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

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).

Blood and Black Lace

STATS:
Blood and Black Lace
1964
Director: Mario Bava
Writer: Giuseppe Barilla, Marcello Fondato, and Mario Bava
Starring: Cameron Mitchell and Eva Bartok (no relation to the albino bat from Anastasia)

She killed her victims with rabies.

And sub-Disney showtunes about togetherness.

WHA’ HAPPENED?
A glove-wearing murderer (or two) stalks and kills beautiful models throughout some Italian city. All the victims are connected to a fashion house run by a recent widow. One of the victims has a diary of all the shadiness going on in the company…

…and everyone wants to read it or destroy it. As the victims pile up, innocent people are arrested and more secrets come to light. In the bloody climax, the killers have to fight for their lives… not from the police, but from each other.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?
I’ve always had a soft spot for Italian horror films, even when they’re nonsensical, misogynistic, and crazy-boring. You show me ballerinas swimming through barbed wire (by accident and in stylized lighting) and I’ll be your fan for life.

Or at least until you make something like this.

That said, I’m much more familiar with the directors that “borrowed” from Bava than I’m familiar with Bava himself. Sure, all these movies feature killers that apparently shop at the same glove store, but I just assumed that the 60s-era stuff would be a little less insane than what came after.

Like magic heads.

So this blog is my opportunity to sample some old school giallo.

Also, there’s a great blog called The Moon Is a Dead World that’s encouraging other bloggers to review this film. So bring it on.

SAY WHAT?
“The thought that a sex maniac is prowling around your fashion house… well, I don’t like it.”

“Now listen to me, you little idiot.”

“You loved everything I had. Everything but me.”

“Look at him. He hates women. Look at him. He’s the killer.”

“Goodbye, Clarisse.”

“If only the men would come back. We’re all women left alone.”

SHIRTS AND SKINS:
Lots of female flesh (mostly getting cut up and whatnot), but nothing on the male side of things.

BLOOD AND GUTS:
Blood and Black Lace may not have Argento levels of blood, but it’s surprisingly brutal for a 47-year-old film. Women get burnt, strangled, stabbed, and generally tortured by the killers. The models are so freaking killable, in fact, that it’s almost a comedy.

Almost.

Like most Italian horror movies, most of the tension dissipates when the detectives are on screen talking in dubbed-over voices about suspects and motives and whatnot. But when the scene calls for a single woman to wander around a dark room… Well, it’s pretty special.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:
Did anyone notice the bright red mannequins in every scene? Those are going to haunt my dreams.

See that horrible red demon in the background?

Why would you buy clothes off of that thing?

Did I ever mention the lighting and the cinematography? Because damn…

I want to live there. Well, after the murders stop.

Did anybody else notice a Disney quality to the colors and backgrounds? Some of the sets looked like fairy tales. With strangulations.

Snow White, anyone?

Cameron Mitchell’s final acting role is “Dr. Cadaver” in Jack-O. Sad.

The slasher film about a mutant first lady

rampaging through Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

I wonder if the creators of Modern Family named their gay couple after the actor Cameron Mitchell.

Cameron and Mitchell. Coincidence?

Yes, yes it is.

OK. IS IT GAY?

Well, I’m conflicted. This is a film about the Italian fashion industry, and yet there are no gay people. That’s pretty far-fetched. However, it was the 60s, so I can forgive a movie for being a product of its era.

As if the crap from my generation

is going to stand the test of time.

And I do admire this film for being a pre-slasher slasher with plenty of artistic integrity.

But some of the violence and contempt against women is a little hard to stomach. Sure, the female characters burn evidence and hide bodies and, you know, kill people, but the film is called “Six Women for the Murderer” for a reason. The ladies walk in, they flail around helplessly, then they die.

Further, I could take a whole gender studies angle on this film and discuss the weird sexual politics at play. (Let’s just look at the last scene: the central couple both succeed in killing each other, in addition to previous lovers, in a very psychosexual way. The woman dies because she falls off this big phallic pole, but not before kissing the man in a clearly sexless way. Then the movie ends.)

As a gay man, I’m fascinated by the gender roles at play here, and the next time I watch it, I’ll pay even closer attention to the relationship between the two killers. I can’t tell if the main villain is a coded gay character… or just a jackass.

This film is like a little time capsule of 60s attitudes. It’s definitely not gay, but it’s not exactly well-adjusted and hetero. On a gayness scale, I’d give this an old-school Burgess Meredith, whatever that means.