2021 Halloween Challenge

Angst (1983)
Dir Gerald Kargl



criteria it satisfies
One Word | Streamed on criterion | VHS era film that's 90 minutes | Movie from Germany, I mean Austria (I'm an American, close enough) | Horror film on the Mofo List (number 60)
I suspect this will be either my German film or the Mofo List film (I'm keeping a spreadsheet)

I'll keep this one short. Our protagonsit, the narrator, is being released from prison and he is someone who has had a compulsion to kill people. We follow him for what seems like literally his immediate release to his final crime spree. It's a home invastion movie. Probably recommended for people who like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but this is a lot more heavily stylized. With claustrophobic close-ups and low angle shots to maximize the sense of perspective. The movie tries to convey the fits of the overwhelming urge to kill the narrator has.

Roughly based on a real mass murderer that changed Austrian laws.

I enjoyed it. I thought it was good. I would understand why it's not for everyone. I need to revisit Henry, to see how well that one holds up for me (won't have time this year), but I think I'd still prefer the griminess of the style of the latter.

Yeah, it's one of those films that you know is going to end in misery. But I appreciated that there was nothing glamorized about it, and that there was a variety of victims (even if the young woman victim gets more time and more sexualized elements).

I also felt physically sick during the one scene where the camera is relentlessly circling a car (I'm sure you know the scene).

It's an effective film, but not one I see watching again any time soon.

Looking over my notes, I realized I never wrote an entry for the following.

The Intruder (1973... sort of. It was never released until recently on Blu-ray)
Director – Chris Robinson

Satisfies... Two Word Title, and only that... So I guess I'm officially marking off two of the goals, while the other remain tentative.



These people are all family. They've gathered on an island, haven't told anyone, and are there talking to... well, I kept getting people not on screen confused. But apparently someone died in a helicopter crash (over a.. jungle?), had a lot of gold bars that the government doesn't know if those also were lost in the crash as well. Now the partner... or maybe the lawyer, has gathered the relatives on one of his vacation islands because they know the gold wasn't lost, and he's proposing splitting the gold amongst everyone and not tell the government (because. taxes). Again, all of these people are family. Actually there's a few more people as well.







This is a large cast of people that I can't keep straight. Also Micky Rooney pilots the boat to the island. And then... pilots back to the mainland. And is killed there the next day. I'm not sure why he's in this movie.
What then follows is a sequence of family members being picked off one by one. There's also speculation that unnamed business partner's business partner is alive. Possibly the family member.

Honestly, in the first half of the movie, there was one interesting shot of a tall man walking outside a window during a lightning storm. But apart from that, I don't know how much I can recommend this up until this point.

Towards the last half hour, the movie seems to want to play the, "maybe they could be the murderer," so much the logic really breaks down. We do get a martial arts fight. Because. Actually it feels like the movie is throwing lots of stuff at the wall as it tries to find a resolution. It's... a curious one. Not entirely great. It does have its moments, but I don't know if there are enough in the end to make it easy to recommend to people.

My Bloody Valentine, 2009

The heir to the local mining company, Tom (Jensen Ackles) makes a fatal error one day that results in several miners being trapped in a cave in. One of the miners goes mad and kills his companion. A year later, that same miner breaks free and goes on a killing spree, including attacking Tom, his girlfriend Sarah (Jaime King), and their friends Axel (Kerr Smith) and Irene (Betsy Rue). A decade later, a disgraced Tom returns home following his father's death and the killings begin again.

I'll admit that I don't have super strong memories of the original 1981 film, and my main reaction is that this is sort of a sub-par remake with a handful of decent moments, but nothing special.

My general feeling here is that this is a film that, in trying to tell a certain story a certain way, mostly ends up shooting itself in the foot. For starters, this film was made to be viewed in 3-D, which means that there are a ton of dubious CGI moments of eyeballs, severed heads, tree branches, pickaxes, and any number of other things constantly lunging at the camera and then . . . . hanging there for a beat too long so that you can appreciate the three-dimensionality of it all!

But the problem here goes beyond the mechanics of how the film is shot. The real problem is in how the deaths progress and how our characters are developed. This is one of those slashers that wants you to question the killer's identity up to the last minute. But this means that our chief suspects (Tom and Axel) are kept very much at arm's length. Ostensibly, Sarah is our protagonist, but the film can't do anything with her except make her the center of a tug-of-war between Axel (who is now her husband) and Tom (her former flame).

And this is really what made the film fall flat for me. I won't say who is or isn't the killer, obviously. But the film works really hard to make us think it could be either man. The result of this, especially with Axel, is to create characters who are controlling, disrespectful of Sarah's autonomy as a person, possessive, deceptive, and just all around unlikable. Axel in particular is a real piece of work: cheating on his wife, loudly claiming his possession of her by yelling at Tom that she lives in "my house" and that he has sex with her. And, problematically, the film itself treats Sarah like a prize. It's a sour, repetitive, off-putting central dynamic.

This is also, for better and worse, a film that really wants you to know it's rated R. But there's something kind of, I don't know, almost self-conscious about the whole affair. As if the creators sat around like 12 year old giggling "and we get to show boobies, and we get to show a totally naked lady, like her down there, and every five minutes, someone gets a pickaxe in their face. And the F-word. Guys, we can use the F-word as much as we want." I did mildly enjoy a sequence where an angry woman chases the man who filmed her without her consent into the parking lot in the nude. A naked woman in heels and carrying a gun has a sort of Fascination-lite fun to it, but the film of course then uses lots of angles to ogle her body as she's stalked by the killer and whatever goodwill the scene earned just evaporates. (No, we don't see any nude male characters! How did you guess?!)

Performance-wise, the film is, again, fine. I'd imagine a lot of people are familiar with Ackles from his time on Supernatural, and the guy does have a certain degree of charisma. Ditto Kerr Smith. Jaime King is fine as Sarah, but she's really given so little to work with, aside from alternating between being scared and confused (and sometimes scared AND confused). Just a little more character development would have gone a long way here, but the film would rather keep you wondering who the killer is, and so most cards are held firmly to the characters' chests.

Also, this film could have used more of that sweet, sweet mine action! There's a scene at the beginning, a single sequence in the middle, and then the final showdown at the end. It's such an effective setting, and I don't understand why most of the scenes were set in the grocery store, the hospital, or the police station.

October 4th Frankenstein (1910)
21. A horror short film under 30 minutes



I don't know if this is Edison's best film but Frankenstein (1910) is pretty damn great. It runs just under 15 minutes and it manages to blend horror and comedy and tell a pretty good version of the story. In this version Frankenstein creates his monster but he also wants to get married. While he's disgusted by the monsters appearance this monster just wants to be friends with his father. Shenanigans ensue and the monster sees himself in the mirror realizes what he is and disappears. It's a cool little version of the story and I like it.

Eye of the Devil and In the Earth makes for a good double feature.


Ben Wheatley, he still loves his toadstool circles.

ETA: looking at goal sudoku, those are very likely, "4 word title" and "horror movie released on 2021," respectively.
Longer thoughts coming either tomorrow or Monday.

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, 2018

Edgar (Thomas Lennon) has returned home to live with his parents after the death of his younger brother. Discovering a disturbing puppet in his brother's effects, he ends up going to a convention where he can sell the puppet. Along with his new girlfriend Ashley (Jenny Pellicer) and friend Markowitz (Nelson Franklin), Edgar learns the disturbing history behind the man who created the puppets (Udo Kier) just as the puppets come to life and begin to wreak havoc.

Some franchises start out strong and then take a distinct turn downhill. But other series actually start in the garbage can and just sort of flail around in there. This is probably the most enjoyable of the Puppet Master films I've seen (about on par with the original), but that's very much faint praise.

This film really, really leans into the idea of the puppet creator's Nazi outlook on life, beginning the film with him killing a lesbian couple because they are "filthy homosexuals". Once the film establishes Edgar and his friends and they arrive at the hotel, the middle 40 minutes is just the puppets killing of various character, most of them in the context of it being a hate crime.

The killing scenes are for the most part a mix of tasteless and underwhelming. The film does that thing of hiring an actress who has obviously only been employed to get topless (people can obviously do what they want with their bodies, but the "filled to the point of bursting" breast implant look has always made me cringe a bit). A scene where a pregnant Black woman is sexually violated only to have her baby get cut out of her stomach and carried away by a puppet fell on the wrong side of camp gore for me. And many of the other sequences are just too brief. There are a few competent and fun uses of practical gore effects, like a man's achilles heel being cut or a man's intestines spilling out on the floor. But overall the middle sequences of carnage just feel episodic and inconsequential.

The film picks up a little steam when the central gang (and Barbara Crampton!) realize that the puppets are acting out a Nazi agenda. There's a genuinely funny sequence where Markowitz decides to go help a woman who is in danger after he realizes she's Jewish. "You changed your mind because she's Jewish?" "Yes." "Why?" "*pause* I've got six million reasons." Okay, I laughed at that. But the dialogue and the action working at the right pitch only happens for a few minutes before the film devolves back into the same muddle that came before.

And without going into details, the film intentionally ends on a cliffhanger that's just as unsatisfying as you might imagine.

Okay, we're far enough along in the month I could sketch out the movies I'm hoping to see for the rest of the month that I can start sudoku'ing placements.

Side Question - I haven't seen Blacula yet. Is that considered a blatant rip-off? I mean, the title obviously is. But is the movie itself one or is it just part of an expanded universe?

15. A film with someone traveling to a European country
The Black Cat

20. A film on a different streaming site(Youtube, HBO MAX, Tubi, etc)
The Raven (Criterion Channel)


18. A film on Hulu
My Bloody Valentine

29. A horror film released in October 2021
Titane (official US release date is 10/1/2021 according to IMDB, but it was clearly showing in theaters here the week before that)

31. A horror film on the Time Out top 100 horror film list
Black Sabbath (83)


19 A film on Shudder
Pyscho Goreman

13. A film from Germany
Angst (Austria, so a bit of a cheat)

9. A late sequel (past part four)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell

4. A horror film with 4 words
Eye of the Devil

28. A horror film released in 2021
In the Earth

I would post actual write-ups on Eye of the Devil and In the Earth, but there are things I need to get done today. Maybe later. Probably not.
The write-ups might be just mostly spoiler tags since I went into both pretty cold in terms of knowledge, it makes hesitant the non-spoiler anything because the recommend of, "if you like x, then maybe you should check these out."

A Field in England, 2013

An apprentice named Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) is fleeing from his master in the midst of a battle in the Civil War. Stumbling into the company of three soldiers, Cutler (Ryan Pope), Jacob (Peter Ferdinando), and Friend (Richard Glover), the group wanders until stumbling across a strange sorcerer named O'Neil (Michael Smiley) who is determined to use Whitehead to find a treasure buried somewhere in the field.

Psychological horror is a tricky thing, because in the wrong hands it can devolve into a series of seemingly unconnected visual sequences that the creator thought would be cool. Wheatley (from whom I've seen Kill List, Sightseers, High Rise and Free Fire) has a very strong grasp on strangeness of tone. Good psychological horror feels like it's telling a story with the emotions it evokes with the imagery, and that's the case here.

There's also plenty of Wheatley's dark humor (though credit also to writer Amy Jump), such as in a sequence where a dying man asks his companions to deliver a message to his wife, only for us to see that .

The black-and-white looks very nice, and a scene late in the film that gets into kaleidoscopic hallucinatory sequences is both beautiful and menacing, especially a shot in which O'Neil stands against a tree, flapping his cape like some malevolent butterfly. It's controlled chaos and a great sequence.

Definitely recommended.

Devil Fish, 1984

A group of marine biologists (Valentine Monnier, Michael Sopkiw) attempt to track down a mysterious sea creature that is killing people off of the Florida coast. But what they're chasing is no ordinary predator.

This movie is bad, and it should feel bad.

Okay, so this is a classic example of the kind of film that is perfect for a MST3K viewing (and such an episode does exist), but not all that great just on your own. Yeah, there is some fun to be had from the stilted line readings, the "special effects," and the questionable editing. But that stuff's only fun for so long. And while I could write a few paragraphs deriding it, I'm sure that plenty of others have done so already, and much funnier than I could.

So get a group of friends and some snacks and rip this one to pieces.

I feel like I post this pic at least once a year. This takes care of my 2021 quota.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

Raw, 2016

Justine (Garance Marillier) is a first year student at a medical university, studying to become a veterinarian. Justine--a virgin and a bit of a loner--struggles to fit in. Her only allies are her roommate, Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella) and her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf), who is ahead of her at the university. A lifelong vegetarian, Justine is forced to eat raw animal meat as part of an initiation/hazing event, and it triggers strange and violent changes in her behavior and appetites.

I had started this film a week ago, and then bailed on it because of some of the animal content. (For anyone who hasn't seen it: I'm not talking about animal cruelty. But watching a horse get sedated and intubated was a little too close to some real life stuff I've seen with horses.) Today I came back to finish it and I'm really glad I did.

My main reaction--one that I'm not sure is typical, as I've not read anything yet about this film--is that I was more appalled by the hazing sequences than I was by the "horror" sequences. Don't get me wrong, I know that harassment and humiliation are not as bad as actual physical violence/murder. But I think that the two elements intertwine in a really electric way. To me, hazing/initiation rituals have always been one of those things that just makes me despair. People with more power using it to harm or humiliate those with less power. And those with less power sitting back and taking it, in part because they know that one day they'll be the ones in control.

It's such a horrible dynamic. And as the film goes on, the actions taken by the main character intensify with the hazing doled out to the first year students. In one sequence, Justine is doused with paint and shoved into a room with another student, also covered in paint, and told not to come out until they've completed a sexual encounter. Later, troubling behavior by Justine is witnessed by multiple students who believe she is merely very drunk. And yet even as students are heard saying to stop filming her, or to help her, no one steps up to stop her humiliation. This is a grim portrait of the way that "traditions" like hazing can create an environment where not only are students desperate and stressed, but where really problematic behavior can either go unnoticed or, worse, be laughed off and encouraged.

I don't want to get into details, because I want to avoid spoilers, but I also really enjoyed the fraught emotional triangle that forms between Justine, Adrien, and Alexia. Between sisterly bonds, roommate loyalty, and sexual attraction, there's more than enough tension and possessiveness to go around. The way that it all unfolds feels, in the end, kind of inevitable, but it's still fascinating to watch.

I have very little to criticize here. It's not the most believable thing that a female student would be assigned a male roommate. This is waved away by explaining that Adrien is gay, but, um . . . I don't think so. There's also some information that we learn toward the end of the film that made me question the logic of some of the events and conversations that happened earlier in the film.

But any negatives for me didn't really register. This is a disturbing and engaging film with strong performances from all of its leads. I'd definitely recommend it.

The Golden Glove, 2019

In this film, based on a true crime story, Fritz Honka (Jonas Dassler) is a middle-aged man living in an attic apartment in Hamburg in the 1970s. A serious alcoholic with the kind of misogynistic lust that leads him to pursue and at the same time be seriously angry with women, Fritz preys on the down-and-out women who frequent the bar where he spends most of his time.

This is an incredibly brutal film that devotes most of its time to studying the social dynamic between Honka and the women he victimizes. While I read that the film was criticized for being violent without diving into Honka's psychological reasons for the killings, I felt that the film did a good job of portraying the kind of situation where a person could get away with such brutal acts.

Honka's victims were mainly older women, many of them part time or full time sex workers. One of the most horrifying aspects of this story is the role that class and addiction play. Honka's second victim is a woman he picks up at the bar. Taking her back to his apartment, but unable to get an erection, Honka rapes her with a kitchen implement and hits her. Waking up the next morning to him slapping her and demanding she be gone by the time he gets home she . . . sets about cleaning the house, even unknowingly vacuuming around the hatch where his previous victim lays dismembered. There's a strong sense that no one knows or cares what happens to these women, something that the women themselves seem more than aware of.

The film also shows a type of attitude that some people have that is really chilling. When Honka decides that he wants something, he becomes immediately angry and violent if it is denied him. He is truly egocentric, assuming that he "deserves" sex from any woman he likes. Further, his attitude is that the women are the illogical ones. As one victim complains of his beating her, he retorts that he's only hitting her because she's not following directions. This is a person who simply has no empathy.

I also appreciated that the film practiced an equity of nudity between the killer and his victims. Too often, female victims are sprawled out while their rapists remain inexplicably clothed except for like a single butt cheek. Here, Honka is on display just as much as his victims, and the repulsion comes not from their bodies (which are realistic bodies of women in their 40s and 50s), but from his treatment of them. In fact, his victims are often more sexually experienced than him, and his frustration at his own lack of physical arousal is often taken out on them.

Finally, the film seems to cast some guilt on the bar and its patrons. Honka repeatedly leaves the bar with women who never return, yet no one seems to raise an eyebrow at this. The other patrons at the bar are kind of a sketchy lot, and we learn in one unpleasant sequence that Honka isn't the only one who likes using intimidation and physical assault to feel better about himself.

This is a film that falls much more on the "sad drama" side of horror. Yes, there's a serial killer and some disturbing murders. There's an intercut sequence between a murder and a man preparing a sheep's head that is one of the more gruesome examples of sound editing I can think of in recent viewings. But overall this feels more like a study of a man who committed horrible crimes and the environment that allowed him to do so with impunity.

My only complaint, really, was the character of a young man who lives in the apartment below Honka. This film was adapted from a novel, so maybe this character is a holdover from that? But the character simply feels superfluous and we don't spend enough time with him for him to feel like an audience proxy.

+

The Beyond, 1981

Liza (Catriona MacColl) has just purchased a run-down hotel in Louisiana, unaware of the building's dark history, including a man named Schweick (Antoine Saint-John) being killed in his room for practicing the occult. As strange and deadly events begin to unfold in the hotel, Liza and Dr. McCabe (David Warbeck) must get to the bottom of things.

I am a perpetual (and at this point unabashed) multitasker when I watch films. Ironically, I seem to engage better with stories when I can do something else as I watch them: folding laundry, reading a book, etc). But I will say this about Fulci: his films demand all of your attention.

This is probably my favorite of what I've seen from Fulci in terms of combining visuals and story. Yes, of course there is plenty of eyeball trauma and melting faces. But there's a real coherence to the hotel "reviving" and the effect it has on the recently--and not so recently--dead. Most people tend to talk about Fulci's more, um, excessive displays of gore (maggots anyone?), but I found that my favorite scares here were more of the slow-burn variety. My favorite shot was of a reanimated corpse slowly using his finger to rip a hole in his body bag.

What probably appeals most to me about this one was the way that it captures the intimidating "magic" of a dream/nightmare. Things happen that are strange and don't make sense, and the characters are struggling to fit those things into some kind of reality. And rather than try to explain away what is happening, the movie lets everything hold together loosely.

I also thought that the ending of the movie (no spoilers!) was bold and unexpected and kind of beautiful in a weird way.

Be sure to check out the MST3K version sometime; not only is it one of my favorite eps, it also has one of the best sketch segments they ever made:

Adding Beyond the Black Rainbow, Angel Heart, and Paranormal Activity 4 in the categories of A Horror Move with 4 Words in the Title, A Hollywood Horror Under 2 Hours, and A Late Sequel.

__________________

I love this thing, I watch it every year.

Love me some The Beyond. And love that ending!

Ah, now I get it.
Yeah, I'd watch the first two, Curse Of Frankenstein and Revenge Of Frankenstein, and then the fifth one, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed if I were you. Those are the best of the series and are pretty enjoyable. Frankenstein Created Woman has its fans but it didn't do that much for me.