as any fight fan could hope for.

In one moment during the climax, we see a long shot of Biao and Wah facing off in profile, ‘Street Fighter’-style, on a rooftop, as immediately behind them, a jumbo jet glides in to land at Hong Kong’s notoriously perilous urban airport… at which point, I felt like pausing the movie, falling to my knees, and simply giving thanks to the gods for the particular time and place in culture which brought us insane masterpieces like this one -- just a few decades behind us, one day’s flight away, but somehow feeling like an outburst of joyful mania from a completely different universe. 

 

2. Miami Blues 

(George Armitage, 1990)

Probably one of the best entries in the cycle of late ‘80s/early ‘90s American neo-noirs I’ve seen to date - and hands down the funniest - this adaptation of Charles Willeford’s 1984 book begins as Junior (Alec Baldwin), an impulsive, sociopathic criminal, touches down in Miami, casually bends back the fingers of an intrusive Hare Krishna on his way through the exit lounge, and promptly finds himself falling into a why-the-hell-not romantic relationship with naïve local prostitute Suzi (Jennifer Jason Leigh), in the midst of the non-stop crime spree which comprises his regular day-to-day.

Unfortunately for the newly inseparable couple however, that Hare Krishna guy ended up defying medical science by inexplicably dying of shock following the finger-bending incident, meaning that grizzled and toothless homicide detective Hoke Mosely (Fred Ward) is now on Junior’s trail, instigating a ramshackle cat-and-mouse between the two men which can’t possibly end well, least of all for Suzi.

Attempting to make a whimsical film noir takes some balls, but that’s exactly what Armitage and producer Jonathan Demme seem to have been going for here, and against the odds, they succeeded brilliantly, creating a world in which toe-curling brutality, systemic corruption and random, meaningless death exist side-by-side with impromptu pork chop dinners, misplaced dentures and recipes for ‘vinegar pie’ (whatever that is).

It helps that Armitage proves adept in staging long, intense inter-character scenes which seem capable of turning on a dime between good-natured bonhomie and psychotic violence, and Willeford’s complex and morally ambivalent characters are lent an additional spark by career-best level performances from Baldwin, Leigh and Ward.

As with ‘The Iceman Cometh’ discussed above, this is one of these films in which all three leads are basically right up in our face, all the time - but it doesn’t matter, because they’re all such captivating, horribly loveable human disaster areas, we could happily watch their antics for weeks, and still never really know what’s coming next.

Meanwhile, DP Tak Fujimoto coolly resists the temptation to riff on the visual style of a certain other Miami-based ‘80s crime franchise, instead turning the city into a candy-coloured pastel wonderland which actually looks like it might be quite a nice place to live, aside from all the blood.

Inspired use is made of Norman Greenbaum’s ‘Spirit in the Sky’ during the opening and closing credits (a perfect musical shrug-of-the-shoulders to sign off a nihilistic crime movie, now that I think about it, and you’ve got to love the irony of “..gonna go to the place that’s the best” playing over an aerial shot of the smog-choked city), and the always welcome appearance of faces like Charles Napier and Martine Beswick in the supporting cast feels like a thinly veiled high five to the cult film fans who have followed Armitage and Demme from their days on the grindhouse/exploitation circuit.

I confess, I’m not familiar with Willeford’s series of Hoke Mosely novels, but on the expectation that they might nail something akin to the uniquely schizophrenic tone of this wonderful movie, I’m clearing space on my bookshelves as we speak. 

 

1. Light Sleeper 

(Paul Schrader, 1992)

Another year, another reclaimed masterpiece dredged up from the vast and treacherous back catalogue of Paul Schrader - and of all of his films, this is possibly the one that has hit me hardest, although I’d have difficult trying to tell you precisely why that is.

At the time of its release, ‘Light Sleeper’ often seems to have been dismissed as a middle-aged rehash of ‘Taxi Driver’, and on one level it is easy to see why. But, if you can manage to approach it without reference to the structure and plot beats it shares with its more famous predecessor, this tale of former addict John LeTour (William Defoe) attempting to break out of his emotionally neutered existence as a bagman/delivery boy for high class coke dealer Ann (Susan Sarandon) carries a singular power which transcends its time, place and subject matter.

Shot very much as it would have been a few years earlier, at the very apex of high gloss, ‘80s cinematic style, Defoe’s slow glide through the reflecting, desaturated surfaces of nocturnal Manhattan conveys an icy, uncanny emptiness which barely even needs to be elaborated upon by Schrader’s script. For all the surface level composure required by his trade though, LeTour’s faltering attempts to rekindle his relationship with ex-girlfriend Dana Delaney emerge just as desperate and cack-handed as Travis Bickle’s attempts to make human contact, in spite of two whole extra decades of hard-won life experience.

Denied permission to use the Bob Dylan songs he had written the script around, Schrader - in a brilliant example of makin’ lemonade - hired Christian rock singer Michael Been to record original music for ‘Light Sleeper’ instead, and, whilst the moody vistas of overwrought, sub-Springsteenian pomp which resulted might well have been unbearable on record, in the context of the film, the songs work superbly, their tides of smouldering passion effectively acting as LeTour’s inner voice, providing a soaring, white-hot emotional contrast to the cold, clean surroundings and transactional relationships of his material existence.

Schrader is on record as saying that he regrets turning the latter half of the film into a thriller, complete with an all-too-familiar violent bloodbath at the finale. Presumably he sees this as a concession to commercialism which detracted from the more existential core themes he was trying to address here. For my own purposes though, the plunge into genre proved very welcome, adding a vicious (neo)noir hook to the guts of a story which might otherwise have floundered into aimless introspection, reeling us in via a spiral of loss and collapse which could only reasonably conclude with an explosion of violent self-definition / self-immolation.

More than anything, I love the pace of this film - the slow glide, almost menacing simply in its constancy. Even when the characters are static, the camera prowls, like time creeping away at a consistent, doom metal tempo, taking us on a journey which has got to end somewhere, irrespective of the director’s more nebulous Sartre-via-Antonioni type intentions. And, when it does finally arrive at its destination - fragmented, hand-held footage documenting the blood-splattered walls of a modern art-bedecked penthouse hotel suite - the film achieves a moment of transcendence whose weird, spiritual power speaks to the religious angst and search for grace at the core of all of Schrader’s work more effectively than anything he’s ever managed to get across on paper.

As I say, it’s difficult for me to explain why ‘Light Sleeper’ had such an impact on me. I suppose that, like LeTour, I’m mid-way through my adult life at this point, dealing with the choices I’ve made. But - thankfully - the similarities end there, so there’s very little direct character identification going on here.

Could it be that, in the final analysis, this is simply an excellent movie, and that, by their very nature, the best movies become more than the sum of their parts - more than their creators intended or understood, even? And, they do not always give up their secrets so easily.

TOP TEN DISCOVERIES: 2023 (Part # 1 of 2)

Well, cards on the table - 2023 was not exactly a great year, on either a personal level, a global level, or I daresay on many of the myriad levels found somewhere in-between.

But, mustn’t grumble, right? Even as my (our?) quality of life takes a (personal / collective?) battering, we’re all (mostly?) still here, still reading things and watching movies, and still (occasionally) updating blogs.

In fact, I’ve found myself thinking recently about exactly why watching movies has become my primary form of recreation in recent years, and, in the end, I think what it comes down to is cinemas ability to transport me to a different time and place, and to do so more efficiently and immediately than most other entertainment media.

This doesn’t always even need to involve ‘escapism’ as such (although that’s nice too), but (at the risk of descending into utter pretention, given that I largely gravitate toward movies concerned with the travails of lesbian vampires, psychotic killers, girl gangs or flesh-eating monsters of one kind or another), even the most absurd and poorly realised examples of global genre cinema can offer instant, full strength access to different perspectives, different cultures, different problems and different solutions - no supporting reading or conceptual re-adjustment required (tho this can always follow later).

Case in point: unexpectedly, two of the films on last year’s ‘top ten’ list below concern the experiences of indigenous peoples in Canada. This is not a subject I had previously paid much attention to, or taken an active interest in, to be perfectly honest - but now it’s very much on my radar. Thanks, movies!

As per last year, the following is definitely not a list of the best films I saw in 2023, or even necessarily a ljst of the best films I saw for the first time in 2023. Rather, it’s just a list of movies that surprised me, or made an impression on me, or that I just feel like telling people about and encouraging them to watch, for whatever reason. If you take my advice on any of ‘em, I hope you enjoy the experience.

 

10. Slash / Back 

(Nyla Innuksuk, 2022)

Though it may be weak tea as a horror movie, Nyla Innuksuk’s debut feature (which I wrote about here back in January 2023) absolutely smashes it as a character drama, as an insight into a remote and culturally unique community, and as a “girls on the scene” survival-through-teamwork movie in the lineage of ‘The Thing From Another World’.

It has a modest, gutsy DIY spirit which I absolutely loved, and a rare sense of inter-generational appeal. If you’ve got kids, try watching it with ‘em - see what happens.

 

9. The Day of the Dolphin 

(Mike Nichols, 1973)

Long story short: this one is pretty weak as a political thriller, but if want to see George C. Scott developing a father/son relationship with a talking dolphin (and who wouldn't?) - essential viewing.

The tone is totally all over the place, to the extent that we’re never quite sure whether we’re watching a serious, Watergate-era thriller or a heart-warming talking animal movie (a confusion of genres perhaps unique in the history of cinema), initially leading me to assume the film must have been subject to a long and torturous back story of behind-the-scenes monkey business.

But no - aside from a few expected grumbles about Scott being difficult on-set, the version of ‘Day of the Dolphin’ which ended up on screen was written by one guy (Buck Henry, no less), directed by one guy, and released by AVCO Embassy, no questions asked. And yet, it still turned out like this? Mind-boggling.

Apparently the script has very little in common with the more sensational source novel, with hearsay suggesting that the filmmakers instead took inspiration from the real life work of Dr John Lilly. But, aside from featuring a research scientist working with dolphins who has a contentious relationship with government intelligence agencies, the story has very little in common with anything he did either, so, what are we watching here, exactly?

Well, whatever it is, the narrative is under-developed in several key areas and the vibe of meditative earnestness which Nichols seems to be going for is undercut by a cheesy, Lassie-defeats-the-bad-guys resolution which feels like a total joke… but for all its faults, ‘Day of the Dolphin’ remains weirdly fascinating, beautifully shot (the dolphin footage alone is stunning), and packs a massive emotional punch, becoming more affecting than it really has any right to be during its startlingly bleak final minutes.

Sitting comfortably next to ‘Silent Running’ in the limited canon of first wave / post-hippie environmental tearjerkers, Nichols and Henry hit those “man is the only real monster” buttons more effectively than much of what followed once these kind of themes began to filter into the mainstream during the 80s and 90s. A uniquely weird, “only in the ‘70s” proposition which I’m very glad I made time for last year.

 

8. Un Témoin dans la Ville 

[Witness in the City] 

(Édouard Molinaro, 1959)

Of all the movies I watched during 2023 which fall within the broad category of ‘film noir’ (and there were quite a few), I think this one - which I wrote about at length here - made the biggest impression on me. 

Despite clear nods to Lang, Hitchcock and goodness knows who else, it still feels like a highly original entry in the genre, replete with dense, shadow-haunted photography, a great sense of visual storytelling, sickening suspense and an unsettling mixture of humanism and bleakest nihilism, all anchored by a desperate, almost monstrously menacing, performance from Lino Ventura.

Now available on blu-ray on both sides of the Atlantic (thanks respectively to Kino Lorber’s French Film Noir collection and Radiance’s World Noir set), it would be great to see this overlooked minor classic picking up a bit more of a following in the English-speaking world.

 

7. The Swimmer 

(Frank Perry, 1968)

If ever there were a film which proves difficult to discuss with / sell to those who have not yet seen it, Frank and Eleanor Perry’s uniquely troubling (and troubled) studio-financed cult oddity is it.

For the first half hour of your first viewing, you’ll be apt to wonder quite why you’re watching this seemingly aimless drift through a garishly-lit world of conceited mid-century WASP contentment and dreary socialite gossip, watching struggling alpha male Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) attempt to find his way home by traversing the swimming pools of his privileged neighbours in up-market Connecticut on a balmy summer day.

But, as Merrill’s quest continues, becoming increasingly fraught and uncertain, things will gradually begin to make more sense. Then, suitably crushed by its conclusion, you will be drawn to watch the film again - at which point it will REALLY start to make sense.

Taken out of the Perrys’ hands prior to editing, additional / replacement scenes shot at the behest of producer Sam Spiegel initially feel mystifying and out of place, but eventually add a queasy, proto-psychedelic beauty to proceedings which makes the ground beneath our feet feel even more uncertain, lending the film an even more fascinating sense of outside-the-box strangeness.

You’re always guaranteed the real deal from a Lancaster perfromance however, and he holds together one of the most formally challenging films ever to have emerged from the Hollywood system with what I can only describe as a sense of tormented, masculine ease, confidently navigating a role which I’m sure no other male lead of his generation would have touched with a barge pole, driving us ever onward toward a harrowing, almost Poe-like gothic conclusion which feels like a tombstone raised above the aspirations of the USA’s entire post-war culture.

So, I mean, no wonder it didn’t really go over big at the box office, right? But, now that we’re less personally caught up in those generational aspirations and can give the film the attention (and repeat viewing) it deserves in the comfort of our own homes, it’s really quite the thing. 

 

6. Clearcut 

(Ryszard Bugajski, 1991)

An enraged, uncompromising attempt to probe the limits of a liberal pacifist mind-set and posit the necessity of more radical alternatives, this adaptation of a novel by Canadian author M.T. Kelly from Polish ex-pat director Bugajski seems on one level to address a highly specific regional concern (the disenfranchisement and loss of land suffered by indigenous communities in North Western Ontario), yet still feels frighteningly relevant to the precarious assumptions underpinning all of our lives in the 21st century. Indeed, it was difficult to view it in close proximity to the clusterfuck of events taking place in the Middle East during the last quarter of 2023 without drawing some very uncomfortable parallels.

But, before we get too dour, I should clarify that ‘Clearcut’ (its title referring to the process of intensive logging which leaves areas of land looking like “the dark side of the moon”) also stands tall as an engrossing and violent quasi-supernatural / metaphysical thriller, shot through with a welcome vein of pitch black humour, largely emerging from a brilliantly mannered, scene stealing performance from Oneida actor Graham Greene.

Long story short then: Ron Lea plays activist-lawyer Peter Maguire, who has just lost a case, attempting to defend indigenous lands from exploitation by a logging conglomerate. Despite ineffectual protests and civil unrest, tribal elders (as represented by Floyd ‘Red Crow’ Westerman) seem resigned to their fate, but, as Maguire plans his return to Toronto to mount an appeal, he notices a new “Indian” with a fierce intellect and unnerving, passive-aggressive attitude on the scene - Arthur, played by Greene.

Before long, both Maguire and belligerent mill owner Bud Ricketts (Michael Hogan) have been taken hostage by Arthur, and, with the tacit approval of Westerman’s tribe, transported to the unmapped depths of the river valley threatened by Ricketts’ logging operations, where, we must assume, the two white men are about to be subjected to some seriously harrowing rites of passage.

Due to its intense concentration on indigenous mythology and ritual, its occasional moments of savage violence, and its eventual blurring of consensus reality, ‘Clearcut’ has recently found itself re-evaluated (primarily by critic Kier-La Janisse in her documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched and its accompanying blu-ray box set) as an exemplar of ‘folk-horror’. And, given the crucial ambiguity which is maintained re: the story’s interpretation, I think that this dubious prescription more or less holds up.

What, after all, is Arthur, in the end? A violent native rights activist? An externalised personification of Maguire’s unrealised anger? Or, simply a spirit of the violated land, summoned to extract vengeance? Naturally, Bugajski’s film is far too canny to give the nod to either a material, psychological or spiritual interpretation of events, and is all the stronger for it.

And likewise, though ‘Clearcut’s occasional pigeonholing as “the Canadian ‘Deliverance’” initially seems trite, the comparison persists, not as a reflection of any shared setting or story elements, but simply because both films eventually concern ‘civilised’ men encountering something atavistic and nameless within the landscape, and finding themselves forever changed by it.

Like both Boorman’s film and the best entries in Janisse’s beloved sub-genre, ‘Clearcut’ carries a power which is impossible to fully explain, impossible to reduce to its constituent parts, and impossible to forget. It is recommended to appropriately brave viewers in the strongest possible terms.

-- 

To be continued…

Lovecraft on Film Appendum: The Evil Clergyman (Charles Band, 1987 / 2012)

As anyone familiar with his work will be aware, H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Evil Clergyman’ is a brief, half-formed fragment, obviously written in haste, perhaps extrapolated from a bad dream, and presumably never intended for publication in its extant form. Nonetheless, it saw print several years after Lovecraft’s death, in the April 1939 edition of ‘Weird Tales’, and - rather irksomely - it has formed part of his accepted canon ever since, seemingly more by accident than design.

As such, it seems appropriate that the story’s movie adaptation should take the form of an orphaned, 28 minute short, originally intended for inclusion in a 1988 Empire Pictures anthology flick named ‘Pulse Pounders’ which never saw the light of a projector at the time, remaining unreleased due to (it says here) circumstances arising from the company’s bankruptcy.

Furthermore, it appears that the original film elements for ‘The Evil Clergyman’ were subsequently misplaced or destroyed, leaving the footage presumed lost until, a quarter century later, Charlie Band found a VHS work print knocking about in his attic and smelled a quick buck to be made.

A bit of a clean up, a new credits sequence and a newly commissioned score from brother Richard later, and ‘The Evil Clergyman’ finally premiered, streaming on Band’s Full Moon Features website, in 2012.

I’m unfamiliar with the back story re: how exactly those film elements ended up disappearing, but I can only assume it must have been the result of some terrible and unprecedented freak accident, as any other explanation would frankly beggar belief given the breadth of talent involved in creating this segment, and the relatively lavish budget obviously invested in this thing.

With the exception of an AWOL Stuart Gordon in fact, ‘..Clergyman’ is effectively a ‘Reanimator’  reunion, with Dennis Paoli providing the script, photography by Mac Ahlberg, effects by John Carl Buechler, and a cast comprising Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs and David Gale, with the ever wonderful David Warner (R.I.P.) thrown in for good measure.

In the grand tradition of Poe/Lovecraft adaptations through the ages, the film’s narrative has pretty much nothing in common with the supposed source story whatsoever. Instead, Paoli’s script sees Crampton taking centre stage, playing a woman returning to the attic chamber of a medieval castle which she had previously shared with her lover (Combs), a lapsed priest and alleged black magician who has recently taken his own life, prompting her to flee and leave the room vacant.

This ill-stared chamber is apparently still up for rent from the castle’s acid-tongued landlady (Una Brandon-Jones) however, and, once ensconced within it (ostensibly to “collect her things,” although the room looks bare), Crampton begins to experience a series of increasingly hair-raising manifestations related to her deceased partner, and reflective of the unholy depredations the pair apparently got up to prior to Combs’ decision to sling a noose slung over the high beams, and depart this mortal coil… temporarily, at least.

Along the way, Warner pops up as the revenant spirit of another dead priest, who pops up to warn Crampton of the error of her ways, whilst Gale is in full effect as Combs’ familiar, a chittering, man-faced rat-thing straight out of ‘Dreams in the Witch House’.

And... it actually all works really well. Paoli’s story is weird, memorable and unnerving, leaving plenty to the imagination, whilst the production design and performances are excellent.

Though she’s not really called upon to do much more than act terrified, confused and distraught here, Crampton achieves this quite brilliantly. Always a good few rungs up the ladder from yr average ‘80s ‘scream queen’, the sheer intensity scruff of the neck and drags us through this compressed ghost train ride of a viewing experience very effectively.

By contrast, we get a relatively low-key turn from Combs, but there is still a hell of a lot to enjoy in his sleazily sinister presence. His introductory “hi” at the moment his character first takes on corporeal form is a delight in itself, and the spectral love scenes he shares with Crampton take on an appropriately fevered quality, drawing us further into the odd story being told here.

Warner meanwhile seems a bit surplus to requirements here in terms of the narrative, but it’s great to have him along for the ride, and he’s clearly having a fine time regardless. In the midst of a seemingly endless series of rent-a-villain / mad scientist roles at this point in his career, the old boy knows exactly how to pitch a high-handed spectral priest, managing to deliver lines like “I’m a bishop, from Canterbury, sent to expel your lover from our church” entirely straight, without eliciting laughs from the peanut gallery.

As for the long-suffering David Gale meanwhile, one shudders to imagine the indignities he must have been subjected to in the process of realising Buechler’s man-faced rat effects - an inspired mixture of puppetry and facial prosthetics which is actually extremely effective, allowing Gale’s face and voice remain present, even when seemingly attached to a repulsive, ankle-high critter capering about on the castle floor.

Essentially functioning as a foul-mouthed, perpetually enraged manifestation of the Combs character’s id, Gale manages to deliver a memorable performance under what we might reasonably assuming were challenging circumstances; his spittle-flecked delivery of words like “WHORE” and “SLUT” in particular are imbued with an old world, puritan gusto which I very much enjoyed.

Shot, inevitably, amid the imposing environs of the swanky Italian castle which Charles Band inexplicably ended up owning in the late ‘80s (also see: ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (1991), ‘Castle Freak’ (1995)), ‘..Clergyman’ benefits greatly from the location’s in-built atmosphere, adopting an almost abstract / fairy tale-like vibe which slips further into delirium as Crampton’s visions take told, and the world outside her lofty chamber effectively ceases to exist.

Moodily lit by Ahlberg in a none-more-80s manner, with deep shadows and shocks of blue-tinged moon light drifting in across the ancient brick-work, this is certainly one of the more accomplished efforts I’ve seen bearing Charles Band’s name as director. As is often the case, it’s perhaps questionable to what extent creative decisions here were actually taken by Band, but for what it’s worth, everything here is very solidly done. (I particularly liked the striking use of vertiginous high and low angles, reflecting the constant presence of both the swinging noose above, and the skittering rat-thing below.)

Even Richard Band’s retrospectively recorded orchestral score goes over gangbusters, really classing up this murky VHS-sourced work-print, much like his similarly bombastic/melodic work on Gordon’s ‘80s films, hovering just on the precipice of Elfman-esque parody, but never quite taking the plunge, or overpowering the action on-screen.

Given how strong this short is overall, it’s easy to see why a few elements ended up being recycled in other productions during the years in which the material shot for ‘Pulse Pounders’ remained unreleased.

Most notably, the effects used to create the human-faced rat creature were repurposed pretty much in their entirety for the creation of Brown Jenkin in Gordon’s 2005 TV adaptation of Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, whilst the “erotically charged predatory haunting” conceit of Paoli’s script also strongly reminded me of another Gordon-adjacent film, Danny Draven’s 2002 ‘Deathbed’ (not to be confused with the late George Barry’s outsider masterpiece of the same name), an interesting obscurity, also shot by Ahlberg and executive produced by Band, which saw release on DVD under the rather niche banner of “Stuart Gordon presents…”. (Were there any other entries in that series, I wonder? I don’t recall ever seeing any...)

In summary then, ‘The Evil Clergyman’ stands as something of an unexpected minor miracle for fans of the Empire/Full Moon/Stuart Gordon milieu. Alongside this year’s Suitable Flesh, it offers encouraging proof that the spirit of Gordon’s Lovecraft movies could live on and flourish, even in circumstances in which the man himself was unable to call the shots. Well worth making a small amount of time for if (as is understandable) it passed you by upon its belated release in 2012.

Lovecraft on Film: Suitable Flesh (Joe Lynch, 2023)

“..the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black realm begins and the watcher guards the gate… I saw a shaggoth - it changed shape… I can’t stand it… I won’t stand it… I’ll kill her if she ever sends me there again…” 

- H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The Thing On The Doorstep’

Though it was apparently drafted as early as 1933, ‘The Thing On The Doorstep’ was actually the last of H.P. Lovecraft’s story to see publication during the author’s lifetime, appearing two months before his death, in the January 1937 issue of ‘Weird Tales’.

Employing a relatively direct and unadorned prose style, ‘..Doorstep’ opens not with, say, a dense and baroque description of the stunted trees growing around some rarely used pike off the road in the depths of the Miskatonic valley, but instead with a concise sentence more deliberately designed to draw in the casual pulp magazine reader. (“It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.”)

This has led some to speculate that this tale, chronicling decadent writer Edward Pickman Derby’s enslavement and bodily possession by his sinister wife Asenath, may have been concocted with a greater degree of commercial consideration than was usually the case with HPL’s work - possibly reflecting the occasional necessity of actually earning a buck or two from the coffers of his long-suffering editors. Perhaps as a result, it is rarely cited as a favourite by Lovecraft’s more ardent devotees, and remains a bit of an outlier within his canon of core ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ tales.

Nonetheless, I’ve always found it surprising that ‘Thing on the Doorstep’ hasn’t more frequently drawn the attention of those seeking to adapt the Lovecraft’s work for the screen, given that it features the only significant female character in the entirety of his fiction (well, sort of), and that the essence its core body transference plot-line remains pretty cinema-friendly, requiring no on-screen realisation of unearthly locales or sanity-shaking monstrosities.

And verily, the drought of ‘..Doorstep’ adaptations has finally come to an end in grand style this year, as some familiar faces have teamed up with some less familiar ones to bring us ‘Suitable Flesh’ - an acknowledged tribute to / continuation of the legacy of Lovecraftian cinema created by the late Stuart Gordon, and a far from unworthy one, if I’m any judge.

Birthed from a project which was apparently in the early stages of development when Gordon passed away in 2020, ‘..Flesh’ has subsequently been brought to fruition by producer/star Barbara Crampton and director Joe Lynch, and the resulting film benefits greatly from a classically well turned out script by Dennis Paoli (who, for the uninitiated amongst us, wrote all of Gordon’s Lovecraft adaptations).

Dragging the core conceit of Lovecraft’s tale into the 21st century by means of gender-switching both the narrator and the best friend character who forms the subject of the narration, Paoli has succeeded in whittling the story down into a highly effective, tightly-plotted modern horror movie (just as he did with Reanimator and From Beyond all those years ago), adding additional interest to the narrative by considerably complicating the nature of Dr Elizabeth Derby’s relationship to the unlikely sexual partner who drags her into a hellish predicament of body-switching black magickal terror.

Played by Heather Graham, Dr Derby was formerly an Arkham-based psychoanalyst, but when we meet her here, she is a resident in the dingy padded cell which Miskatonic Medical School have conveniently kept upstairs since the days of Dean Halsey’s incarceration.

Elizabeth’s friend and professional mentor, Dr Daniella Upton (Crampton), boldly steps through the bolted door, intent on subjecting her latest patient to a good ol’ “let’s go through it one more time” talking cure. And so, after Derby has obsessively reiterated her insistence that the corpse of one Asa Waite - a badly mutilated teenage boy currently residing downstairs in the morgue - be cremated immediately, we shift straight into Film Noir-approved flashback mode, taking us back to the day when awkward and inarticulate goth kid Asa (played by Judah Lewis) first burst unannounced through the door of Elizabeth’s private practice office, pleading for help, claiming he was being pursued and persecuted by his father, before suddenly undergoing a sudden, alarming shift in personality.

Patterned more after a thriller or noir than a gothic horror, Paoli’s script renders the assorted twists which follow with a precision that any ‘40s RKO or Columbia screenwriter would have been proud of, threading a wealth of verbal tics and visual motifs (a concentration on hands, the details of the various characters’ smoking habits, etc) through the narrative to help us glide through this potentially confusing yarn in smooth, exposition-free fashion, whilst allowing all the knotty inter-personal relationships to pay off just the way they should come the inevitable, bloody conclusion.

For Lovecraft fans approaching a ‘..Doorstep’ adaptation, the natural fear is that the generous dose of yogsothothery HPL gifted us with on paper could easily be jettisoned, allowing the central body-swap gimmick to be presented as a more easily digestible (and cheaper) science fiction conceit.

As such, I’m glad to report that ‘Suitable Flesh’ keeps at least a bit of Mythos mayhem in the mix, allowing Asa’s father (or at least, the malevolent entity inhabiting him) to remain a black magician and disciple of the Great Old Ones. In fact, his portrayal (by Bruce Davison, when in his ‘original’ body) as a foul-mouthed, narcissistic, lecherous old bastard  proves one of the movie’s highlights - both surprising and genuinely menacing.

(Could Davison’s character perhaps be read as a reflection of the evil wrought upon contemporary American culture by certain other predatory, self-obsessed baby boomers… or is that maybe a stretch too far, do you think?)

That aside though, we’ve still inevitably lost a lot in the transition to the screen. With the constraints of low budget filmmaking being what they are, you’ll be unsurprised to hear that there are no unspeakable rites in unhallowed caverns beneath the Maine woods to be enjoyed here, no - ahem - “shaggoths”, no hints of nameless cults sniffing around the Derby/Waites’ doors, and - sadly - no remnant of the original story’s Innsmouth angle (which effectively makes it a sequel of sorts to ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’).

There are some remaining hints that ‘..Flesh’s script may at one point have retained this connection (eg, some references to Elizabeth’s husband (Jonathan Schaech) catching and cooking fish, and the couple’s use of ocean footage when they're making love), but, unlike the rest of Paoli’s script, these little winks to the Lovecraft-literate viewer never really pay off.

As a result, we lose probably the single nastiest idea from Lovecraft’s story (that of the elderly sorcerer Ephraim Waite fathering his “weak-willed, half-human girl child” purely in order to take possession of her body, leaving her spirit screaming mad in the attic in his mouldering carcass), along with that persistant sense of a wider occult conspiracy which permeates Lovecraft’s mythos tales.

Making up for these absences however, ‘Suitable Flesh’ does give us, well… a hell of a lot of sex, to not put too fine a point on it.

Crowbarring sex and perverse eroticism into Lovecraft’s universe was already of course a key element of all of Paoli and Gordon’s collaborations, but even in the BDSM-drenched ‘From Beyond’, the beast-with-two-backs was never previously foregrounded to quite the extent it is here, as the development of ‘Suitable Flesh’s plot is increasingly driven forward through the multifarious couplings of of the bodies of the four primary characters, together which whichever combinations of the four (or five?) primary intelligences are ‘inhabiting’ them at any given point, as the body-swappin’ ritual initiated by the entity possessing Ephraim Waite becomes wilder and more instantaneous as things progress.

As some commentators have already noted, many of the sex scenes here have a bit of a ‘skinemax’ / cable TV vibe to them, and not necessarily in a good way, as tastefully shot, nudity-free kinky/vanilla encounters remain the order of the day, in spite of the outlandish circumstances surrounding them, making ‘Suitable Flesh’ perhaps the world’s first example of a fully-fledged Lovecraftian erotic thriller. (Fifty Shades of Great Old One, anyone? I’ll get my coat…) (1)

Moving away from such pastel-hued sweatiness however, the climactic body transfer / seduction scene between Heather Graham and Judah Lewis in the study of Waite house proves rather more disquieting - probably the closest ‘Suitable Flesh’ gets to the trademark moments of transgression which Gordon brought to nearly all his films, as the teenaged Asa - inhabited by the spirit formerly residing in his father - uses telepathic ooga-booga to force himself upon Elizabeth Derby, as the corpse of the old man - soon to be decapitated and flambéed - lays dead on the carpet behind them.

It’s a great, show-stopping scene all round, but, the curious disjuncture between ‘erotic thriller’ and ‘cosmic horror’ can still be felt here to some extent, in the sense that, whilst all this was going on, I kept finding myself wishing they’d give it a rest and check out those oh-so-tempting sorcerer’s bookshelves behind them instead. I mean, softcore sex films are ten a penny, but how often do you get a chance to have a good poke around in ‘Unaussprechlichen Kulten’, y’knowwhatImean?

(Admittedly, we do get a pretty good look at Waite’s ‘Necronomicon’ here, but sadly I fear the prop the design team came up with looks a bit naff. Bit of a niche gripe to put it mildly, but I do sometimes wish people could move past the look of the book as defined by ‘The Evil Dead’ and try a different approach…)

Anyway, ‘Suitable Flesh’s closing act, full of gory chaos in Miskatonic Medical School, functions as pure fan service for the ‘Reanimator’ / ‘From Beyond’ crowd... but I’m entirely fine with that, I must say. I especially enjoyed the little in-joke about the security guard sitting outside the morgue being the son of the guy who fulfilled the same function on ‘Reanimator’ , and as mentioned, I’m glad the hospital kept the padded cell upstairs, just for old time’s sake.

As always, Crampton is cool as ice here, and the male members of the cast (Lewis, Davison, Schaech) are all excellent, but really - in acting terms, this movie belongs to Heather Graham. I mean, I must confess, I’ve not exactly been following her career much over the past few decades, but I don’t recall seeing her in a role this full-on, since... I dunno, ‘Boogie Nights’, perhaps? She delivers a totally fearless, multi-faceted and appropriately unhinged performance here anyway, chewing up and spitting out some challenging material with ease, so - respect is due.

Could this be the start of a new career trajectory for her I wonder, joining Nick Cage as a former A-lister battling it out every couple of months in the realm of crazy, mid-budget horror movies? Here’s hoping.

Moving on to Joe Lynch’s direction meanwhile, it would be all too easy to say, “Stuart Gordon could have done this better”, but that would be an unfair comparison. Gordon, after all, was a much-loved horror director with a consistently strong body of work behind him, whereas, at the point I sat down to watch ‘Suitable Flesh’, Lynch was just... some guy, as far as I was concerned.

If I were feeling critical, I could take issue with a few bits of sub-par production design, a few goofy transitions (one ‘ceiling fan wipe’ in particular raised a few unintentional laughs in the cinema), the aforementioned blandness afflicting some of the sex scenes, and a reliance on the kind of modern effects (pointless gliding camera moves, rumbling “woosh/BANG!” sound design timed to the cutting, etc) which one would imagine Gordon, as a filmmaker of an older generation, would possibly not have embraced.

But, these are minor criticisms, and thankfully the film built up such a weight of good feeling elsewhere that I certainly wasn’t feeling critical when I left the screening. Lynch stepped into some big shoes by taking this project on and making it happen, and by-and-large he’s done pretty damn well with it. Good for him.

If not exactly a mind-blowing, game-changing triumph by any stretch of the imagination, ‘Suitable Flesh’ is solid, whether viewed as a more-than-decent 21st century horror film, a really weird-ass erotic thriller, or a noteworthy new addition to the tangled canon of Lovecraftian cinema. Perhaps most importantly though, it’s also a worthy continuation of the cinematic world Stuart Gordon created across his lifetime, and proof positive that that spirit can be still be taken forward, even though he’s no longer with us. Well done everybody. Any chance of another one, do you think..?

--

(1) In view of this, it was no surprise to hear director Joe Lynch popping up on the always entertaining The Movies That Made Me podcast last month, discussing his long-standing and unrepentant love for the erotic thriller genre.

Happy Halloween!

I hope you’re all having a good one out there.

And so, yeah, sadly I didn’t manage to get as many posts up here this season as I’d hoped to - but I hope readers got something out of the ones which did make it to the finish-line nonetheless.

I do have a couple more good ‘uns in various states of completion however, so happily the Horror Express will be rattling on through November to some extent, and, perhaps more importantly, I’ve also managed to watch a lot of movies, and make a lot of notes, which will be fed into a bigger project or two just down the line, all being well.

For now though, let’s settle in for the evening, heed the words of Roky and let the spirits run free.

Horror Express: The Vampire’s Ghost (Lesley Selander, 1945)

I had a lot of fun with Lesley Selander’s The Catman of Paris earlier this month, so thought I’d make some time (only 58 minutes required) to check in on the other b-horror he directed for Republic Pictures in the mid ‘40s.

As with ‘Catman..’, the title is intriguingly silly, betraying an attempt to hang onto the coattails of Universal’s waning horror output (they’d released both ‘The Mummy’s Ghost’ and ‘The Ghost of Frankenstein’ in the proceeding years), but... mixed results here, I'd say.

From the outset, ‘The Vampire’s Ghost’ proves to be a rather inert and talky affair, set amid the confines of a pokey and generally uninspiring backlot version of darkest Africa, wherein a largely undistinguished cast of white colonial types trudge through their allotted paces with no great surfeit of enthusiasm.

On the plus side though, it sure has some interesting notions buried within it.

Though he’s certainly no ghost, our resident vampire here turns out to be a former member of Queen Elizabeth I’s court, who - perhaps uniquely in the annals of cinematic vampirism - now finds himself running a gin joint in a fictional central African state, fleecing sailors in dice games and ruing the weary burden of his immortal condition, like some cut-price, blood-drinking Rick Blaine.

An odd fit for the vampire role, John Abbott initially looks more like the kind of guy you’d cast as an accountant or an elevator operator. But, he has a deep, sonorous voice and Peter Lorre-worthy bug-eyes, and ultmately leans into his unusual characterisation very well.

There’s an absolutely sublime scene for instance where, after being wounded by a spear whilst out on ‘safari’, Abbott uses his powers of mental persuasion to command the film’s hero (Charles Gordon) to carry him to the summit of a nearby mountain, where he luxuriates in the healing light of the full moon, his head resting on the precious Elizabethan box containing the grave soil of his original resting place, presented to him by the Queen after the Armada. Great stuff.

At first, it seems as if the vampire is going to be characterised as a variation on the Wandering Jew/Wolfman archetype - condemned to walk the earth for all eternity whilst seeking an escape from his supernatural affliction, and trying to warn the other characters away from him, lest they fall victim to his curse.

Later on though, he seems to have lost this benevolent streak, and, having given fair warning, gets straight on with the business of dominating Gordon’s mind, reducing him to a brain-dead slave, whilst he claims the leading lady (Peggy Stewart) for himself, whisking her off to the remote, abandoned temple of a supposed “death cult”, where, inexplicably in view of the film’s geography, a four-armed Hindu idol awaits them. (I liked the way Abbott plays all this with  “another day, another dollar” resignation, as though he’s been through it all a hundred times before.)

Many of these interesting and unconventional story elements can presumably be traced back to legendary screenwriter and SF pioneer Leigh Brackett, who takes co-writer and original story credits here, the same year she worked for Howard Hawks on ‘The Big Sleep’. And, as I can’t locate any additional background on her involvement with this film... that’s about all I have to say about that.

Stylistically meanwhile, the movie seems to draw heavily from Val Lewton’s then-recent series of b-horror successes at RKO, even directly mimicking ‘I Walked With A Zombie’ (1943) during scenes in which the white folks sit nervously in their bamboo-shaded bungalows, muttering darkly about the jungle drums affecting the productivity of the natives down at the ol’ plantation and so on, whilst the presentation of the vampire’s killings seems to echo both ‘The Leopard Man’ (1943) and ‘Cat People’ (1942) in places.

Unfortunately though, Selander proves unable to muster even a fraction of the atmosphere Jacques Tourneur brought to those projects - largely through no fault of his own, I’m assuming, as a “first take, best take” policy clearly seems to have been in operation, whilst even the film’s best ‘horror’ moment (the vampire’s murder of the bar's sultry dancing girl Adele Mara, in a shadowed bedroom with the incessant pounding of the drums as a backdrop) is subjected to a disappointing early fade.

As ever with movies like this, I’m also obliged to note that events play out in what is very much the boilerplate “white man’s Africa” of the era’s pulp magazines and Jungle Jim serials. So, even if it can’t quite summon up the energy to be overtly racist about it, if you’re looking for sympathetic portrayals of indigenous African characters or veiled commentary on the vampiric nature of colonialism or somesuch, well, I’m afraid you won’t find it here, partner.

As usual with these things, the sight of African-American actors forced to play benign, half-witted tribespeople gabbling away in pidgin English also rather grates, especially in view of the film’s failure to conjure any of the gravitas or sense of place which Tourneur, or even Victor Halperin (‘White Zombie’), brought to their respective entries in the sub-genre. So, if you’re the sort of sensible viewer who doesn’t feel the need to tolerate this kind of crap when watching old movies - be forewarned.

Indeed, whilst dedicated scholars of pulp horror, vampire lore or off-beat poverty row programmers are sure to find enough intriguing content in ‘The Vampire’s Ghost’ to keep them occupied long after the credits have rolled, purely in terms of the film’s entertainment value, I’m going to have to close by suggesting that more general horror fans might want to think twice and/or keep their expectations in check when approaching this one.

Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of the Abyss (Don Sharp, 1980)

The HHoH’s hot streak continues into episode # 10, as Don “Razor” Sharp (‘Kiss of the Vampire’, ‘Psychomania’) directs this positively ripping Wheatley-esque black magick yarn.

Like Children of the Full Moon, it’s a bit of a “does exactly what it says on the tin” kind of episode, but what can I say? It’s bloody good tin, and I’m happy to see them getting some more use out of it.

So, we’re treated here to some rousing adventures in the home counties antiques trade, as Tina (Caroline Langrishe), a shop owner and astrologically-minded associate of tweedy man-about-town Mike Roberts (Ray Lonnen), inadvertently takes possession of Dr John Dee’s original scrying glass, bought as part of a cut price job lot at an auction.

Soon thereafter, the pair both find themselves in the sights of the malevolent Chronozon Society, after Mike narrowly avoids running down one of their fleeing sacrificial victims, as he roars past the grounds of their high priest's stately home in his Mercedes convertible.

Like any good Englishman, Mike greets the sight of a distressed and disorientated young woman standing in the middle of the road with a spirited “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”, before immediately inviting her back to his gaff for a brandy, thus allowing her the opportunity to make off with the cursed mirror (which he has borrowed from Tina on the pretext of getting its value professionally appraised), at which point the game is very much afoot.

It must be said, this episode is not exactly over-blessed with gothic atmosphere, and its supernatural elements do get a bit silly in places, especially vis-a-vis the Chronozon cultists’ rather hackneyed use of voodoo dolls to target their enemies, and the highly questionable make up used to represent the manifestations of their bull-faced deity.

But, for the most part, the ritual scenes still hit the required clichés dead-on (Baphomet pentagrams, deconsecrated church, hooded celebrants, inverted crucifixes, infernal chanting, and a nice, neat cupboard where they keep their roosters), and they are considerably elevated by a superbly imperious performance from John Carson (‘Captain Kronos’, ‘Taste the Blood of Dracula’) as the cult’s aristocratic high priest Charles Randolph.

Meanwhile, Sharp keeps things fast-paced and eventful, as the story rattles onward with a good, pulpy velocity. For his part, screenwriter David Fisher clearly spent an enjoyable afternoon or two boning up on the best occult lore his local library had to offer, meaning that his script is chock full of at-least-distantly-truthful exposition concerning Dee & Kelley, Aleister Crowley, the Thule Society and the exacting detail of the notorious Chronozon Working, as historically attempted by at least some of those august gents - albeit, not exactly in the considerately TV friendly form depicted here, with the sacrificial victims given strips of anointed fabric to preserve their modesty.

Aside from the obvious Wheatley comparisons, ‘Guardian of the Abyss’ also reminded me of Ralph Comer’s absolutely fantastic 1969 occult novel The Mirror of Dionysus - not only with regard to the use of the mirror / scrying glass as a plot point, but also the conscious attempt to drag the aesthetic of Wheatley’s black magic tales kicking and screaming into the more socially liberal 1970s, and the tendency of both stories to take an ‘info dump’ approach to communicating the fruits of the writers’ occult research.

Did you know for instance, that if you invite a black magician into your home, you must NEVER allow them access to wine, bread and salt? Well, you do now!

This handy life tip reaches us via an absolutely splendid reinterpretation of the memorable ‘Mocata comes to visit’ / attempted hypnotism sequence from Hammer’s ‘The Devil Rides Out’, which constitutes the highlight both of the episode as a whole, and of Carson’s commanding performance. Though perhaps not quite equalling Charles Gray's inimitable take on this particular character-type, he definitely puts his own unique stamp on it.

Elsewhere, the slightly Kate Bush-like Rosalyn Landor makes for a very striking presence as the aforementioned sacrificial victim / love interest / willowy femme fatale type character - which is convenient, as IMDB reminds me that she actually played the little girl in ‘The Devil Rides Out’ twelve years earlier, at the age of ten! So, rest assured, someone was clearly putting some thought into this stuff.

And, I even rather liked Lonnen’s hero character too. Though he would have been considered a mere oik within the refined, aristocratic universe of Wheatley’s novels, we’re at the dawn of the socially mobile 1980s here chaps, and Mike Roberts represents a distinctly English, none-more-middle-class pulp protagonist of the kind you just don’t see anymore.

A dashing, clear-headed fellow who’s just as comfortable assessing the value of military brasses and undertaking genealogical research as he is with car chases, proffering brandy to stray young ladies and the occasional bit of fisticuffs, he could easily have come straight from the pages of a Brian Lumley or Guy N. Smith book, and is all the better for it in my view. (It’s a shame he doesn’t smoke a pipe, but - you can’t have everything.)

Actually, I was lying about the car chases and fisticuffs - sadly, both are notably absent from ‘Guardian of the Abyss’, despite multiple opportunities for their inclusion (although, I’m confident Mike Roberts could still have proved himself pretty handy in both scenarios, given half a chance).

This absence is a real shame given Sharp’s proven track record as an action director, and lord knows, this tale could surely have benefitted from at least a few scenes of hooded cultists getting walloped and tripping over their cassocks and so on. But, I fear this lack of choreographed action probably speaks to a regrettable degree of haste and budgetary constraint in this episode’s production, which is also very much evident in its ending.

With the best will in the world (which I certainly had by this point), the conclusion of ‘Guardian of the Abyss’ still feels rushed, sloppy and confusing, leaving things on a rather unsatisfactory note. But, no matter - I had such a grand old time on the way to it, I'm happy to let things slide.

Exploito All’Italiana: Black Magic Rites (Renato Polselli, 1973)

 So, having managed to maintain this blog for the better part of fifteen years, it feels remiss of me not have dedicated at least a few paragraphs to discussing the indescribable cinematic singularity which is Renato Polselli’s ‘Riti, Magie Nere e Segrete Orge nel Trecento’ [‘Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies of the Fourteenth Century’], aka ‘The Reincarnation of Isobel’, allegedly aka ‘The Ghastly Orgies of Count Dracula’… but known to most of us (for the sake of brevity, if nothing else) simply as ‘Black Magic Rites’.

So, what with it being October, and having just spent some time luxuriating in the glow of Indicator’s never-thought-I’d-see-the-day 4k restoration… now would seem to be the time to take a deep breath and get on with it.

It must be admitted from the outset that this is a very difficult movie to try to review in any conventional sense, as those who have seen it will surely appreciate.

It is not only the film’s almost total lack of narrative which causes difficulties for the potential critic, but the seeming lack of any unifying pattern or purpose whatsoever. Faced with the onslaught of audio-visual anarchy found herein, the idea of understanding what Polselli’s intentions were in creating this thing, or of positing any framework against which his success may be assessed, seems nigh on impossible.

‘Black Magic Rites’ is, essentially, about as close as a piece of ostensibly commercial cinema has ever come to a state of utter, formless chaos, a celluloid equivalent of the mad piping of the servitors of Lovecraft’s blind idiot god crouching vacantly at the centre of the uncaring universe.

If you go in with enough determination, and pay close enough attention, you can identify discrete scenes and sections within the film, albeit generally interrupting and overlapping with each other to no clearly defined purpose. (This time around for instance, I was particularly taken by the whole funeral / premature burial sequence).

But, basically, this is a 100-minute hypnotic drone of a movie - no form, no progression. Most of the characters here are doing exactly the same thing at the end that they were doing at the start. The intermittent fragments of narrative which do creep in from time to time feel a bit like a heavy psychedelic rock band half-heartedly trying to add lyrics and song structure to their music, only for it to be totally drowned out by the roar of their amplifiers.

And what exactly, the uninitiated may ask, might that metaphorical roar consist of?

Well, you know - fire, screaming, gurning faces, crimson gore, kaleidoscopic psychedelic hoo-hah, awkwardly framed tableaux of female and male bodies squeezed into all kinds of outré costumes (both 14th and 20th century vintage), frantic time-and-space shredding jump cuts and cross-edits, lurid red and green disco lighting, erotic torture, breath-taking scenery and groovy castles, anonymous, drooling creeps lurking in shadows, more fire, more screaming faces, hypnotism, witch burnings, widescreen vistas of ritual depravity, pitchfork wielding mobs, chintzy birthday parties, frantic, awkward softcore sex, outbursts of alarming, screechy comic relief, and Count Dracula (apparently). 

The usual, basically - just a whole lot more of it. An all-you-can-eat buffet of all purpose, fumetti-style gothic horror/sleaze.

Within the pantheon of Italian genre directors who have become admired and/or infamous amongst the fans who have painstakingly unearthed their work over the decades, Polselli stands out as the kind of figure who, if he didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him.

I mean, he had to be out there somewhere on the margins, didn’t he? The guy whose films were more extreme, more hysterical, more chaotic and senseless than anyone else’s, and who was stricken by censorship, public indifference and critical bafflement to such an extent that many of his films were barely even released at all, languishing in unfathomable obscurity for decades, and in some cases remaining almost impossible to see to this day.

And yet, despite these catastrophic set-backs, he kept dusting himself off and coming back to make more of the damned things, driven on by who knows what unfathomable personal demons. Certainly, the few public comments he made during his lifetime shed little light on why he persisted in ploughing his long-suffering financiers’ money into such grotesque, bizarre and (crucially) unprofitable productions. Indeed, reading the sparse interviews conducted with Polselli whilst he was still with us, his attempts to explain himself seem alternately gnomic, cynical and entirely irrelevant to the work at hand.

Suffice to say that, if you were putting together some ‘Berberian Sound Studio’-styled fiction based around the world of Italian cult cinema, you could scarcely hope to create such a fascinating, baffling and hilarious character - and yet, here he is, large as life, with ‘Black Magic Rites’ standing as his defining artistic statement.

Enthusiasts such as myself often tend to praise Euro-horror films for achieving passages of surrealistic delirium. In ‘Black Magic Rites’ though, Polselli begins in a state of surrealistic delirium and keeps his foot down hard on the accelerator right through to the closing ‘FINE’.

As a result, it stands as an example of a piece of pulpy, cynical exploitation assembled with such fevered intensity that it goes full circle on the artistic spectrum, swallowing its own tail and emerging as an experimental art piece; an overwhelming sensory experience that would probably sit better on a double bill next to ‘Flaming Creatures’ or ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ than with a Paul Naschy or Sergio Martino movie.

To return to my earlier music metaphor, watching ‘Black Magic Rites’ for the first time as a fan of Euro-horror feels a bit like growing up listening to canonical ‘60s rock, loving the occasional moments of dissonance and feedback... then suddenly discovering Les Rallizes Denudes or Mainliner. Whoa. Too much, man.

Before we get too carried away though, it’s worth splashing our faces with cold water and remembering that, of the individual elements which make up the totality of ‘Black Magic Rites’, none are entirely unique within the Italio-cult context.

The voluminous output of that nation’s cinema during the early ‘70s did, after all, include low budget horror films which, whether by accident or design, were almost entirely incoherent (Angelo Pannacciò’s ‘Sex of the Witch’), or formally and tonally inexplicable (Francesco Mazzei’s The Weapon, The Hour, The Motive). 

There were films which simply pushed WAY TOO FAR to ever see widespread, uncut distribution at the time of their production (Fernando Di Leo’s ‘Slaughter Hotel’ aka ‘Cold Blooded Beast’), and other entries in the “sexy gothic” sub-genre which knowingly plunged over the precipice into full-blown parody and deliberately disjointed, rambling nonsense (Luigi Batzella’s ‘Nude For Satan’) - all trends redolent of a pre-porno film culture which routinely allowed questionably committed filmmakers to essentially go out and shoot whatever the hell they felt like, so long the requisite nudity and softcore groping was delivered on time.

‘Black Magic Rites’ though is the only film I’m aware of which managed to simultaneously cash in on ALL of these crazy possibilities, creating a maximalist overload of ‘70s witch-smut insanity which has never been equalled.

Trying to account for all this on a rational basis, I’m tempted to consider the suggestion floated by Stephen Thrower in his supplement to the Indicator release, that, perhaps, Polselli had intended to make a somewhat more structured, narrative film but (as per the Pannacciò film cited above) simply lost control of the production, discovering after the money had run out and the actors fled the set that he was missing whatever footage he needed to pull the whole thing together.

Hitting the editing room therefore, perhaps with only a few days to spare before delivering a rough cut, he simply panicked, resorting to the only tool available to a director of crazy horror movies in such circumstances - Art! Or, more specifically - jump cuts, and dreams-within-flashbacks-within-dreams, special / temporal disorientation, overlapping images and audio tracks and hypnotic repetition of footage - all cut to the beat of Franco Reverberi’s freaky, ritualistic score. Yeah!

In other circumstances, such an endeavour could have emerged as simply unwatchable (and many would no doubt claim ‘Black Magic Rites’ is just that), but, even for the less fanatical viewer, the film’s aesthetic pleasures and unexpected outbursts of beauty certainly help to sweeten the pill.

‘Black Magic Rites’ was shot in Italian weirdo horror’s home-from-home, the 15th century Castello Piccolomini in Balsorano, previously home to everyone from The Crimson Executioner to Lady Frankenstein, and it must be said, Polselli uses the castello’s potential quite brilliantly in places, especially when he breaks away from the suffocating, colour-saturated gloom of the interiors to stage scenes on the castle battlements, showcasing the astonishing vistas of snow-capped mountains which form the backdrop to the valley in which the castle stands. (1)

A necessary refresher amid all the madness going on down in the ballrooms and dungeons, you can almost smell the fresh air during these sequences, and a similar chill wind of melancholic atmos can also be felt during the funeral / burial sequence I mentioned above, which is really beautifully put together, acting both as a reference to the best scene in Polselli’s earlier The Vampire and the Ballerina, and indeed to its original inspiration, Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr.  

Though I prefer to avoid going into ‘consumer guide’ mode in these reviews, it must be said that the new transfer of the film really helps to highlight the beauty of some of the individual images Polselli and his collaborators conjured up here amidst all the carnage and peek-a-boo nudity and cheap special effects, perhaps helping to lend the whole thing a bit more of a sense of artistry than was really evident in earlier editions. God knows the travails Director of Photography Ugo Brunelli probably had to go through whilst shooting all this stuff, but he certainly delivered the goods in technical terms.

His work, together with Reverberi’s appropriately wigged out yet infernally catchy score (heavy on hand percussion, primitive electronics and reversed/echoed vocal weirdness), work to ensure the film remains an aesthetically intoxicating experience, as well as a simply overpowering one - with this intention often succeeding in spite of Polselli’s feverish, ADHD-afflicted editing and obsession with rubbing our noses in the most unpleasant imagery he can conjure up at any given point.

By far the funniest thing about the new transfer though is that it retains the grandly ornate interval cards from the movie’s original Italian cinema screenings, which I don't recall seeing before. What a hoot! I mean, can you imagine the poor, unsuspecting audience, staggering out into the sunlight for a smoke after 45 minutes of this shit? (“Say pal, whatcha think's gonna happen next?”) 

Simply amazing - as indeed is every aspect of this astounding, unrepeatable film’s genesis, existence and continued survival.

Check it out, please, before the thousand-faced messengers of Azathoth think better of letting it out in the wild, and pull remaining copies through some black trans-dimensional vortex, leaving no trace but a lingering, half-forgotten memory, ready to be shaken off with tomorrow morning’s much needed coffee.

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(1) As I believe I noted in my ‘Lady Frankenstein’ review a few years ago, I’m intrigued by the fact that, of the four noteworthy Italian horror film Mickey Hargitay appeared in, three were shot in the Castello Piccolomini! I mean, was this just a coincidence, or did he live nearby, or know the owners of the castle or something..? Sadly the man himself is no longer with us to provide an answer, but - any insight welcomed.