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.

Review: The Happening

July 12, 2008 Andrew Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Horror, Science Fiction No Comments

2008
Director: M. Night Shyalaman
Viewed: July 7, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

After Unbreakable seduced me with its empathic, gorgeous take on the superhero origin story, I came away an admirer of M. Night Shyalaman’s ability to repackage well-worn stories with a fresh dose of pained humanity and absolute sincerity. Signs confirmed my assessment, as well as the writer-director’s instincts for chills. The Village was… less great. Lady in the Water arrived as a sweet and embarrassing jumble, a vanity project with a sour aftertaste. And now we have The Happening, and given the public nature of Shyalaman’s descent from artistic grace, how can this film be anything but a Rorschach test on how far the former wunderkind of genre filmmaking has fallen? To be sure, The Happening has a germ of the director’s flair for compelling concepts and attractive composition. However, the film is so aggressively bad in so many ways, I came away wondering whether Shyalaman has always been a covertly poor filmmaker, or one who just matured into ineptitude.

Read the rest…

3-Minute Intro: [•Rec]

June 25, 2008 Andrew 3-Minute Intros, Foreign, Horror No Comments

Screened: June 24, 2008
Format: DVD - Filmax (Spanish Import)
Selected By: Chris

Since 1999, when The Blair Witch Project shattered expectations to become both a cultural sensation and the most profitable film of all time, “point-of-view” filmmaking has repeatedly reared its head in horror cinema. Granted, the conceit of placing a camera directly into the story itself owes a debt to decades-old documentary cinéma-vérité traditions, as well as to the Danish Dogme95 film movement. And its appearance in the horror genre dates at least to the 1980 Italian cult classic Cannibal Apocalypse. Yet it was Blair Witch that truly spawned a crop of divergent horror POV progeny, among them this year’s Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead. While sheer audience familiarity ensures that no subsequent POV horror fiction will likely acquire the urban legend qualities of Blair Witch, the subgenre does have its terrifying little gems, such as 2007’s Spanish hit, [•REC].

Directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza are rising stars in the burgeoning world of Spain’s horror cinema. Natives of Catalonia and València respectively, Balagueró and Plaza transitioned from festival-favorite short films to feature productions as their profiles grew, and both contributed to the film revival of Narciso Ibañez Serrador’s horror television series, Tales to Keep You Awake. Balagueró garnered some degree of cult fame from features such as The Nameless, Darkness, and Fragile. However, [•REC] is the first high-profile international success for either director, helped along by positive word-of-mouth in the alt-horror fan community in Spain, Britain, and beyond.

Balagueró and Plaza eschew Blair Witch’s less-is-more methods in favor of mainstream scares and gores, but [•REC] achieves an uncommon realism and simplicity in its presentation. Shot entirely on location, the film tells the story of a shoestring Barcelona television news crew comprising one reporter and one cameraman. In the course of taping a humdrum human interest feature, the pair find themselves trapped in an unthinkably nightmarish situation. In keeping with journalistic standards and the rules of the subgenre, naturally they keep right on filming. Consistent with the best traditions of horror, the film deftly delves into modern fears about paranoia, community, isolation, and biological terror. Running a lean 75 minutes, [•REC] shuns indulgent digressions in favor of the classic pairing of slowly mounting tension and gruesome shocks.