Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: Cannibal Holocaust

October 22, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Foreign, Horror No Comments

Screened: October 17, 2008
Format: DVD - Grindhouse Releasing (2005)
HorrorFest 2008

Depending on who you ask, Italian director Ruggero Deodato’s 1980 exploitation magnum opus, Cannibal Holocaust, is either a masterpiece of ruthless social commentary and over-the-top gore, or unrepentantly amoral, racist, sadistic garbage that could only originate from a supremely sick mind. One of a handful of self-proclaimed “most controversial” horror films of all time, Holocaust has served as a sort of twisted gold standard in fringe movie-making since its release, representing the most depraved excesses of the European film industry.

Director Deodato had previously created numerous exploitation films, including other cannibal features, but Cannibal Holocaust would become his most ambitious and renowned work. Holocaust unabashedly mimics the style of the notorious mondo documentaries, initially produced in Italy, which depict gruesome accidents and deaths, bizarre aboriginal customs, and other sensational subjects. Indeed, Deodato allegedly conceived of the film as a statement on the sensationalism and lack of integrity he observed in Italian journalists, particularly with respect to violence. Critics have railed against Holocaust’s hypocrisy in the respect, pointing to the film’s lurid promotion and treatment of is subject matter.

Cannibal Holocaust seemingly offers something for everyone to loathe: child murder, gang-rape, abortion, torture, beheadings, impalements, shameless racism, the on-screen slaughter of animals, and, yes, cannibalism. Although promoters now boast of Holocaust’s numerous censorings and bannings as badges of honor, the controversy and confusion over its initial release were problematic. At one point, Deodato had to produce his actors alive and well in an Italian court to prove that he had not made a genuine snuff film.

Despite the notoriety of its content, Cannibal Holocaust’s most significant cinematic legacy is likely its structure and technique. Its conceit of the allegedly “found footage” of a documentary film crew and its cunning promotion that tricked audiences into believing they were witnessing nonfiction would inspire later films such as The Last Broadcast and particularly The Blair Witch Project. Deodato’s reliance on location shooting in a rugged, naturalistic style heightened the film’s illusion. This led no less a figure than Sergio Leone to declare that the Deodato had created a “masterpiece of cinematographic realism,” although the legendary Italian director added, “I think you will get in trouble with all the world.”

3-Minute Intro: The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

October 22, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Foreign, Horror 2 Comments

Screened: October 17, 2008
Format: Blu-Ray - Picturehouse (2008)
HorrorFest 2008

It’s probably overstatement to suggest that Juan Anontio Bayona’s 2007 directorial debut, The Orphanage, would not have been possible without the box-office and critical triumph of Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006, but the latter film’s success certainly didn’t hurt. Not only did Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy film enhance the receptiveness of audiences to Spanish-language gothic cinema, but the director’s role as a producer for The Orphanage was prominently featured in the film’s promotion. Fortunately for Bayona, his film successfully escapes from del Toro’s shadow, delivering a chilling and harrowing update on reliable horror conventions now mostly absent from American films.

Bayona and screenwriter Sergio Sánchez provide us with a landscape that is familiar, but also realized with efficiency and a pitch-perfect gothic sensibility. The essential elements for a conventional ghost story are all present: a creepy old house, a sensitive little child, buried secrets, a séance, and a protagonist driven to the brink of desperation and madness. What makes The Orphanage an adept piece of horror film-making is Bayona’s assumption that we understand and appreciate the traditions of the genre. He stacks the film with dense layers of mystery, and packs in crucial details that reward viewers willing to pay attention and able to keep up.

The Orphanage was the first feature film for Bayona, who established himself directing music videos for Spanish pop groups. The director’s flair for evoking a classically gothic atmosphere abounds, as does his talent for absorbing and revisiting iconic ghost story devices in a refreshing manner. For the critical leading role of Laura, Bayona turned to Spanish actor Belén Rueda, who won a Goya award for her performance in director Alejandro Amenábar’s 2004 Oscar-winner The Sea Inside. Despite The Orphanage’s admittedly moody and gorgeous trappings, it is undeniably Rueda’s engaging performance as Laura that holds the film together. Rueda’s convoluted portrayal—compassionate, arrogant, fearful, resolute, neurotic—creates an absorbing study of parenting and grief that dwells within a sharply executed haunted house tale for the twenty-first century. In addition to Bayona’s skill in handling a story laden with twists and sleight-of-hand, it is the strength of Rueda’s performance that lends such anguish and horror to The Orphanage’s final revelations.

3-Minute Intro: Sleepaway Camp

October 22, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Horror No Comments

Screened: October 16, 2008
Format: DVD - Anchor Bay (2000)
HorrorFest 2008

The tale of first-time director Robert Hiltzik’s 1983 film, Sleepaway Camp, and how it became a beloved cult classic, is one of the lesser-known sagas of the slasher movie’s 1980s heyday. At the time of Sleepaway Camp’s production, the slasher parameters were already well-established by features such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, Halloween, and Friday the 13th, as well as a host of lesser works vying for adolescent eyeballs. Sleepaway Camp had a conceptual drawback in that it utilized the same setting as the Friday the 13th series—a summer camp—but it was savvy enough to subvert the subgenre in cunning ways. Its protagonist, the shy little Angela Baker, doesn’t quite fulfill the archetype feminist film critic Carol J. Clover has termed the Final Girl, the pretty young thing who eventually confronts the killer.

Sleepaway Camp attained a modest success in its theatrical run. Perhaps unexpectedly, a small but loyal fan base gradually developed over the years based on sales and rentals of the VHS videocassette. The film’s murder sequences—especially a notorious scene involving a beehive—and particularly its shocking conclusion lent it a forbidden quality that endeared many teenage horror fans. There were two rogue sequels by another director, but the original film’s cast and crew quickly moved on. Director Hiltzik attended law school and eventually attained partner in a New York City firm. Felissa Rose, who had something of a break portraying Angela at the age of thirteen, went on to an arts education and a career in the theater.

In 2000, horror film buffs from a website devoted to the Sleepaway Camp series contacted Hiltzik about recording an audio commentary track for a new DVD release of the film. The director-turned-attorney was shocked that his seemingly forgettable film had acquired a devoted following over the years. The revival of interest in the film also brought Rose attention as a lost cult figure, and she has appeared in host of low-budget horror films since 2000. The revival has even sparked enthusiasm for a new Sleepaway Camp film that is now in production, with Hiltzik returning to direct and Rose reprising her notorious role.

3-Minute Intro: Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)

October 22, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Foreign, Horror 2 Comments

Screened: October 16, 2008
Format: DVD - Blue Underground (2007)
HorrorFest 2008

Dario Argento’s brutal 1975 thriller, Deep Red, also known as The Hatchet Murders, is a film balanced on the threshold between the acclaimed director’s work in the lurid Italian genre known as giallo and his more surreal, supernatural films. Often considered the finest giallo ever made, and allegedly Argento’s favorite among all the works in his filmography, Deep Red features a bloody excess in its violence that few films dare to exhibit. After achieving significant fame in Italy with his “animal trilogy” of more traditional giallo films–The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Cat o’Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet–Argento crafted Deep Red as a gruesome serial killer tale, replete with his trademark sequences of shocking death.

For his lead perfromer, Agento deferred from his usual fondness for unknowns and genre fixtures and selected 1960s English cinema icon David Hemmings. Introduced to the stage as a boy soprano, Hemmings worked in opera and the British theater, before he was eventually discovered by Michelangelo Antonioni. The famed Italian auteur cast Hemmings opposite Vanessa Redgrave in his art film / murder mystery masterwork, Blowup. Hemmings went on to star in a succession of prestigious 1960s British features such as Camelot, Charge of the Light Bridge, and Alfred the Great, while also dabbling in cult films such as Barberella and a pop music career. Deep Red captures Hemmings at the trailing edge of his career before the camera, prior to his transformation into a prolific director of American television in the 1980s, on action series such as The A-Team, Magnum P.I., and Airwolf.

In keeping with Agento’s signature style, Deep Red favors elaborate, often surreal production design and unconventional camera work. The plot, such as it is, is secondary to the director’s fussiness over scenes of elaborate murder and his thematic obsession with memory and secret knowledge. Deep Red highlights Argento’s preference for visceral violence to which his audience could relate. Rather than gunshots, his characters suffer bludgeonings, slashings, burns, falls, and similar grisly dooms. The film also contains numerous literary and artistic allusions, which Argento constructs with an emerging eye for bold lighting design and unusual camera placement.

3-Minute Intro: The Last House on the Left

October 22, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Horror 1 Comment

Screened: October 15, 2008
Format: DVD - MGM (2002)
HorrorFest 2008

Wes Craven’s shocking 1972 directorial debut, The Last House on the Left, arguably remains the acclaimed horror film-maker’s most uncompromising and disturbing feature film. The story is simple and horrifying: two teenage girls are kidnapped and brutalized by convicts, who then fall into the clutches of the girls’ vengeful family. The film’s graphic depiction of violence, much of it sexual in nature, ignited widespread condemnation and motivated theatrical bannings nationwide. However, the film also discovered an enthusiastic audience for its realistic scares, an audience that craved the gritty horror offered by the likes of Last House and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Few of these viewers were aware that Last House was loosely based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 medieval drama The Virgin Spring.

Craven, a native Ohioan from a strict Baptist upbringing, wanted The Last House on the Left’s horrors to convey the same sense of dread and revulsion that he perceived in contemporary news footage from the Vietnam War. The director delivered in this respect, as the film underwent numerous rounds of editing for its United States release, and was effectively banned in the United Kingdom until 2002. Legend has it that Craven actually distributed the film illegally with a bootleg “R” rating, and that he had to establish a team to restore prints that were returned chopped up by theater owners. The film’s slipshod, over-the-top promotion contributed to the gruesome hype. This included its last-minute title: “The Last House on the Left” was evidently selected for its sinister sound, and not because it had anything to do with the film.

Producer Sean Cunningham later established the Friday the 13th franchise, and Craven of course went on to direct such genre milestones as The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream. The unflinching brutality evident in The Last House on the Left has led some critics to deride it as a gutter product, while other praise it as an under-appreciated exploitation masterpiece. Craven himself is said to regard it as one of his best films. Defenders of Last House on the Left insist that its brazenly realized themes of humanity’s fundamental cruelty and the debasing nature of revenge remain relevant today.

3-Minute Intro: Don’t Look Now

October 22, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Foreign, Horror 2 Comments

Screened: October 15, 2008
Format: DVD - Paramount (2002)
HorrorFest 2008

Since its 1973 premiere, Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now has acquired a reputation as one of the finest, most artful British thrillers ever made. At the time of the film’s production, the English Roeg had moved from a career as an accomplished cinematographer to securing a Palm d’Or nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for his 1971 Outback drama, Walkabout. Don’t Look Now paired Roeg with New Hollywood icons Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie for a chilling, often surreal tale of grief and madness amid the canals and crumbling churches of Venice. By 1973, the Canadian Sutherland had transitioned from a prestigious television career to leading roles in films such as MASH and Klute. English native Christie had achieved a glamorous celebrity after her appearance in Doctor Zhivago, followed by a string of acclaimed features, including Fahrenheit 451 and McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

With Don’t Look Now, Roeg transforms a relatively straightforward story of mystery and perhaps supernatural terror into a slow-burn experiment in pure mood. Sutherland and Christie portray an architect and his wife, who have moved to Venice to escape the grief over their recently deceased young daughter. Strange things begin to happen—coincidences, accidents, visits from menacing strangers—but they don’t seem to add up. All the while the Venice police are searching for a remorseless killer. Much like Sutherland, we find ourselves asking, “What am I really afraid of? Am I losing it?”

The film is justifiably famous for its atmosphere, and also for its torrid love scene between Sutherland and Christie. Roeg allegedly added this sequence as an ad hoc modification to the script, editing it in his signature cross-cutting style. The scene’s notoriety was enhanced by rumors that the actors eventually became entwined in a real romance. However, the film uses this scene not for titillation, but as a powerful counterpoint to the disintegrating relationship between Sutherland and Christie’s characters. Throughout its slowly unfolding events, Don’t Look Now gradually evokes an atmosphere of doom. This aura culminates when the film reaches its bizarre, shocking conclusion, one still hotly debated among critics.

3-Minute Intro: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

October 13, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Dramas No Comments

Screened: October 12, 2008
Format: Blu-ray - Paramount (2008)
Selected By: Andrew

For better or worse, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 crime epic, The Godfather, has become the iconic American gangster film, if not the iconic American film, of the post-New Hollywood era. Both the original, and its equally acclaimed 1974 sequel, The Godfather Part II, have fixed themselves in the American cinematic landscape, saturating our shared pop cultural traditions and even the Mafia’s perceptions of itself. Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel, The Godfather has attained a universally legendary status that few films can claim. It was a box-office smash in its day; winner of the Best Picture Oscar; critically lauded from almost every corner; and still remembered and adored by cinematic aficionados and casual audiences alike a generation later.

In 1972, Coppola was a relative unknown, a risky choice to direct a big-budget Mafia epic in the mold of New Hollywood successes such as Bonnie & Clyde and The French Connection. The director’s domineering style frequently clashed with Paramount Pictures’ demands, particularly with respect to the film’s casting and its depiction of violence. As if Coppola’s casting of the notoriously intractable Marlon Brando was not enough, the director insisted on an obscure thirty-two year old actor named Al Pacino for his lead. Coppola was determined to craft an unusually sympathetic portrayal of an Italian-American crime family, one that explicitly approached its subject as a metaphor for American capitalism. In this The Godfather and its sequel can be seen as unparalleled successes, establishing the prestige of both the crime picture generally and the Mafia picture specifically. This effect has outlasted the New Hollywood era itself, lending stature to films as diverse as Scarface, Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, Heat, and City of God.

After screening The Godfather Part II, George Lucas is said to have commented to Coppola that the two films are actually one, best appreciated as a single work of art. The Godfather presents us with a man who reluctantly and then ruthlessly assumes the commanding heights of power within his narrow, enclosed world. Part II illustrates how wickedness and paranoia eventually isolate that man, destroying all that loves save for the power itself.

3-Minute Intro: The Cannonball Run

September 2, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Comedies, Action No Comments

Screened: September 1, 2008
Format: DVD - HBO (2001)
Selected By: Grant

When Korean War veteran Hal Needham came to Hollywood in the 1950s to work as a stuntman, he had no intention of transforming action filmmaking. Needham quickly developed a strong reputation for his stunt work in television Westerns, parlaying his success into film. Eventually progressing to stunt coordination and second unit direction, Needham was regarded as one of the industry’s chief innovators by 1976, when he approached friend Burt Reynolds with a script called Smokey and the Bandit. The film was an enormous hit for both the director and star, a feat they replicated in 1981 with The Cannonball Run, a camp ensemble comedy celebration of auto racing and Hollywood excess.

Back in 1976, there had been two films—the action feature Cannonball! and the comedy The Gumball Rally—based on a real-life outlaw cross-country auto race, the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. Run five times between 1971 and 1979, the Dash was legendary in Needham’s racing and stunt circles for having no rules save the specified starting and end point. With The Cannonball Run, the director undeniably created the race’s most widespread cultural legacy, going so far as to integrate notorious events from past Dashes into the film’s plot.

Cannonball was a part of Reynolds’ unparalleled 1978-1982 domination of the American box office, although his collaborations with Needham and other B-movie fare had by 1981 somewhat diminished his reputation in the eyes of audiences and directors. However, dismissing Cannonball, or any Needham film, as shallow misses the point. The director always intended his films to be joyful tributes to his heroes and the things he loved, particularly fast cars. Despite its broad, engaging cast of comedy fixtures, rising stars, and Hollywood has-beens—including Roger Moore parodying his contemporary James Bond role—Needham’s focus is on the vehicles, which he films with the devoted attention that only an enthusiast can bring. Ultimately, the film’s frisky character ensures The Cannonball Run’s status, not merely as a 1981 cultural artifact, but also one of the great Hollywood chase films. It’s a character embodied in its roguish disdain for law enforcement and its enthusiasm for a competition where nothing is at stake but bragging rights.

3-Minute Intro: Deliverance

September 2, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Dramas No Comments

Screened: September 1, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Brothers (2004)
Selected By: Grant

Burt Reynolds began his acting career on the stage and in television, but in the 1960s he transitioned to film, where he would eventually establish his role as a leading man sex symbol and Hollywood institution. Reynolds’ early renown as a reliable and popular performer, often in Spaghetti Westerns, gradually grew until he was offered his breakout starring role in John Boorman’s landmark 1972 drama, Deliverance. The film was also a pivotal success for its three other principals: John Voight, following his acclaimed debut in 1969’s Midnight Cowboy; relatively unknown actor and guitarist Ronny Cox; and newcomer Ned Beatty in his own acting debut.

Based on the lauded 1970 work by American poet and novelist James Dickey, whose popularity exploded following the film, Deliverance is arguably the most revered work from Boorman. The English director began his career as a documentary filmmaker for the BBC, before breaking out in 1967 with the brutal Lee Marvin crime drama Point Blank, now regarded as a neo-noir classic. Boorman’s modest success with feature films eventually paved the way for Deliverance, his first box-office triumph and most enduring feature, alongside his 1981 fantasy epic, Excalibur. Despite his British background, the director brought an unexpected sensitivity to the film’s disturbing, notorious depiction of American folly and endurance.

Dickey’s novel and the film address these themes with a relatively simple story: four Atlanta businessmen set off into the Georgian wilderness for a weekend canoe adventure that becomes a terrifying nightmare. The film’s renowned, eerie banjo sequence and the actors’ grueling stunt work provide a visceral edge to its commentary. Unremittingly dark in tone, the film features a now archetypal depiction of Appalachian hillbillies as monstrous, violent deviants. The protagonists, however, are also shown to be ultimately foolish, arrogant, and morally bankrupt. The film is ambiguous as to whether the brutality of the wilderness and their ordeal bestows the four suburbanites with these qualities, or merely brings them to the surface. In crafting this harrowing depiction of middle class hubris and the fragility of decency, Boorman and the performers created what might be regarded as one of the great American horror films of the late twentieth century.

3-Minute Intro: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

August 25, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Comedies No Comments

Screened: August 22, 2008
Format: Laserdisc (Special Edition)
Selected By: Stephanie

It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely director of the archetype madcap ensemble comedy than Stanley Kramer. Coming out of Hell’s Kitchen with family roots deep in the film industry trenches, Kramer became a respected and award-showered producer capable of working within the studio system and on his own. Beginning in 1955, he moved on to directing his own features. He made a spate of acclaimed social issue dramas that reflected his own political sensibilities, including The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, and Judgment at Nuremberg. Then, in 1963 Kramer set out to create a sprawling, zany comedy epic, the 70 mm, three-hour behemoth It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Fulfilling Hollywood’s contemporary taste for spectacle (the better to lure away television viewers), Mad World was assembled with a More Is More philosophy. This is evident in its enormous cast, its stunts, its plot, and its wild comedy blend of slapstick, puns, gentle satire, and outrageous sight gags. The film’s story is relatively simple—a dying confession leads to a greed-fueled race for buried treasure—but Mad World is really about grandiose wackiness, a vehicle to cram every recognizable 1960s comedic celebrity into the frame. Who cares that some of the cameos amount to Where’s Waldo reaction shots? The fact that the whole ridiculous enterprise still manages to be infectiously funny testifies to Kramer’s previously concealed talent for the genre.

Mad World’s marathon running time is a tale unto itself. The fabled 210-minute Cinerama premiere, complete with overture, intermission, exit music, and fictional police radio chatter to be piped into the theater restrooms, has unfortunately been lost. The film was such a hit that United Artists sliced it for the roadshow release to increase the number of times it could be screened in a day, then sliced it again for the general release, all without Kramer’s involvement. Decades later, the director was able to assist with the reconstruction of a 182-minute version for the Special Edition Laserdisc. Although some of the restored scenes are of poor quality, this remains the most complete version of the film ever produced, and is regarded as a cinematic treasure among film fans.

3-Minute Intro: Cannibal Holocaust

3-Minute Intro: The Orphanage (El Orfanato)

3-Minute Intro: Sleepaway Camp

3-Minute Intro: Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)

3-Minute Intro: The Last House on the Left

3-Minute Intro: Don’t Look Now

3-Minute Intro: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

3-Minute Intro: The Cannonball Run

3-Minute Intro: Deliverance

3-Minute Intro: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

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