I have now added to my ever-growing Blu-ray and DVD collection David Lynch’s 2001 protean production Mulholland Dr and it has been considering the nature of logical order in film and fiction.

Fiction generally behaves in accordance with its own internal and decipherable narrative logic that allows the reader or audience to suspend disbelief and accept the characters and events are credible representations of some reality. This spans the gauntlet from grounded ‘realistic’ dramas such as The Remains of the Day to fantastic and physics defying spectacles like Avengers: Endgame. The cause-and-effect logic of the story dictates the progression of the characters actions, emotions, and growth with a clear and understanding relationship between event and outcome.

Mulholland Dr abandons all sense of narrative logic in favor of dream logic. The audience is denied a firm, clear, foundation of logical rules by which the film operates leaving them swept by the currents of imagery, raw emotion, and sound into a whirlpool that each individual is solely responsible for interpreting. The film is most often compared directly to a dream where major events and sequences have only the barest of connecting narratives flowing freely from one to another with a logic that feels present but is forever just beyond discovery.

I cannot tell you what Mulholland Dr is about. I cannot give to you a definitive interpretation on what maybe reality and what may be dream if such a distinction even exists within its narrative. It is like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but with is cold clinical style replaced by one that is unsettling, disturbing, and even horrifying.

I have seen this film called the best horror movie of the early 2000s and it is hard to argue with that assessment. Horror works best when not only the characters but the audience is forced to face threatening events that defy understanding. The dead do not rise and feed upon the living, magical beasts do not prowl the night, and science has not produced monstrosities savaging the countryside. But eventually in horror films and fiction the new rules are discovered, the vampire must rest on earth from its grave, the uncompleted tasked finished so the spirits my rest, the nature of the beast is understood and through that defeated returning the world to an order that again rational. Mulholland Drnever resolves its internal logical, the world unbalanced is never again rational, and the unsettled horror of a cold uncaring universe that beyond understanding remains, haunting the audience far beyond the film’s 146-minute running time.

I do not pretend to understand Lynch’s vision but I do feel it and that I think that was his intent all along.

The 80s were a good time and a bad time for horror films. The monumental success in the late 70s of Halloween inspired innumerable low budget film makers and studios that a cheap slasher was the sure path to box office riches producing a crop of under-funded knockoffs that possessed none of the style of the films they were following. 1980 brought the rip-off production Prom Nightwhich had the benefit of starring Jamie Lee Curtis who had starred Halloween but other than that had precious little to offer.

Six years later a wholly different production under the title The Haunting of Hamilton High retooled and retitled itself in Hello Mary Lou; Prom Night 2 a story without any connection to the first Prom Night save that take place in the same high school. Both films are Canadian productions that attempt to present their locals as standard Americana but I could swear that in Prom Night 2 when money is flashed it has a clearly Canadian appearance.

The plot of Prom Night 2 is fairly straight forward, Mary Lou Maloney, an enthusiastic sinner of a high school girl, is killed in an accident on Prom night 1957 before she can be crown as prom queen and 30 years later her vengeful and still sinful spirit descends on the high school thirsting for sex, violence, and her crown.

This is film is a mess.

It rips off so many themes and shots and concepts from other movies that there is scarcely anything in it which it can claim as its own. Trying to merge ideas from The Exorcist, Carrie, and Nightmare on Elm Street proved to be a fool’s errand and aside from Lisa Schrage as Mary Lou and perhaps Michael Ironside there is little to praise in the acting presented to us. The lines are delivered without conviction or credibility while being shot in a flat over-lit video style. There is nothing to recommend this film and its gratuitous use of female nudity reveals not only the actresses but the production desperate attempt to drawn in an audience as low class as the production itself.

Hello Mary Lou; Prom Night 2 is currently streaming on Shudder.

With Saint Patrick’s Day fast approaching I was in the mood for some Irish themed horror and something a little more authentic that any film of the Leprechaun franchise. Sunday night I treated myself the 2017’s Irish Gothic horror The Lodgers.

Set in the Irish countryside following World War I the story centers on fraternal twins Rachel and Edward who live in an isolated and decaying manor trapped by a family superstition or curse that compels them to always be in their beds by midnight, never admit a stranger to the home, and never abandon one another. The film opens on their 18th birthday and an unrevealed expectation that is linked to their coming of age. Into this creepy atmospheric situation comes Sean recently returned home from the war facing the dual challenges of having lost a leg and being seen as a traitor for her service to the hated English. Rachel’s blossoming sexual desires, Edward’s terror of leaving the house day or night, the family’s non-existent finances, and Sean’s attraction to Rachel combine for an explosive mixture that threatens the twins with the exposure of their actual natures.

There are many styles of horror films, rampaging monsters, murderous masked killers, and the slow burn mood piece of which The Lodgers falls neatly into. The film is not one with an exaggerated body county and the effects are there to create unsettling imagery rather than memorable kills. It is a film that unwinds with its characters and as each secret is pulled unwillingly from them. Directed by Brian O’Malley The Lodgers takes it’s time in revealing its truths trusting that the audience will be intrigued by the mystery and the dreamlike haunting imagery beautifully photographed by cinematographer Richard Kendrick. The performances by Charlotte Vega and Bill Milner are suitably internalized, matching the gothic nature of the story’s themes of isolation, both physical and social, and repressed nature of the characters.

With a brief running time of 92 minutes The Lodgers does not overstay its welcome nor needlessly meander but rather tells its tale with clean plotting that doesn’t disrupt its sedate pacing. While some reviewers have complained that the films has few ‘scares’ I enjoy a film that expects moods to carry more than a suddenly startling image or sound.

The Lodgers is not for everyone. If your tastes in horror expects more excitement than slow tension it is likely not to your taste but for people who enjoyed Robert Wise’s The Haunting this may be more to their liking.

Update: The Lodger is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Streaming Review: House (1977)

On paper the plot of Japan’s 1977’s unique horror film House is deceptively simple. Seven teenage girls spending their summer vacation in a remote and isolated house face deadly supernatural peril. Variations on this set-up have prompted everything from competent well crafted horror film to direct to video exploitive fare but nothing is like Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House.

Most movies take extraordinary care to never spoil the illusion of reality they are trying to achieve, to never remind the audiences that there are in fact watching a film but written by Chiho Katura and directed by Obayashi House, leaning heavily into the artifice of filmmaking, never lets you forget that this is fact entirely artificial. From obvious stages, painted backdrops for landscapes, animated sequences, to characters interacting with a diegetic backstory flashback House revels in shattering the facade between the art and the observer.

The artificiality is further enhanced by the names for the seven teenage girls with each only referred by a nickname that typifies that girl’s defining characteristic, Gorgeous for the beautiful daughter of a film composer, Prof for the girl drawn to intellectual talents, Kung Fu for the martial artist and athlete, Fantasy for the dreamer and so on. The characters are deliberately

Kumiko Oba (“Fantasy”), Masayo Miyako (“Sweet”), Eriko Tanaka (“Melody”), Kimiko Ikegami (“Gorgeous”), Ai Matsubara (“Prof”), Mieko Sato (“Mac”), Miki Jinbo (“Kung Fu”); seated: Yoko Minamida (“Gorgeous’s Aunt”)

drawn in the most simplistic terms existing as archetypes versus fully realized and motivated people but it is clearly a deliberate choice by the writer and director rather than a deficit of talent on either of their parts.

The resulting film is unique, frenetic, and hallucinatory, as though the filmmakers were simultaneously riding a sugar-high while tripping on LSD.

House is a difficult film to either recommend or to dissuade anyone from watching as it is so unique and unlike any other horror movie that everyone person watching it is liable to have a reaction as unique as the film itself. It is the truest melding of ‘art house’ with the horror genre I have ever experienced making such films a Midsommar or The Wicker Man appear as sedate and conventional as 70s prime time dramas. If you have a taste for experimental film and the description ‘Lynchian’ is familiar and not a turn-off then Obayashi’s House may be just right for you.

House is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

One of my recent podcast discoveries, Junk Food Cinema, recently dedicated an episode to the 1983 slasher movie Sleepaway Camp. Near the start of the episode the hosts recommended if you had not seen the movie to watch it before diving into the podcast and since I knew it was currently streaming on Shudder that is exactly what I did. It should be noted that the hosts do not consider Sleepaway Camp  a good movie, in fact they were covering it per a patron request, but they praised it final 10 seconds.

Sleepaway Camp is very much like Friday the 13th in that people at a summer camp are being killed by an unknown person and part of the film’s twist is who is the killer. Much like that original Friday film the killer’s motivation is tied to events years earlier seen at that start of the film. Unlike Friday every single person killed is a horrible human being which in many ways places audience sympathies, if there are any, smack on the killer’s side.

Save for the final shot the film has no originality in the cinematography with flat lighting, uninspired composition, and no real use of depth of field. The writing is terrible with some of the least lifelike dialog that has ever assaulted my ears and with character actions and reactions utterly disconnected from any semblance of actual human behavior. None of the performers have the skill to make the lines sound even close to credible.

In an unusual twist for this sort of production the women and girls are not filmed in a fetishistic manner but there is certainly the impression that men and boys are.

I have heard that this film has become a cult staple among the gay horror film community and on one level I can understand it. The killer’s eventual motivation is revealed to be in part revenge for gender identity bullying and that sort of revenge fantasy could be enjoyable in a power claim manner. However, the revelation of the killer and their motivation walks the familiar ground of transphobia.

Sleepaway Camp is not a film I can recommend other than as an exercise in understanding aspects of cult cinema. If you decide to watch it you may want to have twitter or a book handy to read while you wait for the next kill to take place.

Last night was to be my first horror film of 2021 with The Siren which promised to be a moody small character pieces set on a mountain lake and the siren that inhabits drowning her victims. The film shattered by ability to suspend disbelief and I abandoned it, to explain what happen will be very spoilery for about the first 30 minutes of this short 80-minute movie.

The protagonist is a Tom a mute but not deaf church going man who has rented the cabin on the lake. We get in his backstory that a swimming accident nearly killed him and rendered him mute and he doesn’t go swimming any more. Ok, that’s a reasonable set up and a character that is different from the normal cookie cutter approach to scriptwriting. He meets Al a friendly neighbor but who knows of the siren and is hunting her for drowning his husband Michal.

In the middle of the night Tom is awaken by sounds of water splashing and when he goes to the dock, which is connected to his bedroom, he meets Nina, swimming and fully clothed in the pitch blackness of the mountain night. She explains that she thought the house was empty and that she often swims to it from the far side of the lake but not a word not a hint as to why she does this fully freakin’ clothed. Nor does Tom has the slightest curiosity about the matter either.

The next day after buying oars for the rowboat Tom rows onto the lake and against encounters our Siren Nina, who, because she has been enamored with Tom, has stolen fresh street clothes to swim in and is now wearing earrings from her stash of jewelry and watches presumably from previous victims. Again, Tom displays not the slightest hint of bewilderment that this attractive young woman swims fully clothed and wearing jewelry.

Nina convinces Tom to come into the water and to remove the life jacket he was wearing, which he does. His trauma seems utterly negated by a pretty face. At first things are pleasant but there is tension because we know she is driven by a lust to kill and sure enough with both hands she pushed him under the water and holds him there with her great strength that was demonstrated earlier with her crushing a stone in one hand. Tom struggles and fights but he can’t break free or get to the surface. At this point I thought perhaps he wasn’t a protagonist and perhaps it was Al who would take over the story much like Psycho. But then Nina because she is so enamored with Tom relents and pulls him up repeating over and over, ‘I’m Sorry.’

Cut to the next scene Tom and Nina on the rocky shore, sitting together. I stopped the stream right then and there. Tom’s inability to notice that a woman swimming in her street clothes is something odd that can barely be ignored but to sit beside her in a friendly after she has held you for a prolonged period under the water and you have a traumatic past with drowning is simply beyond the boundaries of credibility.

The Siren is a well photographed, slowed paced horror film that had the characters acted even the slightest bit more like actual people might have been very engaging. I love a good slow burn horror that isn’t about ‘kills’ but I do expect the characters to behave in a manner that is somewhat consistent with humanity in general.

The Sire is currently streaming on Shudder and I do not recommend.

Season’s Review: Rare Exports

There are loads of traditional Christmas films that people watch each year, It’s A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, The Muppet Christmas Carol and Die Hard to name just a few but in our household one of the movies on the season’s playlist is the charming Finnish Horror/Comedy Rare Exports.

Like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Rare Exports is a Christmas film from which Christmas cannot be removed without destroying the story and yet the film in absolutely not about the story or moral of Christmas in either the religious or secular senses. There is no learning to love your fellow man, no hearts grow three sizes larger, no understanding of the value of your life and all that it touches but rather to the simple tale of a young boy who discovers that origins of the winter holiday is much darker, much more fearsome, than the fairytale he had been told and that the Americans digging in the mountain are about to awaken ancient spirits that will descend upon the naughty.

Set in an isolated Sami border town in the frozen reaches of Lapland Rare Exports follows Pietari a young boy in the days before Christmas. Explosive excavations atop the nearby mountain of Korvatunturi has upset the local ecology and the reindeer herd that the Sami rely upon for their income is devastated threatening everyone’s livelihood including Pietari’s father Rauno. When Rauno’s illegal wolf pit captures something else the films turns from family dram to horror and the discovery of something monstrous in Mt. Joulupukki threatens more than just income.

Rare Exports is that exceptional film able to blend comedy, drama, and horror seamlessly into one story. Some have found the film to have jarring tonal shifts but that is not my experience. Each development of the story leads organically into the next as the characters are drawn into more dire and desperate actions trying to save their town and themselves. With gorgeous cinematography by Mika Orasmaa the film looks stunning and the now dated CGI effects match the tone and style of the photography perfectly. Director Jalmari Helander manages to make his budget of 1.8 million Euros look like a much more substantial production.  The bulk of the film is in Finnish with subtitles that as is common with Finnish production anytime characters of different nationalities are speaking English is the default tongue spoken.

I heartily recommend Rare Exports which is currently streaming on Shudder and Hulu.

I discovered a new podcast a week or so ago Cult 45 is a podcast devoted to cult and exploitation cinema. The name is a play on name of the malt liquor Colt 45 which of course is a play on a firearm so just from its title the podcast is meta.

The podcast is hosted by and comments on from an American black perspective and it is highly entertaining. So far, I have listened to episodes about the films The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Re-Animator, and a double episode on The Wicker Man commenting on both version of the movie. (And righteously they revere the original and mock the re-make.)

Here is their episode on the classic horror film that launched a franchise Night of the Living Dead.