Saturday, December 09, 2006

 

Dario Argento Part 1

Yes, he really IS that weird looking!

Very few European horror movie directors have been revered in the same way as Dario Argento. Referred to in equal measures as “The Italian Hitchcock” and “The Master of Horror” (despite making only two films that can be comfortably bracketed in the genre), he impressed enough to be brought over to America to make a studio film, without a great of success but more of that later. Picking up themes and trends from earlier Italian movies by the great Mario Bava and of penny dreadful style crime books published in Italy, Argento began his film career as a critic, moving into screenwriting including a credit on Sergio Leone’s sweeping western epic “Once Upon a Time in the West” with Bernardo Bertolucci in 1968.

He didn’t have to wait long for his directorial debut, the internationally renowned “Bird With the Crystal Plumage” in 1969, what proved to be an archetypal Argento film. A flop on its original release, it became an international hit and can be viewed as a template for future Argento thrillers. The black gloved killer, an everyday man who witnesses a murder and is persuaded to investigate, feeling he saw something that doesn’t add up, strange phone calls and outrageous set pieces.

The film starts with Sam Dalmos (Tony Musante), who thinks he’s stumbled across the identity of a serial killer in Rome when he witnesses a murder whilst trapped between two panes of glass. This marks another familiar trademark of Argento’s work, a pane of glass, window or mirror featured during key scenes, through which the images are never quite what they seem. The movie marked the first of what’s frequently referred to as the director’s “Animal Trilogy”, closely followed by “Cat O’Nine Tails” and the rarely seen “Four Flies on Grey Velvet”, both released in 1971.

Both solid Giallo entries and did little to detract Argento’s growing reputation as a director with a mind for suspense and an eye for the fancy camerawork, his reputation for coherent plots though was beginning to take a nosedive. This was a downfall of the genre, famed for its set pieces and final scene plot twists, “Flies” was to be his final Giallo until his next movie, a comedy called “Five Days of Milan”, sank without trace in the box office. ATthis turned out to be a blessing as Argento returned to the genre that brought him fame, and with some style.

The word ‘masterpiece’ is misused frequently, but “Profondo Rosso”, or “Deep Red” to give it its English title began an unbroken run of six movies that have rightly gone down as classics of the genre. Starring David Hemmings as a Pianist who witnesses the hatchet murder of a psychic (through her flat window, note the motif!), he arrives at the flat too late but finds the body impaled on the broken glass. Returning later to find a painting missing, he’s convinced of its importance but can’t place why and tells police he saw the killer. His photograph with the claim appears in the paper so he must solve the murder both to satisfy his own curiosity of the painting’s importance and to prevent himself becoming the next victim.

“Deep Red” is perhaps the first to represent Argento’s flare for violent, spectacular and flamboyantly directed set-piece murder scenes. We see a man attacked by an inexplicable walking doll (left, echoes of which appear in “Saw”) before having his teeth smashed out, a woman’s burnt alive in a bath before condensation is used as a clue, an “Omen” style death resulting in a squashed head and a beheading by lift. We also have increasingly stylish camerawork as characters are dwarfed by immense Roman statues, cameras plummet entire buildings before resting on two characters talking to each other. We have a five minute scene following Hemming’s character investigating a building, watching him leave the building to revealing to us the clue he missed. Again the motifs are there. A black gloved killer, menacing phone calls from the murderer, a protagonist who agonises over something he believes is important but there’s more here, an element of horror.

The movie shows the first signs of Argento leading towards the supernatural. “The House of the Screaming Child” where bad things happen, a soundtrack that suggest the presence of something hanging over the key characters, the killer leaving sinister objects for its victims to find such as a toy doll hanging from a noose, the mechanised doll that attacks one victim and paintings by a child that detail graphic murders. It also introduces a theory of telepathy Argento would later turn into a feature with “Phenomena”.


Profondo Rosso, aka Deep Red: Not for the faint-hearted!

So ends part one of my epic blog about Argento’s work, but there’s much more to come. I’ll be back with a second part detailing the first two of his proposed “Three Mothers” trilogy and “Tenebrae”, a third looking at the four movies up to “Opera”, a fourth looking at his American work and subsequent return to Italy and a fifth taking in the poorly received “Phantom of the Opera” and a return to the Giallo in the passing of the millennium. So stay with me and we’ll get there in the end, until then…

“Beware the moon and stay on the path…”


Tuesday, December 05, 2006

 

Zombie Movies

Very few movie monsters have endured in the same way as the zombie, giving us a movie history spanning more than 70 years without a single one of them becoming famous in their own right. Vampires have Dracula, slashers have Jason or Michael Myers, monsters have King Kong, Lychanthropes have The Wolf Man, who do zombies have…Bub! (See right) But that doesn’t mean they havn’t brought us some of the most memorable movies to scare us silly.

The zombie made its first notable appearance in 1932 with “White Zombie”, starring Bela Lugosi. Set in Haiti, the early living dead were mainly portrayed as slaves and born out of a fear of the voodoo religion, considered a dark art in those days. It was followed by a sequel, “Revolt of the Zombies”, four years later, both movies playing on the early horror theme that the threat was far away from American society and not a bout to overspill onto their values. 1943’s “I Walked With a Zombie”, directed by Jacques Turner from the Val Lewton stable of horror movies carried on that theme. A re-working of sorts of “Jane Eyre” it featured the first infamous zombie as 6ft 7” Darby Jones played the terrifying looking but placid ‘Carrefour’. Wonderfully executed, it’s a classic to this day.

Very little action in the 50’s as invasion fears and the threat of Communism saw Sci-fi flicks flourish but it was us Brits who produced the next notable entry in Hammer’s “Plague of the Zombies”. Very spooky and atmospheric it still portrayed the living dead as objects of control who strangled their victims, we didn’t see any flesh eating until George A. Romero sat down in the directing chair.

Seminal Zombie mayhem


“Night of the Living Dead” was a watershed in horror in general, not just as a zombie flick, when it was released in 1968. Very few horror flicks featured on-screen gore, let alone the sight of a young girl eating her father before killing her mum with a garden tool! It raised deep questions of how to deal with the dead and many social issues including racism, the threat of scientific advancements and the belief that man will contribute to his own downfall. It can be viewed as an anti-war movie, if ever there was a warning to stop the killing, it’s the fear they’ll come back to life and eat us whole! Horrific sights were also becoming more common due to the televised coverage of the Vietnam conflict.

More on that movie at another time, it was a surprise that, barring a few Spanish movies, most notably “Tombs of the Blind Dead” that I must do a piece on and “The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue”, it took “Night’s” sequel “Dawn of the Dead” to inspire a host of cash-ins from the Italian market. Lucio Fulci was the main culprit who created his Zombie Quartet of “Zombie Flesh Eaters”, “The Beyond” “House by the Cemetery” and “City of the Living Dead”. All quite different in their own way and varying in quality (steer well clear of “City”, it’s crap!), “House” is worth a mention as featuring a single zombie, Dr Freudstein, using the blood of the living to keep his rotting corpse alive. Some outrageous gore scenes and a surprisingly complex but coherent plot (surprising if you’ve seen “The Beyond” that is!) this really is worth tracking down.

The Italian’s carried on the trend with Bruno Matthei’s “Zombie Creeping Flesh”, Andrea Bianchi’s “Nights of Terror” and Marino Girolami’s insane “Zombie Holocaust” that featured a pitch battle between zombies and cannibals just to up the gore content! They’ve even had a go at merging genres with “Dawn of the Mummy”, avoid that one, please!

The rotting ones had a quiet time of it in America with notable entries from Sam Raimi, George A. Romero and a spoof in the “Return of the Living Dead” series as the zombie took a back seat to werewolves, serial killers and vampires for the latter half of the 80’s. That changed with Peter Jackson bringing them back in the 90’s with a vengeance with the utterly outrageous “Braindead”. If you think you’ve seen gore films, you’ve not seen any until you’ve seen this splatter-fest that goes for Monty-Python style laughs rather than scares. Going down the “Evil Dead” route of total bodily dismemberment rather than Romero’s “Shoot ‘em in the head” method, you get it all here. Beheadings, entrails, zombie sex, gnomes in the head, vicars who “Kick arse for the lord” and a two minute scene involving a lawnmower and a room full of zombies that has to be seen to be believed.


Genius!!!

It brings us back to Romero, allowed a fourth bite at the cherry with “Land of the Dead” thanks to the “Dawn” remake, Dawn inspired “28 Days Later” and “Shaun of the Dead” and a decent script. Where next for the zombie? Judging by the sight of a port chop coming to life in 1988 buddy/horror movie hybrid, anywhere!

Recommended viewing: Romero’s zombie quartet, “Evil Dead 1+2”, “House by the Cemetery”, “Braindead”, “Tombs of the/Return of the Blind Dead”, “Demons”.

Avoid!: “”Nights of Terror”, “Dawn of the Mummy”, “Raiders of the Living Dead”, “The Supernaturals”, “Zombie Island Massacre” (not even a zombie movie!), “Redneck Zombies”, “Mutant”, “Oasis of the Zombies”, “City of the Living Dead”.

“Beware the moon and stay on the path…”

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