Thief

US | 1981 | Directed by Michael Mann

Logline: An ex-con and seasoned safecracker looking to settle down takes on a lucrative job for the mafia, unaware of the long-term implications.

All the hallmarks of Michael Mann’s distinctive style can be seen here in his debut feature (he’d made a few shorts and a TV movie prior). Based on the novel (read: exploits) by real-life jewel thief John Seybold, writing under the pen name Frank Hohimer, titled The Home Invaders: Confessions of a Cat Burglar, Mann wrote the screenplay, executive produced, and directed this thoroughly accomplished neo-noir tale with James Caan in a career performance. At its Cannes premiere it screened under the title Violent Streets. 

Frank (Caan) is keen to get out of the business that has almost set him up for life. He’s already done ten plus years in the can, and since being back on the street he’s set up two solid businesses, a bar and a car dealership, whilst working as a professional gem thief with his accomplice Barry (James Beulshi). But the most important part is missing; family. He has been courting one of his cashiers, Jessie (Tuesday Weld), and he propositions her.

Frank’s expertise is seemingly brought to the attention of Leo (Robert Prosky, in impressive villain form), who is an associate of a man who owes Frank money. But Leo is the boss of the Chicago mob and he has plans for Frank. He offers Frank serious money, but Frank is reluctant to deal with big egos. After an intense rendezvous with Jessie, and a meeting of the minds, Frank decides to do do one large score for Leo, so he can retire and settle down with Jessie, and an adopted baby, courtesy of Leo’s black market dealings. 

It must have all looked great on paper. 

As in all classic noir, the best laid plans are scuttled, sabotaged, damaged beyond repair, or simply fucked up beyond all recognition. In Frank’s case, the perfect crime comes hopelessly undone, and Frank refuses to be the captain going down with the ship. There will be blood, but none of it will be spilled on Frank’s bronzed Armani silk shirt if he can help it. There will be casualties, though, nihilism will rear its ugly head. 

From the opening heist scene, establishing Frank’s prowess, his professional minimalism, slipping away through the back streets after stealing the hot rocks, Mann’s skill as a director is evident, his aesthetics clear. The cinematography, from Adrian Biddle, is rich and dark, the wet streets, the vivid neon, the deep shadows, the intense, driven performances. 

Tangerine Dream provide the pulsating synth-rock score, and it’s a beauty. I was reminded of Scarface, released a couple of years later, and wondered if Brian De Palma was influenced in any way, as there is a certain vibe, both in the look and the sound, that is quite familiar with De Palma’s gangster epic. 

It’s a shame Tuesday Weld isn’t given more to chew on, her Jessie role is pretty thankless. She’s a great actor, and the nuances and intelligence she imparts in her character really demanded moire screen time, more involvement. It is Jessie who gives Frank the impetus to get out, yet when the going gets tough, Frank gives her the coldest shoulder. It’s a borderline tragedy. 

It’s not Michael Mann’s best movie - Heat takes that place on the mantlepiece - but I’m confident in putting it amongst his top three. Like the Coen brothers’ debut, it is that visually and thematically distinctive and impressive. 

Thief two-disc (Theatrical Version and Director's Cut) Blu-ray and DVD is released through Via Vision.

Bonus features include audio commentary from director Michael Mann and lead actor James Caan. 

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe

UK | 2016 | Directed by André Øvredal

Logline: Father and son medical examiners investigate a mysterious murder victim with no apparent death and discover increasingly disturbing signs that a malevolent supernatural force is involved. 

Following the critical success of his Trollhunter found footage horror fantasy hybrid Norwegian Øvredal changes his approach entirely with his third feature and delivers one of the year’s creepiest movies. Whereas as Trollhunter was more of creature feature romp with tongue in cheek, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is definitely a darker and affecting piece of work. This is unbridled nightmare material, and likely to unnerve the most jaded horror fans. It’s also one of the most original horror movies in recent years. 

Austin (Emile Hirsch) and his father Tommy (Brian Cox) work as medical examiners in the family-owned business. Late one night the local Sheriff delivers a young woman’s body who had been discovered in a shallow grave in the basement of a house where several brutal murders had taken place. She is apparently dead, but appears in pristine condition. Austin is due for a date with girlfriend, Emma (Ophelia Lovibond), so dad sends him off, but Austin gets a bad case of the guilts,  so he postpones the date til later in the evening, so he can assist his father and get the cause of death sorted quickly. 

With the two men working together in the underground facility a storm begins to rage above ground. As the corpse can’t be immediately identified she is given the police procedural moniker of “Jane Doe”. Her glazed eyes are milky, and odd sign. She has dirt under her fingernails and toenails. Her tongue has been severed. But this is only the beginning. The night will get darker and the atmosphere of dread will soon turn to abject terror as Jane Doe begins to reveal her true nature, her origin, her purpose. 

Building on classic horror elements Øvredal steadily creates an overwhelmingly ominous vibe. It’s essentially a two-hander, and a chamber piece, as almost the entire movie takes place in the examining room. It’s a superbly executed piece of cinema that could easily have fallen prey to feeling like a filmed play, or a short film padded out to feature length. The sound design is one of the movie’s highlights, especially the punctuation use of a small bell tinkling, tied to the toe of a corpse, a reminder of an old-fashioned method of careful morticians who didn’t want to end up burying a person who wasn’t quite dead yet, as was often the case during plague times. Also excellent is the prosthetic work. 

Cox and Hirsch give excellent performances. Apparently Martin Sheen was originally cast in the father’s role, but had to pull out. Cox is perfect, and I can’t imagine Sheen giving a better performance. Special mention must be made on Olwen Kelly, who plays Jane Doe, laying fully nude and prone on an autopsy table, as it would be easy to describe her role as thankless, however, it is her sustained stillness (she is a yoga expert); her ability to control her body and breathing, and thus, she’s amazing, the most convincing dead body I’ve ever seen in a feature.

The less one knows about The Autopsy of Jane Doe the better. For the trainspotters there is a neat little clue to the nature of the nightmare in the poster art. There are a couple of very effective shocks, and the narrative tightens its screw of dread with consummate control. Best watched late at night, alone, with all the lights off.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

US | 2016 | Directed by Gareth Edwards

Logline: A small faction of the Rebel Alliance, lead by a vengeful young woman, attempt to steal the plans for the Empire’s new weapon, the Death Star. 

I left my cynicism at the door when I watched The Force Awakens, episode VII in the Star Wars saga, directed by J.J. Abrams, and I really enjoyed the movie at the time. The more I thought about the movie in the weeks and months that followed the less impressed I was with it. The whole facsimile of episode IV element - and it’s a huge one - weighed more and more heavily. The sheen of the movie turned to floss, the movie began to taste and feel like Hubba Bubba bubblegum, all uber-flavour and great for blowing the bubbles of my youth, but soon enough the flavour was gone and the gum was no longer fun to chew. 

Gareth Edwards, who made Monsters, one of my favourite movies of the past ten years, and who delivered a great Godzilla re-boot a few years ago, is at the helm of this prequel, which dovetails straight into A New Hope like hand in Rebel glove. The story is essentially the brainchild of John Knoll, the special effects whiz from Industrial Light & Magic, who took his cue from the first paragraph of the opening scrawl to A New Hope; “It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, an armoured space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.”  

The screenplay is by Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy, and while Rogue One isn’t a plot-point for plot-point direct copy of A New Hope it does rely heavily on the nostalgia for the original movies, but is that such a bad thing? While its merits as a stand alone movie can be debated, with character punctuation involving certain crucial roles within the Empire, it does provide a wealth of peripheral nods to the original trilogy that will appeal like gems to the more geeky of Star Wars fans, for example, the aggressive ugly mug who later accosts Luke in the Mos Eisley cantina, and the same hologram chess game from onboard the MF, making brief appearances. It is these references that enrich the movie as a whole, and are handled by Edwards with care and intelligence. 

Rogue One is, essentially, an espionage war movie, and rumour has it that a substantial amount of the movie was re-shot, after Disney executives became alarmed with the rough cut Edwards delivered earlier in the year. They told Edwards he’d made a war movie, to which he replied, yes. But apparently that’s not what Disney really wanted. Rogue One is certainly still a movie with a lot of battling going on, but one wonders just how much was actually re-shot. One rumour mill suggested between 40-50%, whilst another source told me he had inside knowledge that up to 80%. That seems excessive, and unrealistic, considering the release date. But something tells me somewhere there is another version of Rogue One that is much darker in tone and probably more violent. Maybe it will become the holy grail of bootlegs amongst Star Wars fans in years to come. It’s always fun and interesting to have those illicit treasures floating around. But I digress … 

One of Rogue One’s key successes, as opposed to Abrams’ super-glossy, ultimately hollow episode, is how close in mood, tone, and its visual style, it is to the original Star Wars movie, Episode IV: A New Hope. There are no wipe edits, John Williams’ legendary score rears its head in just a few scenes, and only the fourth moon of Yavin makes an appearance in the location department, but there is a genuine sense of exhilaration and intrigue which Edwards conjures. Admittedly, at times the sense of humour pokes its head up a little higher than I anticipated, most notably with the character of K-2SO, an Imperial droid who has been acquired and re-programmed for use by the Rebel Alliance. He’s like a cross between C-3PO and Chappie. He’s definitely funny, but the reliance on him for comic relief veers dangerously close to He Who Will Not Be Named for fear of jinxing the movie. 

Performances are solid, with Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, and Ben Mendelsohn (who is really shining in his career of late) standouts, while it’s curious to note just how multi-racial the cast is compared to George Lucas’s original trilogy. The production design is superb, the battle sequences thrilling, and the new locations are spectacular; the security of the Imperial residing in a lush Dubai-like tropical paradise, but a giant Jedi knight rock in the desert, wtf?!

Rogue One will no doubt have its cynics, but I’m proud to say, I’m not on that haters’ boat. Okay, admittedly, I don’t like that they’ve opted for full CGI on a crucial character. It’s the same issue I had with Tron: Legacy. I’d have much preferred an actor who looks the part, rather than attempting to digitally create a character from 1977. It’s all in the eyes. But hey, Rogue One, is awesome sauce. I might even go as far as saying it’s my second favourite movie of the entire saga. Now that’s a rogue move. 

Tonight She Comes

US | 2016 | Directed by Matt Stuertz

Logline: After a girl goes missing, two of her friends, and two strangers, find themselves trapped in a cabin in the woods, and dealing with a demon.

This hipster-looking director, delivering his second feature, is unafraid to twist the tropes, and is not shy at pushing the boundaries of what might be considered that all-too-important indie-mainstream crossover threshold. Tonight She Comes is a wild, unruly beast, and, ultimately, it rewards in such memorable ways that whatever reservations you might have had during its first half hour are torn asunder once the serious shit starts to hit the fan. 

Yes, the first half an hour is a curious affair, filled with stupid, annoying characters and behaviour, and a puerile sense of humour. One wonders if it’s a parody or just something ill-conceived. James (Nathan Eswine) is a rural postman, and his buddy Pete (Adam Hartley), is along for the ride. Meanwhile Ashley (Larissa White) and her friend Lyndsey (Cameisha Cotton) arrive at a lakeside cabin for a little girly r&r, whilst waiting to rendezvous with Kristy (Dal Nicole). But Kristy isn’t feeling herself anymore. 

At the risk of spoiling the fun Tonight She Comes spills along with crude hi-jinx, obscure POVs, and a strange perspective. Just whose story is being told here? Do we really care about these idiots? Or is this all an elaborate ruse by the young writer/director to lure us into a false sense of the absurd, only to pull the shagpile carpet out from under us? Indeed Tonight She Comes is riddled with sly and not-so-sly references, wearing its influences on its sleeve like flair on a uniform. Stuertz is brazen, and goes bolder still, once we’re introduced to the weirdo locals, Francis (Frankie Ray), and his offspring, Felicity (Jenna McDonald), and her older brother Philip (Brock Russell). 

It becomes quickly apparent the cabin family have been up to no good, although they claim to be setting things right. There is a demon afoot, and there will be hell to pay, unless everyone does exactly what Fah-liss-ah-tay says. The clock countdown continues, and the blood starts to flow unabated, and not just arterial either. You’ll wrinkle your nose if you get my cyclic drift. 

Tonight She Comes is a great-looking movie, with high production values, especially the awesome, mostly practical, special effects. The performances from an unknown cast are bang on, but special mention must go to McDonald as bogan daughter, and Ray, as her papa. They deliver the backwoods banter with aplomb. Also of note is the retro-vibed score from Wojciech Golczewski, tapping into the synth-driven suspense with seductive ease. 

It’s a riotous, entertaining assault on the senses, and as the chaos continues to ensue, the audience knows that awesome poster design and its matter-of-fact tagline wasn’t dicking around. Like a red river to a black ocean, this demon is hellbent. Fighting fire with fire seems to be the only option, and it’s getting damn close to midnight. 

Many will probably consider Tonight She Comes to be jumping on the It Follows bandwagon, but this vivid nightmare delivers in spades what It Follows only manages in spoonfuls. It’s short and as coppery-sweet as us True Believers’ like it. I hope it gets a theatrical, because horrorphiles would be served a grand injustice not to see this, loud, on the big screen. 

The Night of the Virgin

La Noche del Virgen | Spain | 2016 | Directed by Roberto San Sebastián

Logline: A desperate young man goes home with an older woman only to find himself caught up in an elaborate and nightmarish birth prophecy. 

You think you’ve seen it all? Oh no, think again. There are still wonderfully dark, festering corners of nightmare filth waiting to be scooped up and flung at the screen, all in the name of extreme entertainment. This is one night you won’t forget in a hurry. Prepare to be shocked, prepare to be offended, prepare to be appalled, but most importantly, prepare to see one of the best horror movies of the year, because this onslaught has its tongue rammed so far into its cheek there’s an ulcer. 

Nico (Javier Bódalo) is at a New Year’s Eve party, waiting to rendezvous with some mates. He invades the personal space of a couple of women on the dance floor, only to be met with a drink flung at him and vomit on his shoes. But then he meets Medea (Miriam Martín), a cougar on a mission, and before he knows it he’s standing in her darkened hallway, all fingers and thumbs. Medea warns him not to step on the cockroaches as it’s bad luck. Crunch. Oops. Too late. This mess is going to come back and haunt him something awful. 

To describe Medea’s abode as unkempt would be a huge understatement. Her bathroom alone makes “The Worst Toilet in Scotland“ look positively pristine, if you know what I mean. But Nico doesn’t really mind. He just wants to get his rocks off, and it seems fairly obvious Medea is up for accommodating his lusty agenda. That’s until she falls asleep on him, and he’s left to his own perverse devices. 

To describe this movie as simply a dark sex comedy would be doing it a grave injustice. This is the kind of oily black, inspired comedy of errors that will appeal to those that get their kicks from the most heinous of gags. If you can imagine the fiendish, absurd extremities of Takashi Miike, Frank Henenlotter, and early Peter Jackson, even Pedro Almodovar, rolled into one gleefully unsavoury, and at times hilarious, delight, then you might get to grips with the wild proclivities of this scatological gem. 

The two central performances are awesome, as it is, essentially, a two-hander. Almost the entire movie takes place in Medea’s apartment, so you could even call the movie a chamber piece. Ha ha, yes! The art direction is superb, and the special effects, courtesy of an outfit called Bacon FX, are outstanding. It’s a triumph of splattery design. 

In fact, I’ve not seen as much bodily fluid ejaculated, projected, discharged, and excreted in a horror movie since, I don’t know when. Keep a barf bag handy, or at least a box of tissues, as you may find yourself feeling the urge to wipe your clammy hands. But it’s all fantastic, nasty fun, as only the Spanish can do. Seriously, do yourself a favour and get weird and dirty with Nico. Real dirty. 

There are losers, and then there are Losers, and Nico is one of the latter. But he is our hero, our champion. It is this pathetic angle that gives The Night of the Virgin its true visceral edge. But, very importantly, make sure you stay to watch the end credits, for during there is a return to the New Year’s Eve television coverage which bookends the narrative, and a particular news story that pulls it all into brilliant perspective. 

Yup, The Night of the Virgin is definitely one of the most outrageous, and original horror movies I’ve seen in many years. 

The Night of the Virgin screens as part of Sydney's A Night Of Horror International Film Festival, Friday, December 2nd, 9pm, Dendy Cinemas Newtown

Threads

UK/Australia | 1984 | directed by Mick Jackson

Logline: The last few months before a nuclear holocaust, the attack on the industrial city of Sheffield, England, and the long-term effects of such an event. 

I first watched this movie when it was originally broadcast on television, which is what it had been produced for, in the mid-80s. Watching it again more than thirty years later very little of what made it so powerful has dated. With the world in the political state that it is, it is as pertinent as ever. A third World War will leave no victors, only a wasteland of terminal-ill survivors, with the poison spreading the world over. 

Although it is often referred to as the UK’s answer to The Day After, which was made the year before, also for television, although it was released in cinemas in some countries outside of the US, Threads was first commissioned by the head of the BBC after he was directly affected by watching the British docudrama The War Game (1965). Mick Jackson had already just worked on a documentary about a possible nuclear holocaust, on an episode of Living Proof, and as such he brought a certain gravitas to the production, essentially expanding on the ideas and scenarios delivered in the A Guide to Armageddon episode. 

The main narrative crux of the movie focuses on two families, the middle-class Becketts and the working class Kemps, who live in the city of Sheffield, in northern England, a city whose primary industries are metal works, coal, and chemical manufacture. Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher) is set to marry Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale). We see their courtship in the months leading up to an nuclear attack. The other storyline follows the the Home Office, and its Chief Executive (Michael O’Hagen), and the officials as they follow the escalating exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the threat of war becoming all too real, and the desperation as several nuclear warheads detonate over England land and sea. 

As one would expect the consequences are catastrophic. Using the 1980 British Government exercise findings known as “Square Leg”, the filmmakers project a series of statistics which are presented as inter-titles - dramatic punctuation, if you will - depicting many things, but chiefly the level of destruction and the number of casualties. Around 17-30 million would be killed, with between 10-20 million unburned corpses left scattered around the country in the aftermath, as the survivors would not be able to dispose of them properly.

After the first month cholera, dysentery, and typhoid would be rife. Looting would be a huge problem. Food stocks and supplies would diminish rapidly. Basically, it would be a return to the Middle Ages, with no foreseeable solution to the ravaged land. The nuclear winter would continue on for decades, and Threads shows us some of the horror up until thirteen years after an attack, with Ruth’s teenage daughter Jane (Victoria O’Keefe) attempting to get by in a very dark and desolate future.

Carl Sagan, who was one of the many consultants on the production, introduced the wider public to the concept of the nuclear winter, and Threads is the first fictional drama to portray such a cataclysmic scenario. The Day After only deals, as the title says, with the immediate aftermath, and is nowhere near as harrowing as what Threads illustrates. 

As the production is several years before the introduction of CGI the use of stock footage from WWII and military archives portrays the effects of nuclear devastation. We’ve seen many of these images before, but it doesn’t diminish their power. Though the exterior production values aren’t very high, but one can see how skilfully Jackson directs the scenes of panic and chaos to bring as much impact. It might seem a bit like a cross between two grungy British dramas, the veteran Coronation Street and cult post-apocalyptic The Survivors, but it’s the fact that Jackson specifically chose unknown actors for his cast, and their naturalistic performances, that brings a Ken Loach realism to the story (unlike the casting of pretty faces, Steve Guttenberg, John Lithgow, JoBeth Williams, and Jason Robards in The Day After).

Very wisely, there is no music used (unlike The Day After, which although used sparingly still jars as emotionally manipulative), however I couldn’t help but conjure the use of Sheffield electronic outfit The Human League and many of their brooding, early, experimental tracks, such as Almost Medieval, Zero as a Limit, Dreams Of Leaving, and The Black Hit of Space, which I would be curious to hear used in context. 

Threads is a bitter message of hopeless grief, and one of the most stark political statements ever made. 

The Ballad of Tam Lin

UK | 1970 | Directed by Roddy McDowell

Logline: An ageing seductress uses her wealth and supernatural wiles to control a brood of young folk, while her favourite, becomes enamoured with a local village girl, and thus becomes the subject of her jealousy. 

"And ance it fell upon a day/A cauld day and a snell/When we were frae the hunting come/That frae my horse I fell/The Queen o Fairies she caught me/In yon green hill to dwell.”

Loosely based on an ancient Scottish ballad, “Tam-Lin”, by Robert Burns, it was the last screenplay of William Squires who wrote for American television. Roddy McDowell turned down the returning role of Cornelius in Beneath the Planet of the Apes to direct his only movie, and after it’s belated US release it vanished, only to surface sporadically on television in a re-cut, re-titled version disowned by McDowell. It wasn’t until 1998 that McDowell’s intended cut of the movie (complete with lengthy intro from Roddy himself) surfaced on VHS, and in recent years this director's cut has been given a restored Blu-ray release.

In this version of the celtic legend a glamorous and mysterious woman, Michaela Cazaret, known affectionately by her entourage as Micky, brings her swinging London set out to her enormous country manor where she indulges them in her games and toys. She has one regular bedfellow, Tom Lynn (Ian McShane), but I’m sure the inference is that she is lovers with them all. She is like a strange, beautiful Mother Hen, and Tom is her strutting peacock. 

Into the picture wanders young Janet (Stephanie Beacham), the daughter of the local vicar, and she takes Tom’s fancy. Now Tom’s heart is aflutter, but his mind is under the lock and key of Ms. Cazaret. No matter how much cognac he swills, he can’t get Janet out his head. Meanwhile Elroy (Richard Wattis), Micky’s aide-de-camp (pun intended), has his eye on the wayward stud. Reporting back any tomfoolery to the mistress of the manor, or, as the US re-cut version refers to her, The Devil’s Widow. 

"And pleasant is the fairy land/But, an eerie tale to tell/Ay at the end of seven years/We pay a tiend to hell/I am sae fair and fu' o fles/I'm feared it be mysel.”

Ian McShane is brilliant in the role of the handsome, hapless Tom Lynn (see the play on the title?). HIs Tom portrays the necessary confidence, and quiet arrogance, superbly. In counterpoint Micky’s vulnerability, her emotional fragility (how much of it is feigned?), works into his groove, then buckles his strut. Whilst the deer-in-the-headlights, butter-wouldn’t-melt innocence of Janet is the river running between them. Tom plunges in, Micky throws in piranha, can Janet save Tom? 

For the trainspotters there are several young faces in the support cast - Micky’s harem - that will bring a smile. Keep a look out for Joanna Lumley, Sinéad Cusack (several years before she married Jeremy Irons), Hammer girl Jenny Hanley, and Bruce Robinson (yes, the director of Withnail and I!) Also of note is the score by Stanley Myers, and several folk songs performed by Pentangle. Oh, and a couple of fabulous cars to boot! 

Very much influenced by, and a fractured, satirical reflection of the swinging London of the late 60s, coupled with a dark, insidious Wicker Man edge, this tale of greed, jealousy, cruel manipulation and the power of true love, is a nightmare dressed in the threads of a fairy tale. Apparently a tribute, a gesture of love, to legendary star Ava Gardner, who was in her late 40s when she made this. A curious gesture, indeed. 

"But the night is Halloween, lady/The morn is Hallowday/Then win me, win me, an ye will/For weel I wat ye may.”

During the movie’s first half the elements of a traditional horror movie are barely apparent, with the scent of its romantic interludes seemingly overpowering any foul stench, but following Janet’s declaration and bombshell to Micky, and it’s all on for young and old. During the second half, and especially in the movie’s last twenty minutes or so, Roddy pulls out all the stops, showing great technique, and the movie becomes as intense a nightmare as Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 

It’s a shame McDowell never directed any further movies, as he showed a distinctive style (I loved his use of stills during the courtship of Tom and Janet by the stream), and great understanding of the poetic, both light and dark, power of cinema narrative. Indeed, Tam Lin is a very atmospheric film! I believe the interfering by the studio and executive producers brought McDowell such frustration and despair that he vowed never to direct again. So we are left with just one curious, peculiar, rare gem, that must be savoured like a fine lilac wine. 

“Out then spak the Queen o Fairies/And an angry woman was she/Shame betide her ill-far'd face/And an ill death may she die/For she's taen awa the bonniest knigh/In a' my companie."

Next Door

Naboer | Norway/Denmark/Sweden | 2005 | Directed by Pål Sletaune

Logline: A man who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend becomes embroiled in the strange and seductive behaviour of his two neighbours, only to find his grip on reality disintegrating. 

The word “naboer” in Norwegian means “neighbours” and it’s a more accurate description of the movie, but accuracy is not what this movie intends to deliver. This is a movie about fractured perspective and delusion, it’s fantasy vs reality, dream into nightmare. It’s a superbly constructed thriller body with a sharp spine of horror. Hitchcock meets Polanski meets Lynch and all of them getting on like a house on fire. 

John (Kristoffer Joner) is visited by his ex, Ingrid (Anna Bache-Wiig), who has come to collect some of her stuff she left in his first storey apartment. She is wary of John, and when her new boyfriend Åke (Michael Nyqvist) honks his horn she waves to him from the window to signal that she is not being threatened. John is bewildered, and insists he would never do anything to harm Ingrid. Ingrid reminds John of his brutal fantasy. 

John is approached by his next door neighbour Anne (Cecilie Mosli), who asks for his assistance in moving heavy furniture inside her apartment. She’s a bit odd. John then meets Anne’s friend Kim (Julia Schacht), who is also a bit strange. The two women seem to know something John doesn’t. Anne slips away, and Kim tries to seduce John with sadomasochistic behaviour. John gets carried away, and things start to get messy. Very messy, indeed. 

Next Door is very much a chamber piece. It operates like a piece of theatre, but is undeniably cinematic in the way it is executed. Almost the entire movie takes place inside John and his neighbours’ apartments and in the corridor outside. Like something out of a Lynch movie, the hallway is curved, bending into the unknown, an interior “lost highway”. Like a Polanski movie it is John’s perspective that the audience is locked into, John’s growing unease, his climbing dread, an overwhelming sense that everything is becoming slow and steadily unhinged. 

Just who are these two women?!

Sletaune’s screenplay is tight as a drum, and he elicits sensational performances from his small cast, especially Joner and Schacht, and fans of the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies will recognise Nyqvist. The psychosexual thematic content is provocative and edgy. I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t already remade it for the American palette, it screams to be dominated, but Tinseltown would never be able to make it as good as Sletaune has, unless he’s seduced in the same way George Sluizer was after he made the original Dutch-language The Vanishing, and then five years later remaking it for Hollywood and completely compromising the ending. I shudder to think how Next Door could/would be compromised and ruined. 

Next Door’s labyrinthine setting, both literally and figuratively, works wonders; it is claustrophobic, yet curiously expansive. As John’s mind begins to fragment, he fumbles desperately with the truth, scrambling to fit the pieces of his reality jigsaw back together again, only to realise... he hasn’t realised anything. The mind is a fragile, yet malleable thing. Indeed, some doors should never be opened, warns the movie’s tagline. And once opened, they can never be closed. 

Do yourself a favour, find this movie (ignore the lame cover art), and watch it, the revelation is a cracker. 

Jigoku

Hell | Japan | 1960 | Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa

Logline: A group of sinners involved in interconnected tales of murder, revenge, duplicity, and adultery all meet at the Gates of Hell.

“Hear me! You who in life piled up sin upon sin will be trapped in Hell forever. Suffer! Suffer! This vortex of torment will whirl for all eternity.”

Shiro (Shigeru Amachi), is engaged to Yukio (Utako Mitsuya), the daughter of his theology professor. One night he is driving with his college colleague, Tamura (Yoichi Numata), and suggests a short cut down a dark country road. Unfortunately they hit a drunk yakuza, and Tamura, who is driving, decides to leave the scene, insisting no one saw the crime. Shiro and Tamura read in the newspaper that the gangland member has died of his injuries, but there were no witnesses. But, there were. The mother of the yakuza. She, and the girlfriend, conspire to seek revenge on the two men that perpetrated the crime. 

So we have two sins presented; murder and vengeance. But there are more to come. By the halfway point of the movie there are several others whose paths will cross, whose sins have been exposed, and whose torment will be just as ghastly. For it is these folk who will suffer the various lower realms of the underworld, in the movie’s final third, which is depicted as a surreal, phantasmagorical landscape inspired by the infamous hell-scroll paintings, the unique stylistics of Butoh theatre, and embracing the ero-guro-nansensu of Japanese ciné lore!

The movie’s opening title sequence is mesmerising in its own absurdist way, heavily stylised with painted credits on cards, primary colour filters, and Shintoho nudies posed on either side, while a director’s voice calls, “Action!” A black streak of satire throbs quietly in the background of the entire movie. The mise-en-scene and cinematography are nothing short of extraordinary. The production design and art direction is stunning, and the special effects are terrific - the gore gags alone are the first of their kind, pre-dating Herschell Gordon Lewis by a few years. 

There is a curious perspective on morality and roles at play in Jigoku. Just who is Tamura, really? He materialises on several occasions out of the blue, and behaves with a knowing smile, wearing unusual colours (compared to everyone else). It’s as if he is a spook for the Devil, but then he becomes caught up in the same undoing as everyone else. He admits to be being evil, even calls himself a demon. But his intentions are blurred. 

And what are we to make of poor Shiro? He is the central protagonist, as bewildered by everything as we the audience, and yet, he is more innocent than guilty, so why should he be punished so? Perhaps he represents that evil-by-association element, of which he is most definitely tainted to. He hasn’t chosen his friends wisely, and he could’ve been more proactive at the right moments. But hey, dams da breaks. You make your futon, you sleep in it. That’s the way the fortune cookie crumbles. 

Nakagawa had made eight other horror movies during the 1950s, and this was to be the last. Like some kind of mutant take on the Faust fable treated as a lurid, oh so lurid, study of seeking salvation, of the lack thereof, due to the overwhelming nature of sin to shroud our mortal lives. There is no other movie quite like Jigoku, way ahead of its time (in its own universe, even!), and yet, intrinsically locked in its own present, on the crest of the Japanese new wave, a pioneer of extreme cinema (I’m sure Takashi Miike learned a thing or two from this movie), and an adventurous step sideways from the familiar kaidan-geki movies so popular in Japanese film history.

Jigoku is not meant to be seen as some kind of theological treatise, it is to be experienced simply as pure, expressionist cinema; as striking, bizarre, and powerful as the oneiric tapestry and inescapable dread of true nightmares. 

Hell or High Water

US | 2016 | Directed by David Mackenzie

Logline: A divorced father and his ex-con older brother resort to a desperate scheme in order to save their family's ranch in West Texas.

The last movie I saw of Mackenzie’s was Young Adam, back in 2003. He’s made seven features since then, and this one is an absolute cracker, I’m sure his doubt best yet. It’s a modern-day Western with noir undertones. The script (which had been kicking around on the un-produced hot list since 2011) is written by actor-cum-writer/director Taylor Sheridan, who penned Sicario, and it’s a blistering tale of desperation unraveling, infused with gritty violence, and punctuated by sharp dialogue, shot from the hip. 

Toby (Chris Pine) has hooked up with his loose cannon brother Tanner (Ben Foster), who’s just a year out of prison and deadset on making trouble for himself. Toby has bridges to repair with his two adolescent sons, and the best way he knows how is to make sure the homestead and the oil beneath it becomes their property. To do so he needs some serious cash, and he needs it delivered to the bank before the foreclosure. This is imperative, hell or high water. 

Tanner and Toby begin robbing local banks, collecting small, but tidy sums, nothing too greedy, that way they’re not ending up with traceable dough. But Sheriff Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), on the eve of retirement, becomes hellbent on sorting these lads out, especially after the robbing spree drama escalates. Hamilton’s deputy Parker (Gil Birmingham) has to endure Hamilton’s crass jokes for a few more days. Toby has to put up with Tanner’s inherent obnoxiousness for about the same. 

Sporting three high calibre performances, Hell or High Water canters along steadily, providing cattle prods at all the right spots. It’s a beautifully paced thriller, and the chemistry between Pine and Foster is fantastic, neither have been better. Bridges pulls out a gnarly, grizzled, and oh-so-stubborn pearler of a performance, arguably a career best, and it’s the perfect, languid counterpoint to the hot shots he’s pursuing. Special nod to three small roles; the sassy diner waitress, Jenny Ann (Katy Mixon), the no bullshit T-Bone waitress (Margaret Bowman), and the oddly uncredited role of Emily (Melanie Papalia), who attempts to seduce Toby at the casino. 

Hell or High Water is one of those movies you sense how the story is going to play out, and you’re looking forward to it, yet the slight curve it takes is incredibly rewarding. The final scene is masterfully handled, and it fits like grubby hand in cowboy glove. Sheridan and Mackenzie are not trying to reinvent the wheel, they just know, like the best horror filmmakers, that if you put the right actors in place, give them some meat to chew on, gift them authentic locations, and shield them with atmospheric music, and you’ve got yourself a sure-fire winner.  

Along with Blood Father, Hell or High Water is easily one of the best non-horror genre flicks this year. Forget the old school histrionics of The Hateful Eight, this is where the real dust is being kicked up. Another fave to add to my list. I smell major accolades on their way. 

Dread

UK/US | 2009 | Directed by Anthony DiBlasi

Logline: Three American college students undertake a project tackling people’s perception of fear only to have one of the students unravel and explode. 

Clive Barker’s original short story, “Dread”, which is included in his Books of Blood Volume 2, is substantially different from the version adapted for the big screen by director Anthony DiBlasi, and the differences, especially the ending, have had many Barker fans in a quiet rage. I’ve not read the short story, but I’m aware of the dramatically different direction that original narrative takes.I discovered this after watching DiBlasi’s movie, which made me certainly very curious, especially as Barker is one of the producers onboard the movie production, but it didn’t change my opinion of the movie. 

Stephen (Jackson Rathbone), a student on an American university campus, is about to undertake a cinema thesis, and he’s befriended by Quaid (Shaun Evans), another student. Quaid convinces Stephen to do a joint project, recording interviews with subjects about their greatest fears, and the dread that eats away when they think about such fears. Stephen asks his colleague Cheryl (Hanne Steen), an editor whom he fancies, if she’ll come onboard, which she does. The three begin interviewing subjects, but the results aren’t what Quaid is after. He wants much more grittier stories. 

Quaid has a big skeleton in his closet. Well, actually, more like a demon. He reveals his childhood horror to Stephen, after he learns of Stephen’s childhood loss. Cheryl comes clean with a tale of woe of her own. Now we’re getting somewhere thinks Quaid, but the best is yet to come. Y’see, Quaid is a fairly traumatised individual, and he needs to work through some issues. As a young boy he witnessed the brutal slaying of his parents at the hands of a psychopath wielding a sharp axe. This double murder is the movie’s opening scene, and it packs a sensational wallop. 

But there are more wallops to come. Dread has a nasty left hook, and there are a couple of blows that are almost sucker punches. I must hand it to DiBlasi, he’s delivered a seriously good horror movie. He understands the use of tension and suspense and, more importantly, he understands the power of a moment of extreme violence - a gore gag, if you will - and that it is heavily reliant on the editing and lighting. Dread uses both to very good effect in a number of set-pieces. 

There is a fourth, pivotal character, Abby (Laura Donnelly), another student, a very pretty girl afflicted with a huge black birthmark that covers half her face. She has a crush on Stephen, but she is crushed by her own insecurity issues. Quaid, it seems, has an agenda. And following a violent outburst, everything will soon collide. As the movie is an English-American co-production, there are a few English actors amongst the leads. Evans and Donnelly are both British, each with strong native accents (Liverpudlian and Irish, respectively), yet they sport bang on American accents, I had no idea, and I’m usually pretty good at spotting them. All the leads deliver excellent performances, I couldn’t single out anyone. 

Admittedly there is an element of the far-fetched that begins to creep into the story fabric, but not enough to ruin the enjoyment of a thoroughly gripping tale, a truly nightmarish scenario that only comes to the harshest of light in the movie’s final quarter. If you think you know how this one’s going to pan out, think again. This is one for the True Believers. 

Dread was picked up by After Dark Horrorfest and released as one of their “8 Films To Die For” in 2010. It is up with the best of the series, alongside The Abandoned (2006), Wicked Little Things (2006), Borderland (2007), Autopsy (2008), The Brøken (2008), and two Aussie ones, Dying Breed (2008) and Lake Mungo (2008). 

Angst

Austria | 1983 | Directed by Gerald Kargl

Logline: A violent sociopath is released from prison and immediately breaks into a secluded home where he inflicts his sadistic, murderous fantasies on the three occupants. 

It’s taken me the better part of twenty years to finally see this movie, as it has not been an easy film to find. It was banned in many countries for a long time, so it existed in a bootleg foreign-language form, and only in the past couple of years has it been officially available in a version with English subtitles. It is an extraordinary piece of cinema, far more powerful than I anticipated. I was expecting a dingy, grimy, relentless assault. The kind of unctuous experience that would leave me feeling like I needed a shower, not too dissimilar to the effect of watching Maniac (1980), for the first time. It was relentless alright, but there was a minimalism and unique atmosphere that was undeniably poetic. 

Erwin Leder plays the man at the centre of the movie. He is unnamed, credited simply as The Psychopath, and he is certainly a man deeply unhinged. The movie was titled Schizophrenia in France when it was released on Blu-ray in 2012, but the original title, which means "anxiety" in English, translates as “fear” in Austrian. This double-edged sword fits the movie snugly, for this is a portrait of moral desolation, a study of extreme violence, of isolation and loneliness. It is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful depictions of the intense drive, the erratic behaviour, the impulsiveness, and inherent nihilism of the serial killer, and Leder delivers a blistering performance. 

Kargl wrote the screenplay with his cinematographer and editor, Zbigniew Rybczński. In the wake of the movie’s controversy resulting in financial issues for his follow-up project Kargl abandoned directing features, and as such Angst is the only movie he made. Instead he made commercials, documentaries and educational films. Rybczński, on the other hand, went on to direct music videos for artists including Art Of Noise, Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys, and many more. His extraordinary camerawork on Angst has to be seen to be believed, it is nothing short of revelatory. 

In fact, one of the most impressive things about Angst is just how modern the vibe is. The visual stylistic in which it is mostly shot, frequently from a roving crane - that feels like a drone - and also from a body-cam strapped to Leder, gives the movie a distinctly contemporary feel, much like the Steadicam used in Come and See, another movie that feels ahead of its time, despite it being set in World War II. Then there’s the pulsating and percussive electronic score by Tangerine Dream’s Klaus Schulze. 

Angst was definitely ahead of its time in terms of its technique. Combined with its bold premise, and uncompromising narrative, including several brutal murders, one in particular that left such a bitter taste in the director’s mouth that he insisted on darkening the image during the killing scene on the Blu-ray release in order to dilute the horrific nature of the scene. 

There are two versions of Angst, one is considered the director’s cut and the other is considered the distributor’s version. The international distributor for the home video release insisted on a prologue sequence that would clarify the sociopathic and murderous background of the killer to the audience before his release from prison, rather than the subjective point-of-view from the killer which is relayed in bits and pieces by voice-over narration during the course of the movie. 

The director’s cut begins with the convicted killer’s release from prison, having murdered his mother, which is explained in voice-over, but not shown. The prologue is entirely necessary. But the director’s cut also includes the darkened scene of the murder of the young woman (Silvia Rabenreither) . By altering the visual impact of this scene Kargl is essentially doing what Steven Spielberg and George Lucas did with E.T. and Star Wars, respectively; they retroactively re-stamped a new moral view, and in doing so ruined two very powerful scenes that spoke volumes about the respective characters and the overall tone of the movie. 

Angst is a gruelling experience for those unused to such extremism, but it’s a brilliant and unique piece of cinema and aesthetically rewarding for cinephiles and horrorphiles prepared to go the distance. I’m not surprised it is one of Gaspar Noe’s most influential films, he refers to it as “the rarest masterpiece of cinema.” 

Don't Breathe

US | 2016 | Directed by Fede Alvarez

Logline: A trio of young burglars break into the house of a blind man who they suspect is hoarding a fortune in cash, only to discover he isn’t quire the invalid they anticipated.

In the follow-up to his excellent Evil Dead re-imagining the South American director teams up again with screenwriter Rodo Sayagues for an original take on the Wait Until Dark premise. The result is a superbly-paced, brutal thriller with a horror streak that kicks in during the second half. Alvarez is a talented director in terms of his handling of suspense and mise-en-scene, but the screenplay is riddled with annoying inconsistencies and discrepancies. 

Rocky (Jane Levy), her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto), and friend Alex (Dylan Minnette) are experienced thieves, breaking into wealthy Detroit homes, and stealing jewellery, expensive apparel, and cash, when they can find it, and they have no qualms about trashing the homes they burglarise. Rocky comes from a less-than-ideal home environment, with a white trash mother and boyfriend. She wants to take her kid sister and escape to a better life. She agrees to take part in once last robbery. 

They get a tip-off on a loner (Stephen Lang) living in a desolate part of the city who is apparently sitting on a load of cash. Sounds like the perfect crime is waiting for them to perpetrate. Scoping the man’s house they see that he’s blind and has a big brutish dog. All the other homes in the street are derelict. They wait until nightfall to drug the dog, infiltrate the house, drug the owner, and locate the safe. Everything seems to be running smoothly. 

Of course, everything quickly goes pear-shaped, and the three teenagers find themselves at the mercy of a war veteran with more than his fair share of wounds, and perhaps a few skeletons in his closet. It’s gonna be a long night. 

Whereas Wait Until Dark focused on an innocent blind woman trying to survive a home invasion, Don’t Breathe focuses on several naive thieves trying to survive an experienced soldier defending his turf. You know what these young guys are doing is very wrong, but you can’t help but feel for them once the shit starts to hit the fan. Alvarez has fun with the cat-and-mouse game, and then ramps up the shock factor in the movie’s last half an hour. Belief needs to be suspended somewhat, but it’s certainly what gives Don’t Breathe the horror cajones. 

Levy, who played Mia in Evil Dead, is fantastic in the central role, and certainly a talent to watch as her career takes off. Lang provides the perfect counterpoint, equally charismatic, but glazed and huge. Zovatto and Minnette are solid, but the movie definitely belongs to Levy and Lang. 

Now as much as I enjoyed Don’t Breathe, and it’s easily one of the most effective cinematic thrillers of recent years, there were some very annoying holes in the writing. I can’t discuss them without revealing spoilers, suffice to say, they have bugged the hell out of me. One involves the capacities of what a blind man would be able to achieve, and the other involves inadequate police work. One is revealed early on in the movie and the other is revealed at movie’s end. 

If there is a sequel, and let’s assume there will be one since the $10m movie has made close to $100m at the box office, then all belief will need to be suspended big time. If they don’t make a sequel, then the movie sits comfortably as a great exercise in suspense. Oh, and one other thing, I’m really not digging this trend for horror movies to be given pseudo-meta titles such as You’re Next, Don’t Breathe, and the upcoming Get Out. Sinister and Insidious were bad enough, but this is just flat out lazy. 

Green Room

US | 2015 | Directed by Jeremy Saulnier

Logline: A cash-strapped punk band find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives following an incident at their gig in a remote neo-Nazi venue.

Filmmaker Saulnier made his first feature, Murder Party, on the smell of a bloodied handkerchief. Six years later, with the help of crowd-sourcing and shrewd financing, he delivered one of the standout movies of recent years, Blue Ruin, a very grim study of revenge and violence executed with the kind of assured panache that reminded me of the great directors of the 70s. There was much expectation on what would be his difficult third feature. 

But I have a confession to make. I first saw Green Room at the Sitges Film Festival in October last year. The movie-watching schedule for Sitges is exhausting, especially when you’re also doing a lot of networking and drinking. The session for Green Room was a late one, and I didn’t fare too well, nodding off frequently, and even having to make an emergency slash during a crucial part of the movie (I ended up missing one of the gore set-pieces!) In the end my memory of the movie was that it wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as Blue Ruin, but in the months after I had to remind myself that the experience of it had been severely handicapped. 

Watching it a second time recently I discovered I had missed far more of it than I realised. The movie is an excellent chamber piece, a thriller with a strong backbone of horror. I still think Blue Ruin is a more powerful and resonant narrative, but Green Room packs serious punch. I also still have reservations with the casting of Patrick Stewart as the central villain, Darcy. He is forever etched as Captain Picard and Professor X, I couldn’t quite remove those characters from my mind enough to engage him as the scheming, ruthless owner of the skinhead club. 

The rest of the cast are solid and includes great performances from Imogen Poots as Amber, Anton Yelchin (R.I.P.) as Pat, and Alia Shawkat as Sam. Also of note is Macon Blair (the lead in Blue Ruin) playing Picard’s, er, I mean Darcy’s right hand man, and a bunch of unknowns playing the neo-Nazi thugs. If Darcy had been played by an unknown Green Room’s tone of menace would’ve been lifted tenfold. 

One of the elements that stood out so strongly in Blue Ruin was Saulnier’s attention to the graphic realism and sudden impact of violence. Once again he displays a Scorsese-like punch with the ultra-violence; Green Room sports some truly savage and horrific injuries, made disturbingly realistic, although it must be said, there is no way Pat would be able to endure his extreme wounds for so long without passing out from nerve damage and loss of blood. But hey. 

Just as there was a sadistic streak of jet-black humour that run like an dangerous undercurrent though much of Blue Ruin, there is the same malevolent comedic tone hissing and spitting in the background of Green Room. It’s a very unique sense of humour and one that will continue to give Saulnier the kudos he so obviously owns. Along with a handful of other contemporary directors, such as Ben Wheatley and Jeff Nichols, Saulnier is carving his own way into a great new wave of savvy, fearless, idiosyncratic directors who are delivering powerful and original pieces of cinema.

Oh, and for the record, I reckon Pat's Desert Island Band is The Police.  

Alice, Sweet Alice

US | 1976 | Directed by Alfred Sole

Logline: After a young girl is murdered during her first communion, her strange and withdrawn older sister becomes the main suspect.

Alfred Sole isn’t the only notable horror director who started his feature career in the adult movie industry, there’s Abel Ferrara and Wes Craven, even Francis Coppola made a softie before Roger Corman offered him the chance to direct Dementia 13. Sole only directed four movies, the other notable one being the unctuous Tanya’s Island with Vanity rejecting her abusive lover for the affections of a huge ape. But I digress. 

Alice, Sweet Alice was originally released as Communion, a title Sole fought hard to keep, but due to copyright issues which resulted in the original studio dropping the movie from its distribution schedule, it was picked up by another company who feared the general public would confuse it for being a Christian film. Curiously, the title was inspired from a line in a Catholic publication, and it’s Catholicism which has its feathers seriously ruffled by the movie’s premise. Alice, Sweet Alice is a murder mystery pinned by religious piousness. 

Alice (Paula Sheppard) is a troubled twelve-year-old. Her eight-year-old sister Karen (Brooke Shields in her feature debut) is about to have her first holy communion, and Alice is jealous of her mother’s attention on her younger sister. She behaves badly, frightening her sister by wearing a mask, and generally acting up. She becomes the centre of attention when her sister is strangled to death in the church by a figure wearing the same mask just prior to the ceremony, and Alice is, quite justifiably, the main suspect. 

What unfolds is essentially a whodunit, and many critics over the years have pointed out how similar in atmosphere, tone, and mise-en-scene the movie is to the Italian gialli, even saying Alice, Sweet Alice is the closest American movie to a genuine giallo. But not only in its design, many of its cast have that striking European look, from Linda Miller as the highly strung mother Catherine, to Mildred Clinton as Mrs. Tredoni, the housekeeper for Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich), and even Paula Sheppard. Sheppard’s casting is particular fascinating, as she was nineteen at the time of filming. Although its obvious she has a young woman’s figure and voice, it is her unusually short stature and her round baby face that allows her to play the role of adolescent Alice. Her contrasting young and mature physicality gives her a compelling visual edge, one that Sole uses to great effectiveness. It’s a shame, Sheppard made Liquid Sky in 1982 and then abandoned her acting career.

The movie is set in the early 1960s, but there isn’t much, apart from the cars and Catherine’s hair style, that date stamp the story. It is definitely the giallo-esque qualities of the movie that make it far more memorable than other murder mysteries of the period, even if it isn't that scary. Sole’s wonderful use of widescreen and closeup compositions, and some of the editing, are very much of the gialli school of technique, as are the brutal kitchen knife attacks. Bill Lustig was one of the special effects guys, and he would go on to direct Maniac five years later. 

It’s curious then that Sole remarked that he had not watched any gialli, but openly admitted to being influenced by Don’t Look Now, Les Diaboliques, and the thrillers of Hitchcock. I’m surprised Alice, Sweet Alice hasn’t been remade. It was re-released theatrically in the US in a cut version in 1981, under the title Holy Terror, and to cash in on Brooke Shields fame. For nearly twenty years it was bootlegged from television screenings, until finally Anchor Bay released it officially on VHS in 1997, and then DVD a couple of years after that.

Carrie

US | 1976 | Directed by Brian De Palms

Logline: An introverted teenager, harassed by her mother and humiliated by her classmates, finally unleashes her deadly telekinetic powers. 

I still vividly remember as a boy, the film poster key art with Carrie’s name in averted comas, slightly pixilated and undulating in huge letters with Sissy Spacek’s wide-eyed expression, her body and face drenched in blood. As far as I was concerned it looked like a truly adult horror film up there with The Exorcist (1973). Several years later it was among my early “adult” movie experiences on VHS.

Carrie was Stephen King’s first novel, and he sold the movie rights for just $US2500. It was a huge box office success for Brian De Palma, making over $US30m (made for less than $US2m). It made King a household name, and stars of Sissy Spacek and John Travolta, and provided Piper Laurie with her first big screen role since The Hustler (1961)! 

Carrie celebrates its 40th anniversary at this year’s Sydney Underground Film Festival and although the high school antics and dialogue of the students has dated (including actors who are obviously much older than the characters they’re playing), the movie still commands a strong sense of dread and foreboding, and it sports a terrific visual flair, both elements De Palma has always been able to elicit so well in his movies. 

Carrietta White is an outsider, a wallflower ruthlessly teased and taunted by her bullying peers at school, especially that super pretty, real nasty bitch Christine Hargensen (Nancy Allen). We see poor, naive Carrie suffering horribly in the girls’ chasing rooms, “Plug it up! Plug it up!”, while later at home Carrie’s sociopathic, religious fanatic of a mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie), almost terrorises the poor girl with guilt and shame, “I can see your dirty pillows!”

Well-meaning Susan Snell (Amy Irving, who years later would marry Stephen Spielberg) orchestrates it so her own boyfriend Tommy Ross (William Katt, who years later would become The Greatest American Hero) will take Carrie to the prom as a kind of perverse act of goodwill. But Christine and her dumb boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta) plan to completely humiliate Carrie in front of the whole senior school.  

Margaret (Piper Laurie) forbids Carrie to go to the prom. But Carrie is determined, her sight blurred by the rose-coloured lenses of a boy’s false heart and fake intentions. There are demons at work. The Devil is at play. Carrie harbours a dark and troubling secret, and soon enough the whole town will know her name, feel her wrath. 

The movie’s opening scene the high school girls run naked in slow motion through the gym changing room while Carrie showers. It’s slightly bizarre as it unfolds, the viewer feeling a tad uncomfortable, there’s something not quite right. De Palma has always possessed a lurid fascination with voyeurism (he filmed the scene twice, one with full nudity and one with underwear worn, as he anticipated – correctly – that the film would eventually end up on Network television), and many his early movies demonstrate the power and vulnerability of the act of watching vs. the act of seeing. 

Carrie notices she is bleeding, menstruating. She is shocked, she is a late developer. This visual symbolism of innocent blood spilled juxtaposes beautifully with the evil blood spilled at film’s end, as well as providing the crucial key to Carrie’s burgeoning telekinetic power, itself linked to her sexuality.

Later during the movie’s climax Brian De Palma utilises a split-screen technique, a device he’d first used to great effect in his earlier movie Sisters (1973). It is both distracting, yet highly potent in creating a sense of disorientation, but also a sense of omnipotent menace and destructive immediacy. He has frequently been criticised for copying Alfred Hitchcock’s methods of cinematic suspense and eye for composition. In Carrie, and many of his other movies, this familiarity of mise-en-scene and use of suspense is apparent, but there is a dark, lurid and palpable quality to De Palma’s visual style which is all his own. 

The performances of Spacek and Laurie (who was Oscar-nominated), shine with malevolent glow. As mother and daughter, its a kind of dual-edged sword. It’s not Travolta’s best work (his role is a little thankless and peripheral if anything), and certainly Nancy Allen and some of the other support actors aren’t up to the same calibre as Sissy and Laurie, but De Palma makes sure his directing technique becomes a star in its own right; Margaret’s final confrontation with her daughter is a harrowing set-piece worth the price of admission alone.  

Carrie does not follow Stephen King’s brilliant novel faithfully, nor is it De Palma’s most accomplished work (Blow Out, Scarface, and Dressed to Kill are my personal favourites), but for late night popcorn and beer thrills, chills and spills, watching curiously familiar actors in much younger days, it’s a damn bloody treat, a black comedy even, and not to be missed on the big screen!

The digitally-remastered 40th anniversary screening of Carrie is at the tenth Sydney Underground Film Festival, Saturday September 18th, 10pm, Cinema 1, The Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 

The Fly

US | 1986 | Directed by David Cronenberg

Logline: A maverick scientist invents teleportation, but after an experiment goes wrong he slowly starts to mutate into a human-fly hybrid.

 "I'm saying I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now that dream is over and the insect is awake."

In the world of nightmare cinema Cronenberg’s embrace and melding of sf concepts and visceral horror are unique and brilliant. His remake of The Fly (1950) is no exception, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this week. While some critics would accuse Cronenberg of trying to turn something truly base and repulsive into high art, the movie turned out to be the most financially successful and critically acclaimed movie of his career (it won an Oscar for Best Special Effects), and it also features a career performance from Jeff Goldblum.

Screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue originated the idea of doing a remake of the classic B-movie. When Cronenberg came onboard (after aborting from the Total Recall project he was set to direct), he made extensive re-writes, including changing the characters and re-writing all of the dialogue, but he retained Pogue’s central “fusion” and gradual mutation concept, and most of the plot points, and infused a wonderful edge of black humour.

Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is an incredibly talented, but eccentric scientist. He lives alone in a warehouse space in a rundown building. Whilst at a convention he’s badgered into doing an interview by ambitious science journalist Veronica (Geena Davis). Brundle agrees, but only if he can show her his Big Secret, something that will change the world as they know it. The chemistry is obvious. They arrange for Veronica to document Seth’s experimental process.

When Veronica’s magazine editor Stathis (John Getz), and sleazy ex-boyfriend, finds out the kind of story she’s sitting on he interferes and starts making demands. Brundle becomes jealous of Stathis lurking in the background, and in a drunken moment alone he makes a rash decision, which results in a very serious consequence at the genetic-molecular level. What begins as superhuman strength and a ferocious libido is soon overwhelmed by “insect politics” and sub-human instincts.

There is a genuine bond between Goldblum and Davis (they became long-term partners during the making of the movie), and Getz plays the third fiddle as solid support. The special effects makeup work by Chris Walas is amazing for the time (Walas would go on to direct a lame, entirely unnecessary sequel). The physical degradation of Brundle is something in itself, right up to the animatronic monster, but also of note are the gore effects (the snapped wrist in the arm wrestle scene is a wince-inducing stand-out). A scene in the shooting script which was (unfortunately) never filmed had Brundlefly scoffing restaurant leftovers from a dumpster and a bag lady sees him and screams in horror and disgust. Brundlefly reacts by seizing the lady and disintegrating her head with his vile vomit, then after recoils in a moment of human realisation at what he’s just done.

David Cronenberg’s The Fly is so cleverly put together, so entertaining, and yet, so grand in its tragedy it’s almost Shakespearean. Apart from the 80s fashion and hairstyles the movie has aged very well, the production design (Cronenberg based the pods on his own Ducati motorcycle cylinders), special effects (note the revolving set, pioneered by Kubrick on 2001), the thematic content, even the basic science fiction principle is still as pertinent as it ever was, perhaps even more so in this rapidly over-congesting, technomaniacal world.

Cronenberg’s fascination with the disintegration of the body, the perversely close relationship between human and machine, the dangers of scientific experimentation, and the desire for dark adventure, are all superbly integrated in his re-imagining. Along with John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, it is easily one of the best remakes ever produced. 

Blue Velvet

US | 1986 | Directed by David Lynch

Logline: A college student becomes willingly embroiled in the dark and dangerous world of a nightclub singer, and the psychopath who has kidnapped her husband and child.

Thirty years ago David Lynch delivered a comedy as dark as he likes his coffee, as black as midnight on a moonless night. It wasn’t seen as a comedy back then, it was perceived as a shocking neo-noir, the underbelly of small-town Middle America being slit open, its innards steaming in the smoky haze behind a seedy jazz bar. It’s a strange tale, distinctly Lynchian; the dreary normalcy of the mundane turned upside down, made perverted and grotesque. 

Blue Velvet is the kind of movie that I doubt would get made now. Certainly not funded in the same way, and certainly not with the kinds of actors who graced David Lynch’s deep crime melodrama three decades ago. Even more curious is that the executive producer, Dino De Laurentiis, had financed Lynch’s previous movie, Dune, which was a huge budgeted box-office bomb. It seems surprising Dino gave Lynch such a long leash again, but interesting to note the producer went uncredited.

Lynch was contractually obligated to deliver a two-hour movie to Dino. With his faithful editor, Duwayne Dunham (who would later direct episodes of Twin Peaks), they cut the original four-hour version down to exactly one frame shy of two hours. A few years ago, when the movie was being given the Blu-ray treatment nearly an hours’ footage of deleted scenes surfaced, long thought lost, and were included as a bonus featurette on the BD release. For some reason Lynch decided not include a couple of the most interesting lost scenes, so only a bunch of stills exist for those (first seen in the 2002 DVD release), in particular the “Look down” ear flush bathroom segment (a still of which ended up being used by media at the time), which was part of a longer scene inside Dorothy’s apartment, and a very curious “epilogue” debriefing scene with Sandy and Jeffrey at the sheriff’s department sitting at a table with a large branch/log in front of them.

Lynch’s story plays on classic noir tropes, the visual narrative uses many of the genre’s shadow play, mystery elements, while the classic femme fatale role is curiously perverted in the character of Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who spends much of her screen time exuding a mysterious and dangerous allure, part victim, part seducer. She encompasses the movie’s title of fear and desire; of loose sexual attraction – to naïve young Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) and violent thug Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) – and freak show ("He put his disease in me!") to Jeffrey’s chaste love interest Sandy (Laura Dern) and her conservative family.

The sexual symbolism, especially the Oedipal complex, and Lynch’s burrowing orifice fetish, provides the movie with much of its grotesque fascination. From the camera probing inside the severed ear that Jeffrey finds in the grass, to the bugs and beetles - Jeffrey’s Aunt Barbara (Frances Bay) is fixated on a terminate problem – and shooting Dorothy’s face in extreme close-up, sideways, her red lipstick mouth essentially becoming a vagina. But it’s not a titillating kind of sensuality, more of an oppressive, overwhelming force, beckoning and imprisoning.  Lynch returns several times to the close-up image of flames flickering, suggesting a strange mutability echoing our lead characters.

What became most apparent on this 30th anniversary screening was the satirical tone that Lynch injects into this subversive, yet surprisingly simple thriller. He plays with the conventions of wholesome Americana (note the red, white and blue in the opening scene), daytime soap television, the conservatism of bygone eras, such as the 40s and 50s, the stilted dialogue and both wooden and hysterical performances, elements he would return to, but with greater crossover appeal and success in his masterful TV series Twin Peaks.

The enigmatic qualities of Blue Velvet are still evident, but the movie feels more conventional, a little less shocking. Certainly Dennis Hopper’s menacing, volatile Frank is still the movie’s main draw card (infamously Hopper contacted Lynch during the audition process insisting he cast him as he declared, “I am Frank!”), and in his one scene, Dean Stockwell’s high-as-a-kite Ben, steals the limelight as he mimes to Roy Orbison. It’s a shame the terrific character actors Brad Dourif and Jack Nance weren’t given more screen time.  

Blue Velvet is a movie that has aged in curious fashion, teetering on the precipice of “deep trash” - the mechanical robin with the bug in its mouth – yet its absurdist streak and nightmarish fabric keeping the soap from washing the darkness clean. 

Blood Father

France | 2016 | Directed by Jean-François Richet

Logline: An ex-con is reunited with his estranged teenaged daughter and must protect her from the relentless drug dealers who want her dead.

Link (Mel Gibson) has seen better days, a decade ago, before he did nine years for a bunch of stuff he’d probably rather forget, but he’s gonna need to call on those resources and skills soon enough. He’s passing time and making a quick buck inking cougars and wastrels from his desert trailer park. His wife doesn’t want a bar of him, his AA sponsor, Kirby (William H. Macy), lives a few trailers along, and his teenaged daughter, Lydia (Erin Moriarty) ran away a couple of years back. 

Lydia is a pretty, wayward girl. She’s gotten in over her head. Hitched up with a dodgy drug thug, Jonah (Diego Luna), whose cartel connections are very dangerous. Things go pear-shaped during a house invasion-cum-enforcement, and Lydia finds herself at wits’ end. She makes a call to daddy, who drops everything to scoop her up in his big arms. Link soon discovers his 16-year-old daughter is not the pristine apple of his eye. Just as swiftly the angry Latino lads are on the scene, and even worse, The Cleaner (Raoul Trujillo), a sicario, has his sights set firmly on Lydia, and whomever gets in the way.

Author Peter Craig (son of Sally Field) has adapted his own novel with Andrea Berloff, who recently penned the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton. It’s an absolutely cracking script with dynamite dialogue, and provides Gibson with a really strong return to form, and Blood Father is so much better than his previous attempt at a comeback, Get the Gringo. Y’know, it really is a crying shame Gibson wasn’t cast as an aging Max Rockatansky in Fury Road. But that’s another kettle of fish.

It might be American pulp fiction, but it’s a French production, and perhaps that’s why it has such a sharp, fresh edge to it. Richet is excellent at pacing and delivering blistering set-pieces. His epic two-parter, Mesrine, which starred Vincent Cassell, was one of the best crime dramas of the past ten years. He handles the violence and menace with brutal efficiency, reminding of Luc Besson and Martin Scorsese when they were at the top of their game.

It’s definitely Mel’s vehicle, but Erin Moriarty delivers strong support. I wasn’t entirely convinced at first, but she won me over. The Latino support cast are all solid, but special mention must go to Michael Parks, who plays Link’s shell-shocked, old crony Preacher. He doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but boy, he chews the scenery in blistering, leathery fashion.

Blood Father is classic genre fare, and boy is it a load of hard fun. There are some great slaps of comedy, and it’s a real pleasure to watch Mel take the bull by the horns again. Action thriller fans would be foolish not to catch this on the big screen. One of my favourites of the year. 

Hush

US | 2016 | Directed by Mike Flanagan

Logline: A deaf and mute novelist, who has retreated to an isolated house in the woods, is terrorised by a serial killer armed with a crossbow. 

First things first; the poster design and title do not provide this movie any favours. Glancing at the poster one could be confused into thinking the movie is an edgy romantic drama. Okay, maybe that’s stretching it a little, but hey, this movie deserves much, much better in both departments. But quibbles aside, the increasingly prolific filmmaker Mike Flanagan, on his third feature, delivers his most potent and tense movie yet. 

This is basic nightmare fare, plain and simple, but Flanagan isn’t trying to invent the wheel, he’s not trying to be enigmatic and weird like his first movie, Absentia, he’s not trying to be clever and twisty, like his second movie, Oculus. This is a cat-and-mouse game for horrorphiles, and it delivers in spades.

Maddie (Kate Siegel) is a novelist. She is also deaf and mute, following an infection and surgical complications when she was a teenager. She has moved into a secluded two-storey house in the woods to enable her some quality, solitary time, work on her latest manuscript, and perhaps also to escape a failed relationship. Her neighbour, Sarah (Samantha Sloyan), swings by to return her latest book, Midnight Mass, and compliment Maddie on her writing. She asks how the author comes up with her amazing endings. Maddie replies that she hears a voice in her head describing multiple endings, and she has to choose the best one. 

Sarah leaves, night falls, and Maddie is alone. She Skypes her sister, Max (Emma Graves), but is unaware that a masked intruder has snuck inside the house and has stolen her mobile phone. The Man (John Gallagher Jr.) is a psychopathic killer, armed with a crossbow, and he proceeds to make Maddie’s life a living hell. Maddie's deafness means she is severely handicapped, but the Man wants to draw out his hunting game for as long as possible, so he's prepared to let Maddie sweat bullets for awhile.

There’ll be tears before bedtime. There will be blood. 

Hush is essentially a two-hander, between Maddie and the Man, and both deliver excellent performances. Providing strong support in two small, but important roles, are Sloyan and Michael Trucco as John, a friend of Maddie’s who turns up and is confronted by the Man pretending to be a cop. 

What also elevates Hush above the usual trappings of such low-budget, single-location, small cast, fare is the violence, and the special effects used to execute it. It’s by no means a gore-fest, but the violence depicted is very realistic, and it adds a dramatic tone to the movie. This movie could easily have been derailed by special effects that weren’t convincing, but the bloodletting is done to perfection in what appears to be a nicely balanced combo of practical and CGI effects. 

Stephen King, a big fan of the director's work, Tweeted that he thought Hush was as good as Halloween and Wait Until Dark, and it’s obvious Flanagan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his lead actor (also his wife), and edited the movie, has a firm and very impressive hold on the suspense dynamics that make a top notch nightmare thriller. With a brisk eighty-minute running time Hush is seriously tense, and knows when to pack serious punch. This will no doubt end up as one of my year’s favourites.