The horror…: “Dead of Night”
July 16, 2015 § Leave a comment
The Ealing Studios film Dead of Night is no more a horror movie than is an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which is not at all meant as a slight against either but more as an expression of the fact that the general aim of both the television series and this 1945 portmanteau picture seems to be to evoke that viscerally ticklish, goosefleshy sensation one gets when pleasantly terrified in bite-sized doses, like sitting around a campfire and being told a ghost story which would not be particularly terrifying if not for the fact that it is cold, dark, you guys are in the woods and that failing to be scared or at least to appear scared would be kind of a spoil-sport thing to do, or not do. It would be surprising if a viewer departs this film significantly more conscious of the possibility of malevolent forces being present all around them. For those who seek out horror cinema for jump scares and screams, there are few if any to be found here; but for those who prefer to be mildly unsettled but constantly so, then Dead of Night may very well hit the spot, at times.
Architect Walter Craig (played by Toby Jones lookalike Mervyn Johns) is summoned by acquaintance/client Eliot Foley to a house in the country where a small group of guests is already casually gathered, talking and sharing a drink. Within the first few minutes it is established that Walter is plagued by what seems to be a particularly nagging spell of déjà vu and is convinced that not only has he been in this exact location with this exact set of characters (or at the very least dreamt it), but that the night does not end well, least of all for the individual he believes he will end up murdering. Of course, his assertions are subjected to a range of responses from teasing curiosity by most, to overly huffy skepticism by the resident rationalist Dr Van Straaten whose explanation for everything seems to be that ‘it is not uncommon.’ In support of Walter, four of the characters take turns narrating their own experiences – firsthand and otherwise – with the vaguely paranormal. The doctor eventually succumbs to the mood and narrates his own experience of being boggled. What follows are five Twilight Zone-y episodes (culminating in a somewhat bravura freak-out climax), the most famous of which features Sir Michael Redgrave from The Lady Vanishes as a ventriloquist who finds himself caught between a fellow voice-thrower and the man’s puppet, Hugo, which may or may not have a consciousness of its own, and a malicious one at that. This particular episode’s renown is probably justified, but more so for what it promises to be, whether or not you feel that it delivers on this. There is a tantalising quality to these tales. They dare the viewer to wonder whether or not these ‘paranormal’ experiences will eventually prove to be some silly dream, an illusion of sorts or perhaps the result of a moment of madness. You could commend the filmmakers for their restraint and their investment in the viewers’ sense of imagination, or you could accuse them of falling shot, copping out, or displaying a poverty of creativity if you dare go that far.
Dead of Night, enjoyable as it is, raises the question of how effective horror and comedy can be in partnership. This is not to say that the film is a capital ‘C’ comedy, but that there is a distinctly light touch to it, as though the creators are making a conscious effort to acknowledge that these are nothing more than interesting sketches, pieces of whimsy that really have no bearing on reality, which can’t always be the case, at least with regards to some of the strange experiences the movie dramatises. Horror-comedy combinations have always seemed like a somewhat parasitic relationship in that laughter can result from broken tension, or perhaps in response to morbidly unbroken tension. But does the converse occur? Maybe so. Perhaps comedy stretched to certain extremes can end up exposing the horrors inherent in whatever subject is being made light of, but in the case of Dead of Night, neither is the case. The elements of dread and humour seem to exist despite each other and sometimes the result is that what is on screen is neither funny nor frightening, for example the golfing episode which is quite possibly the weakest, a title it shares with the second tale, that of the boy ghost. In all honesty, are anthology films ever intended to be particularly hearty single courses as opposed to tasting menus designed to entertain the tastebuds fleetingly?
If there is one terrifying aspect of the human experience that is repeatedly touched upon by all of the episodes in Dead of Night it would have to be isolation. Whether it is the newly married man tortured by the possibility that he is being driven mad by the mirror his wife purchased for him as an engagement gift, or the ventriloquist who can’t seem to convince anyone that his puppet is alive and kind of an ass, the fear of being completely alone in experiencing something is a constant theme throughout the film. We all know, on some level, that the commonalities all humans apparently share may actually be subject to more variation than expected. What hunger is to one may not be what hunger is to another, but at least both can agree than hunger isn’t exactly pleasant and that it tends to be eradicated by food. But the idea of seeing something that no one else can clearly see…or hear or feel or touch or taste or know, this can be truly unsettling, and Dead of Night captures this well. If only directors Cavalcanti, Hamer, Crichton and Dearden didn’t choose to erase the aftertaste of this by ultimately highlighting how much of a constructed, matinee romp the film actually is. On this note, it would be appropriate to mention this film’s status as a classic not only of the horror genre but of British cinema overall. Cited as something of a landmark and highly regarded by everyone from Time Out London to Martin Scorsese, Dead of Night is the kind of film one would hope to find exciting and instructive yet which, for reasons not exactly easy to articulate, feels a touch wanting and somewhat undeserving of its high praise. It seems that being alone in one’s indifference towards Dead of Night may be even more unsettling than the picture itself.
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The horror…: “Torso” aka “I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale” or “Bodies bear traces of carnal violence”
April 14, 2015 § Leave a comment
If there exists a club wherein sexually frustrated straight men curl up in the corners of rooms and angrily decry all those ‘bitches’ who won’t put out, “Torso” would be the initiation film shown to each new recruit. This is not to say that the male makers of this 1973 giallo film, director Sergio Martino being chief amongst them, would themselves be members of this club, but that woefully misguided male-centric sexual frustration is nonetheless the fuel on which this movie and its central killer run; that and the leering gaze which would go hand-in-hand with the rage of the entitled male who can’t get laid nearly as easily as he believes he should. Now, it would be a gross oversight to think that this sense of frustration makes “Torso” unique. The great majority of slasher films post-“Psycho” are similarly sexually-charged and many of the best and worst entries in the subgenre involve a man emptying his vast reserves of wrath on the female gender, whether consciously or not, only, in “Torso” the killer explicitly verbalises this sense of frustration and the kind of illogical misogyny that goes with it; the kind that finds a guy calling a girl a slut because she’s not interested in sleeping with him. This pre-climactic moment of reiterating one’s motivation – as though to fend off the creeping sense that zero logic therein resides – is deeply ridiculous from a simple narrative perspective and deeply cheap from a psychological standpoint, but it at the same time highlights the senselessness of his crimes by showing the disparity that exists between the nature of the childhood ‘trauma’ that haunts him into becoming a murderer and the nature of the butchering by which he is presumably attempting to restore some sort of cosmic gender justice. The fact that his campaign of terror is terminated by the reckless valour of another leering male – albeit a non-malicious leerer – crowns the picture with a very paternalistic cherry. This being said, the film seems to demonise the very sexualising, womanising gaze that it itself assumes by portraying most of its male characters as horny and lewd and with sex on the brain. The camera almost seems to say, ‘mmm, yeah, look at that sexy ass, see how it moves…I’m sure you creeps out there would love to tear those shorts right off.’ How hypocritical. Within the first ten minutes, several men, by way of their apparent desire to absolutely devour the women around them, are posited as potential suspects. The only men who don’t come across as a little dirty in the mind are the police and the professor whose lecture opens the film proper.
It’s Perugia in the early seventies; summer is in swing and the university is buzzing with students, which means that sex and drugs abound. Someone has begun killing people, mainly students, and the focus of the violence seems to be on the female victims, on their breasts and their eyes both of which tend to be mutilated. Initially it seems that the film will follow an Argento-esque procedural/investigative narrative mode, but “Torso” is far more lurid than that, quickly losing interest in law enforcement and instead becoming enamoured of a group of sexed-up young students and their adventures while dropping in on the gloved killer whenever a kill is around the corner, always forewarned by a slow (and genuinely creepy) keyboard motif. The opening two and a half minutes waste no time whatsoever in positioning the film firmly within the realm of tits and ass exploitation, only a little classier that its grungy American counterparts. To be honest, these luridly staged images of threesomes that may or may not be depictions of a porno shoot or a decadent sex party or both – while recalled in the film’s final sequence – have no real narrative place. Yes, some of the eventual victims are seen in this opening credits sequence, but the where the killer actually fits into all this is fairly unclear. Admittedly, this is not the kind of film that is interested in having its plausibility challenged or proved. One can simply assume – after the fact – that it takes place from the killer’s point of view and let it rest there. In any case this brand of giddy expressionistic abandon confirms, at the very least, that this film “Torso” will provide the visual swagger, the directorial peacocking by which Italian giallos and their direct predecessors stand apart from other forms of slasher flick.
Eli Roth, director of “Hostel” and other mid-2000s horror pictures and a name partner in what could be called the ‘Tarantino-Rodriguez-Roth grindhouse geek-out club’, considers “Torso” to be a masterpiece, not that his word means particularly much, though it means enough that someone should heed his recommendation, see the film and write about it. In favour of Roth’s ‘masterpiece’ assertion, towards the end of the film, is a fifteen/twenty minute stretch of near-peerless filmmaking that is bound to excite any filmgoer who appreciates assuredly visual storytelling. The sequence in which Jane, disabled by a sprained ankle, wakes from her sleep to find herself locked in a large country villa and surrounded by three dead friends is probably worthy of praise similar to the kind heaped upon the opening ten minutes of “There Will Be Blood” or the celebrated heist in “Rififi.” Admittedly, these two examples are far more powerful than anything Martino manages to achieve in “Torso”, but within the film itself, the sequence is a standout block of cinema, partly because of its technical execution but also because this type of movie often seems more invested in providing scares and blood splatter than it is in sustaining tension. On this note, the film’s first murder already hints at the fact that suspense is as important to this director as payoff. The patience, the timing and the way in which Martino’s framing in this sequence seems to withhold and conceal visual information, Suzy Kendall’s refreshing, breath-holding portrayal of the rare character in a horror film who actually has intelligent instincts, and the relative absence of the relatively bombastic score, all these add up to produce what is arguably the scariest sequence in a film that doesn’t ever feel quite as sordid or gruesome let alone as frightening as either title would suggest.
the odd employment 