Q) How awesome is Blu-ray?
A) Not very.
I finally got around to shoving Avatar on Blu-ray into my relatively new Blu-ray player this week. I then sat back, waited patiently for the movie to start (because Blu-ray discs take their sweet time to load), and prepared to be dazzled (to a level of dazzlement never before experienced) by the most visually impressive film ever on the most visually impressive video format ever.
At least, that was the plan.
Half way through the movie I was less dazzled and more… how can I put this… completely pissed off, when I started getting large obtrusive scene selection "thumbnails" popping up. They'd pop up for about five seconds, disappear for a short while, then reappear with increasing frequency. They were incredibly distracting and made the film unwatchable from the half-way mark onwards.
Given that I've only watched a dozen or so Blu-ray movies so far, I wasn't sure if this was a real problem or some sort of bizarre "feature" that I needed to turn off. After farting around with all the remote buttons and menu functions, I just couldn't get the pop-ups to go away. I eventually hit the stop button and walked out of my home theatre room in disgust.
After googling "how crap is blu-ray?", or something similar, I quickly found out that many other people had experienced the same problem with the Avatar disc on several different brands of Blu-ray player.
The manufacturer of my Blu-ray player proudly proclaimed that they had a firmware upgrade to fix the problem. Great, thanks Pioneer, it's good to know that all I need is a high speed internet connection and a USB stick to get my new Blu-ray player to actually do what it's supposed to do.
Could you image having to upgrade the firmware on your toaster each time you inserted a new kind of bread? Or upgrade your car when you try to give a friend a lift who you've never had in your car before? 'Sorry Jim, the firmware on the Pontiac is four months old, so it won't take passengers called "Jim". On the bright side, the toaster is up to date and will now toast fruit loaf.'
Given that my Blu-Ray player is less than six months old I'm absolutely gob-smacked that this was necessary. Firmware upgrades to add additional functionality are one thing, but having to perform a firmware upgrade just to get the basic functionality (ie video playback) to work properly is ridiculous. If I have to have internet access to get my Blu-ray player working I might as well just download illegal rips of the movie off the internet and dispense with an optical media player altogether.
If you add the fact that you can't be guaranteed your Blu-ray player will play any given Blu-ray disc properly to the fact that Blu-ray discs take such an inordinate amount of time to load, you realise Blu-ray is about as impressive as anything else, you care to think of, that's slow and unreliable. Public trains? Domestic bread makers? The Tax Office?
Blu-ray schmu-ray. Long live DVD!
Technical bit - My Blu-ray player is a Pioneer BDP-120.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Grindhouse: Death Proof (2007) & Planet Terror (2007) Review
Most people, interested in such things, now know the story of Quentin Tarrantino and Robert Rodriguez's ill-fated Grindhouse project. It was supposed to be two exploitation homage flicks (Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Tarrantino's Death Proof) released together as one film complete with fake trailers for other non-existent exploitation flicks that gave viewers the long lost experience of attending a "Grindhouse" cinema or drive-in.
Unfortunately, for all those involved, Grindhouse bombed at the US box office. Many commentators put this down to movie goers being too stupid to get the concept. Maybe, that was the problem. Or maybe, just maybe, no one wanted to pay good money to watch two crap films. This is, after all, why "Grindhouse" cinemas and drive-ins died out in the first place.
Once it was obvious Grindhouse was a box-office dud, and before you could say "fuck artistic integrity" the Weinsteins decided to dismantle Grindhouse and release Death Proof and Planet Terror separately in new extended cuts. This, of course, completely misses the point of why these films were created in the first place and puts them in the unenviable position of having to stand on their own which they were never designed to do.
Death Proof
Death Proof tells the story of two separate groups of women who are tormented by a charming, but ultimately psychotic and homicidal, stuntman in a death proof car.
Well, sort of.
For the largest part of its running time Death Proof simply features a bunch of female caricatures sitting around reciting page after page of repetitive Tarrantino dialogue. They never really seem like characters from a 70's exploitation flick, and they certainly don't seem like real women. They're just dull Tarrantino mouth pieces.
The trailer may fool you into thinking the film is a car chase action fest. Don't be fooled. There are only two action sequences in the whole film. The first is over almost before it starts and the other comes way too late in this ridiculously long film.
Tarrantino's commitment to doing an exploitation homage seems a bit half-hearted too. The fake film artefacts, dodgy cuts, and stagnant direction are applied to the first half of the film, but the second half of the film is almost pristine and looks more like a modern action film (when it finally kicks into gear). It's almost as if he became bored with the concept and didn't bother maintaining theses devices all the way through. I can’t blame him, I suppose, I was pretty bored by it all myself.
And why is the film nearly two hours long? Most of these exploitation films were notoriously short. I'm pretty sure, like virtually all Tarrantino films, Death Proof would have benefited from some more judicious editing.
In a much shorter form, and combined with fake trailers and Rodriguez's Planet Terror, maybe Death Proof, as part of Grindhouse worked. But on its own it's an overly long, inconsistent exploitation homage that nearly bored me to death.
Planet Terror
Planet Terror is a balls and all (and I mean that quite literally) homage to splatter movies of the 1980's. Unlike Death Proof the tone is consistent, and things move at a pretty brisk pace.
Of course, being a homage to 80's splatter movies it, quite deliberately, inherits all the problems these films had. No character development, cheesy dialogue, and confused plotting. But these films often work in a "so bad they're good" kind of way and that’s exactly the level Planet Terror works on.
There is blood and guts galore in Planet Terror, so much so that, like many splatter films of the 80's, when the umpteenth virus-infected mutant person is hit by a truck and explodes in a shower of blood, guts, and body parts it's not shocking it's actually pretty amusing. Of course, Peter Jackson did this kind of thing years ago with Bad Taste and Brain Dead.
I also thought it was ironic that Rodriguez has reached a point in his career where he's made such an expensive film that deliberately looks cheap, when he really made a name for himself making cheap films that looked expensive.
If you're a fan of 80's splatter movies then you'll probably get a kick out of Planet Terror. If not, then you would probably be well advised to give this blood and pus soaked film a wide berth.
Unfortunately, for all those involved, Grindhouse bombed at the US box office. Many commentators put this down to movie goers being too stupid to get the concept. Maybe, that was the problem. Or maybe, just maybe, no one wanted to pay good money to watch two crap films. This is, after all, why "Grindhouse" cinemas and drive-ins died out in the first place.
Once it was obvious Grindhouse was a box-office dud, and before you could say "fuck artistic integrity" the Weinsteins decided to dismantle Grindhouse and release Death Proof and Planet Terror separately in new extended cuts. This, of course, completely misses the point of why these films were created in the first place and puts them in the unenviable position of having to stand on their own which they were never designed to do.
Death Proof
Death Proof tells the story of two separate groups of women who are tormented by a charming, but ultimately psychotic and homicidal, stuntman in a death proof car.
Well, sort of.
For the largest part of its running time Death Proof simply features a bunch of female caricatures sitting around reciting page after page of repetitive Tarrantino dialogue. They never really seem like characters from a 70's exploitation flick, and they certainly don't seem like real women. They're just dull Tarrantino mouth pieces.
The trailer may fool you into thinking the film is a car chase action fest. Don't be fooled. There are only two action sequences in the whole film. The first is over almost before it starts and the other comes way too late in this ridiculously long film.
Tarrantino's commitment to doing an exploitation homage seems a bit half-hearted too. The fake film artefacts, dodgy cuts, and stagnant direction are applied to the first half of the film, but the second half of the film is almost pristine and looks more like a modern action film (when it finally kicks into gear). It's almost as if he became bored with the concept and didn't bother maintaining theses devices all the way through. I can’t blame him, I suppose, I was pretty bored by it all myself.
And why is the film nearly two hours long? Most of these exploitation films were notoriously short. I'm pretty sure, like virtually all Tarrantino films, Death Proof would have benefited from some more judicious editing.
In a much shorter form, and combined with fake trailers and Rodriguez's Planet Terror, maybe Death Proof, as part of Grindhouse worked. But on its own it's an overly long, inconsistent exploitation homage that nearly bored me to death.
Planet Terror
Planet Terror is a balls and all (and I mean that quite literally) homage to splatter movies of the 1980's. Unlike Death Proof the tone is consistent, and things move at a pretty brisk pace.
Of course, being a homage to 80's splatter movies it, quite deliberately, inherits all the problems these films had. No character development, cheesy dialogue, and confused plotting. But these films often work in a "so bad they're good" kind of way and that’s exactly the level Planet Terror works on.
There is blood and guts galore in Planet Terror, so much so that, like many splatter films of the 80's, when the umpteenth virus-infected mutant person is hit by a truck and explodes in a shower of blood, guts, and body parts it's not shocking it's actually pretty amusing. Of course, Peter Jackson did this kind of thing years ago with Bad Taste and Brain Dead.
I also thought it was ironic that Rodriguez has reached a point in his career where he's made such an expensive film that deliberately looks cheap, when he really made a name for himself making cheap films that looked expensive.
If you're a fan of 80's splatter movies then you'll probably get a kick out of Planet Terror. If not, then you would probably be well advised to give this blood and pus soaked film a wide berth.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Long Dum Bom: The Host (2006) Review
There’s a strange phenomenon, amongst the fraternity of western film critics, that I just can’t get my head around. Whenever a big dumb genre picture is released by one of the major US studios, critics have to take a number and wait their turn to lambaste it. But, when an equally dumb genre picture emanates from a non-English speaking country the very same critics shovel praise on it as if they have shares in the production company that made it.
Like the confusing Russian action/horror picture Nightwatch and the cheesy overblown Hong Kong CG fest Kung Fu Hussle, we now have the listless Korean creature feature The Host to add to the collection of bad genre films that are well received in the west seemingly because they are not from the west.
By any objective measure The Host is an underwhelming film. Whilst the impressive opening scenes promise an interesting adventure, it all too soon becomes bogged down in an unsuspenseful and tiresomely slow moving story about a dysfunctional family caught up in the hysteria that results when a big nasty computer generated tadpole emerges from Seoul’s Han river and starts eating people.
Films like this can be a blast if the director gets the tone right. Tremors and Lake Placid are prime examples of how this sort of thing should be done. Unfortunately, the tone of the The Host is all over the shop. Director Joon-Ho Bong just doesn’t seem to know what kind of film he’s making, and the end result is an overly long film that doesn’t really work on any level. It’s never scary. It’s not dramatically satisfying. It’s never very funny (in fact, some of the physical comedy is embarrassingly lame), and it spends so much time just spinning its wheels it doesn’t satisfy as an adventure story either.
The film's none too subtle anti-American references are understandable given the way in which successive US governments have treated South Korea in the past, but these references are not terribly clever, and are somewhat ironic given that the film’s producers required the services of a US effects company to create The Host.
Like the confusing Russian action/horror picture Nightwatch and the cheesy overblown Hong Kong CG fest Kung Fu Hussle, we now have the listless Korean creature feature The Host to add to the collection of bad genre films that are well received in the west seemingly because they are not from the west.
By any objective measure The Host is an underwhelming film. Whilst the impressive opening scenes promise an interesting adventure, it all too soon becomes bogged down in an unsuspenseful and tiresomely slow moving story about a dysfunctional family caught up in the hysteria that results when a big nasty computer generated tadpole emerges from Seoul’s Han river and starts eating people.
Films like this can be a blast if the director gets the tone right. Tremors and Lake Placid are prime examples of how this sort of thing should be done. Unfortunately, the tone of the The Host is all over the shop. Director Joon-Ho Bong just doesn’t seem to know what kind of film he’s making, and the end result is an overly long film that doesn’t really work on any level. It’s never scary. It’s not dramatically satisfying. It’s never very funny (in fact, some of the physical comedy is embarrassingly lame), and it spends so much time just spinning its wheels it doesn’t satisfy as an adventure story either.
The film's none too subtle anti-American references are understandable given the way in which successive US governments have treated South Korea in the past, but these references are not terribly clever, and are somewhat ironic given that the film’s producers required the services of a US effects company to create The Host.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Final Girl Film Club: It's Alive (1974) Review
In the past I’ve made the mistake of making analogous references to things that are peculiar to my home country, which confuses the Pavlova out of people who are not from my home country. In order to avoid such confusion during my discussion of It’s Alive, I’m going to quickly explain what a Jam Ball Doughnut is, just in case this tasty treat is not well recognised internationally. A Jam Ball Doughnut is, as the name suggests, a (loosely) ball shaped doughnut. It‘s dusted in sugar and has a single vein of jam that goes into the doughnut's centre where you'll find a big glob of the same jam. Now, this jam is like no other jam you will find in any jar or in any other food. It’s iridescently iridescent red in color and has a unique taste that resembles nothing in the natural world. It’s one of life’s big mysteries as to why this particular jam can only found in Jam Ball Doughnuts, and nowhere else, but there you have it. Now, with that clumsy bit exposition out of the way let’s talk about It’s Alive…
Frank (John Ryan) and Lenore (Sharron Farrell) are expecting parents. Late one night Lenore rolls over in bed and tells Frank “it’s time”. The happy couple calmly get their crap together, drop off their first son at a friend’s house, and check-in at the local Community Hospital. Lenore is quickly escorted into the delivery suite while Frank waits in the expecting father’s waiting room. Frank barely has time to have an ominous conversation, with the other expecting fathers, about pollution and chemicals in food and blah blah blah bad stuff in the “modern” world, before the proverbial excrement hits the fan.
Screaming is heard coming from Lenore’s delivery suite. One of the many nameless medical practitioners in attendence emerges clutching his bloodied throat and collapses on the floor, dead. When Frank runs into the delivery suite, Lenore is still on the delivery table, screaming, but the new born baby is nowhere to be seen and the several hundred doctors and nurses in attendance are strewn all over the floor, dead. It’s a shocking scene of carnage with everyone and everything covered in Jam Ball Doughnut jam.
After the bloody birth, the film follows the murderous trail of Lenore & Frank’s fugitive mutant baby in one sub-plot and the fallout for our unhappy couple in the other.
I still can’t decide whether I liked It’s Alive or not. The basic premise is pure schlock, but the execution is serious and assured. It’s never terribly suspenseful or scary, but it’s still strangely entertaining most of the way through. The mutant baby is a bit hokey looking, but it’s appearances are brief and shadowy. The film nicely highlights the fact that when you mess with nature it tends to mess with you right back, but some of these references feel a bit forced (like the expecting father’s pow wow in the waiting room).
Frank (John Ryan) and Lenore (Sharron Farrell) are expecting parents. Late one night Lenore rolls over in bed and tells Frank “it’s time”. The happy couple calmly get their crap together, drop off their first son at a friend’s house, and check-in at the local Community Hospital. Lenore is quickly escorted into the delivery suite while Frank waits in the expecting father’s waiting room. Frank barely has time to have an ominous conversation, with the other expecting fathers, about pollution and chemicals in food and blah blah blah bad stuff in the “modern” world, before the proverbial excrement hits the fan.
Screaming is heard coming from Lenore’s delivery suite. One of the many nameless medical practitioners in attendence emerges clutching his bloodied throat and collapses on the floor, dead. When Frank runs into the delivery suite, Lenore is still on the delivery table, screaming, but the new born baby is nowhere to be seen and the several hundred doctors and nurses in attendance are strewn all over the floor, dead. It’s a shocking scene of carnage with everyone and everything covered in Jam Ball Doughnut jam.
After the bloody birth, the film follows the murderous trail of Lenore & Frank’s fugitive mutant baby in one sub-plot and the fallout for our unhappy couple in the other.I still can’t decide whether I liked It’s Alive or not. The basic premise is pure schlock, but the execution is serious and assured. It’s never terribly suspenseful or scary, but it’s still strangely entertaining most of the way through. The mutant baby is a bit hokey looking, but it’s appearances are brief and shadowy. The film nicely highlights the fact that when you mess with nature it tends to mess with you right back, but some of these references feel a bit forced (like the expecting father’s pow wow in the waiting room).
The performances are a mixed bag. John Ryan is pitch perfect as Frank, but Sharon Farrell’s performance is a little over-baked when she’s asked to convey Lenore’s post-mutant-baby-birth neurosis. Their first son, who the film checks in with from time to time (for some arbitrary reason), is a pure goofball, but his guardian for the duration of the film is solid.
I can honestly say I was never bored by It’s Alive, but I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat either. The fact that I dedicated a paragraph of this review to describing doughnuts is a fair indication of my ambivalence towards it and how difficult it is to say something meaningful about it. Somehow it’s worse than good, but better than bad.
Related Links:
Final Girl Film Club
Final Girl
Friday, February 5, 2010
Drink Moosehead Or Die: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Review
You could be forgiven for thinking that My Bloody Valentine is not actually an 80’s slasher movie but rather a feature length commercial for Moosehead. In case you’re some non beer drinking loser who doesn’t know what Moosehead is, it’s Canada’s most recognisable export lager.
All the drinkers in My Bloody Valentine drink Moosehead and those that don’t drink carry their crap around in used Moosehead cartons. Anyone who dares not drink Moosehead pays the ultimate price…
One little old lady never drinks Moosehead: she dies first
One idiot shoves Moosehead up his nose: he dies.
One girl sits around doin’ nothing while her boyfriend dutifully gets more Moosehead: she dies.
One couple of horny youngsters stop drinking Moosehead to shag: they die.
The prevailing message here is simple: drink Moosehead or die.
If you’ve not had Moosehead before you may well now be wondering what it’s like. To be perfectly honest, and at the risk of having a pick axe slammed into my skull and my heart torn out, it’s nothin’ special. Like most exported lagers it’s designed to appeal to a wide range of palettes and as a result it’s… well… kinda bland. Obviously, drinking Moosehead is preferable to dying (hell, drinking Tasman Bitter is preferable to dying), but it would never otherwise be my beer of choice. If you’re looking for a Canadian brew with some real flavour check out any one of the many oddly titled beers from French-Canadian brewer Unibroue.
But I digress.
The best thing I can say about My Bloody Valentine, is that it gives me an opportunity to talk about beer. Beyond that, it’s hard to recommend it. A lot of the violence was allegedly cut out for the benefit of US censors and no one has seen fit to restore it for the DVD release. So, in slasher movie terms, it is a pretty innocuous affair. A lot of the performances are distractingly hammy, even by 80’s standards. The comic relief guy, Howard (Alf Humphreys), is particularly annoying. He employs the Weekend At Bernies II philosophy of comedy that says you can make an unfunny script funny simply by acting like a complete twerp. The film’s conclusion is so arbitrary and makes so little sense any fun you had watching the melodramatic, Moosehead-swilling, caricatures being picked off one by one is soon forgotten.
All the drinkers in My Bloody Valentine drink Moosehead and those that don’t drink carry their crap around in used Moosehead cartons. Anyone who dares not drink Moosehead pays the ultimate price…
One little old lady never drinks Moosehead: she dies first
One idiot shoves Moosehead up his nose: he dies.
One girl sits around doin’ nothing while her boyfriend dutifully gets more Moosehead: she dies.
One couple of horny youngsters stop drinking Moosehead to shag: they die.
The prevailing message here is simple: drink Moosehead or die.
If you’ve not had Moosehead before you may well now be wondering what it’s like. To be perfectly honest, and at the risk of having a pick axe slammed into my skull and my heart torn out, it’s nothin’ special. Like most exported lagers it’s designed to appeal to a wide range of palettes and as a result it’s… well… kinda bland. Obviously, drinking Moosehead is preferable to dying (hell, drinking Tasman Bitter is preferable to dying), but it would never otherwise be my beer of choice. If you’re looking for a Canadian brew with some real flavour check out any one of the many oddly titled beers from French-Canadian brewer Unibroue.
But I digress.
The best thing I can say about My Bloody Valentine, is that it gives me an opportunity to talk about beer. Beyond that, it’s hard to recommend it. A lot of the violence was allegedly cut out for the benefit of US censors and no one has seen fit to restore it for the DVD release. So, in slasher movie terms, it is a pretty innocuous affair. A lot of the performances are distractingly hammy, even by 80’s standards. The comic relief guy, Howard (Alf Humphreys), is particularly annoying. He employs the Weekend At Bernies II philosophy of comedy that says you can make an unfunny script funny simply by acting like a complete twerp. The film’s conclusion is so arbitrary and makes so little sense any fun you had watching the melodramatic, Moosehead-swilling, caricatures being picked off one by one is soon forgotten.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Final Girl Film Club: Black Sabbath (1963) Review
I naively thought that 1975’s Trilogy Of Terror was probably the first horror anthology movie ever made. It turns out I was wronger than Chow Mein on an Italian menu, because predating that made-for-television classic by a good 13 years was Mario Bava’s made-for-movie-theatres classic I Tre Volti Della Paura.
The original Italian title translates to “The Three Faces Of Fear”, but as is too often the case with foreign films, the distributors couldn’t just release it with the literally translated title of The Three Faces Of Fear. No. That would be too simple, make too much sense, and presumably put the idiot, who comes up with English titles for foreign films, out of a job. Instead, Bava’s prehistoric anthology gem is known in non-Italian speaking parts of the world as Black Sabbath (urgh).
Like contemporary horror anthologies Black Sabbath features three separate stories, book-ended by short segments featuring a “creepy” master of ceremonies (in this case, none other than, Boris Karloff). Also, like contemporary horror anthologies, the quality of the segments varies. The quality of the vignettes on offer here seems to be inversely proportional to their length. The last segment, A Drop Of Water, is the shortest and easily the sweetest. The second segment, The Wurdalak, is the longest and weakest. While the opening segment, The Telephone, falls in between in both length and quality. Like I said.
In the first segment, The Telephone, Rosy (Michele Mercier) arrives home alone in an alluring black dress, alluringly undresses and alluringly slips into an alluring robe. Sadly, all this alluringness is shattered when she starts getting menacing phone calls from someone who can clearly see her movements and who threatens to kill her before dawn. It’s not as frightening or as suspenseful as the opening act of the seminal menacing-phone-call movie When A Stranger Calls, but it’s still pretty compelling stuff that stands up very well considering it was made 17 years earlier. It also provides more evidence (if it was needed) that this basic plot works best as a short film, not a feature.
The second segment, The Wurdalak, is set in the olden days, with an olden days traveller stumbling across a homestead of worried family members mumbling ominously about the return of their father. If he gets back by a certain time everything will be right with the world. If not, he will return as a Wurdalak and that, apparently, is not good.
At first I thought a Wurdalak was a zombie of sorts, given all the early talk of the “undead”, but (and I don’t think I’m ruining anything by saying this) when Dad (Boris Karloff) does return as a Wurdalak he looks more like a werewolf thanks to his excessively hairy costuming. As things progress, slowly, the Wurdalak’s victims fail to exhibit the hairiness of Daddy Wurdalak and look and behave more like vampires. All in all, this olden day tale of zombie werewolf vampire Wurdalaks drags on for too long and fails to generate any real interest or tension. Karloff’s performance, in particular, is lacklustre. He’s either stoned, just there for the paycheck or, most probably, both. The Wurdalak is really Black Sabbath’s saggy bottom.
It seems the “leave the best till last” heuristic was alive and well in 1963 because the third and final segment A Drop Of Water is a cracker. Nurse Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) gets a call to come help dress a recently deceased woman who she had been caring for. Before you can ask, why didn’t the housekeeper call the mortician instead of the nurse, the creepiest of creepy looking dead people is revealed and you’ll soon be more concerned with controlling any involuntary bowel movements than you will be with any of A Drop Of Water’s gaps in logic. After dressing the dead woman, Nurse Chester steals the her ring, and from there things get even creepier. I couldn’t tell if the dead woman was an actress or a mannequin. If she was an actress she deserves an academy award, if she was a mannequin then the effects team deserve one.
Even though the stories are quite different, Mario Bava does a good job of tying them together with a consistent style and tone. The lighting and shot composition are almost too artist for this genre of film. Whilst the film has a few dull spots (mostly in The Wurdalak segment), it is always nice to look at. Not withstanding the weak second segment, Black Sabbath starts and finishes strongly, and is a must see for anthology or horror fans.
Related Links:
Final Girl Film Club
Final Girl
The original Italian title translates to “The Three Faces Of Fear”, but as is too often the case with foreign films, the distributors couldn’t just release it with the literally translated title of The Three Faces Of Fear. No. That would be too simple, make too much sense, and presumably put the idiot, who comes up with English titles for foreign films, out of a job. Instead, Bava’s prehistoric anthology gem is known in non-Italian speaking parts of the world as Black Sabbath (urgh).
Like contemporary horror anthologies Black Sabbath features three separate stories, book-ended by short segments featuring a “creepy” master of ceremonies (in this case, none other than, Boris Karloff). Also, like contemporary horror anthologies, the quality of the segments varies. The quality of the vignettes on offer here seems to be inversely proportional to their length. The last segment, A Drop Of Water, is the shortest and easily the sweetest. The second segment, The Wurdalak, is the longest and weakest. While the opening segment, The Telephone, falls in between in both length and quality. Like I said.
In the first segment, The Telephone, Rosy (Michele Mercier) arrives home alone in an alluring black dress, alluringly undresses and alluringly slips into an alluring robe. Sadly, all this alluringness is shattered when she starts getting menacing phone calls from someone who can clearly see her movements and who threatens to kill her before dawn. It’s not as frightening or as suspenseful as the opening act of the seminal menacing-phone-call movie When A Stranger Calls, but it’s still pretty compelling stuff that stands up very well considering it was made 17 years earlier. It also provides more evidence (if it was needed) that this basic plot works best as a short film, not a feature.
The second segment, The Wurdalak, is set in the olden days, with an olden days traveller stumbling across a homestead of worried family members mumbling ominously about the return of their father. If he gets back by a certain time everything will be right with the world. If not, he will return as a Wurdalak and that, apparently, is not good.
At first I thought a Wurdalak was a zombie of sorts, given all the early talk of the “undead”, but (and I don’t think I’m ruining anything by saying this) when Dad (Boris Karloff) does return as a Wurdalak he looks more like a werewolf thanks to his excessively hairy costuming. As things progress, slowly, the Wurdalak’s victims fail to exhibit the hairiness of Daddy Wurdalak and look and behave more like vampires. All in all, this olden day tale of zombie werewolf vampire Wurdalaks drags on for too long and fails to generate any real interest or tension. Karloff’s performance, in particular, is lacklustre. He’s either stoned, just there for the paycheck or, most probably, both. The Wurdalak is really Black Sabbath’s saggy bottom.
It seems the “leave the best till last” heuristic was alive and well in 1963 because the third and final segment A Drop Of Water is a cracker. Nurse Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) gets a call to come help dress a recently deceased woman who she had been caring for. Before you can ask, why didn’t the housekeeper call the mortician instead of the nurse, the creepiest of creepy looking dead people is revealed and you’ll soon be more concerned with controlling any involuntary bowel movements than you will be with any of A Drop Of Water’s gaps in logic. After dressing the dead woman, Nurse Chester steals the her ring, and from there things get even creepier. I couldn’t tell if the dead woman was an actress or a mannequin. If she was an actress she deserves an academy award, if she was a mannequin then the effects team deserve one.
Even though the stories are quite different, Mario Bava does a good job of tying them together with a consistent style and tone. The lighting and shot composition are almost too artist for this genre of film. Whilst the film has a few dull spots (mostly in The Wurdalak segment), it is always nice to look at. Not withstanding the weak second segment, Black Sabbath starts and finishes strongly, and is a must see for anthology or horror fans.
Related Links:
Final Girl Film Club
Final Girl
Friday, July 3, 2009
Final Girl Film Club: Burial Ground [aka The Nights Of Terror] (1981) Review
My first taste of Italian horror from the early 80’s was Lucio Fulcio’s The Beyond. It was a load of bemusing nonsense, but compared to Burial Ground it was high art. Watching Burial Ground is like watching a child repetitively banging away on a toy drum. It’s cute for a minute or two but ultimately becomes a dull monotonous drone that you just wish would stop or change tune.
In Burial Ground, a professor, with an impossibly long beard, unearths some sort of stone tablet with a few markings on it that look remarkably like something you’d see on a Fisher Price toy for infants. He mutters to himself, “I’m the only one who knows the secret. It’s incredible. Incredible,” before he trots back to the site where he discovered the tablet only to be promptly eaten alive by hessian sack dressed zombies with paper mache heads.
In the wake of the professor's premature demise, seven previously invited guests (three adult couples and one child) show up at his luxurious mansion oblivious to the fact that their host is dead. They barely have time to speculate about the professor’s whereabouts and have a quick shag before the zombies descend upon them. What ensues is a seemingly endless series of scenes where the protagonists enter a set from one side, some zombies enter from the other, any/all female characters scream wildly, and the male characters try to find an object to hit the zombie’s piñata head with. I lost count of the number of times this happens. It’s mind-numbingly repetitive.
Like Lucio Fulci, director Andrea Bianchi, makes the mistake of shooting his substandard effects in bright light, and extreme close up. If their appearances were brief and shadowy, they may very well have been scary. But the protracted, brightly lit, shots of the paper mache headed extras stiffly shuffling towards their dim-witted victims is about as suspenseful as watching dish water go down the drain.
Whilst it’s really difficult to know what Fulci’s intentions were with The Beyond, it’s pretty clear Bianchi really only has exploitation in mind. There’s sex, violence and even some incest thrown in for good measure. The incestuous scenes are bit off-putting, but not for the reasons you might expect. The young boy is played by a pint sized man, and his bizarre interactions with his mother play like the worst kind of David Lynch surrealism, rather than anything resembling a convincing portrayal of incestuous love.
Whilst I consider myself a fan of horror cinema I suspect italian zombie flicks from the 70’s and 80's just aren’t for me. With no story, no characters, and crappy effects shot in bright light I'm really hard pressed to find anything to like.
In Burial Ground, a professor, with an impossibly long beard, unearths some sort of stone tablet with a few markings on it that look remarkably like something you’d see on a Fisher Price toy for infants. He mutters to himself, “I’m the only one who knows the secret. It’s incredible. Incredible,” before he trots back to the site where he discovered the tablet only to be promptly eaten alive by hessian sack dressed zombies with paper mache heads.
In the wake of the professor's premature demise, seven previously invited guests (three adult couples and one child) show up at his luxurious mansion oblivious to the fact that their host is dead. They barely have time to speculate about the professor’s whereabouts and have a quick shag before the zombies descend upon them. What ensues is a seemingly endless series of scenes where the protagonists enter a set from one side, some zombies enter from the other, any/all female characters scream wildly, and the male characters try to find an object to hit the zombie’s piñata head with. I lost count of the number of times this happens. It’s mind-numbingly repetitive.
Like Lucio Fulci, director Andrea Bianchi, makes the mistake of shooting his substandard effects in bright light, and extreme close up. If their appearances were brief and shadowy, they may very well have been scary. But the protracted, brightly lit, shots of the paper mache headed extras stiffly shuffling towards their dim-witted victims is about as suspenseful as watching dish water go down the drain.
Whilst it’s really difficult to know what Fulci’s intentions were with The Beyond, it’s pretty clear Bianchi really only has exploitation in mind. There’s sex, violence and even some incest thrown in for good measure. The incestuous scenes are bit off-putting, but not for the reasons you might expect. The young boy is played by a pint sized man, and his bizarre interactions with his mother play like the worst kind of David Lynch surrealism, rather than anything resembling a convincing portrayal of incestuous love.
Whilst I consider myself a fan of horror cinema I suspect italian zombie flicks from the 70’s and 80's just aren’t for me. With no story, no characters, and crappy effects shot in bright light I'm really hard pressed to find anything to like.
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