SOLITUDE OF BLOOD (2002) - PSYCHO meets REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

SOLITUDE OF BLOOD
(2002, Russia, Stereoblood, Odinochestvo krovi)

A trippy Russian serial killer thriller...

I think that reading about the recent Russian slasher Dead Daughters lead me to this, with the promise of a Russian giallo, which isn't a bad way to approach it. But while the oblique camera angles, experimental camera moves and eclectic soundtrack all work in the film's favour, the techniques strangely aren't applied as energetically to the murder scenes, which horror fans would expect to be the 'set pieces' of the genre. I'd highly recommend this, not so much for the horror angle, but as a murder mystery presented as a subtly disorientating trip.

Maria is trying not to worry that her husband has been missing for three weeks. Added to this is an impending deadline at work that's hugely imporant for her company. Elsewhere in the city, a vicious killer is picking off isolated victims with a particularly nasty knife...


The story keeps us guessing which direction it's is going in, hinting at all sorts of possibilities. It's a nightmarish murder mystery, with a mood that's ideal for watching after midnight.

The expert camerawork repeatedly attempts to disorientate the viewer, mimicking Maria's loose grip on her situation. Like the style of Requiem for a Dream, there is an emphasis on insignificant sounds, the audio changing with each camera angle - a technique normally avoided to lessen the effect of the visual 'cut'. (Should sound be directional every time the editor moves the viewpoint? Discuss.) Some of the floating camerawork, not quite aimed at the action, pushed me slightly towards travel sickness at one point. In conclusion, the cumulative effect is gently trippy.

There's a theramin scene that hints at the eccentric ecesses of a Dario Argento murder, and there's also a visual nod to Psycho (well, it's playing on TV!). But I was more reminded of Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill, probably for the lift scene. A homage to a Hitchcock homage, perhaps.

Thankfully, for a nightmare scenario of this nature, there's none of the increasingly dull 'is it a dream' moments. Instead Maria's disorientation is used to increase suspense, as most of her friends aren't taking her plight seriously, and that she might also be in danger because she's misreading the situation.


Ingeborga Dapkunaite as Maria is superb. She doesn't overplay her plight and totally held my attention and sympathy. The actress has already played many small roles in American and British films and TV (Hannibal Rising, Bodies, Shadow of the Vampire). The script is by Pavel Ruminov who went on to direct Dead Daughters (2007) reviewed here.

The cinematographer has a trailer and some clips and trailer here on his website. The locations include Moscow in the snow - watching it will make you feel cold.

Strong performances, confidently offbeat cinematography, and an effective (not totally musical) soundtrack all make this a treat. Though it has fewer moments of horror than Dead Daughters, I found this a much more satisfying and carefully structured film. One of the best modern Russian thrillers I've seen.


I think amazon.com is selling the same Russian DVD that I saw (the title is written in Russian). The DVD is 1.66 widescreen (non-anamorphic) with well-translated, if rather large, English subtitles.

Surprisingly Acidemic hasn't rooted this one out yet, but Quiet Cool has a spoiler-filled review with some choice screengrabs that demonstrate the colour scheme on offer.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981) - 28 years later...

MY BLOODY VALENTINE
(Canada, 1981)

This beats Friday the 13th, any day of the week!

I'm pretty sure I saw this supporting Friday the 13th - Part 2 in a Bournemouth cinema while Lady Diana and Prince Charles were getting married (July 29th, 1981). The Royal Wedding was on every TV in the country and I wanted to escape somewhere until it was all over...

The original My Bloody Valentine has always been a solid horror movie, but the many shock moments were severely castrated by censor cuts. Practically every kill is cut down so much that you barely know what has actually happened. What was worse is that there were some great colour photos of the make-up effects in Fangoria magazine showing us what we'd missed.

Through the years, each release on home video - VHS, laserdisc, all the way upto the first Paramount DVD release - I was hoping for some cut footage to reappear. But even the DVD was the same censored version.

Then in 2006 came the entertaining and fact-packed documentary about the 80's slasher movie genre, Going to Pieces. In the DVD extras was the tantalising news that the director of My Bloody Valentine, George Mihalka, had held onto the uncut version. Thankfully this has lead to a full restoration.

Now, I've finally watched the Special Edition, released on DVD earlier this year, ending a 28 year wait to see the version that I'd always wanted, with all the scenes promised in those early issues of Fangoria. This new version is a slasher that surpasses the early Friday the 13th movies on almost every level.

In Valentine Bluffs, a Canadian mining town, preparations for a Valentine's Day party are underway. But the Sheriff and the Mayor are getting nervous because the last time they had such a celebration, a lot of folks got killed by an insane miner brandishing a pick-axe. They haven't celebrated the occasion for nearly twenty years, until now. As February 14th gets closer, it looks like the date is indeed cursed. Also, the biggest Valentine's party picked the worst location possible, near the entrance to the town's coal mine...

Near the start of the story, someone gets a rhyming Valentine card and a gory present that feels exactly like the end of the 'Poetic Justice' segment if Tales From The Crypt (1972), in turn based on the EC horror comic story. But after that it's a familiar blend of sexed-up youngsters (miners, not minors) and gory mayhem, right down to the barman who could be a close relation of Friday the 13th's Crazy Ralph. "It could be you!" is his way of saying "You're next" to die horribly, rather than a prophecy of a lottery win.

Like Friday the 13th, I didn't recognise any of the actors, and the atmosphere is helped enormously by extensive location filming, that keeps everything looking real, even though some of the acting isn't. The leads are all very strong, with stern silent hero-type T.J. (Paul Kelman) looking a lot like a young Rufus Sewell. My least favourite is the goof-off character who manages to make all his friends laugh by making the worst jokes possible.

But My Bloody Valentine is very different from Friday the 13th in many ways. The drama actually works, with the older townsfolk looking very nervous about the town's nasty secrets, and two of the miners caught in a painful smalltown love triangle.


While Tom Savini's effects for the first Friday were convincing, they were barely glimpsed. The murders in My Bloody Valentine are more complex and sustained, often with a 'double-whammy'. They take the more realistic take that murder is often prolonged and painful. At the same time they dreamt up some unique kills for the slasher genre. Even the photos of the body being dragged along the ground, a pick-axe skewering the jaw of the victim, look remarkably convincing.

The scene in the showers is famous for its pay-off, but I found the build-up particularly unsettling, with prolonged takes of the victim being carried along, held by her head, shown from the point-of-view of the murderer, shining his helmet-lamp into her terrified face. Yes, it's intense and horrifying - in Friday the 13th it's almost over before it begins.

The FX are remarkably convincing for the most part, at a time when everyone was trying to perfect prosthetic gory effects to top the last. For the first time I noticed a hand 'wobble', in the game where two macho miners play the 'stabbing the table between the fingers' game (also used in Aliens). Looks like they were using a very convincing prosthetic hand - I thought they found a couple of experts to do it for real!

While the many of the characters are 'up for it', and this is an unofficial entry in the get drunk, 'have-sex-then-die' genre, sex is treated far differently than the usual half-naked girl wandering around with a knife. The opening scene cleverly confuses expectations in an underground triste, the best pool player in town is a flouncy-looking blonde, when the hero is in a fight the women don't just stand around and cower - they join in, and my particular favourite, a guy actually gets a condom out before sex. This is so very rare in movies nowadays, let alone 1981! It's a more adult attitude, and a bucking of the cliches. After watching a lot of horror films, I've gotten very tired of the cliches.


Lastly, while Friday the 13th took three films to sort out the iconic look of Jason, My Bloody Valentine hits the ground running with the awesome image of the miner dressed in black, with a gas mask covering the face. The pick-axe completes a really scary look. But with most of the blood diluted by censorship (Friday the 13th had cuts as well), the film disappeared without a sequel, maybe because it didn't have a catchy ad campaign, and the killer doesn't have a nick-name. I don't know why, but it didn't catch on - but now it's one of my favourites of the slasher genre.


The new Special Edition Lionsgate DVD has the option to watch both the original cinema release or the new restored version - both work seamlessly. There's also an interesting interview with the director and a couple of the cast, (why build sets when everything you need is 2000 feet underground?) and Ken Diaz (The Thing, Pirates of the Caribbean) and Tom Burman (The Manitou, The Exterminator, Grey's Anatomy) talk about how their impressive special effects were done.

The restored, original trailer of the 1981 My Bloody Valentine is here on YouTube...

BRIAN DE PALMA - 1970's master of horror

Life before Scarface - Brian De Palma's horror decade

It feels like movie blasphemy when I say that my admiration for Brian De Palma ended, and not began, with Scarface. It’s a cult film now, but at the time of release it meant to me that the director was no longer making superb horror films.


Scarface (1983) wasn’t as violent as some of his previous films and felt mainstream. Guys, guns, gals. I was disappointed. But in the ten years before that, I’d enjoyed seven of his films in a row. One of the original 'movie brats', alongside Spielberg and Lucas, 1970s De Palma films were a safe bet for a thrilling ride.


After some early, experimental films made in New York in the late sixties, discovering Robert De Niro in the process (Greetings and Hi Mom!), his first mainstream movie was a bizarre false start, a comedy co-starring Orson Welles, Get To Know Your Rabbit (1972). But De Palma caught critics' eyes and the attention of horror magazines with the shocker Sisters.His subsequent films also freely 'referenced' the work of Alfred Hitchcock plundering shots, sub-plots and musical phrases. But Phantom of the Paradise and Carrie felt new, creative and twists in the genre, with amazing camerawork and some purely visual storytelling. Obsession was inspired by Vertigo. The Fury was a tour-de-force extension of the telekinetic theme of Carrie. Dressed to Kill was a stylish but ultraviolent variant of Psycho, Blow Out a mixture of The Conversation and Blow Up. Then he made Scarface - Brian De Palma had left the genre.


But let's look on the bright side, um, the dark side, at these early thrillers:

SISTERS (1973)
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974)
OBSESSION (1976)
CARRIE (1976)
THE FURY (1978)
DRESSED TO KILL (1980)
BLOW OUT (1981)

Sisters (1973) was De Palma's first 'Hitchcock', starting off like a short parody of Psycho. Margot Kidder (before she starred in Black Christmas or Superman) plays a troubled young woman who can get very nasty, very quickly. There’s a bloody knife murder that can still make the guys wince, and an early taste of De Palma's trademark split-screen scenes, simultaneously showing key action from different viewpoints. While the story gets weirder and weirder, Kidder playing a good twin and a psychotic one, there's also more humour than in his later thrillers. It's also good to see Jennifer Salt outside the manic household of TVs long-running Soap. The excellent Charles Durning and William Finlay would shortly return to other De Palma films. One of Hitchcock's most famous collaborators, composer Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Vertigo, North By Northwest), went way, way over the top with theramin-fuelled madness for the soundtrack.


At the time, I was hungry for horror and knew that Phantom of the Paradise was a new version of Phantom of the Opera, but revamped as a glam-rock musical! This was before the dire Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical that started a couple of years later. The film mixes a host of gothic horror film references with a fine set of songs by Paul Williams (Bugsy Malone). This is still highly thought of and has even been commemorated with reunion concerts in the US. It did well in the UK, primarily on double-bills with The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the only film with which it could possibly be compatible. There's an extensive look at Phantom of the Paradise here.

I missed Obsession (1976) because it was hardly circulated in cinemas. I caught it five years later in a BFI retrospective release. A close riff on Vertigo, featuring a lush score from Herrmann (practically his last), it's a beautifully made mystery with a standout kidnap sequence. It's the first time De Palma used John Lithgow - Cliff Robertson and Genevieve Bujold are also perfectly cast.


It was Carrie (1976) that launched both De Palma and Stephen King as household names in horror. One of my top ten horror films, it was one of the best movie experiences I've ever had, when a packed Saturday-night crowd were literally scared out of their seats. I’ve never heard so much screaming where a rollercoaster wasn’t involved. For the final shock, the whole building shook as everyone jumped! A grisly, chilling tale focussed on a teenage girl’s rite of passage at an all too recognisable high school, where bullying backfires big time. The director's trademark split-screen technique, roaming camerawork, use of slow-motion and storytelling without dialogue makes for an unforgettable horror film, made even more memorable for the high school setting that so many other slashers would soon use!


De Palma stayed in the world of deadly telekinesis with The Fury (1978) – a comparatively overlooked film which predated the very similar Firestarter and Scanners. It doesn’t have the humour of Carrie, but otherwise feels like a sequel, packed with bloody 'set-pieces', a tremendous and rare horror score from John Williams, and spectacular body horror effects from Dick Smith (The Godfather, The Exorcist). A fuller look at The Fury here.


Dressed to Kill (1980) was technically impressive, with more split-screen and long scenes with no dialogue, but caused a critical backlash against the director. At a time when feminism was successfully targeting slasher films, women's groups and critics focused on this big Hollywood thriller, where a killer sexually targets half-naked women with savage razor attacks. Expanding the use of nudity that barely caused comment in Carrie (despite opening with a shower scene in a schoolgirl's changing room), this riff on Psycho was preoccupied with women's sexual fantasies from a very male perspective. Several scenes were severely cut for TV and video releases for many years. It stars Angie Dickinson (Police Woman), Nancy Allen (by now, married to De Palma), Michael Caine (Jaws: The Revenge) and Keith Gordon (Christine).


He returned to suspense for Blow Out (1981) starring John Travolta in an early non-singing, non-dancing role (he'd also had a bit-part in Carrie). It's an enjoyable but under-rated thriller, where a guy collecting sounds for a low-budget horror film gets involved with the cover-up of a political assassination. Again with John Lithgow as the baddie – I didn’t think the actor would ever play good guys again, he was so good at nasty. Nancy Allen again played a prostitute - her later role in Robocop was a much needed change of image. Once again, De Palma uses Dennis Franz (Hill Street Blues) as an overweight cop. It's a favourite film of Tarantino, no doubt influencing his casting in Pulp Fiction.

In all, an impressive run to keep us horror hounds happy. But he'd peaked. Off he went to high-profile projects with the stars: Scarface (1983) with Al Pacino, Oscar success with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery in The Untouchables (1987), even a Vietnam movie trailing the pack with Casualties of War (1989). He took a critical and financial battering with the unfunny The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and lost his flare for horror, with Body Double (1984), Raising Cain (1992) and Femme Fatale (2002). I watched Snake Eyes (1998) and Mission Impossible (1996) hoping for a glimpse of his early genius and was bitterly disappointed.
After rewatching his seventies thrillers I'd love to talk about them at length - they're all great films to see in a cinema...

FRIDAY THE 13th (1980) - finally Friday uncut, and on Blu-Ray

FRIDAY THE 13th

(1980, USA)

The first was only the beginning...

I keep returning to Crystal Lake, expecting to learn why it became so insanely popular. Now on Blu-Ray, it's possible to see the original movie clearer than it was ever projected. I couldn't even hear all the dialogue when I first saw it in a suburban fleapit.

It was a packed house on a Saturday night, the audience was hungry for the high bodycount promised by the trailer - a serial slasher film with guaranteed gore. Ironically at the time, America and the UK were unlikely to see much blood, sex or nudity after films had been past their respective censorship boards. The violence in the film was cut down - each kill faded to white early rather than show the whole murder. The week it came out in the UK (I’m guessing that was June 13th, 1980), I wish I’d seen it on Friday, and not Saturday, because I was sat in front of a loudmouth bastard who’d also seen it the night before. He proceeded to spoil every single surprise by telling his date what was about to happen. Not fun. But the film continued to fascinate, partly because of the bloody behind-the-scenes photographs in Fangoria, and also the series' subsequent longevity.

The new uncut US releases restore the death scenes that were only previously seen on home video on the Japanese laserdisc. There are also extras, old and new, talking about the original production – casting, special effects, story ideas and music. The director, Sean Cunningham, talks about misdirection, distracting the audience from where the next scare is coming from, which originally worked well. At the time, no one was sure whether the killer could be Crazy Ralph, Mr Christie the supervisor, or even the pot-obsessed cop… there were enough red herrings to keep us guessing. In interviews, the writer is honest about ripping off elements from the recently successful Halloween, and topping it all off with a shock ending like Carrie.

They talk about the making of the film, but not the key to it's success - the publicity machine. The classic bodycount trailer, and timing the premieres on Friday the 13th, selling it both as a ghost train ride and a date movie. We went to see everyone die. The characters weren’t expected to live, they weren’t given enough personality for us to get to know. Many of them were even annoying. The only thing that broke the boredom of the simple storylinewas the next kill. This is what the movie promised. Seeing it again, I was surprised at how few onscreen murders there were.


Friday the 13th became part of the horror movie genre called ‘have sex then die’. The inadvertent subtext is also ‘smoke pot then die’ or ‘play strip Monopoly then die’. Missing also is any mention of the handheld camerawork – Halloween opened with a memorable roving camera from the point of view of the murderer (itself an acknowledged steal from Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers). The success of much of Friday’s suspense are the twitchy point-of-view shots through the killer's eyes – indicating that they were nearby and also conveniently hiding their identity. I remember, In the cinema, there was screaming whenever the camera started creeping in on anyone.

Naturally, no mention is made of the uncanny resemblances to an earlier bodycount slasher, Mario Bava's 1971 Twitch of the Death Nerve, otherwise known as Bay of Blood. It has many of the same murder methods, a waterside setting, corpses rearranged for shock effect, and even a fisherman's pullover... But with far more explicit violence, more onscreen carnage and even gushing blood. The difference being it's Italian dubbed into English, and it has a twisty complex plot, perhaps too complex for a Saturday night crowd of teenagers. The similarities between Bay of Blood and the first two Friday the 13th films are as shocking as the nudity, and the gratuitous use of squishy squid close-ups. From the machete in the face, to the couple skewered with a spear during love-making. From a wheelchair murder, to a close-up decapitation... all from a film made nine years earlier.


Cunningham never planned on getting as far as a sequel, as is obvious from the bizarre premise of Friday the 13th Part II. He simply made a low budget horror, and look what happened.

On Blu-Ray, it looks remarkably good. It makes the most of the very dark, underlit, exterior scenes. The 5.1 audio mix isn’t tricksy, just slightly broadened, and there’s also the mono mix for purists. It’s the first time I’ve seen the film in a 16:9 aspect since the cinema release, and the composition looks strong and not cramped, even after all the years of 4:3 home videos. I’ve just finished watching all the Fridays in order. Now they’re coming out on Blu-Ray and in DVD special editions, with Friday the 13th Part III viewable in 3D on home video for the first time. For a better selection of cast and crew interviews, there's also the extensive documentary His Name Was Jason out on DVD.


Strangely, I can't find the Blu-Ray of Friday the 13th on Amazon.com, only on Amazon.co.uk which is ironic as this new Uncut edition and Blu-Ray haven't been released in the UK. I guess they're trying to minimise confusion with the new remake. Also, Amazon lists it as 2.35 widescreen, when it's really 16:9. Part III was the first Friday to be shot 2.35 (and also the first in the series to feature the iconic hockey mask).

Don't worry, I'm not going to review the rest of the series, I just wanted to share my memories of when it all began. And I didn't even mention Kevin Bacon or his speedos.

DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING (1971) - extraordinary Lucio Fulci thriller

DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING
(1972, Italy, Non si sevizia un paperino)

After watching Mike Baronas' Paura DVD tribute to Lucio Fulci, I was hungry for some of Fulci's films that I hadn't yet seen. I'm very glad I started with this one.

With the customary oblique title, I'd assumed that this was a typical Italian slasher, with half-naked models being terrorised and creatively knocked off. I was surprised when Don't Torture a Duckling turned out to be as good as the early Dario Argento thrillers, with a unique setting and an uncomfortably edgy plot that's still topical and challenging today.

In a remote hilltop town in southern Italy, seemingly ignored and bypassed by a new motorway, a series of child-murders turns the local people into a lynch mob. The victims are all young boys. The police have plenty of suspects, but little evidence, and so the killings continue...

The ancient hilltop sun-bleached town is a great-looking location. Carefully but dynamically photographed, Fulci tells his story with long, precise shots, using the zoom lens like a highly-trained sniper.

Barbara Bouchet is the only face in the cast I recognised - this beautiful actress gets a far better part here, than when she played Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond comedy, Casino Royale (1967). Here she appears unnervingly confident during an extended nude scene with a young co-star. In fact the whole cast work admirably well in a variety of intense scenes, even the child actors, who Fulci has no problem getting performances from.

While this is essentially more a murder mystery than Fulci's later supernatural horrors, a couple of startlingly vicious scenes pushes it firmly into horror territory, topped off with a voodoo doll motif. A prolonged and nasty chain-thrashing pre-dates the opening scene of Fulci's The Beyond (which is newly released on DVD).

The child murders are comparitively restrained, but obviously shocking. The thankfully unrealistic use of dummies lessens a couple of nasty moments, but elsewhere, the make-up effects look painfully real.

Fulci appears to be attacking small town mentality, the police and the church, but his messages aren't heavy-handed or intrusive, just playfully subversive if you dig into the subtext!

Altogether, this is a unique story, in an unusual setting, with some inventive surprises for the genre, all beautifully shot and slickly told. My only reservation could be that the dialogue is dubbed into English (when most of the cast are Italian). But in the 70s, dubbing was widespread and far more skilfully done than it is today. It's also typical for the period.

This recent DVD release from Blue Underground appears uncut, and is presented in a beautiful 2.35 widescreen transfer. What are you waiting for? Yeah, I know it isn't very seasonal.

Do you want to know more?
More about Lucio Fulci films here...

ANATOMIE (2000) - gutsy German thriller

ANATOMY
(2000, Germany, Anatomie)

Go up the lab, and see what's on the slab...

Franka Potente is reason enough to watch this slick slasher from Germany. The actress scored an international success with Run Lola Run (1998), then starred in Antomie before a short run of Hollywood parts - in Blow (2001) opposite Johnny Depp, The Bourne Identity (2002) and The Bourne Supremacy (2004). She also starred in another horror, Creep (2004) in the UK.

Paula and Gretchen are two medical students who get the chance to study anatomy at an old revered college in picturesque Heidelburg. But while they dissect dead bodies during the day, two masked maniacs are using the same high-tech facility at night to carefully cut up victims while they're still alive.


(These scenes reminded me of the unfortunate runner in Scream and Scream Again (1970) who wakes up without a leg, then another leg, then his arms).

As the two roommates start to get popular with the male students, Paula starts to suspect that something nasty is going on in the college...


This is gripping and enjoyable while it lasts, but the climax arrives a little too quickly, leaving enough loose ends for a sequel (in 2003).

The special effects all look exactly like the squishy nastiness, though it's far less bloody than I anticipated. Plasticised bodies that look like those made famous by Dr Gunther Von Hagens, are used as exhibits in the research wing of the college. I felt they were under-used by the director and would have liked a closer look at these extremely creepy replicas. For instance, a huge set of shelves decked out with skulls deserved far more attention.


To ease the tension, and almost dissipate it, there are one too many scenes of upbeat college life, with an intrusive pop soundtrack - indeed Paula’s roommate Gretchen is played my German singer Anna Loos, who gets an unlikely sex scene on a metal dissection table.

Franka Potente ensures the character of Paula is as realistic as the medical mayhem around her. Benno Fürmann is also impressive as the self-obsessed muscle-boy, Hein. Fürmann has a long list of credits in Germany, but recently appeared as Inspector Detector in Speed Racer.


Anatomie avoids most of the cliches of modern horror, using more Hitchcockian suspense and a steadily-unfolding story, which is all the more creepy for remaining in the realm of the very possible.

What makes it different from American horror is the mixture of nudity, sex and death. Most of the corpses are young and good-looking, adding a necrophilic edge to the flesh on display.


The UK DVD from Columbia Tristar is presented in anamorphic 2.35 widescreen, and has plenty of extras (including an Anna Loos pop video and interesting interviews).

Not on DVD: DEATH WEEKEND (1976) your typical rape/revenge movie

DEATH WEEKEND

(1976, Canada)

Wanting to review Death Weekend, one of the first X films I ever saw in a cinema, set me to thinking about similar films with the same plotline, and whether to cover the movie at all. Am I a little out of my depth to be recommending a movie about rape?

The film belongs to the ‘rape/revenge’ sub-genre of horror films and psycho-thrillers, where a woman takes revenge on those who assaulted her. These films are not about the effect on her life (like TV movies or soaps do), but driven by more exploitable action – scenes of sex and violence. Obviously there are many other films about rape and revenge, but it's usually the men who dish out the rough justice.


'Rapesploitation' in the seventies

A decade of rape-themed films began with Hannie Caulder (1971). It’s a western, but subverts the genre by having a woman take her own revenge. It’s very seventies, showing a prolonged sexual assault and having several men involved. This also means a prolonged, action-packed revenge, because she then has to track them all down, one by one. Raquel Welch plays the title character, and Christopher Lee (trying to break out of horror film typecasting) plays the gunsmith who teaches her how to use firearms.

Movie vengeance was then returned to the guys, with a string of films that showed graphic rape scenes. Some of these rapesploitation films are of course not without merit, but have obviously had censorship issues and even periods of being completely banned, both in cinemas and on video. They are all on DVD now, unlike Death Weekend.

Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), took the premise of a western, but placed it in modern day rural Britain. It’s a brilliant portrayal of mob mentality and violence in a small town. Susan George plays the beautiful young wife, coveted by the local lads, with weedy husband Dustin Hoffman forced to revenge her.

Also in 1971 (what was going on that year?), A Clockwork Orange hit the screens, and in the UK also left the screens until after the director’s death. Several rape scenes set up Alex (Malcolm McDowell) as a violent problem for the government to try and cure.

Equally controversial, The Last House On the Left appeared in 1972. Two women are graphically violently assaulted, but don’t get to take their revenge. Producer Sean Cunningham (Friday the 13th) and director Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street) both toned down the realism of violence in their films in order to start a long career in horror films.

Even Alfred Hitchcock made an astonishingly seedy thriller in 1972. Though Frenzy focuses more on a man who is wrongly accused of being a serial rapist. Jon Finch's character is more interested in clearing his name than avenging the victims. The villain (Barry Foster) plays a memorably nasty murderer, appearing in scenes which gave censors headaches for decades, (maybe 'I can’t cut that, it’s a Hitchcock film...').

Death Wish (1974) took the premise into crime-drenched Manhattan, and here again it's a man taking revenge. It was a huge hit and far more widely seen than Last House on the Left. Director Michael Winner pulled all the stops out for the multiple gang rape that motivates Charles Bronson's character through five Death Wish films. It’s a prolonged and nasty scene, crassly peppered with nudity (still cut when shown on TV in the UK). The film then unrelentingly justifies the anti-hero, and anyone in the audience living in a big city, to arm themselves and dish out murderous vengeance on muggers and even thieves. I shudder to think what real damage this film has done.

Rape/revenge movies - women fight back

I find the rape/revenge genre to be more balanced, because women get their own revenge. It’s a theme that’s proved popular in the slasher genre too, when the last prospective victim standing is usually a woman.

The first that I can remember in a modern setting, are two films made in 1976, Death Weekend and Lipstick. Perhaps they were inspired by the success of Death Wish, but wanting to revert revenge to the women.

Lipstick even dealt with the legal problems facing women who had been raped. The seriousness of the issue is somewhat undermined by the victim here being a fashion model, played by real-life model Margaux Hemingway. This makes the film almost surreal, especially when she starts running around in high heels, high fashion, wielding a shotgun! Chris Sarandon resigned the rest of his acting career to playing baddies, by playing the serial rapist.

The most famous movie in the genre is also the worst, I Spit on Your Grave (1978). I falsely remembered this as the one that it started rape/revenge as a cycle. After all the films had had limited runs in theatres, even under-achieving titles were suddenly hot property when released on home video in the early eighties, uncut! I Spit On Your Grave had the sleaziest video cover, the rudest name, the lowest budget. The plot is no more than rape and revenge, literally. The rape ordeal takes up the entire first half of the movie, then the second half is a serial revenge. It’s the only title in this article that I wouldn’t recommend at all.

Incidentally, the movie title, the posters and the video covers are often potent in the arguments for and against controversial movies. More people see the videos and poster art than see the movies themselves. The blue UK poster for Death Weekend certainly makes it look more lurid. Taglines like "It began with a rape. It ended with a massacre." further distort perceptions of the film.

Abel Ferrara later made an intriguing and intelligent low-budget riff on Death Wish with the actress Zoe Tamerlis as an Angel of Vengeance in Ms 45 (1981). But now we’ve strayed into the eighties, which had it’s own more responsible take on the genre, with the likes of the stodgy and overlong The Accused and the far more interesting Australian movie Shame…


 

Death Weekend

But here I’m trying to focus on the seventies, when the rape/revenge genre seemed to go into overdrive, and one of the earliest and cleverest films in the genre…

Death Weekend was made in Canada (note that Ivan Reitman was the producer, in between early David Cronenberg films Shivers and Rabid) and sold as a horror film in the UK, and as The House by the Lake in the US. Watching it again, it’s more intelligent and thought-provoking than I remembered.



Brenda Vaccaro plays Diane, a fashion model from the big city. She’s being taken for a ride by rich young Harry (Chuck Shamata) to his remote house in the country. But she’s not stupid and certainly no pushover. The character and situations are carefully written – she’s sexy but not sexily dressed, unless you like flared jeans and baggy rollneck sweaters (contrasted with Margeaux Hemingway’s outfits, also as a model in Lipstick). When Chuck gets amorous, she says no and fully expects it to work. She handles difficult situations confidently and firmly and Harry, though extremely angry, gives up.



Besides being a model, she’s an accomplished car mechanic, and can handle Harry’s car at high speed. Unfortunately, they run into a local gang of joy-riders, lead by Don Stroud, who takes personal exception to being outrun by a woman driver. This simple prejudice triggers the whole story off, as the gang track down Harry’s country house, and terrorizes the two of them for kicks.

But we’re not sure where trouble will first occur. Diane is in trouble from all sides, not realising that she’s not going to a party, but being set up on a romantic weekend for just two. Worse still, Harry’s got some hidden two-way mirrors in her guest bedroom and always takes a different girl to his house every weekend.

Like Straw Dogs and Corruption, there is an extended ‘home invasion’ where the freaky gang terrorize them both, and slowly destroy Harry’s material possessions, even his speedboat! (In a scene that seems to have inspired one of the killings in I Spit on your Grave).

The scenes of sexual assault are at least plot-driven, unlike Death Wish, which needn’t have been shown at all. Although there is brief nudity, it certainly doesn’t go as far as many others in this list, but it does introduce the use of a cut-throat razor for foreplay. As I remember it on its UK release, only the gore and the swearing was removed from the film. I was shocked at this early example of the c-word being used in a movie. The two utterances of the word are still intact on the pre-cert UK release VHS, and the US release (though some violence has been removed).



For a film in this genre, Death Weekend is far more consistent than Last House On the Left (that leavens extremely realistic and prolonged sexual assault with scenes of comic relief cops). Her ordeal is violent, but she doesn’t lose her cool, unlike the characters who ‘crack’ in the old The Hills Have Eyes or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where people descend to almost animal behaviour to defend themselves.

The film seems so confident that it has handled the issue even-handedly, that it dares to suggest that she might have been attracted to one her attackers. This is indicated by the ambiguous ending scene, sending out a dubious ‘mixed message’. To complicate matters further, actress Brenda Vaccaro went on to date the movie's gangleader Don Stroud in real life!

Brenda quickly rose to bigger films, with parts in Airport 77 and Capricorn One (1978). Don Stroud was forever playing heavies on TV cop shows, but tried to break the mould in The Amityville Horror, by playing a priest! That’s stretching it a bit, Don.


Like many 'survival plots', the action is carefully set up so that the only course of action is murder. Nowadays I'm thankful that more films, like Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy, show up murderous vengeance as a messy business of escalation and further tragedy.

But as an exercise in revenge fantasy, I’d still posit Death Weekend as a more responsible film in an irresponsible genre. I’m guessing it’s the ambiguity of the ending is the main reason for this film not being updated to an appearance on DVD as yet. All the male revenge films are out, why not the female?

Unless you track down a VHS, you'll have to settle for these clips on YouTube...

 

 

GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM (2006)

GOING TO PIECES:
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM

(2006, US documentary)

New documentary on eighties horror films is a bit too revealing

Unrated region 1 NTSC DVD (Velocity/Think Film)

This is a good introduction to the sleazy genre of slasher films, that started in the seventies and hogged the eighties. High concept thrillers where teenagers were cut to ribbons - high body counts, inventive death scenes, and two-dimensional characters. The special effects relied on quick edits, prosthetic latex appliances and plenty of fake blood, and were sometimes the best bit in the film. There were plenty of shocks that made you jump out of your seat, a few groans for the shocks that fell flat, and if you were lucky, suspense. Some of them can’t be taken seriously today, because of atrocious acting, zero plot, fashion, and excess padding.


This new documentary celebrates the genre, weeds out the great films that do work and hopefully whets the appetites of new fans. Many of the films mentioned have since been restored uncut for DVD, because of their enduring appeal. New viewers now don’t have to be frustrated by the excessive censor cuts, when the films were first released.

There are wall-to-wall interviews with the directors and stars of the classic slasher films, including some that I haven't seen before. I was most interested to see the directors of the original Prom Night (1980) and My Bloody Valentine (1981). Sad to say that Bob Clark, director of Black Christmas, has since passed away after a road accident.

I still watch many of these movies, and I’d like to add a couple of criticisms. While many of the interviewees are very proud of the innovations and plot twists they dreamt up, it’s a shame that this DVD will introduce new fans but simultaneously spoil the endings, indeed show the endings, of most of the films mentioned. After seeing all the best scenes and the end of the movie, why go out and buy it? Having said that, the montages of gory effects certainly are impressively done, celebrating the excesses of the time.


Also, this history of the slasher genre, based on an exhaustive book of the same name, pretends to tell the story sequentially, starting with Friday the 13th (1980) and Halloween (1978). Only later on does it mention the films that came beforehand, films that influenced the genre and inspired those two films. Credit where credit is due, Friday the 13th ripped many death scenes from Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Bay of Blood, 1971) – these are mentioned briefly halfway into the documentary. Halloween was also heavily influenced by Italian horror, John Carpenter admits he liked the the innovative prowling camerawork in Dario Argento’s earlier films.


While the story of the US films influencing each other as they turn into box office hits, Black Christmas (1974) easily predates many slasher themes (killer in a frat house, teenage victims, escaped psycho), and pioneered the madman on the phone plot twist later used as the crux of the story in When a Stranger Calls (1979). I’d have preferred if all these 'inspirations' were more thoroughly covered early on in the story.

A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th‘s Jason Vorhees, and Halloween’s Michael Myers got even more famous after this movie cycle, as well as many big stars still working today. But it’s the lesser known films that I’m happy to see included in this entertaining and informative docco.

Perhaps now we could get a restored My Bloody Valentine, so that we can finally see the scenes promised to us at the time, in the bloody pages of Fangoria magazine? A miner’s pick must have been one of the nastiest weapons of the genre – let’s see it in action!


Do you want to see more?
For more classic posters, visit the Internet Movie Poster awards.

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TOWER OF EVIL (1972) - an early slasher

TOWER OF EVIL
(UK, 1972)
a.k.a. BEYOND THE FOG, HORROR ON SNAPE ISLAND

Updated December 2013 - now on blu-ray

An expedition sets out to discover the island’s secrets, to find the killer and look for old gold. The team includes two couples involved in a love quadrangle, even more complex than the usual love triangle. They are in for a night of more bloody mayhem and sexual shenanigans.

There are red herrings, blood-lettings, bouts of madness, explicit sex, and the extended use of fast-cutting, with subliminal shocks, accompanied by a woman screaming. If you want to put an audience on edge, make them listen to screaming for a whole minute – it’s nerve shredding. The subliminals interestingly flash forwards as well as back in the story.

Mixing Hollywood haunted house films, with the seventies slasher cycle about to happen in the US.

At the time, Tower of Evil pushes the boat by challenging the censor with as much nudity, sex and violence as possible. Pre-empting slashers with its ‘have sex and die’ and 'smoke pot and die' slasher ruels. It also reminded me of a european giallo - maximising bloody slaughter, nudity and love-making as far as possible. Unlike a giallo, Tower of Evil is without any overt style in either cinematography or fashion!


Tower of Evil is fast-paced entertainment, sincere performances leavened by scathing sarcasm and fruity language. The shocks alternate with many cheesy moments that undermine the grisly atmosphere.

I still can’t forget the laughs in the audience when I saw this supporting Death Race 2000 in 1976. A fake head rolls down some fake stone stairs, only to be capped with a shot of the actress’ head poking through the floor of the set – a stupidly obvious effect that was stupidly still considered a good idea to be used in Alien (which also got laughs when I first saw it in London in 1979).

The aforementioned decapitation effect has an impressive start though. Before the head rolls down the stairs, there’s a wide shot of the body of a naked girl, found with her head turned backwards. As someone touches the head, it parts from the body, leaving a headless corpse. This is either a superb fake body, or the actress’ head has been painfully bent back and hidden beneath the floor of the set, pre-empting the similarly stunning effect that Tom Savini used on a mortuary slab zombie in Day of the Dead (1985).




The story tries its best to confound the audience until the very last moment. The film delivers from the very start, as two fishermen arrive on the island to discover the aftermath of a massacre. Already we are hit with several shocks, mutilation, murder and frantic nudity.

A survivor is taken back to a strange white room for a very unorthodox interrogation, involving regressive hypnosis induced by disco lights and injections of prescription drugs. This is presented as being OK if the police use them. The white room and flashing coloured lights is similar to the hypnosis machine from The Sorcerers.

The island and lighthouse are admittedly stage-bound, but the large sets are impressive. Again, if this was made in Europe, the setting might have been more stylised, but here the idea is to aim for visual realism. This is partly undermined by overconfidence in optical effects. The boat that brings them to the island shows off back-projection at it’s worst, and the opening foggy lighthouse is a brazen model, but other effects prove to be far more successful and even mystifying.

The contemporary use of skin-tight flared jeans leave little to the imagination – and that’s just the men. The extended nude scenes show off topless jiggly women as well as fit young manflesh, a relative rarity in the genre. Full rear nudity courtesy of John Hamill, also one of the divers in the opening scene of Trog, which also starts off with an half-naked hunk-fest. One nude sex scene in Tower of Evil is all the more explicit because of the complete lack of bedclothes. Halloween, this is not.

Tower of Evil has a cast of British horror part-timers. Most have done one or two horrors but none could be considered regulars. Jill Haworth (Haunted House of Horror, It!, The Mutations), and Bryant Haliday had brief stabs as horror icons (The Devil Doll and The Projected Man). There's familiar support from Jack Watson as the boatman, who appeared as a vengeful ghost himself in From Beyond the Grave, but usually played stalwart police and army men. Dapper Anthony Valentine played many villainous smoothies, here plays a police interrogator – his other main horror role was in Hammer’s last horror To The Devil a Daughter, though he also proved how vicious he could be in Performance.

Two faces hard to take seriously in this, because they usually played comedy, are Robin Askwith, who later made his name in the bawdy sex comedy series that started with Confessions of a Window cleaner, and Derek Fowlds, already known as the straight man to the TV glove puppet funny fox Basil Brush, and later became Nigel Hawthorne’s sidekick in the long-running parliamentary sitcom Yes, Minister.

Director Jim O’ Connolly certainly makes a great effort to lift this above the cliches. It improves on his earlier horrors Berserk! (1967) and a low budget favourite of mine The Night Caller. Connolly also wrote the screenplay for Tower of Evil (based on a George Baxt novel). Connolly may be best known as the director of 'cowboy vs dinosaur' epic Valley of Gwangi - one of Ray Harryhausen’s classic special effects films.

The region 1 DVD from elite Entertainment is well restored, taken from colourful sources that don’t look their age – but it’s quite an old DVD and was presented 1.85 widescreen, non-anamorphic. The letterbox crops off some nudity and feels too severe compared to the 4:3 VHS that I’ve become used to over the years. Though even in the cinema, I remember the boat scenes being unconvincing because we could see how far out of the water the boat was, without any waves being seen, so it probably looks more convincing with the image cropped.

Candace Glendenning on the cover of the UK DVD

This is the only UK DVD release so far, from Simply Media.

Scorpion Entertainment released this blu-ray in 2013, remastered from the original inter-positive. The picture appears a little scratchy at the start, but thankfully clears up. The first reel also sounded quiet and a little dull, but again, soon improves.

The extras are only two battered trailers, from the UK and US release - the latter as Horror on Snape Island. But I'm thankful that it's on blu and finally 16:9 anamorphic widescreen (Amazon incorrectly list it as 1.33 aspect).