Saturday, October 31, 2009

30 Nights of Terror Halloween party

( how was i going to say anything new about this ?)

A
rbogast puffed a Lucky and watched the long legged young man walk up the steps to the Charles Addams house he called home. Jeez, the kid moves all regal like goddam Miss America. Something stirred in Arbogast's suit pants. Young master Bates was a swish! Master Bates. Arbo, you drove right into that one with your bright lights on. Neiman or Norman - yeah Norman said he still changed the sheets weekly. Did Norman take the sheets, as his colored buddy Miss Otisia put it?
Arbo, you're due for some action. That swabbie in San Diego was two weeks ago and he wouldn't go all the way. Don't brown me, he'd whined. I ain't Betty Crocker, kid, he'd said. I want to fuck you, not fry you.
Norman was a pretty thing. You could tell he was confused. He'd never stick his wick in that gash Marion Crane but he'd be suskeptical to her charms. All women had a mantrap between their legs
but Norman hadn't gotten his pecker caught yet. He was a v-i-r-g-i-n. It'd take a lot of spit and persuasion to get in but what a sweet ride. Arbo set the scene. He'd hide in the shower while Norman changed the sheets, getting an eyeful of Norm's sweet ass as he bent over. Arbo springs out of the bathroom and chloroforms Norman. He pulls down his jeans and applies a huge gob of Vaseline to his schvontze and the kid's pretty pink rose. oo la la. The chloroform was only to expedite the fucking. Otherwise Arbo would have to dress up as a broad to catch Norman's eye.


Friday, October 30, 2009

30 Nights of Horror October 30

This is for Bernard Welt and David Ehrenstein.

The Seventh Victim is, after Cat People, my favorite Lewton movie. A young student ( Kim Hunter) is informed that her sister, perfumier Jacqueline, has quit paying Mary's tuition and cannot be located. Fearless and naive as all Lewton heroines, Mary sallies forth into the Village bohemia of the '40s iso her sister. She learns that Jacqueline has quit the perfume racket and left her business to the overbearing Mrs. Redy ( Isabel Jewell). She meets her brother-in-law Hugh Beaumont, an italian hostess named Bella and, of all people, Jacqueline's psychiatrist ( Tom Conway). Obviously, in the timeline of Lewtonia, Conway has not yet met Elena the cat person.
A queer logo catches Mary's eye. We learn that it is the symbol of the Paladys, a cabal of "non-violent" satanists. "Non-violent", my eye. They have already murdered private eye Irving August and dispatch a knife wielding killer after Jacqueline when, at last, she turns up. All the fuss is over jacqueline's blabbing the secrets of the Paladys. I don't know why she'd want to belong to a club that can only afford a one armed pianist.
Mary is confronted in the shower by Mrs. Redy, a scene that presages the Marion Crane murder.
Jacqueline had taken a small room containing a chair and a rope slung over the rafters with a noose at one end. Mary meets her tubercular neighbor, who's determined to go out and trip the light fantastic and damn her health. I will not reveal the ending of this film. It's the grimmest ending in the Lewton canon.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

30 Nights of Horror (for Inthemostpeculiarway)

Strangers in the night - Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation. Until recently I had only seen the rated version of this film. At the end of the credits of the original vhs release in '96, Araki berated the distributors, the Clinton administration and everyone else imaginable for nobbling his gory road movie. I did some quick research before sitting down to write. When will I ever learn? The only piece of useful information I found was, of all places, on wikipedia. ( My rule with wikipedia is simple. If I can only find a fact on wiki it's either a factoid, in Mailer's original sense of something unproven repeated until it's accepted as truth, or a lie interpolated by a prankster, propagandist or provo.) The "no thanks to Cheryl Ladd" at credits' end was Araki's flipoff to the former Charlie's Angel for not allowing her daughter Jorfan to play Amy Blue, the Rose McGowan character. Ladd did appear in the dystopian Nowhere, GA's next film.
Like The Living End, TDG is a road movie, a gruesome hilarious and finally numbing road movie. The sexual geometry of Jordan ( James Duval at his beautiful doofus best), Amy and Xavier ( the handsomest man-man to adorn an Araki picture) has been compared to Pasolini's Theorem but in a twisted way i was reminded more of Rebel Without a Cause, if Ray's classic had been dark and post-analytic. X is a sex object and a father figure to Jordan, who is fascinated by X the second he lays eyes on him. Although J and Amy are "virgins", Amy's clearly the more experienced virgin. She functions as a maternal figure to cute, sweet but sofuckindumb Jordan. The increasing attraction between her man and her bf doesn't faze her in the least, her protestations notwithstnding. Before I get to the horror ( and if this isn't a non-genre horror film, what is it?) i want to say that the bathtub sex scene between J and A is immensely lovely. The comic verisimilitude of James Duval having trouble getting his jeans off fast enough, hairy ass crack and all, is worth a thousand Pitt - Gainsbourg - Garrel fashion layout sex scenes.( The Dreamers is almost as false and sickmaking a film as Oliver Stone's NBK monstrosity, a film I detest.) I gasped when I recognized the foreshadowing in J's nosebleed as I witnessed the rape - murder -castration finale, filmed as if seen in secondary glimpses through hands covering eyes.

This night of terror is dedicated with admiration and respect to a young man with a critical future.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

30 Nights of Terror October 7

Beverly was about to pack up her stuff and go when the Portises finally arrived, twenty minutes late.
She had considered peeing in the back yard of this wretched place but the memory of her colleague Susie Temple stopped her. Susie was so annoyed by her dilatory clients that she squatted and, well, defecated in front of the fixer upper in East Jesus as, guess what, the clients walked up the driveway. They'd had a flat tire three miles away and weren't amused by Susie's antics. Susie lost her realtor's license and bungled her new career choice, meth cook, in a literally flamboyant way.
Oh well, here are the fucking Portises at last.
Darren and Samantha Portis were a slightly attractive couple in their late twenties. They both spoke in an elongated upper New York state drawl.
" Hi, I'm Beverly Pills. Why don't .."
" Oh, Dare, this is it. They've painted it and landscaped but it looks juust like that Ann Roool book cover."
" Doctor Dickbiter's house! Get some pictures with your phone, Sammy."
" Darren, the owners prefer no amateur photos of the house or grounds."
" Oh shut up rreal estate lady. Grounds. That's rich."
" Yeahh Dare are they like the grounds Doccy Dick had for suing Ann Roool? As in nonexistent."
Sammy let out a horrid, braying guffaw. It didn't even sound human.
While the awful couple strolled around giggling and taking phone pictures Susie thought about the relative isolation of the place.
She'd have to improvise.

Dare walked around the corner of the house first. Susie let him have it with a nice two by four she'd found in the basement. The combined blood and mold was really pretty but Susie didn't have time for aesthetics. While Dare stood wobbling Susie rammed her pistol into his mouth and squeezed off two shots. Sammy was speechless for a second when she saw what was left of her DH on the ground. Exhaling loudly she grinned and said " Thank you, Bethany. I'm sorry i called you rreal est -"
Beverly only shot Sammy once, in her stomach. She screamed and complained while beverly kicked her repeatedly in the head. Beverly was reaching for her gun when, quite suddenly, Sammy quieted down, nice like. These goddamn crime tourists were always more trouble than they were worth. How long would it take to dispose of the bodies? The old sinkhole near Grippe's Farm was almost full. She tried to remember the Farmer's Almanac weather for this anniversary day. Nope, she thought as she doused the couple with accelerant, the rain should hold off long enough.

Tonight's movie: Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham's Last House on the Left.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

30 Nights of Terror Oct.6

When Peter Lorre was acting in Fritz Lang's M , his night job was singing and hoofing in a musical comedy. Lorre always seems a very modern actor, even in an early film like Mad Love aka The Hands of Orlac. Cinematographer Karl Freund directed, Gregg Toland was dp. A digression: in Pauline Kael's The Citizen Kane Book, she presents stills from ML ( Lorre in baldpate, the drunken housekeeper's pet cockatoo) with similar images from Citizen Kane, visual ammo for her controversial theory that Kane did not spring Athenalike from Orson Welles' head. Toland, of course, was the cameraman on Kane and, I guess, responsible for Mad Love's lively Vorkapich montages.
Lorre is Professor Gogol, a brilliant surgeon who can restore lost limbs. He's hopelessly enamored of an actress, Yvonne Orlac. Nightly he visits the strange theatre where she performs and ogles her wax figure in the lobby. Yvonne appreciates Orlac's attentions as a fan but she's devoted to her concert pianist husband Stephen Orlac ( Colin Clive). When Orlac's hands are crushed in an accident, Gogol sees a chance to win his beloved. As this film can be seen free on TCM on demand, I suggest you check it out. Seventy three minutes of delicious weirdness. Another magesterial American movie seems to have nicked a detail from Mad Love. Can you guess its title?

Sunday, October 4, 2009

30 Nights of Terror - Oct. 4

Hannibal Lecter is the best known villain since Professor Moriarty. Red Dragon, Thomas Harris' first novel about the FBI'S Behavioral Science Unit, was filmed twice. In 1986 Lecter wasn't a household word. He appears in Michael Mann's adaptation of RD three times and is played by Brian Cox. Manhunter is the story of the empathic Will Graham, called out of retirement after a serial killer has begun murdering entire families in a ritualistic fashion. Graham can enter a killer's mind fairly easily. It's the exiting that's difficult.
Graham ends up consulting Lecter in his cell at the Antonioni-white Chesapeake Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Lecter toys with him and sets off a panic reaction in Graham when he tells him
" We're alike, you and me." When it's discovered that the wanted perp aka the Tooth Fairy has been corresponding with Lecter through a tabloid's classified section, Graham stages an interview and photo op with the odious Freddie Lounds, tab journalism's star. Freddie is abducted and tortured by the Tooth Fairy. His awful reentry into the outside world is captured in a mere four shots.

Enough of the synopsis. Red Dragon was filmed again in 2002 with Anthony Hopkins in his final appearance as Lecter. It's a dismal film that shows us its best sequence ( Graham's capture of Lecter) before the credits roll. Michael Mann's somewhat dated version is, according to me, the better of the two. Tomorrow - Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

30 Nights of Terror - 10/02

In October I try to watch at least one horror movie, or what i deem horror, a day. This is a log of those afternoons, evenings, nights and mornings.

Cloverfield - JJ Abrams' American Godzilla movie, shot a la Blair Witch Project, is a first rate roller coaster movie. No one will ever cite it for psychological depth or great characterization. It's a good example of social observation that answers the question: What would a group of blithe upwardly mobile 20somethings do if their party was interrupted by a monster attack? A lot of dialogue was apparently improvised. Although the film was actually shot by a number of camerapersons and edited with a finetooth comb, it's easy to believe you're watching the calamitous events of that night through one person's POV.
Ok. Fine. My only reservations about this movie began rising to the surface as the credits rolled. Abrams and company seem to have watched all the available 9/11 footage. This very enjoyable movie is, on some levels, a terrorist attack restaged as a thrill ride.
Die Monster Die - An American International adaptation of Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space with Boris Karloff, Nick Adams ( looking very spruce) and Suzan Farmer. Lots of fun. Tonight may be Hammer Night. You six will have to click my link and see.