"Do you read Sutter Cane?"
What is my favourite John Carpenter film, you don't ask? That's a tough one, as there are so many. I could maybe give my top 5, in no particular order: Halloween, The Fog, Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing, They Live, and In the Mouth of Madness. And that's excluding many worthy also-rans like Escape From New York, Assault on Precinct 13, Christine, Prince of Darkness,
etc... As you can see, picking a favourite is tough. But I will say
this - the film I have watched the most (disqualifying Halloween, which
I watch almost every fall as a tradition) is In the Mouth of Madness,
if that means anything. I think I've seen it about half a dozen times,
and it keeps beckoning me to return as the days grow shorter and the sun
turns tea-weak through slate clouds. Roughly once a year, sometimes
more, something calls me back to Hobb's end. Something old, dark, and
wet.
The final film in Carpenter's supposed "Doomsday
Trilogy" (The Thing being number one and Prince of Darkness being number
two), ITMOM revolves around hack horror writer Sutter Cane (Jurgen
Prochnow, who we don't see until about halfway through the film), whose
work bears no small resemblance to Stephen King. Cane's work is
massively popular, more popular than King or even the Bible, we are
told. Thing is, Cane has gone missing, and his latest work is having
very strange effect on readers (almost everyone), driving them to
madness, mayhem, and murder (hey, if you're invoking hack writers,
you've got to use that most hakneyed of hack devices, alliteration).
Enter John Trent (Sam "God Among Men" Neill), an insurance fraud
investigator, who has been contracted by Cane's publishing firm to find
the missing author. Trent is accompanied by Linda Styles, Cane's
editor, and they set out to find the fictional Hobb's End, some quaint
New England town that isn't supposed to exist except for in Cane's
fiction. Problem is, they find it; Hobb's End harbours some dark
secrets and is anything but Main St. USA.
Carpenter
does a masterful job of reigning in the various aspects of the story to
keep it from becoming too confusing - there are quite an array of ideas
on display here, and if you remove the slimy things which crawl out of
the black pit in the church (very nice tip of the Lovecraft's Old Ones),
and the couple of hatchet jobs (literally) that occur in town, you'd
still find yourself dealing with a very darkly comic existentialist
apocalypse horror.
As always with Carpenter, the
practical special effects are top notch, and the director's own
throbbing-synth score is fantastic. Prochnow and Neill are worthy foils
and Charlton Heston does a superb job as Cane's befuddled publisher.
And keep an eye out for many of the locations, as the film was shot in
and around Toronto (most notably, the RC Harris filtration plant,
doubling as an insane asylum here).
Carpenter had
played with Lovecraftian ideals before (most notably in The Thing), but
never so obviously as he does in ITMOM. While Cane can be seen as King
(or King-like), he is also operating very much within the Lovecraft
mode. And, though I can't remember the exact quotation, I'm pretty
certain Cane actually says "the Old Ones" at one point, or something
very similar. With that in mind, the structure of the film is
deceptively complex. Sure, the "story-within-a-story" thing has been
done before, but Carpenter masterfully weaves the fiction with the
reality (still fiction, as it is the film itself), and with a bit of
suspension of disbelief, the viewer is led to believe that what is
happening onscreen is happening in the real world, outside the cinema.
Of course, it is less believable now, as the film and its decor have
dated somewhat, but still, there is a complexity in the film that I have
not found in any other of Carpenter's oeuvre (though he mildly flirted
with similar concepts in his too brief, but highly enjoyable, Masters of
Horror entry Cigarette Burns). In this regard, ITMOM is certainly not to the same league as something like Synechdoche, New York, but they're playing the same game.
A
thought-provoking and immensely re-watchable (not to mention quotable)
film, I think that for me, ITMOM is, if not my favourite Carpenter film,
his most accomplished and prescient work. It marries the visceral
impact of The Thing and the arcane sci-religion of Prince of Darkness
and emerges as a powerful and whole work. I only watched it a week ago,
and something has me wanting to pop it in again right now, if only to
remind myself, as one character in the film wearily and portentously
utters seconds before eating the barrels of a shotgun, "reality is not
what it used to be".
Saturday, October 20, 2012
movies: at midnight i'll take your soul (1964)
Where to even begin with this one? Written, directed by and starring the inimitable Jose Mojica Marins, At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul
is the film that kickstarted the Coffin Joe franchise. And what a
franchise it is: roughly 15 films featuring Coffin Joe, with the
majority of them played by Marins. Earlier in the year I ordered the
handsome PAL box set which contains eight Joe films plus a documentary
entitled The Strange World of Jose Mojica Marins
(the NTSC set, which contained three films, is long OOP, but we have
them at the FBW). How can you not love it? Along with that, I picked
up the most recent Joe film, Embodiment of Evil, sadly as-yet-unreleased in NA. But enough about my acquisition fever, let's get on to the film itself.
AMITYS is such a strange trip. The plot concerns a small town's sadistic gravedigger who is obsessed with finding a woman to bear his seed and continue his bloodline. But the plot is neither here nor there - we get an evil witch, the walking dead, and a truly trippy vision of vengeful ghosts mixed with all kinds of supernatural strangeness. Coffin Joe is the highlight, of course, and anyone who defies him is dealt with brutal, graphic violence. There are a few scenes sprinkled throughout the film where Joe truly gets to lay bare his bleak world view - there is no life after death, there is no God, there is no Satan, there is only LIFE. And in this one life, Joe has chosen to live it exactly as he desires, indulging in all earthly pleasures. Wine, sex, violence, power; Joe swims in it all, fears no one or no thing, and laughs in the face of religious cowards. Joe is a non-believer, or rather, a believer in the here and now, whatever he can experience through sensual means. Quite simply, Joe is a hero for our times.
The sound mix on the film is incredibly muddy, although there are some near supernatural moments that sound like the actors are delivering their lines inside an echo chamber. Spooky stuff. The cinematography is lurid, but the black and white tones are starkly stunning. This is crude filmmaking, in the very best sense of the word - raw, unrefined, pure. Not much actually happens in the film - between the taverna, Joe's house, the graveyard, and the windswept woods that connects them all, locations and scenarios are limited, and we find ourselves watching a fairly repetitive film. None of it matters though, because Joe is so deliriously over the top and fun to watch that you forget the film's shortcomings.
Marins conveys a singular vision that is in no way diluted as the series rolls along - something that can be said of very, very few horror franchises. Coffin Joe may not be as recognizable a name in the horror canon as Jason or Freddy, but he has every right to be. You'll have a hard time finding a more consistently sadistic, evil character in horror cinema. I'd recommend any of the Coffin Joe films, but AMITYS holds a special place in my heart as it was introduction to the Coffin Joe and has left an indelible imprint on my mind. All hail Jose Mojica Marins!
AMITYS is such a strange trip. The plot concerns a small town's sadistic gravedigger who is obsessed with finding a woman to bear his seed and continue his bloodline. But the plot is neither here nor there - we get an evil witch, the walking dead, and a truly trippy vision of vengeful ghosts mixed with all kinds of supernatural strangeness. Coffin Joe is the highlight, of course, and anyone who defies him is dealt with brutal, graphic violence. There are a few scenes sprinkled throughout the film where Joe truly gets to lay bare his bleak world view - there is no life after death, there is no God, there is no Satan, there is only LIFE. And in this one life, Joe has chosen to live it exactly as he desires, indulging in all earthly pleasures. Wine, sex, violence, power; Joe swims in it all, fears no one or no thing, and laughs in the face of religious cowards. Joe is a non-believer, or rather, a believer in the here and now, whatever he can experience through sensual means. Quite simply, Joe is a hero for our times.
The sound mix on the film is incredibly muddy, although there are some near supernatural moments that sound like the actors are delivering their lines inside an echo chamber. Spooky stuff. The cinematography is lurid, but the black and white tones are starkly stunning. This is crude filmmaking, in the very best sense of the word - raw, unrefined, pure. Not much actually happens in the film - between the taverna, Joe's house, the graveyard, and the windswept woods that connects them all, locations and scenarios are limited, and we find ourselves watching a fairly repetitive film. None of it matters though, because Joe is so deliriously over the top and fun to watch that you forget the film's shortcomings.
Marins conveys a singular vision that is in no way diluted as the series rolls along - something that can be said of very, very few horror franchises. Coffin Joe may not be as recognizable a name in the horror canon as Jason or Freddy, but he has every right to be. You'll have a hard time finding a more consistently sadistic, evil character in horror cinema. I'd recommend any of the Coffin Joe films, but AMITYS holds a special place in my heart as it was introduction to the Coffin Joe and has left an indelible imprint on my mind. All hail Jose Mojica Marins!
movies: sole survivor (1983)
Not to be confused with the made for TV William Shatner vehicle, or some Kensington cobbler, this Sole Survivor is a subtle, eerie portrayal of guilt, depression and confusion, and the very real "horror" that those emotions suggest.
In keeping with the quiet, creeping dread of earlier films like Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls or Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz' Messiah of Evil, Sole Survivor tells the story of Denise (Anita Skinner), the - wait for it - sole survivor of a horrible plane crash, of which we are shown the grisly aftermath during the film's opening scene. The rest of the film plays out very much in Final Destination mode (albeit with much less gratuitousness and spectacle), with death sending his minions to collect what should have been rightfully his.
Helmed in a workmanlike fashion (but with a strange, austere artistry) by Thom Eberhardt (Night of the Comet), Sole Survivor is one of those forgotten jewels of the VHS era, only recently exhumed by Code Red. And for that, we can all be grateful, as what we have here is a compelling film that is better off in your DVD player than in a Blockbuster delete bin.
As Denise, Skinner is an incredibly sympathetic character, tough and fragile at the same time, trying so very hard to keep a smile on her face and her head held high, but we get the sense that somewhere just beneath the surface, cracks have formed and are beginning to take hold. What makes the outcome of the film all the more shocking and brilliant is that following her crash, she has found love, and things are beginning to look up. Oh dear, she couldn't be more wrong.
Skinner authors a very complex character in what could have been a much less touching role. Her nuanced performance makes the film and elevates it from a forgotten also-ran to a rediscovered gem. Making this all the more remarkable (and - if you'll play along with me - a touch creepy) is the fact that this is one of only two of Skinner's film credits. She had a role in the 1978 film Girlfriends, then poof, right off the map. A cursory internet search turned up nothing else as to what she did next, or her current whereabouts.
Sole Survivor offers up an icy, crawling horror that comes from the slow realization that the impossibly terrifying is not only possible, but probable, and that more often than not, there are no happy endings. I watched the film three days ago and it's stuck with me in the way the best horror does - it doesn't seek to shock, but to disturb, to burrow its way into your unconscious and lie there for a spell, reminding you every once in awhile that everything is not as peachy as it seems. Highly recommended.
In keeping with the quiet, creeping dread of earlier films like Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls or Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz' Messiah of Evil, Sole Survivor tells the story of Denise (Anita Skinner), the - wait for it - sole survivor of a horrible plane crash, of which we are shown the grisly aftermath during the film's opening scene. The rest of the film plays out very much in Final Destination mode (albeit with much less gratuitousness and spectacle), with death sending his minions to collect what should have been rightfully his.
Helmed in a workmanlike fashion (but with a strange, austere artistry) by Thom Eberhardt (Night of the Comet), Sole Survivor is one of those forgotten jewels of the VHS era, only recently exhumed by Code Red. And for that, we can all be grateful, as what we have here is a compelling film that is better off in your DVD player than in a Blockbuster delete bin.
As Denise, Skinner is an incredibly sympathetic character, tough and fragile at the same time, trying so very hard to keep a smile on her face and her head held high, but we get the sense that somewhere just beneath the surface, cracks have formed and are beginning to take hold. What makes the outcome of the film all the more shocking and brilliant is that following her crash, she has found love, and things are beginning to look up. Oh dear, she couldn't be more wrong.
Skinner authors a very complex character in what could have been a much less touching role. Her nuanced performance makes the film and elevates it from a forgotten also-ran to a rediscovered gem. Making this all the more remarkable (and - if you'll play along with me - a touch creepy) is the fact that this is one of only two of Skinner's film credits. She had a role in the 1978 film Girlfriends, then poof, right off the map. A cursory internet search turned up nothing else as to what she did next, or her current whereabouts.
Sole Survivor offers up an icy, crawling horror that comes from the slow realization that the impossibly terrifying is not only possible, but probable, and that more often than not, there are no happy endings. I watched the film three days ago and it's stuck with me in the way the best horror does - it doesn't seek to shock, but to disturb, to burrow its way into your unconscious and lie there for a spell, reminding you every once in awhile that everything is not as peachy as it seems. Highly recommended.
movies: dagon (2001)
I've had Stuart Gordon's Dagon
more or less near the top of my "to watch" pile for over a year now,
and with yesterday's torrential rain and general gloominess, I figured
it was time.
Gordon again turns to Lovecraft as his inspiration for this tale (actually a conflation of two Lovecraft stories, "Dagon" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"), in which a young couple is stranded in a small Spanish fishing village after a boating accident, though it soon becomes very apparent that all is not bueno in this seemingly sleepy town. When Barbara (the fetching Raquel Merono) goes missing soon after their arrival, Paul (Ezra Godden) tries to track her down only to be overcome by a horde of garish fishmen. Or rather men who are slowly transforming into piscine form, including all that transformation might entail (hobbled walking, garbled speech, and grotesque physical mutation). After a chance run in with Ezequiel (Francisco Rabal), Paul learns the terrible secret of the town, one in which the denizens relinquished their faith in God when fish stocks ran low and turned to an older, more powerful deity, Dagon, who blessed the town with untold oceanic bounty and gold and treasure, but left them cursed with their current plight, the offspring of all his untold trysts with human women being the current crop of fishmen.
First, the good: Gordon succeeds in creating a oppressive and chilly atmosphere where rain and darkness are the norm, and twisty, cobbled streets mirror Paul's own confusion. The makeup effects are stellar, and the briny disciples of Dagon look as alien as they do human, and embody both of these aspects in their speech and actions as well. The largely Spanish cast do excellent work as the lurching, slimy humanoids from the deep, minds filled with a singular, murderous intent. And the small Spanish village of Combarro that was the location of the shoot provides a delightfully damp and depressive tone. Looks like a nice place to visit, though you'd probably want to stay away during the rainy season.
There are some terrific practical effects, the most notable the scene in which Ezequiel is strung up and has his facial skin stripped from his body. Again, Gordon looked to the locals for makeup duties, and they come through in spades. Tentacular appendages and probing probosci simultaneously repulse and delight.
And now, the bad: I know I must sound like a broken record by this point, but the CGI employed in the film is worse than awful. Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus provided a better sense of reality than some of the VFX in Dagon. I think this is an unfortunate side-effect of the year in which the film was made. 2001 had filmmakers excited about the possibility of CGI, even though the technology wasn't quite there to back up the boundless visions of some of the brighter directors. The technology was in a dangerous nascent phase that allowed directors to employ it without it being fully developed, to the overall detriment of their final vision. Granted, it would probably have been prohibitively pricey for Gordon and crew to build a massive model of the enormous mer-god Dagon, but he could very easily have taken the route John Carpenter did in In the Mouth of Madness, his Lovecraftian puppet-beasties sprang from the screen and seemed much more menacing than some green-screened squid. Or even do what he had done earlier in the film and suggest (a la Val Lewton) the kraken-king through creative camera angle and actor responses. The poorly done CGI is all the more glaring when juxtaposed with the expertly done practical effects, and the whole thing becomes jarring and takes you out of the film. Regardless, barring the visual let down of the climax and a couple other ill-advised effects throughout, Gordon does a credible job overall capturing the mood of the Lovecraft original.
The casting of Godden as Paul also strikes me as a strange choice - I mean his type is right, but the actor himself can't seem to decide whether to play the role as camp or straight-up, and his wavering between the two leaves the performance wooden. There isn't a great chemistry (read: none at all) between he and Merono's Barbara, either. Really the only good thing about his wholly unlikeable persona was his Miskatonic sweatshirt, a sly wink by Gordon at observant Lovecraft fans.
Overall, Dagon is worth a look, for sure, but falls somewhat shy of the best cinematic Lovecraft adaptations. If you're looking for a Lovecraft-on-film primer, seek out the superior gallows humour of Re-Animator and the ultra-weird, candy-coloured From Beyond (both by Gordon as well), or even older fare such as The Shuttered Room. I'm not generally an advocate of remakes, but I'd love to see someone (even Gordon himself) take another stab at the Dagon story, either with the complete use of practical effects or prudent use of updated CGI technology.
Gordon again turns to Lovecraft as his inspiration for this tale (actually a conflation of two Lovecraft stories, "Dagon" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"), in which a young couple is stranded in a small Spanish fishing village after a boating accident, though it soon becomes very apparent that all is not bueno in this seemingly sleepy town. When Barbara (the fetching Raquel Merono) goes missing soon after their arrival, Paul (Ezra Godden) tries to track her down only to be overcome by a horde of garish fishmen. Or rather men who are slowly transforming into piscine form, including all that transformation might entail (hobbled walking, garbled speech, and grotesque physical mutation). After a chance run in with Ezequiel (Francisco Rabal), Paul learns the terrible secret of the town, one in which the denizens relinquished their faith in God when fish stocks ran low and turned to an older, more powerful deity, Dagon, who blessed the town with untold oceanic bounty and gold and treasure, but left them cursed with their current plight, the offspring of all his untold trysts with human women being the current crop of fishmen.
First, the good: Gordon succeeds in creating a oppressive and chilly atmosphere where rain and darkness are the norm, and twisty, cobbled streets mirror Paul's own confusion. The makeup effects are stellar, and the briny disciples of Dagon look as alien as they do human, and embody both of these aspects in their speech and actions as well. The largely Spanish cast do excellent work as the lurching, slimy humanoids from the deep, minds filled with a singular, murderous intent. And the small Spanish village of Combarro that was the location of the shoot provides a delightfully damp and depressive tone. Looks like a nice place to visit, though you'd probably want to stay away during the rainy season.
There are some terrific practical effects, the most notable the scene in which Ezequiel is strung up and has his facial skin stripped from his body. Again, Gordon looked to the locals for makeup duties, and they come through in spades. Tentacular appendages and probing probosci simultaneously repulse and delight.
And now, the bad: I know I must sound like a broken record by this point, but the CGI employed in the film is worse than awful. Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus provided a better sense of reality than some of the VFX in Dagon. I think this is an unfortunate side-effect of the year in which the film was made. 2001 had filmmakers excited about the possibility of CGI, even though the technology wasn't quite there to back up the boundless visions of some of the brighter directors. The technology was in a dangerous nascent phase that allowed directors to employ it without it being fully developed, to the overall detriment of their final vision. Granted, it would probably have been prohibitively pricey for Gordon and crew to build a massive model of the enormous mer-god Dagon, but he could very easily have taken the route John Carpenter did in In the Mouth of Madness, his Lovecraftian puppet-beasties sprang from the screen and seemed much more menacing than some green-screened squid. Or even do what he had done earlier in the film and suggest (a la Val Lewton) the kraken-king through creative camera angle and actor responses. The poorly done CGI is all the more glaring when juxtaposed with the expertly done practical effects, and the whole thing becomes jarring and takes you out of the film. Regardless, barring the visual let down of the climax and a couple other ill-advised effects throughout, Gordon does a credible job overall capturing the mood of the Lovecraft original.
The casting of Godden as Paul also strikes me as a strange choice - I mean his type is right, but the actor himself can't seem to decide whether to play the role as camp or straight-up, and his wavering between the two leaves the performance wooden. There isn't a great chemistry (read: none at all) between he and Merono's Barbara, either. Really the only good thing about his wholly unlikeable persona was his Miskatonic sweatshirt, a sly wink by Gordon at observant Lovecraft fans.
Overall, Dagon is worth a look, for sure, but falls somewhat shy of the best cinematic Lovecraft adaptations. If you're looking for a Lovecraft-on-film primer, seek out the superior gallows humour of Re-Animator and the ultra-weird, candy-coloured From Beyond (both by Gordon as well), or even older fare such as The Shuttered Room. I'm not generally an advocate of remakes, but I'd love to see someone (even Gordon himself) take another stab at the Dagon story, either with the complete use of practical effects or prudent use of updated CGI technology.
movies: asylum (1972)
Another day, another anthology. This time it's the intriguing Amicus joint Asylum
starring basically every British actor ever. No? Okay, how 'bout
this: Peter Cushing, Barry Morse, Herbert Lom, Britt Ekland (oh man),
Patrick Magee, Charlotte Rampling (oh MAN!), and a bunch of other people
you've probably never heard of but would recognize if you've watched
anything from Amicus/Hammer from the '60s/'70s or essentially anything
on the BBC from that time.
The setup for this one is a doozy - Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) sets off from London to take a new job at an asylum for the incurably insane, although the doctor who greets him (Magee) is not the doctor who summoned him there in the first place. No, Magee's Dr. Rutherford informs Martin that Dr. Byron has himself gone mad and is now confined upstairs with the other patients. And if Martin can figure out which of the patients is Dr. Byron, Rutherford will consider him fit for the position. And off we go...
Rutherford is greeted by the orderly, from whom he tries to extract clues as to the personage of Byron, but the orderly knows better - the game is afoot! From there, we are taken into each of the four patients' rooms, each with a different story of how they came to be there in the first place. And for once, the framing narrative is actually just as, if not more, compelling than the individual stories themselves. Not to say that they are inferior to other Amicus anthologies, but they do at times seem to drag.
The first story (Frozen Fear) concerns Bonnie (Barbara Perkins), who was conspiring with adulterer Walter (Richard Todd) to bump off his voodoo-obsessed wife Ruth (Sylvia Syms) so they could go on the make together. Well, as one would expect from this EC-styled segment, Ruth bites it, and is hacked to pieces by Walter. However, the body parts (presumably aided by some sort of voodoo powers) arise and destroy not only the unfaithful husband, but also gets to Bonnie, who, in an attempt to save herself, hatchets away at her face to remove the disembodied hand clinging to it. And we're brought back to the asylum, where Bonnie shows off her scars, rather delightedly, to Martin. Is this Byron? Martin is unsure, which takes us to the next patient...
Behind door number two, we find Bruno (Morse), who at first gaze appears to be fashioning the emperor's new clothes, complete with invisible needle and thread. What has caused this madness? We find out, in The Weird Tailor. Bruno is an old-school tailor who is behind on the rent, and his displeased landlord gives him until the end of the week to come up with the cash or find new digs. Bruno is at a loss: how to get the money? Ah, but lo and behold a very distinguished and somewhat mysterious gentleman enters the shop as if to answer Bruno's prayers. Mr. Smith (Cushing) commissions a suit made of a strange glowing fabric (Hypercolour FTW!), with very strict specifications that the suit only be worked on between the hours of midnight and 5 am. And the handsome sum of 200 pounds is promised to Bruno upon the suit's completion, more than the tailor needs to settle his rent. All week Bruno toils in the dead hours of the night and finally completes the suit. Upon delivery to Smith, he discovers that dark purpose for the suit that involves raising the dead. He also discovers that Smith has no money to pay him. Anyway, things turn out real crazy and a mannequin in the tailor's shop on which the suit is placed ends up coming to life and nearly destroys Bruno. At least it destroys his mind. Martin is still unconvinced that he has met Byron, and asks to see the next patient, the ravishing...
Barbara (Rampling). Barbara is the first to seem sane, at first. Then comes her story (Lucy Comes To Stay), which is weakest of the bunch, but makes up for it by featuring both her loveliness and the swingin' sexpot styles of Britt Ekland (naked Wicker Man wall-hump, anyone? Start at 1:15). This one isn't really worth recounting, but it involves a scheming older brother trying to get his hands on Barbara's inheritance by proving she's either insane, addicted to pills, or both. At the end of the segment, I didn't really care, I just wanted more Rampling/Ekland action. I think the producers knew that this story was the weakest of the four, and compensated by upping the pulchritude power. Martin is getting antsy at this point, thinking he's being strung along by Rutherford, and asks to see the final patient, in what is the shortest and most gonzo of the tales...
Which brings us to Dr. Byron's (Lom) room, for the segment Mannikins of Horror. Byron seems sane enough, but soon reveals he's out of his gourd by showing off his collection of miniature robots with very lifelike human faces. Each of these, he informs Martin, represents a different real life person, and is exact inside down to the very last detail. His latest creation is a tiny robot in his own likeness, which will soon be given life through "the power of concentration"(?). Thank you, says Martin, I've seen enough. He and the orderly make their way out of the ward, and Martin returns to Rutherford. Martin exclaims that he will not choose and does not appreciate being subjected to the whimsical games of the doctor. While they argue, we see cuts to Byron's room, where he lies in darkness, eyes focused on his little doppelganger, concentrating life into the little guy. Well, goddamn, it works! Through a series of improbable (given the robot's lack of great mobility) events, the robot enters Rutherford's office and stabs the doc in the back of the neck with a scalpel! This segment is just so bizarre it needs to be seen.
Directed by the venerable Roy Ward Baker (who helmed countless Hammer and Amicus films, and who sadly passed away just a week ago, aged 93), and written by Robert Bloch (Psycho), Asylum is a fun little romp. The actors all pull off their roles with great aplomb, and while some of the stories are weaker than others, the whole thing is kept interesting by the overarching narrative. Which, it must be said, is fairly easy to figure out (I guessed correctly at the conclusion five minutes into the film). If you're a fan of anthology horror, mysteries, Charlotte Rampling and/or Britt Ekland, check it out. I'm not going to say it's a "must see" because, frankly it's not; however, you won't feel like you've wasted your time when it's all said and done. Don't rabidly track it down, but if you see a lonely copy gathering dust at your local independent video store, give it a whirl. You won't be disappointed.
The setup for this one is a doozy - Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) sets off from London to take a new job at an asylum for the incurably insane, although the doctor who greets him (Magee) is not the doctor who summoned him there in the first place. No, Magee's Dr. Rutherford informs Martin that Dr. Byron has himself gone mad and is now confined upstairs with the other patients. And if Martin can figure out which of the patients is Dr. Byron, Rutherford will consider him fit for the position. And off we go...
Rutherford is greeted by the orderly, from whom he tries to extract clues as to the personage of Byron, but the orderly knows better - the game is afoot! From there, we are taken into each of the four patients' rooms, each with a different story of how they came to be there in the first place. And for once, the framing narrative is actually just as, if not more, compelling than the individual stories themselves. Not to say that they are inferior to other Amicus anthologies, but they do at times seem to drag.
The first story (Frozen Fear) concerns Bonnie (Barbara Perkins), who was conspiring with adulterer Walter (Richard Todd) to bump off his voodoo-obsessed wife Ruth (Sylvia Syms) so they could go on the make together. Well, as one would expect from this EC-styled segment, Ruth bites it, and is hacked to pieces by Walter. However, the body parts (presumably aided by some sort of voodoo powers) arise and destroy not only the unfaithful husband, but also gets to Bonnie, who, in an attempt to save herself, hatchets away at her face to remove the disembodied hand clinging to it. And we're brought back to the asylum, where Bonnie shows off her scars, rather delightedly, to Martin. Is this Byron? Martin is unsure, which takes us to the next patient...
Behind door number two, we find Bruno (Morse), who at first gaze appears to be fashioning the emperor's new clothes, complete with invisible needle and thread. What has caused this madness? We find out, in The Weird Tailor. Bruno is an old-school tailor who is behind on the rent, and his displeased landlord gives him until the end of the week to come up with the cash or find new digs. Bruno is at a loss: how to get the money? Ah, but lo and behold a very distinguished and somewhat mysterious gentleman enters the shop as if to answer Bruno's prayers. Mr. Smith (Cushing) commissions a suit made of a strange glowing fabric (Hypercolour FTW!), with very strict specifications that the suit only be worked on between the hours of midnight and 5 am. And the handsome sum of 200 pounds is promised to Bruno upon the suit's completion, more than the tailor needs to settle his rent. All week Bruno toils in the dead hours of the night and finally completes the suit. Upon delivery to Smith, he discovers that dark purpose for the suit that involves raising the dead. He also discovers that Smith has no money to pay him. Anyway, things turn out real crazy and a mannequin in the tailor's shop on which the suit is placed ends up coming to life and nearly destroys Bruno. At least it destroys his mind. Martin is still unconvinced that he has met Byron, and asks to see the next patient, the ravishing...
Barbara (Rampling). Barbara is the first to seem sane, at first. Then comes her story (Lucy Comes To Stay), which is weakest of the bunch, but makes up for it by featuring both her loveliness and the swingin' sexpot styles of Britt Ekland (naked Wicker Man wall-hump, anyone? Start at 1:15). This one isn't really worth recounting, but it involves a scheming older brother trying to get his hands on Barbara's inheritance by proving she's either insane, addicted to pills, or both. At the end of the segment, I didn't really care, I just wanted more Rampling/Ekland action. I think the producers knew that this story was the weakest of the four, and compensated by upping the pulchritude power. Martin is getting antsy at this point, thinking he's being strung along by Rutherford, and asks to see the final patient, in what is the shortest and most gonzo of the tales...
Which brings us to Dr. Byron's (Lom) room, for the segment Mannikins of Horror. Byron seems sane enough, but soon reveals he's out of his gourd by showing off his collection of miniature robots with very lifelike human faces. Each of these, he informs Martin, represents a different real life person, and is exact inside down to the very last detail. His latest creation is a tiny robot in his own likeness, which will soon be given life through "the power of concentration"(?). Thank you, says Martin, I've seen enough. He and the orderly make their way out of the ward, and Martin returns to Rutherford. Martin exclaims that he will not choose and does not appreciate being subjected to the whimsical games of the doctor. While they argue, we see cuts to Byron's room, where he lies in darkness, eyes focused on his little doppelganger, concentrating life into the little guy. Well, goddamn, it works! Through a series of improbable (given the robot's lack of great mobility) events, the robot enters Rutherford's office and stabs the doc in the back of the neck with a scalpel! This segment is just so bizarre it needs to be seen.
Directed by the venerable Roy Ward Baker (who helmed countless Hammer and Amicus films, and who sadly passed away just a week ago, aged 93), and written by Robert Bloch (Psycho), Asylum is a fun little romp. The actors all pull off their roles with great aplomb, and while some of the stories are weaker than others, the whole thing is kept interesting by the overarching narrative. Which, it must be said, is fairly easy to figure out (I guessed correctly at the conclusion five minutes into the film). If you're a fan of anthology horror, mysteries, Charlotte Rampling and/or Britt Ekland, check it out. I'm not going to say it's a "must see" because, frankly it's not; however, you won't feel like you've wasted your time when it's all said and done. Don't rabidly track it down, but if you see a lonely copy gathering dust at your local independent video store, give it a whirl. You won't be disappointed.
movies: dark night of the scarecrow (1981)
As made for TV movies go, 1981s Dark Night of the Scarecrow
is as good as it gets. Previously available only on a long OOP VHS,
VCI recently released a stunning looking DVD of this horror/revenge
minor classic.
Starring the venerable Charles Durning and Larry Drake (Darkman, L.A. Law, Dr. Giggles), Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a slow burn, quiet creeper, less gratuitousness and more skin-crawling tingles.
Bubba (Drake) is the village idiot, and after a girl is attacked, postmaster Otis (Durning) and his cronies make a rash decision to take vigilante justice on the presumed guilty Bubba, and after a tense hunt, they find Bubba hiding in the fields as a scarecrow. Helpless on the cross, Bubba is gunned down in cold blood by the rage-blinded men. Soon after, they discover that Bubba had actually saved the girl's life, and their decision to take a man's life was in vain. However, because of a grudge held toward Bubba, this action doesn't seem to weigh too heavily on any of the men's souls...until they start getting picked off by an unseen force, one by one.
The cast is better than it has any right to be, but Durning is especially sterling as his usual mealy-mouthed, greasy, conniving self. Drake is wonderfully sympathetic in a sort of Frankenstein's monster role.
The pacing of the film is terrific, and the sense of vindication in the viewer grows alongside the fear felt by the perpetrators of the heinous crime. There aren't any "cheap scares", and every fear that the antagonists hold is played out in agonizingly long detail. The last five minutes are truly something to behold, filled with a creeping dread that is so regrettably absent from most modern "horror". With thumbs up from Vincent Price, Ray Bradbury, Stuart Gordon, and me, Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a much appreciated resurrected gem that can be appreciated by the dyed-in-the-wool genre fan as well as the casual viewer. Watch it.
Starring the venerable Charles Durning and Larry Drake (Darkman, L.A. Law, Dr. Giggles), Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a slow burn, quiet creeper, less gratuitousness and more skin-crawling tingles.
Bubba (Drake) is the village idiot, and after a girl is attacked, postmaster Otis (Durning) and his cronies make a rash decision to take vigilante justice on the presumed guilty Bubba, and after a tense hunt, they find Bubba hiding in the fields as a scarecrow. Helpless on the cross, Bubba is gunned down in cold blood by the rage-blinded men. Soon after, they discover that Bubba had actually saved the girl's life, and their decision to take a man's life was in vain. However, because of a grudge held toward Bubba, this action doesn't seem to weigh too heavily on any of the men's souls...until they start getting picked off by an unseen force, one by one.
The cast is better than it has any right to be, but Durning is especially sterling as his usual mealy-mouthed, greasy, conniving self. Drake is wonderfully sympathetic in a sort of Frankenstein's monster role.
The pacing of the film is terrific, and the sense of vindication in the viewer grows alongside the fear felt by the perpetrators of the heinous crime. There aren't any "cheap scares", and every fear that the antagonists hold is played out in agonizingly long detail. The last five minutes are truly something to behold, filled with a creeping dread that is so regrettably absent from most modern "horror". With thumbs up from Vincent Price, Ray Bradbury, Stuart Gordon, and me, Dark Night of the Scarecrow is a much appreciated resurrected gem that can be appreciated by the dyed-in-the-wool genre fan as well as the casual viewer. Watch it.
movies: let sleeping corpses lie (1974)
"You're all the same, the lot of you, with your long hair and faggot
clothes. Drugs, sex, every sort of filth. And you hate the police,
don't ya?"
"You make it easy."
Aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, aka Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue, aka Don't Open the Window, Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead, aka Zombi 3, aka at least half a dozen other titles depending on the country in which it was released, Jorge Grau's zombie opus Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (the title on my Blue Underground DVD) has an international pedigree worthy of its plethora of monikers.
Directed by a Spaniard, starring a half Brit-half Italian (Ray Lovelock), a Spaniard (Cristina Galbo), an American (Arthur Kennedy), and a host of Spanish and Italian character actors in minor roles, and shot mainly in the English countryside around Manchester and Yorkshire, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a strange and wonderful horror film. Taking cues from Night of the Living Dead, the Manson murders, environmental fears and generational unrest, it is shocking to realize Grau's film presaged Romero's Dawn of the Dead by four years.
We begin with George (Lovelock) locking up his London curio shop and goin' up the country for a weekend of R&R. An ill-fated gas station encounter with spacey Edna (Galbo) leaves the two of them traveling together, not by choice, to Edna's sister's house. A couple wrong turns and an unfamiliar landscape soon see the pair among markers such as rolling hills, oaks and streams instead of signs for Leicester Square.
As they stop to ask for directions, Edna is attacked by a man with blood red eyes (this is, coincidentally enough, 28 years before the rage virus induced similarly scarlet orbs in 28 Days Later...) and a like thirst for the crimson stuff. George, who was over the hill asking a farmer for directions, shrugs off Edna's hysteria as a mixture of fatigue and the possibility of her exaggerating an encounter with a tramp. Later that night, Edna's sister's husband is killed by the same man who attacked Edna, and as the police get involved, there is an immediate friction between the inspector (Kennedy) and George.
The anti-authoritarian, long-haired, bearded and hiply-garbed George doesn't go over well in small town England a mere five years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, and nor does the inspector's hard-headedness and bigotry sit well with George. As bodies begin to pile up and the dead begin to rise (highlighted in one chilling scene at the...uh, the Manchester Morgue), the two poles of George and the inspector pull further apart and we see the clash between rational thought and blind belief taken to the extreme.
Having more in common with Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man than, say, Lucio Fulci's Zombie (though there's enough graphic grue on display to please the gorehounds), Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a smart, well-acted, moody (owing largely to the chilly, grey, misty English countryside) horror film in which the director's reach does not exceed his grasp. If you count yourself among the zombie faithful and have yet to see this one, move it to the to the top of your pile. Highly recommended.
"You make it easy."
Aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, aka Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue, aka Don't Open the Window, Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead, aka Zombi 3, aka at least half a dozen other titles depending on the country in which it was released, Jorge Grau's zombie opus Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (the title on my Blue Underground DVD) has an international pedigree worthy of its plethora of monikers.
Directed by a Spaniard, starring a half Brit-half Italian (Ray Lovelock), a Spaniard (Cristina Galbo), an American (Arthur Kennedy), and a host of Spanish and Italian character actors in minor roles, and shot mainly in the English countryside around Manchester and Yorkshire, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a strange and wonderful horror film. Taking cues from Night of the Living Dead, the Manson murders, environmental fears and generational unrest, it is shocking to realize Grau's film presaged Romero's Dawn of the Dead by four years.
We begin with George (Lovelock) locking up his London curio shop and goin' up the country for a weekend of R&R. An ill-fated gas station encounter with spacey Edna (Galbo) leaves the two of them traveling together, not by choice, to Edna's sister's house. A couple wrong turns and an unfamiliar landscape soon see the pair among markers such as rolling hills, oaks and streams instead of signs for Leicester Square.
As they stop to ask for directions, Edna is attacked by a man with blood red eyes (this is, coincidentally enough, 28 years before the rage virus induced similarly scarlet orbs in 28 Days Later...) and a like thirst for the crimson stuff. George, who was over the hill asking a farmer for directions, shrugs off Edna's hysteria as a mixture of fatigue and the possibility of her exaggerating an encounter with a tramp. Later that night, Edna's sister's husband is killed by the same man who attacked Edna, and as the police get involved, there is an immediate friction between the inspector (Kennedy) and George.
The anti-authoritarian, long-haired, bearded and hiply-garbed George doesn't go over well in small town England a mere five years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, and nor does the inspector's hard-headedness and bigotry sit well with George. As bodies begin to pile up and the dead begin to rise (highlighted in one chilling scene at the...uh, the Manchester Morgue), the two poles of George and the inspector pull further apart and we see the clash between rational thought and blind belief taken to the extreme.
Having more in common with Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man than, say, Lucio Fulci's Zombie (though there's enough graphic grue on display to please the gorehounds), Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a smart, well-acted, moody (owing largely to the chilly, grey, misty English countryside) horror film in which the director's reach does not exceed his grasp. If you count yourself among the zombie faithful and have yet to see this one, move it to the to the top of your pile. Highly recommended.
movies: the tomb of ligeia (1964)
The very last of Roger Corman's uncannily successful Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, The Tomb of Ligeia
is yet another winner. Starring Vincent Price (I'd seriously watch the
man read the phone book) as Verdon Fell and Elizabeth Shepherd as The Lady Rowena Trevanion, Ligeia breaks
somewhat with Corman/Poe tradition as there are many outdoor settings
and many scenes shot in daylight. Still, Corman's trademark gothic
chill pervades the film, and several of the more unsettling scenes are
clothed not in satin drapery but bright sunshine.
The story begins with Fell burying his newlydead wife, the Ligeia of the title, although there is some doubt as to whether or not she is actually dead. A priest implores Fell that he cannot bury his wife in consecrated ground as she died unnaturally. Price chews up this scene, spewing forth dark prophecies about his wife's will being too strong for her to die, and comes across somewhat like the devil himself. A black cat jumps on the coffin and Ligeia's eyes flutter open! Fell informs the priest and the pallbearers that it is simply an effect of rigor mortis.
Later, on a fox hunt, Rowena stumbles across the crumbling abbey where Ligeia is interred, but is thrown from her mount when the black cat returns and spooks the horse. Fell appears from behind a wall and startles Rowena to fainting. From this point on, Rowena is transfixed by Fell's wounded widower, and becomes intent on marrying him. However, that seemingly vengeful cat just won't go away, and interrupts any attempt at intimacy between Fell and Rowena. Is the cat actually the reincarnated soul of Ligeia, who will not rest while any potential suitors for her husband live? Or is the answer more grounded in a shadowy reality, where everything is not as it seems, and those who project a noble countenance actually carry a dark purpose? Such is the beauty of these Corman/Poe adaptations: likely owing to the original literary source, things are rarely as simple as they seem, and there almost always (as there are here) undercurrents of madness, obsession and brooding, buried sexuality.
As always, Price looks likes he's having an absolute blast with the character of Verdon Fell, and when the truth of his wife's "death" comes out at the end, the mixed sympathies we feel for him throughout the film come crashing down like the mossy stones of the the abbey. While I would have a hard time picking a Price/Poe favourite, this one stands up with the best of them. Ligeia is a fun, occasionally spooky descent into necrophiliac lust and the supernatural. Worth it.
The story begins with Fell burying his newlydead wife, the Ligeia of the title, although there is some doubt as to whether or not she is actually dead. A priest implores Fell that he cannot bury his wife in consecrated ground as she died unnaturally. Price chews up this scene, spewing forth dark prophecies about his wife's will being too strong for her to die, and comes across somewhat like the devil himself. A black cat jumps on the coffin and Ligeia's eyes flutter open! Fell informs the priest and the pallbearers that it is simply an effect of rigor mortis.
Later, on a fox hunt, Rowena stumbles across the crumbling abbey where Ligeia is interred, but is thrown from her mount when the black cat returns and spooks the horse. Fell appears from behind a wall and startles Rowena to fainting. From this point on, Rowena is transfixed by Fell's wounded widower, and becomes intent on marrying him. However, that seemingly vengeful cat just won't go away, and interrupts any attempt at intimacy between Fell and Rowena. Is the cat actually the reincarnated soul of Ligeia, who will not rest while any potential suitors for her husband live? Or is the answer more grounded in a shadowy reality, where everything is not as it seems, and those who project a noble countenance actually carry a dark purpose? Such is the beauty of these Corman/Poe adaptations: likely owing to the original literary source, things are rarely as simple as they seem, and there almost always (as there are here) undercurrents of madness, obsession and brooding, buried sexuality.
As always, Price looks likes he's having an absolute blast with the character of Verdon Fell, and when the truth of his wife's "death" comes out at the end, the mixed sympathies we feel for him throughout the film come crashing down like the mossy stones of the the abbey. While I would have a hard time picking a Price/Poe favourite, this one stands up with the best of them. Ligeia is a fun, occasionally spooky descent into necrophiliac lust and the supernatural. Worth it.
movies: the legend of hell house (1973)
Richard Matheson's countless film and TV writing credits are often overshadowed by his most famous work, I Am Legend, from which three (to date) official adaptations have been made, with many other "last man on earth" films drawing direct inspiration from his original novel. But attention must be paid to the fantastic work he has contributed elsewhere in the cinematic realm, the absolute peak of which, for me, is 1973's The Legend of Hell House.
Directed by John Hough (who would later go on to direct Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, the "Witch Mountain" films, and the supremely creepy "children's" movie, The Watcher in the Woods), The Legend of Hell House begins with a group of four characters - mental medium Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), physicist Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), his wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), and physical medium Benjamin Fischer (Roddy McDowall) - converging on The Belasco House, aka Hell House, the "Mount Everest of haunted houses" we are informed by Lionel. They have been charged by the wealthy Mr. Deutsch with shutting the door once and for all on the haunting. Trouble is, this very same thing had been attempted before, 20 years earlier, and all involved were either killed or crippled and made insane. All but one, that is, McDowall's Benjamin Fischer, returning to the home not for any sense of closure, but simply to shut himself off from any psychic phenomena to which he may be susceptible, wait out the week, collect a paycheck, and bid goodbye to the house forever. The young Miss Tanner and Dr. Barrett have other plans though - Tanner wishes to commune with the spirits in the home through her psychic powers, and Barrett wishes to zap the home of its energies with his newfangled technology. Neither of them see their goals through to the end.
The film plays out in a tastefully restrained fashion a la The Haunting, and some opulent, creaky, cobwebby sets inside the home (as well as the home itself) provide much appreciated eye candy. Director Hough conjures a slow burn build to a simultaneously preposterous and chilling finale. Along the way there are ghostly whispered threats and pleas, a possessed cat, a ghost-rape/possession, an eerie seance, overtones of sexual repression/buried desire, and an uncovered rotting corpse. As the days go by, the screws are tightened, and minds begin to break.
Bizarre and often grotesque camera work from Alan Hume (who lensed From Beyond the Grave, among many others) is filled with exaggerated angles, jarring depths of field, and tight compositions, and augments the claustrophobic, disorienting atmosphere of uncertainty and dread. Executive produced by James H. Nicholson (of American International), The Legend of Hell House has a similar feeling to the films that came out of AIP's stable; brooding, gothic, ghostly, horrific more in their implication than what they actually showed, and with a wonderfully downbeat ending. You could do far worse than to pop in this classic ghost house thriller on a chilly autumn day like this.
Directed by John Hough (who would later go on to direct Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, the "Witch Mountain" films, and the supremely creepy "children's" movie, The Watcher in the Woods), The Legend of Hell House begins with a group of four characters - mental medium Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), physicist Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), his wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), and physical medium Benjamin Fischer (Roddy McDowall) - converging on The Belasco House, aka Hell House, the "Mount Everest of haunted houses" we are informed by Lionel. They have been charged by the wealthy Mr. Deutsch with shutting the door once and for all on the haunting. Trouble is, this very same thing had been attempted before, 20 years earlier, and all involved were either killed or crippled and made insane. All but one, that is, McDowall's Benjamin Fischer, returning to the home not for any sense of closure, but simply to shut himself off from any psychic phenomena to which he may be susceptible, wait out the week, collect a paycheck, and bid goodbye to the house forever. The young Miss Tanner and Dr. Barrett have other plans though - Tanner wishes to commune with the spirits in the home through her psychic powers, and Barrett wishes to zap the home of its energies with his newfangled technology. Neither of them see their goals through to the end.
The film plays out in a tastefully restrained fashion a la The Haunting, and some opulent, creaky, cobwebby sets inside the home (as well as the home itself) provide much appreciated eye candy. Director Hough conjures a slow burn build to a simultaneously preposterous and chilling finale. Along the way there are ghostly whispered threats and pleas, a possessed cat, a ghost-rape/possession, an eerie seance, overtones of sexual repression/buried desire, and an uncovered rotting corpse. As the days go by, the screws are tightened, and minds begin to break.
Bizarre and often grotesque camera work from Alan Hume (who lensed From Beyond the Grave, among many others) is filled with exaggerated angles, jarring depths of field, and tight compositions, and augments the claustrophobic, disorienting atmosphere of uncertainty and dread. Executive produced by James H. Nicholson (of American International), The Legend of Hell House has a similar feeling to the films that came out of AIP's stable; brooding, gothic, ghostly, horrific more in their implication than what they actually showed, and with a wonderfully downbeat ending. You could do far worse than to pop in this classic ghost house thriller on a chilly autumn day like this.
movies: the stone tape (1972)
Originally broadcast on the BBC as a Christmas ghost story in 1972, The Stone Tape
has gained a significant cult following that belies its humble
beginnings. It's greatest pedigree is screenwriter Nigel Kneale, best
known for his creation of Bernard Quatermass, the character around whom
the Quatermass series and the resulting films are based. The Stone Tape
treads in a similar track as the more renowned Quatermass, but while
the latter deals mainly with science (and science fiction), the former,
and the subject of today's review, delves into superstition and the
supernatural, and delivers a nice ghostly chill that the earlier series
lacks.
We begin The Stone Tape outside a secluded mansion which has been purchased as a research facility by Ryan Industries. The purpose of the research is for the team to come up with a new recording medium, something beyond tape. As research team leader Peter Brock (Michael Bryant - no, not that one...) says, "Give me Wagner's Ring Cycle on the head of a ball bearing with instant playback". Somewhat quaint, by today's standards; or perhaps prescient? As the team begins setting up equipment in one particularly cavernous room, Jill (Jane Asher, ex-Ms. Paul McCartney) hears echoing footfalls and then a woman scream. As others hear the woman at varying intervals, it is determined that the room is haunted. After attempts are made to expunge the ghost, Brock, with some insistent urging from Jill, realizes that there is not a physical roaming spectre per se, but that the spirit in the room is recorded in the very walls themselves, a "stone tape". What at first seems like a major breakthrough in the team's research (i.e. this is the recording medium that has eluded them thus far), soon becomes something far more sinister as Jill becomes obsessed with and haunted by the spirit and her history, and makes a chilling discovery that the ghost to which they have been witness is simply on the surface, or the first layer of the "tape", and that there are far older things recorded or contained on sub-layers of the stone, back, back in history, back perhaps to when the stone itself was formed. Old, dark, unspeakably malevolent things.
The whole cast here is wonderful, with especially exceptional turns by Asher, Bryant, and Iain Cuthbertson (see also the similarly spooky Children of the Stones). Bryant's team leader is headstrong and vain, and is nearly seized by madness while trying to remove the ghost from the room (in a terrifically psychedelic and possibly seizure-inducing scene) before refusing to acknowledge that what he had clung to so tightly was even a possibility after the experiment has failed. Asher is the typical gothic heroine, fragile and tough in the same package, and one whose pleas and warnings are mostly ignored by the rest of the team, save Cuthbertson's Roy Collins.
The sound and visual effects are of course dated but work well in reinforcing the theme. Analogue sound and video effects are nowhere near as precise as modern CGI, but the amorphous green shapes and eerie glowing lights the VFX crew conjures up are a perfect match for old, weird things that cannot be described, let alone shown visually. The effects have almost add to the creepiness, because instead of striving for realism and falling hard, they simply embrace the sort of abstract concepts in the play and work marvelously to that end. Some might see the effects as cheesy or dated, but they worked well given the concepts and subject matter of the play.
The final 5 minutes of The Stone Tape are truly chilling and a semi-ambiguous ending leaves the viewer contemplating the terrible consequences and possible outcomes of Jill and Peter's actions for days.
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is The Stone Tape:
We begin The Stone Tape outside a secluded mansion which has been purchased as a research facility by Ryan Industries. The purpose of the research is for the team to come up with a new recording medium, something beyond tape. As research team leader Peter Brock (Michael Bryant - no, not that one...) says, "Give me Wagner's Ring Cycle on the head of a ball bearing with instant playback". Somewhat quaint, by today's standards; or perhaps prescient? As the team begins setting up equipment in one particularly cavernous room, Jill (Jane Asher, ex-Ms. Paul McCartney) hears echoing footfalls and then a woman scream. As others hear the woman at varying intervals, it is determined that the room is haunted. After attempts are made to expunge the ghost, Brock, with some insistent urging from Jill, realizes that there is not a physical roaming spectre per se, but that the spirit in the room is recorded in the very walls themselves, a "stone tape". What at first seems like a major breakthrough in the team's research (i.e. this is the recording medium that has eluded them thus far), soon becomes something far more sinister as Jill becomes obsessed with and haunted by the spirit and her history, and makes a chilling discovery that the ghost to which they have been witness is simply on the surface, or the first layer of the "tape", and that there are far older things recorded or contained on sub-layers of the stone, back, back in history, back perhaps to when the stone itself was formed. Old, dark, unspeakably malevolent things.
The whole cast here is wonderful, with especially exceptional turns by Asher, Bryant, and Iain Cuthbertson (see also the similarly spooky Children of the Stones). Bryant's team leader is headstrong and vain, and is nearly seized by madness while trying to remove the ghost from the room (in a terrifically psychedelic and possibly seizure-inducing scene) before refusing to acknowledge that what he had clung to so tightly was even a possibility after the experiment has failed. Asher is the typical gothic heroine, fragile and tough in the same package, and one whose pleas and warnings are mostly ignored by the rest of the team, save Cuthbertson's Roy Collins.
The sound and visual effects are of course dated but work well in reinforcing the theme. Analogue sound and video effects are nowhere near as precise as modern CGI, but the amorphous green shapes and eerie glowing lights the VFX crew conjures up are a perfect match for old, weird things that cannot be described, let alone shown visually. The effects have almost add to the creepiness, because instead of striving for realism and falling hard, they simply embrace the sort of abstract concepts in the play and work marvelously to that end. Some might see the effects as cheesy or dated, but they worked well given the concepts and subject matter of the play.
The final 5 minutes of The Stone Tape are truly chilling and a semi-ambiguous ending leaves the viewer contemplating the terrible consequences and possible outcomes of Jill and Peter's actions for days.
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is The Stone Tape:
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