Gateway Cinephiles

Screened: October 30, 2007
Format: DVD - Criterion Collection (2004)
Horror Fest 2007

Canadian David Cronenberg has established himself as one of the most credible and visionary directors working in film today. His 1983 feature, Videodrome, is often regarded as his first work of true genius. Until the late 1980’s, his films were typically labeled as horror, but even Cronenberg’s early work defies genre conventions and categorization. Prior to Videodrome, his films—including Rabid, The Brood, and Scanners—highlighted his innovation and his shrewd instincts for getting under his audience’s skin. With Videodrome, Cronenberg revealed not only his own mastery of the medium, but a modern nightmare that remains disturbing and relevant in the twenty-first century.

As in many of his films, Cronenberg exhibits a reserved, almost understated hand in his direction of Videodrome, preferring to let his images speak for themselves. His actors deliver their lines in a flat, uninterested manner. For all the grotesqueries of Videodrome’s techno-organic special effects, the mundane sets and props seem almost banal. James Woods, the archetypical Intense, Fast-Talking Sleazy Guy, seems out of place at first in the lead performance. That is, until we begin to witness his mental—and perhaps physical—transformation under the influence of Videodrome. Then the genius of his casting becomes apparent, as a masculine, aggressive, scenery-chewing character actor is subjugated to the will of the electronic signal.

Videodrome contains elements of science fiction, thriller, and avant-garde film, but it is undeniably a work of unsettling and repulsive horror. Specifically, it addresses the horror of the Television Age, which is itself a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. Motifs from both the literate science fiction tradition and urban legend surface in the film: subliminal messages; electromagnetic waves that can inflict disease or kill; snuff films; flesh that transforms into machine, and machine into flesh; brainwashed assassins; vast political and corporate conspiracies. And most of all, the tattered but eerily persistent notion that electronic mass media represents Something New, an evolution not just of the social order, but of the individual. If you find yourself wondering whether particular scenes or shots in Videodrome are real or a hallucination, ask yourself, “Does it matter?” If it is a hallucination, would the reality underneath be any less horrifying?

Screened: October 30, 2007
Format: DVD - Turner Home Entertainment (2005)
Horror Fest 2007

Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People is a rare species of horror film: a surprise box-office smash in it time, a beloved classic in the decades the followed, and a work of magnificent skill and beauty. The first film from producer Val Lewton after he became head of RKO’s horror division, Cat People was a signal to the studio and audiences alike that Lewton would produce a new breed of thriller. Armed with a miniscule budget, a handful of sets, and a mandate to keep the film short, Lewton tapped French actress Simone Simon for his lead and French-American director Tourneur. Together, they brought a chilling, noir sensibility to the film that captivated audiences. Shot for less than $140,000, Cat People made over $4 million in 1942, compared to the half million brought in by RKO’s Citizen Kane the previous year.

Cat People has the requisite ingredients for a horror movie: a beautiful woman, a sense of dread, and—perhaps—malevolent supernatural forces. However, it is not particularly horrific. Lewton and Tourneur successfully resisted the studio’s demands for fearsome, cheesy effects shots, and created a film that terrifies by showing less, not more. The fear of Cat People lies in what is implied and imagined. Through brilliant use of scene construction, lighting, and editing, the filmmakers craft a shadowy tale about the irrationality and consuming nature of fear.

The script was a collaborate effort between DeWitt Bodeen, Lewton, Tourneur, and others. It has a poetic simplicity that serves the filmmakers’ vision well. While violence and lust were often used to promote B-movies, they were rarely addressed maturely in the films of this era. In this respect, Cat People was a revelation, touching on so many unsettling topics with intellect and grace. It plucks at numerous human fears: anxiety over female sexuality; the terror of the loss of self-control; sexual and emotional jealousy; paranoia; fear of insanity; fear of the foreign; and the animal panic of being hunted. Cat People is not a socially conscious film, but it speaks to what lurks in our consciousness. It conjures a rare, realistic kind of dread, the kind that prompts the unconvincing reassurance, “You’re just imagining things.”

Screened: October 29, 2007
Format: DVD - Blue Underground (2007)
Horror Fest 2007

Critics and fans of director Dario Argento usually name his 1977 horror debut, Suspiria, as the Italian filmmaker’s unrivaled masterpiece. Already acclaimed for his giallo films–lurid, sexy Italian thrillers–Argento sought to craft a trilogy about three immortal and diabolical witches, loosely inspired by English author Thomas de Quincy. The second film in Argento’s trilogy, 1980’s Inferno, was also well-received, and the long-overdue third feature, The Mother of Tears, premiered this year amid critical buzz. However, Suspiria will likely be Argento’s legacy. A revolutionary and shocking work, it transformed genre filmmaking and subverted traditional assumptions about the evocation of horror.

In some respects, Suspiria has all the characteristics of a bad horror movie. The plot loses its way about five minutes in, and many scenes have no apparent connection to one another. The acting is wooden, and the dialogue almost laughable. Fortunately, the story and performances are secondary to the film’s exquisite artistry and depraved imagination. Disney animated films had a profound influence on Italian filmmakers of Argento’s generation, and he was particularly obsessed with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In this context, Susipiria can be approached as a fairy tale for adults, its world more vivid and perilous than real life.

There is nothing unassuming about Suspiria. The film has a bright, almost garish palate, full of bold primary colors and suffocating shadows. Every scene is lit in candy hues, and the sets pop with baroque and hallucinatory details. The camera hovers and zooms and tilts at odd angles. Relentless synthesizer music dominates the film’s soundtrack, scored by the Italian progressive rock group Goblin, frequent Argento collaborators. And then there is the over-the-top violence, which prompts even Argento’s fans to squirm in their seats. Blood suffuses the film, spurting and pooling in brilliant red. Characters suffer horrific, grotesque, almost comically elaborate deaths, filmed with unflinching realism, and prompting some to accuse Argento of sadism and misogyny. Suspiria is, in a way, a counterpoint to the less-is-more school of horror filmmaking, a shrill shriek that insists, no, more is more. What makes it endure as a horror classic is its resemblance to the worst sort of nightmares: pitiless, harrowing, and unforgettable.

Screened: October 29, 2007
Format: DVD - Anchor Bay (2001) (Extended Version)
Horror-Fest 2007

Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man is one of the most enigmatic British films of the past fifty years. Film magazine Cinefantastique once claimed it as “the Citizen Kane of horror movies.” However, some critics have dismissed it as a misguided jumble of mystery, melodrama, allegory, camp, and musical numbers. The film was plagued with production problems, and it is miraculous that Hardy and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer ever saw their work released. Yet actor Christopher Lee, a veteran of the British Hammer horror film era, has called The Wicker Man the most intelligent film he has ever made.

Strictly as a work of art, The Wicker Man is a success. Shot on location in Scotland, the film’s gorgeous photography captures the windswept, hardscrabble details of the insular North Atlantic. The film features a host of colorful walk-ons by British character actors, as well as some genuinely memorable performances, particularly the strong lead by Edward Woodward. Indeed, The Wicker Man would be Woodward’s film if it were not for the sudden and sinister appearance of Lee about halfway in. The depictions of pagan or neo-pagan magical practices are admirably realistic, at least given the expectations of a horror film about paganism. The folk music featured prominently in the film has a palpable 1970s character, a mixture of earnestness and absurdity that makes it strangely appealing.

Although it is often labeled a horror film, The Wicker Man is not particularly horrifying. It has no gore, no monsters, no sudden scares, and minimal special effects. What makes it haunting and memorable is its atmosphere of creeping dread. The film scatters small details before the viewer–objects, symbols, facial expressions, lines of dialogue. These details coalesce to create a tableau of chills, and the final scene of the film unfolds with an unblinking, unnerving ferocity. The Wicker Man is almost certainly a film with a message; disturbing currents run through it regarding belief, superstition, fate, choice, and morality. Whatever wisdom it offers remains something of a secret wisdom. I like to think that the moral of The Wicker Man, if one ever existed, was only whispered by cast and crew, and only over whiskey on lonely nights.

Screened: October 23, 2007
Format: DVD - Turner Home Entertainment (2005)
Selected by: Libby

Today, Howard Hawks‘ Bringing Up Baby is regarded as one of the best comedies of the classic Hollwood era, if not the greatest screwball comedy ever. When it premiered in 1938, however, Baby generated mediocre ticket sales in Middle America. As a result, Hawks was fired from RKO Pictures, while star Katherine Hepburn was labeled “box office poison” and forced to buy out her contract. Baby’s riotous comedic style, its sly sexual innuendo, and its relentless pace were all years ahead of their time. The film’s manic charms were only widely appreciated decades later.

Hawks was, to paraphrase critic Leonard Maltin, the most famous director no one has ever heard of. He worked successfully in nearly every genre, and his filmography is a staggering catalog of classic Hollywood: Scarface, His Girl Friday, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Rio Bravo, to name a few. Hawks’ no-nonsense, unpretentious style and naturalistic dialog were assets for a madcap, over-the-top comedy such as Bringing Up Baby. Blessed with a pair of firecracker leads, a crop of memorable characters, two charismatic animal actors, and a brilliant shooting script that ran 202 whopping pages, Hawks sets his cameras rolling and gets the hell out of the way. He avoids unnecessary cuts whenever possible, moving the frame around so as not to interrupt the breakneck pace.

Already a veteran of Hollywood comedies when he made Baby, Cary Grant was cast against type as an uptight, milquetoast scientist. His vaudeville background is particularly evident here, as he does all his own pratfalls and other slapstick stunts. Meanwhile, Baby was Katherine Hepburn’s first comedy, a risky bit of casting that paid off marvelously. Some of the animal special effects in Baby will seem obvious and dated, and the plot veers from implausible to outright baffling. However, the joys of this film are neither technical nor narrative. They lie in its supersonic speed, its crackling dialog, its perfect comedic timing, and the guilty thrill of watching two love-struck people wreck each others’ lives for our amusement.

Bonus Points: Watch for the first time the word “gay” was used in a homosexual context in a Hollywood film.

Screened: October 15, 2007
Format: DVD - Criterion Collection (2004)
Selected by: Andrew

Ikiru, usually translated to English as To Live, is the thirteenth film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa is most widely renowned for his epic, period samurai films, such as Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Ran. Ikiru, set in a contemporary Japan of suffocating bureaucracy and hollow nightlife, is far removed from the spectacle and violence of such films. Nonetheless, Ikiru is often regarded as Kurosawa’s first true masterpiece. Although released in Japan in 1952, the film was not distributed internationally until 1960, allegedly because it was thought “too Japanese” for Western audiences. Nothing could be further from the truth; Ikiru is a universal meditation on life and death.

Reportedly inspired by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ikiru is the story of a modern man grappling with his own imminent demise. What elevates Ikiru above countless other melodramas about terminal illness is its superb art. Kurosawa utilizes his trademark techniques to create a film that is not merely sad, but profoundly, desperately sad, and also achingly beautiful. The story by screenwriter Hideo Oguni is deliberately paced, and told in nonlinear fashion. As you watch, take particular note of the Kurosawa’s use of framing, wipes, and dissolves, and the manner in which scenes in past and present echo one another. The film’s lead performance is by Takashi Shimura, an actor who worked with Kurosawa on eleven films. In Ikiru, Shimura gives the most extraordinary and heartfelt performance of his career. When Kurosawa employs a close-up of Shimura, observe how much the actor conveys with only tiny changes in facial expression.

Kurosawa himself once wrote “Sometimes I think of my death. I think of ceasing to be… and it is from these thoughts that Ikiru came.” Critic Roger Ebert has described Ikiru as “one of the few movies that might actually be able to inspire someone to lead their life a little differently.” The film transcends overused phrases such as a “life-affirming” and achieves something deeply stirring and sublime. It is consistently regarded as one of the finest Japanese films ever made, and it includes some of the most beautifully composed shots ever captured on film.