For followers of the West Memphis 3 case — as documented in the films Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations — here’s an article from today’s New York Times, about new evidence which continues to suggest that the convicted men are innocent.
Lodge Kerrigan’s “Clean, Shaven“
While Hollywood filmmakers have never shied away from the theme of mental illness, they’ve also rarely handled the subject with the responsibility or imagination it has deserved. Films as varied as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Shock Corridor, Rain Man, or A Beautiful Mind might seem to consider the multitude of psychiatric disorders in as many different ways, and might be momentarily troubling, but they generally resort to feel-good sentimentality, undeserved heroism, or cheap “lessons learned” conceits that would be better suited to a TV-movie-of-the-week.
Director Lodge Kerrigan’s intentions and skills as a filmmaker set Clean, Shaven apart not only from the subgenre of “mental illness” films, but also the stolid glut of mid-90s independent films (the willfully quirky Hal Hartley, the unearned “cool” of post-Tarantino crime comedies, etc.). Star Peter Greene is recognizable by his presence as a baddie in a handful of big hit genre pics, namely Pulp Fiction and The Mask. Made with a visual precision that parallels the obsessive “ordering” of its main character, Clean, Shaven gives Greene the rare opportunity to transcend stone-cold badness into a more uncomfortable - and more realistic - terrain: the moral blurriness of life as it is, and not how we’d like it to be.
In doing so, Kerrigan’s Clean, Shaven is the uncommon film willing to acknowledge the unpleasant otherness and isolation of a disturbed individual. His behavior elicits no easy sympathy or understanding and few clues are forthcoming regarding his motivations; in fact, his conduct seems as baffling to him as it does to us. Roger Ebert (yes, Roger Ebert) says Kerrigan “…doesn’t see Peter from the outside, as a danger or a threat, but from the inside, as a suffering man who still retains those instincts that make us human, including love for our children. That society cannot see him with the same empathy is perhaps inevitable. Peter is the kind of man we quickly cross the street to avoid. Now we understand how much he needs to avoid us, as well.”
New Releases:
New Releases (TV Series):
New Arrivals:
Brian De Palma’s nearly forgotten Phantom of the Paradise is a conflation of Faust, Phantom of the Opera, and any number of other showbiz cautionary tales, as well as “horror-musicals” like the more well-known Rocky Horror Picture Show, which it preceded by a year (though the Rocky Horror stage musical did open first) and which it supersedes in craft and invention (in my opinion, of course).
Contrary to Rocky Horror’s somewhat embarrassing, flamboyantly cultish “good time sing-along”, Phantom focuses on classically themed yet idiosyncratic notions of talent and worth and identity. It manages to be both timeless and disturbingly subversive, and just a hell of a lot more fun than Rocky Horror.
De Palma’s direction is as inventive as the rest of his 70s work; the sets and costumes are as ridiculously garish as the glam-rock of the time; and the performances are endearingly goofy — William Finley, as The Phantom, is the type of genuinely nerdly character you’d never see in films today, Jessica Harper (Suspiria) is appropriately innocent and vulnerable, and the diminutive Paul Williams (The Muppet Movie, Smokey and the Bandit), who also wrote the film’s excellent music, is perfectly bizarre as “Swan”, a manipulative record producer.
Excellent site about the film here.
Continuing the Halloween theme, here’s a link to a fascinating article about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and the themes of racism, genocide, etc. suggested in the film. I think it’s one of his best films, and one of the most layered, complex horror films ever made. Some excerpts:
The Shining is also explicitly about America’s general inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of the Indians - or, more exactly, its ability to “overlook” that genocide. Not only is the site called the Overlook Hotel with its Overlook Maze, but one of the key scenes takes place at the July 4th Ball. That date, too, has particular relevance to American Indians. That’s why Kubrick made a movie in which the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame, yet never really sees what the movie’s about… Kubrick carefully equates the Overlook Maze with the Overlook Hotel, and both with the American continent. Chef Hallorann emphasizes to Wendy the size and abundance of the kitchens, remarks upon the extraordinary elbow room (so attractive to early settlers) and begins his long catalog of its storerooms’ wealth with those most American of items: rib roast, hamburger and turkey… At the end of the movie, in the climactic chase in the Overlook Maze, the moral maze of America and of all mankind in which we are chased by the sins of our fathers (”Danny, I’m coming. You can’t get away. I’m right behind you”), the little boy Danny escapes by retracing his own steps (an old Indian trick) and letting his father blunder past.
Halloween is a week away, and while I generally don’t pay much attention to holidays I thought it might be appropriate to bore you all reprint here a few articles and reviews that originally appeared in our store’s email newsletter (subscribe) which have some relation to scary movies, etc. So here’s the first, with several more to come in the following days.
“Monsters and Madmen” and Other Not-So-Guilty Guilty Pleasures
If you’re familiar with the Criterion Collection’s DVD releases – most of which are “unquestioned” classic art house and foreign films - it may at first seem unlikely that they would release something like the Monsters and Madmen box set. But, a closer look at their history reveals that they have always had a fondness and respect for genre and “B” films.
When they were releasing laserdiscs in the early ‘90s, their first title was, predictably, Citizen Kane, followed immediately by… King Kong! Eventually the collection included other esteemed science-fiction, horror, crime and exploitation movies such as Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Switchblade Sisters, The Blob and Robinson Crusoe on Mars. And among their earlier DVD releases was Fiend without A Face – a film produced by the same team responsible for the movies in the M & M set.
Included in the set are four of producers Richard and Alex Gordon’s films: The Haunted Strangler & Corridors of Blood (both starring Boris Karloff!) and Atomic Submarine & First Man into Space. These may not be undiscovered classics of the genre, but they are, like Fiend without a Face, slightly more peculiar than the usual fare and contain some pretty strange, even shocking moments. The films all seem stilted and inept at first, but each one has a point where everything sort of turns an unexpected corner and the filmmakers pull something bizarre out of their hats, something only films like these (made cheaply and under the radar) could get away with. These aren’t works of formal beauty (even by genre standards) or thoughtful introspection, but they are perfect examples the nation’s subconscious fears and desires at the height of the Cold War, and good movies to watch while wearing a silly costume and enjoying a cold drink at a Halloween party.
“Halloween-appropriate” films available on Criterion DVDs:
Here’s a quick rundown of my Halloween picks:
Black Christmas — John Carpenter’s Halloween has been called the first slasher film, but not only is that claim an inaccurate description of his movie, it also excludes the many antecedents to that dubious title. Bob Clark’s Black Christmas was certainly the first english-language film to set that template, and it holds up very well despite the glut of charmless, unpleasant imitators. More here and here.
Black Sunday (1960) — Mario Bava might actually deserve the credit for the modern slasher film, though in his native Italy it is called giallo. Bava’s Black Sunday, while more of a gothic horror, was the first film to genuinely frighten me as a child. Viewing it as an adult, it’s pretty silly, but remains extraordinaly well-made. Tim Burton basically owes his entire career to the look of this film. More here and here.
Face of Another — My favorite Japanese director is Hiroshi Teshigahara, and of the handful of films he made, only this one could be even loosely labelled a horror film, though it’s as much a science-fiction film, like Frankenstein. Psychedelic, absurd, terribly sad. More here and here.
The Ghost Breakers — This title is pure cornball, but I have soft spot (my brain) for Bob Hope. There’s a black character who’s portrayed in a pretty irredeemable way, but besides that and one or two jokes that fall flat, this is still great, equally funny and creepy. More here and here.
The Holy Mountain (1973) — Indescribably outrageous, nonsensical, contrived, pretentious, vulgar, obscene, blasphemous… no list of adjectives seems able to aptly sum up this film. More here and here.
In A Glass Cage — Highly disturbing psycho/political allegory, not necessarily grotesque or even explicit in its violence, but the unpleasant implications and stunning imagery lodge themselves in your mind like the worst bad dream. Do not watch if you’re averse to seeing children tortured and involved in sexually suggestive situations. More here and here.
Inland Empire — One of David Lynch’s best films, and certainly his most frightening. Close-ups of enormous faces mask the cavernous spaces always present behind them, a nightmare photographed in a mirror. My favorite film of the year. More here and here.
The Seventh Victim – Val Lewton was a film producer who managed to stamp all of his projects - regardless of director - with his own style and concerns. This film isn’t as well-known as his Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie, but it’s every bit as good, sort of an Eyes Wide Shut for the 1940s. More here and here.
Sleepaway Camp — Do not read anything about this film, just watch it. The less you know, the better. I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s… well, it’s something.
Spider Baby — Jack Hill is a great director: The Big Doll House, Coffy, Foxy Brown, The Swinging Cheerleaders, Switchblade Sisters, and this utterly bizarre flick. Forget about Rob Zombie and Quentin Tarantino (both of whom fawningly cast this film’s brilliant Sid Haig in their own, later movies), Hill is the real deal. More here and here.
R. Kelly: Trapped in the Closet — I have no idea how this got on here.
Halloween picks from all of us!
Alright, I am not going to go much further than just posting this link, but you should check out the latest casting for JJ Abram’s Star Trek, set-up to be a prequel to the original crew in the series. I am fairly offended by the casting of Bones, and I dunno about the Kirk, but otherwise, it’s pretty wacky…
This week sees the second DVD release of works by Kenneth Anger, one of the greatest and most revered avant-garde / experimental / gay / whatever filmmakers of the last fifty years. Anger has not been a particularly prolific director, making about two dozen shorts (five of which are now available on The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume 1, an additional five on Volume 2) but what he lacks in prolificacy he more than makes up for with quality and influence.
Each of the ten films on these discs is a stunning gem, and each is as distinct from one another as all of them are from ordinary Hollywood product. Anger’s influences are wide-ranging, and this is one reason his body of work is so compelling. Unlike many experimental film artists (e.g. Stan Brakhage or Maya Deren, both of whom are otherwise wonderful) Anger draws upon pop culture as much as mythology or personal esoterica. You’ll see Mickey Mouse, comic books and Kustom Kar Kulture rubbing shoulders with the homosexual S&M Los Angeles underground, or the occult, set variously to scores of pop songs or classical music. So his work is simultaneously challenging and accessible in its choice of imagery and iconography. His use of the form follows suit: You can see the tradition of silent film language, Russian montage (Vertov, Eisenstein, etc.), the dream symbolism of Jean Cocteau, the vibrancy and lyricism of Hollywood and theatrical musicals, and much more. Anger’s films are among the few avant-garde films that are truly beautiful in both a classical and abstract sense of the word. His vivid coloring and use of different film stocks and found footage has held sway over dozens of subsequent directors, including David Lynch, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant , Wong Kar Wai and Gregg Araki. Lynch and Martin Scorsese were especially influenced by Anger’s novel use of pop music.
If you have any doubts about this stuff, two stunning trailers for these discs can be seen here and here. I’ve been watching these films on beat-up old VHS (and, yes, online) for years, but the restoration work on the new DVDs is incredible and they’re really worth seeing in their best form. Also, Anger provides some pretty bizarre commentaries, and several of the films have multiple soundtracks… so pick these up.