HOUR OF THE WOLF

Okay, folks. First I'd like to get the big Nordic elephant out of the way: Oscar-nominated Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann is basically Chris Colfer's face-twin. It was a little distracting.
                  

            

Alright. On with the review…
              

                      

I had never seen an Ingmar Bergman movie before Hour of the Wolf. Everything I knew about Ingmar Bergman I learned from Simpsons references and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. I knew that he was a Scandinavian director who did a bunch of artsy black-and-white movies and that Woody Allen loved him. I also knew, almost without a shadow of a doubt, that his movies were not my style. I pictured long, murky parables about war and death. I pictured beautiful cinematography and absolute boredom. I didn’t picture horror movies. And yet, here I am, writing about an Ingmar Bergman movie in my horror blog.
                

Hour of the Wolf, from what I could tell, is about a pregnant woman and her older husband who live on an island. The husband is slowly getting crazier and crazier because of his interactions with the island's other residents, a castle full of wack-jobs, including a woman that he fooled around with before knocking up his current wife. This guy is pushed to the edge by the surrounding characters, and his wife is becoming increasingly afraid that she’s starting to share her husband’s psychosis. I’m not going to continue explaining the plot, because it isn’t exactly linear, so let’s instead talk about how I might interpret some of the events of this story.

               

               

ONE: The husband is a crazy artist who has retreated to this isolated island to be alone. He lashes out at everyone he meets (including the little boy on the beach) because of some intense distrust of the outside world. He has his pregnant wife to cling to, but when he finally lashes out at her (he shoots her), that’s the final straw and he cracks, disappearing forever into himself.

                

TWO: None of the characters are real except for the husband and wife. The husband has elaborate delusions about the strange people he meets. Slowly, his wife begins to see them too. When one of these delusions gives him the gun he uses to shoot his wife, then his psychosis has finally crossed into a level where he can no longer be cured. At the end of the movie, his wife talks about a scar that the bullets left on her, thus implying that not only is she now damaged by her husband’s psychosis, but now she’s fully succumbed to it, too.

              

            

I could go on discussing about a dozen theories that try to tie together all the loose ends and abrupt moments of violence (and cross-dressing). In fact, that’s probably what Bergman wanted. But I’m of the mindset that reviews aren’t about interpretations, they’re about recommendations. Did I enjoy this movie? Was I intrigued instead of confused? Would I recommend this? I think I’d say yes to all three questions.
            

This is a difficult movie, one with characters that don’t really behave like real people and situations that don’t quite gel. Intellectually, I’m frustrated. Emotionally, I’m highly pleased. This movie kept me surprised, tense, and weirdly curious. The dinner scene at the castle… the violent outburst with the little kid… the laughing ex-girlfriend corpse lady… these were moments that will probably stick with me for a while. As a whole, I prefer my movies to be a little more straight-forward than this, but that doesn’t stop me from appreciating how unsettling everything comes across.

                

Is this a horror movie? Sure. I have a fairly inclusive definition of horror. Everything from Jaws to Rosemary’s Baby to Silence of the Lambs fits under the umbrella. This is psychological. It’s a lot like 2010’s Antichrist without all that squicky gore. Is it wall-to-wall scary? Nope. But I think this one will linger with me.

           

            

I just don’t think it completely works as a narrative film. It’s like watching a hallucination, which is a pretty powerful experience. Sure. But once you realize it’s just a hallucination, it’s hard to really care about what happens.

FOR MORE HOUR OF THE WOLF FUN, CHECK OUT THESE OTHER, MUCH BETTER REVIEWS:

Moon Is a Dead World
Lerner International
United Provinces of Ivanlandia
The Lightning Bug’s Lair

CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER

                                               

STATS:

CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER
1974
Written and Directed by Brian Clemens
Starring Horst Janson (seriously)
                   

WHA’ HAPPENED?

A rich family goes around sucking the life out of pretty, young girls in order to stay youthful forever. Our titular captain (What is he the captain of? No idea.) comes to the rescue, defeating these age-sucking jerkwads with his fencing skills, luck with the ladies, and obscure vampire knowledge. (Fun fact: vampires can bring dead toads back to life just by walking by.)
                 

                       

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

I’ve always been a Hammer fan, and I knew this entry in their mid-70s output is particularly strange. Not oppressively strange in a kung-fu-vampires kind of way, but strange enough to catch my interest on a lazy Saturday morning.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Kronos is shirtless a good 40% of the movie. He has one dimly lit sex scene, and a bunch of innocent bromantic scenes with another male character that turn slightly more homoerotic because hes shirtless. (In one memorable exchange, his buddy touches the captain's torso scar and says that he knows he has guts, because he’s already seen his insides.) The actor playing Kronos isn’t exactly someone to write home about, but hey.
                 

                           

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Mostly slight trickles of mouth blood and glumpy old-age make-up. Hammer has done a lot better in the past.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

I enjoyed the wonky mythos that this film built around its vampire characters. Specifically, each vampire can only be killed in specific ways. Some have to be staked, some have to be burnt, and some have to get a crucifix to sink into their embarrassingly vulnerable chest. It must suck to be the vampire that dies via garlic pizza.
                    

                           

OK. IS IT GAY?

Yeah. The film builds a strange rhythm where it has a bromance scene with Kronos and the doctor who summoned him (the scar-caressing one), followed very quickly by Kronos making sexy-time with his female companion. Either hes bi, or he needs to sort through some issues fast. That, coupled with a particularly androgynous son-of-a-vampire, makes for some pleasant 70s escapism with a slight queer bent. Fun times all around.
                          

TWILIGHT ZONE: Nick of Time

This is William Shatner in the midst of a match of wits with a devil-headed fortune-telling machine. If you have ever seen any non-famous episode of The Twilight Zone, then you should be aware that they often involve hammy actors staring at devil-headed fortune-telling machines. This is not a good half-hour of television. But at least it does not involve a gambler getting chased around by a demon slot machine. (True story.)

The reason I wanted to spotlight this episode is because William Shatner is surprisingly hot. That is, if you ignore how sweaty he gets by the end of the episode. He IS Canadian after all. They get warm easily.

BERSERK

Berserk has no gay characters, but it is camp in its purest form. This glorious, glorious film depicts a series of murders at a low-rent circus run by the makeup-caked, deathless corpse of late-career Joan Crawford. Who could be committing the murders? Could it be Joan herself, the ringmaster with drawn-on eyebrows that grow more suspicious-looking as the movie lurches forward? Could it be the angry dwarf with the weirdly inauthentic British accent? Or could it be any of the other sweaty, hammy actors slumming it as sweaty, hammy circus performers? The answer in revealed in the most sudden, jarring ending of any film I’ve ever seen.

But before we get to the ending, we have to sit through long stretches of actual circus performances. For example, there’s a five-minute-plus scene of dog tricks, peppered by audience reactions to illustrate how much more the film audience is enjoying this show than the real audience is. There are so many scenes of non-fatal circus performances, I felt like I had stumbled across a bad remake of the already-pretty-awful Greatest Show on Earth.

Those scenes are awful, but their needlessness in no way cancels out the apeshit insanity of the rest of the film, which is a long parade of huge performances, nonsensical drama, and circus-themed death scenes. This film is a spray can full of faux-cheese. Watch it if you want to fill up on empty calories.

CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA

Creature from the Haunted Sea is a Roger Corman horror-comedy from the early 60s. You can watch it for free on Youtube, along with such wildly different Corman movies as Beast from the Haunted Cave, Devil from the Haunted Forest, and Thingy from the Haunted Laundromat. Corman basically made 17 movies using the exact same script and a Mad Libs cheat sheet.

My fellow bloggers over at The Moon Is a Dead World have pooled together a bunch of movie reviews for the Halloween Fifteen, and my contribution is a write-up for Creature from the Haunted Sea. Check it out, along with 14 other reviews covering everything from Japanimation to torture porn. I am excited to see what people say.

DEMENTIA 13

DEMENTIA 13

1963

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Written by Francis Ford Coppola

Starring William Campbell, Luana Anders, Bart Patton and Sophia Coppola as the whiny daughter who gets horribly murdered

WHA’ HAPPENED?

Well, this is Psycho in a castle, basically. A woman commits a crime (kills her husband), goes to some far off place (an Irish castle), and promptly gets murdered (in a pond). Just when you thought she was the main character, she gets killed. Oh Francis, you saucy saucy director. The rest of the movie is spent following people as they try to figure out who the killer is. Hint: he’s a hotel-owning taxidermist.

I couldn’t find a relevant picture, so I thought
I'd include John Candy because why not.

WHAT YOU SAY?

"If you’re going to be my wife, you’re going to have to be the trusting, silent variety."

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

There are two reasons I decided to write about Dementia 13. One is thanks to The Moon Is a Dead World, one of my favorite blogs. They’re doing a series of horror reviews in preparation for Halloween, and I wanted to match a few of their reviews. That blog is always a fun read.

The other reason I wanted to watch Dementia 13 is Francis Ford Coppola. That guy is the reason this film hasn’t fallen off the face of the Earth. This is his big break in cinema, courtesy of Roger Corman, and even though it’s a cheapy American International picture, it has a great reputation because of its director's subsequent films. That said, Mr. Coppola isn’t known as being one of the most consistent directors, which also intrigued me. I didn’t know if this film was like Apocalypse Now… or like the behind-the-scenes of Apocalypse Now. Remember, Coppola directed at least three of the greatest films of all time. He also directed the budding onscreen romance of JLo and Robin Williams.

 

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

No nudity, though the female lead shows off some of her curves, especially when she’s swimming in the haunted pond.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Heck yes. I mean, the film is tame by today’s standards, but it has some extremely stylish murder scenes. I’m a sucker for people discovering dead bodies underwater; I’ve always liked seeing people struggle for air after the shock of seeing a floating body part. It’s Jaws-syndrome. And then the murder directly after: genius! For all the story’s faults, it is still shocking in the best sense of the word.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

While I think the basic plot outline has a lot of potential (and so did Hitchcock, which is why he used the EXACT SAME PLOT), but the execution is so hard to follow, it’s almost nonsensical. Visually, the film is great. It’s stylish, and the underwater scenes are truly scary. When compared to similar cheapo horror films from the early 60s, this one really is beautiful.

But you’d also think that Coppola would be able to string together an easier-to-understand film. The plot is not complicated, and yet I had to watch the movie twice to understand who was who. From a storytelling standpoint, this is less Godfather Part II and more Cotton Club. And that is a shame.

This has nothing to do with anything; I just thought it was quaint.

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA

STATS:

The Brides of Dracula

1960

Directed by Terence Fisher

Written by Peter Bryan, Anthony Hinds, Edward Percy, Jimmy Sangster… and Bram Stoker, I guess

Starring Peter Cushing, Not Christopher Lee

WHA’ HAPPENED?

As the film’s opening narration explains: “Dracula is dead but his disciples live on.” Thus, Brides of Dracula has nothing to do with Dracula or anyone married to him. Instead, it’s about this guy…

Not exactly Christopher Lee, huh?

This is Baron Meinster, a vampire whose name is passably scary, if you ignore the fact that he sounds like a cheese.

The movie follows a beautiful French woman as she travels through a Romanian town populated by superstitious folks with suspiciously British accents. They say things like, “There’s nothin’ to be afeared of.” And then they go all silent and glarey when the French woman says the wrong thing. (They reminded me of the similar townspeople from the beginning of American Werewolf in London.)

Because this is a Dracula film, the French woman ends up staying the night at Castle Meinster, presumably because Castle Gouda was too far away. Castle Meinster is a beautiful estate with one of the most exorbitant candle budgets in history.

Seriously. It’s like every room is celebrating Hanukkah.

The French lady snoops around, even though Baroness Meinster warns her not to. Eventually, she meets the Baroness’ son, who is both handsome and a vampire. He’s also chained up in his room. The French lady frees him, because the French love freeing potentially dangerous prisoners.

Baron Meinster runs off and drinks his mom because he’s a vampire (spoiler, I guess) and the French lady doesn’t even try to take responsibility for the thousands of innocent lives that she put in danger. Thankfully, the French lady isn’t our heroine, because the next time we see her, she’s lying unconscious in a road. She’s not exactly Lara Croft.

This is when the film switches to Dr. Van Helsing’s POV. Van Helsing finds the French lady’s unconscious body in the midst of vampire country and automatically assumes the only rational explanation: she “was frightened” and passed out. Apparently, Dr. Van Helsing went to the same medical school as Dr. Phil.

From there, long stretches of the film are taken up by characters talking nonstop about mysterious neck wounds and all that boring stuff as 21^st century audiences twiddle our thumbs and wait for something to actually happen.

Doesn’t this Romanian pub look like a

cheap Italian bistro from Lincoln, Nebraska?

In order to at least vaguely justify the film’s title, Baron Meinster proposes to our French girl (who has since relocated to a completely different city). He drinks her friend Gina, who’s so British she looks like a Dr. Who companion.

K-9.

In a string of poor decisions, Baron Meinster shacks up with a crazy lady and two vampire brides (including Gina) in an old windmill. Because this is a horror movie, the windmill burns down. Van Helsing defeats him and all is right with the world.

Now, there are a few lingering questions here: Why does he follow the French woman to another city? Better yet, why does he propose instead of drinking her outright? What makes her so special? Also, why does he move to an abandoned mill, the only building that can literally turn into a giant cross. He’s just waiting to get staked.

One more thing: Shouldn’t there be three brides, not two?

And is the one in the back smiling?

WHAT YOU SAY?

 “I have very little appetite.”

“You may not believe it, but we’ve had gay times here. Balls. Dinners. Life.”

“Come closer. Please. Come closer. You see, I can’t come… to you.”

“And now I leave you entirely to yourselves… for ten minutes.”

This is the Meinster House. Home of the Meinster family. Meinster.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

I’ve always wanted to review a Hammer film. I have fond memories of watching them with my dad back when I was very young. I also have fond memories of Power Rangers, so this is where you insert a grain of salt.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

There are several murders, but they all occur off-screen. The Baroness gets killed, and we see her bloodless body for less than a second. The BFF Gina gets killed too, but that is similarly off-screen. What we do see is Meinster’s old lady henchwoman falling off the stairs and Van Helsing cauterizing his own neck wound. I didn’t even get screen captures from those scenes; that’s how effective they were.

I may seem like I’m getting nit-picky on a film from a totally different time period and moral code, but these complaints feel symptomatic of a larger problem: I didn’t find this vampire threatening. He’s constantly running away from everybody (male and female, French and otherwise). Furthermore, when we first see him, he’s chained up by an old lady. Add that to the long list of bad decisions he makes in the last half hour of the film, and you’ve got a villain that doesn’t exactly strike fear in the hearts of men.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

One thing I enjoy about films from this time period is what I call “soap opera staging.” This is when two people are talking, one person turns toward the camera, and the conversation continues. This never happens in real life, and yet you see it all the time in older movies.

“But Gwendolyn. Ronaldo isn’t just my lover. He’s also my clone.”

OK. IS IT GAY?

No. It is not. In fact, I was surprised by how weirdly sex-less this film is. I clearly remember Hammer films having lots of blood, boobs, and naughtiness (like in my personal favorite, Frankenstein Created Woman… and Then Groped Her). I guess because this film is from 1960, it’s much tamer and less grope-y. In fact, a good chunk of the movie features the French woman wandering around in her pajamas, except in this film they’re nineteenth-century nighties, which are basically Victoria’s Secret Wizard Cloaks.

The tone of this film can best be described through two lines of dialogue. One character is dishing to her friend about this cute, pale guy that she’s dating: “Did you let him kiss you? Tell me, please.” “Only my hand.”

Sure, I could talk about the Meinster family dynamic, about how the mother disapproves of her son’s non-standard lifestyle and hides him away. On paper, that sounds at least a little interesting for a queer audience. And yet, that’s kind of a stretch. All-in-all, this film doesn’t give me a lot to sink my teeth into.

It’s definitely enjoyable, but it’s a little stuffy and British. And it’s not at all gay. On the gayness scale, I’ll give this a Sir Alec Guinness (before his tell-all biography came out).