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FunHouse the cyberzine of degenerate pop culture vol. 1 no. 4
FUNHOUSE!
The cyberzine of degenerate pop culture
vol. 1 - no. 4; April 24, 1994
Released on Iggy Pop's 47th birthday
editor: Jeff Dove (jeffdove@well.sf.ca.us)
<Note: written on a Macintosh text editor, line feeds are on. Display in
nine point monaco font.>
FUNHOUSE! is dedicated to whatever happens to be on my mind at the time that
I'm writing. The focus will tend to be on those aspects of our fun filled
world that aren't given the attention of the bland traditional media, or
which have been woefully misinterpreted or misdiagnosed by the same.
FUNHOUSE! is basically a happy place, and thus the only real criteria I will
try to meet is to refrain from rants, personal attacks, and flames - and
thus FUNHOUSE! is an apolitical place. Offbeat films, music, literature,
and experiences are largely covered, with the one stipulation being that
articles are attempted to be detailed and well documented, although this is
no guarantee of completeness or correctness, so that the interested reader
may further pursue something which may spark her interest. Correspondence
and contributions are thus encouraged, and any letters will by printed in
future issues. Please send a short message to the above address, and
arrangements will be made for the submission of larger items. The only
other item is that FUNHOUSE! is Free-Free-Freeware! PLEASE copy and
distribute as you wish; however please do not alter any text. I will be
happy to try to clarify anything contained herein, and to provide additional
information if I can, so don't hesitate to contact me.
Table of Contents:
* Letters, Commentary, and Other Stuff You'll Probably Skip Over
* Three Italian Masters: Mario Bava, Sergio Leone, and Dario Argento
Defy Hollywood Conventions. The Critics Balk! Part II-A - Argento
* Jeff Frentzen's All-Night Video Drive-In number one
* Mutant Rocker Profile: Red Cross/Redd Kross
Letters, Commentary, and Other Stuff...
---------------------------------------
New York readers: Howard Stern for governor!
I don't have a lot to say up front this time, which is good because this
issue is packed without too much excess babbling. FUNHOUSE! introduces a
new feature with this issue. Jeff Frentzen's column "All-Night Video
Drive-In" debuts with its first edition of video tips from the outer reaches
of sleazedom. Check it out so you know which obscurity to grab off of the
horror shelf at Vids-R-Us on your next trip. Jeff was also a great help in
contributing to the editing of this issue. Our Italian maestro feature
continues with Part II - Argento. Only it's really only part II-A this time
as the thing is such a monster that it's spread over two issues. Below, the
films The Bird With the Crystal Plumage through Suspiria are discussed along
with a complete filmography. FUNHOUSE! #5 will continue with Inferno
through Trauma, will catalog the various video releases of Argento's films
(and what is missing from them!), and will have a soundtrack discography.
This issue is rounded out with a look at the kings of trash/glam/pop/punk,
the former Red Cross and current Redd Kross. Included is an interview
ripped off from a 1982 issue of Flipside which shows the MacDonald bros
attitude in its early stages of development, and an attempt at a (almost
certainly incomplete) discography. As there is a lot of material either in
the FUNHOUSE! can or in various stages of completion, you can count on the
following topics popping up sometime in the future in these electronic
pages: Argento part B, Sergio Leone, Davie Allan and the Arrows, Dr. Hunter
S. Thompson, instro rock rundown, EC comics, sixties garage punk's greatest
hits, and the FUNHOUSE! Top 100 albums of all time. And remember, if you're
a fan of the good not-so-clean fun found in FUNHOUSE!, make Blockbuster
Video your last resort, as once their takeover is complete they'll be making
it a lot harder for you to track down the movies we hope to inspire you to
see.
Where did you get your copy of Metal Machine Music? Mine was had for $2.49
from Peer Records in Cypress, CA sometime in 1980.
FUNHOUSE! geetare player hall o' fame:
Link Wray
Mick Jones (Clash)
Bob Mould (Husker Du, Sugar)
J. Mascis (Dinosaur, Dinosaur Jr.)
Johnny Thunders (New York Dolls, Heartbreakers) - RIP
Davie Allan (Arrows)
Back issues of FUNHOUSE! are available by anonymous ftp from
etext.archive.umich.edu in the directory pub/Zines/Funhouse. Also check
your favorite gopher for the CICnet EJournals collection. I usually have a
few issues ready to be e-mailed so inquire from jeffdove@well.sf.us.ca if
that's your preferred method of infotext acquisition. These will probably
be the most recent two and an earlier favorite - most likely number one with
its always popular Russ Meyer run down. The current issue can naturally be
had from that address as well, and you can get also yourself on the
subscription list for future issues.
**********************************
You caught my interest with your review of "Drive in Reviews" on Comedy
Central. The "knuckle-head" who has more hair is the one and only, Buzz
Killman, well known "local Chicago" blues harmonist and afternoon "drive
home" sidekick from the looney "Jonathon Brandmier Show" on WLUP FM radio in
Chicago. I like the presentation of your entertaining, straightforward, no
bullshit cyberzine. If you need a "source" for what's happening in the
media, news, records, sports, film, etc. in Chicago let me know - I'd love
to contribute! By the way last week we had a real humdinger of a bout! I'm
sure you caught wind of it on the news - Donny vs. Danny ... Danny Bonaduce
defeated Donny Osmond in a three round decision...The rematch is in the
works!
Later,
Brian Mansfield
suree@mcs.com
**********************************
Dear Jeff,
Thanks for FUNHOUSE #3. The Bava article is excellent, and you are right on
about Bava-Leone-Argento representing a radical break with cinematic norms,
both in terms of pure style and in the way style transforms the narrative.
Bava seems to me by far the most fascinating of the three directors (even
though none of his films, perhaps, is superior to ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE
WEST) in exploring the way stylistic procedures affect the viewer's
experience of the film. I choose to address a marginal point. In
discussing Bava's work on THE BATTLE/THE GIANT OF MARATHON, you imply that
"problems" presumably attributable to Jacques Tourneur's direction led to
Bava's being called on to "save" the film. You might be interested in
Tourneur's version of the story. In interviews he gave to CAHIERS DU CINEMA
and PRESENCE DU CINEMA, Tourneur said that he had an 8 (or 10) week contract
for the film. At the end of this period, because of the slowness of the
Italian crew, all the dialogue scenes had been finished, but the underwater
scenes and the race remained to be shot. Rather than pay Tourneur's
expensive day rate, the producers chose to have a second unit finish the
film. Producer Bruno Vailati directed the race sequence, and he and Bava
directed the underwater scenes. Tourneur seems to have been ambivalent
about the whole affair - in one interview he says the results were better
than he could have done himself, but in the other he says "Why should they
have kept me to shoot people fighting underwater or a guy running? Anybody
can shoot that." Incidentally, Tourneur praised Bava's photography and
considered his miniatures the best he'd ever seen. Have you heard other
accounts of the production of this film? (I know, I know - maybe it isn't
one of the most pressing issues confronting us, but considering all the
woodlands sacrificed to set straight who directed what part of GONE WITH THE
WIND, maybe the GIANT OF MARATHON controversy is worth a kilobyte or two.)
Best wishes,
Chris Fujiwara
fujiwara@world.std.com
**********************************
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for Funhouse #3's Bava article. As I haven't seen this mentioned
anywhere before, maybe you'd like to know that the arrangement of the three
stories in the German version of "Black Sabbath" is different from both the
Italian/French and the AIP versions! In the German version the "Wurdalak"
comes first, the "Drop of Water" second and the "Telephone" last. I think
the underlying concept was to put the segments in chronological order: "The
Wurdalak" apparently takes place in the 18th or 19th century, "The Drop of
Water" in the 1920s or 30s, and "The Telephone" in the 60s. Apart from the
order there seems to be no difference between the German and the French
versions (e.g. it has Nicolosi's score, Karloff's opening narration, the
uncut "gore" in "Wurdalak", the uncensored dialogue in "Telephone", the
cats' meows in "Drop of Water" are left intact - but there's no Karloff on
horseback at the end as in the Italian original).
Dave,
Paul David Doherty
h0142kdd@rz.hu-berlin.de
**********************************
Dear Mr. Dove:
>Would someone PLEASE release Jonathan "Silence of the Lambs" Demme's first
>movie, CAGED HEAT, on video? This film which also stars Erica "Vixen"
>Gavin was produced by New World.
It *is* available... from Sultan Entertainment and New World Entertainment.
The Stainless Steel Moviegoer
masc1745@ucssun1.sdsu.edu
**********************************
Hi there Jeff!
I finally had the time to watch Baron Blood, the new uncut release. It runs
about 93,30 mins on PAL format, so add 4% to get the NTSC running time.
This version includes the original soundtrack and is Bava's original cut.
Picture quality was excellent! The distributor (Redemption) is going to
release some more Bava titles, so far they have released Mask of Satan, Five
Dolls for an August Moon (longer than previous releases!) and something
else. Next title will be Blood and Black Lace and then they're going to
release at least two more titles. Rumors say that the other will be...
YES! The Girl Who Knew Too Much! More details will follow, as soon as I
hear something, I'm also looking for rare Bava titles from Greece, as it
should be easy to find 'em.
Jan Borgelin,
jborge@sara.cc.utu.fi
**********************************
Jeff,
Some comments about your filmmography on Bava:
>While THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH laid the groundwork for the giallo, the
>film which most expertly introduces the elements which would come to define
>that style is SEI DONNE PER L'ASSASSINO (aka BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, 1964).
>Bava had previously explored the place of women in a patriarchal society in
>BLACK SUNDAY, THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, and THE WHIP AND THE BODY, but the
>idea of women being the objects of both a voyeuristic fetishism and the
>victims of punishment for this role by men is most completely developed in
>this effort."
I guess you mean this in a narrow context of Bava's film. I may be hard put
to find something as explicit and Blood and Black Lace before 1964, but
women as "voyeuristic fetishism and victims of punishment", surely that was
not new to film? I mean there must be thousands of examples in film world
wide before 1964. The only thing I really note that is different is Bava's
approach is more like the latter day Grand Guignol theater...For instance
one remembers Roger Vadim's erotic violence with Brigitte Bardot in EN CASE
DE MALHEUR (1957).
[Indeed the comment did refer to Bava's work as he had been building to
BABL's complete devotion to the theme in The Whip and the Body and Black
Sabbath. -JD]
>He creates a series of highly developed and visually complex "set pieces"
>where the principal function is not what will happen, but how it will be
>carried out. Bava saw the story as written as a mundane crime drama, and
>thus decided to use that story to convey something different altogether. If
>the script as filmed were read it would still seem a bit trite, but in the
>actual completed work the crimes are elevated to a level as to be the
>elements around which it revolves. This is a film in which the images on
>the screen far more convey the experience to the viewer than does the
>narrative. The Italian title literally translates to "Six Women for the
>Murderer", and accordingly the viewer is left with no question as to what
>will happen through the first 80% of the movie. The story takes place in a
>fashion salon where one of the models, who is involved in some scandalous
>activities involving drugs and sex, is murdered. In the wake of the killing
>it is discovered that she has kept a diary which may implicate some other
>employees in various illicit activities. Their scrambling for control of
>the diary allows for a background upon which one woman after another is
>eliminated. Models are chosen as victims as they are beautiful and their
>role in society is to be objects of adoration. While none of the victims is
>herself involved in any killing, each is depicted as being tainted in some
>way prior to meeting up with the villain. The story around the murderous
>set pieces is intentionally bland, filmed in a straightforward fashion and
>being carried by a rather uneventful police investigation.
Yes but then this could be the framing of almost any European film that fits
the B-film style of classification. Outside of top film artists, thrillers
and horror films from Italy, France, and Spain in particular have a kind of
daffy detachment. A kind of indifference to the narrative and composition,
but still with things carried along with a degree of competence. (Here in
the US there seems to be a dichotomy, either the B film maker shows a degree
of invention and skill or they seem total incompetents!) Of course, as you
say those parts of the story that excite Bava's imagination are more
creatively done.
>When the set pieces begin however things shift into stylistic overload. An
>opening sequence in which the credits role against a background of a skull
>and flashing colored lights sets the style. When a murder scene takes place
>the soundtrack heats up, the sets become complexly and colorfully lit, and
>the settings used are intricately designed. The camera becomes fluid as it
>lingers and then tracks and pans through the decor. Color schemes are
>complex and the extended scenes are constructed to not only highlight the
>beauty of the women, who are fully made up and in their best model garb, but
>also to develop a sense of cinematic beauty. This is of course directly in
>contrast with the fact that a violent and horrible murder is being
>approached. There is no question in the audience's mind as to what will be
>the end result of the scene being viewed, yet they are still asked to be
>aesthetically pleased as it unfolds. After introducing this style Bava even
>indulges in a bit of subterfuge with his viewers. One model enters into her
>home, which has not yet been shown. As a dark coated figure is seen hunched
>over the fireplace with its back to us the music becomes animated and
>amplified, the room has a darkly lit look, and the camera zooms in. We are
>set for violence, when the figure is revealed to be the elderly woman
>housekeeper. After the false alarm the more conventional, brighter lit,
>style returns. While void of any nudity or of much blood, the killings are
>still carried out in gruesome and torturous fashion, and the victims are
>often posed provocatively, and reveal skin and undergarments while the act
>is being executed.
Now what I think is the most extraordinary aspect of the film. Bava must
have gone to the Grand Guignol before it closed in Paris in 1965. One
recalls that Paris theater (dating from the 18th century!) with its stage
plays of the erotic and macabre. Alas it seems to be only remembered for
its invention of 'gore-gore' stage effects. (In fact it is said film put an
end to the Grand Guignol because it could do it better. One excludes the
fact that the Grand Guignol also did 'straight' theater too, though I am not
sure that survived into the late 50's and early 60's.) Above all by the
50's and 60's the theater was doing plays of irony and sly retribution, and
sometimes just arbitrary mayhem that contained always a strong element of
erotic violence, sometimes without any gore at all. But always with
voyeurism and a strip tease demise for the lady characters. First and
foremost though, this was conceived of as >pure< fantasy, not to be taken
seriously... and certainly not to be taken as being misogynistic. (I am
sure this would totally blow the minds of the "politically correct"
nowadays, or at least go way way over their heads.) So we see this in Blood
and Black Lace (though I don't know if Bava was a fan of the Grand Guignol
or not.) The first murder and last murder are the best examples. The lady
who gets strangled in the park is one the strongest examples to erotic
violence in all of Bava's films. The murder is quite brutal but above
all...elaborated. As a technical detail it has something I have never seen
before or after in a film. After the woman is murdered the villain drags
her wide eyed corpse off by her high heeled feet. Raincoat, skirt and
>slip< ride above garter hosiery way above her panties. (It has happened in
other genre films but the camera either cuts to a close up of the woman's
face or just cuts away altogether.) A very interesting image of almost
inadvertent eroticism. (I mention the slip because, in film, I sometimes
think women never wear slips.) Its also interesting, that though she is
wearing fairly high fashion, she seems to be wearing it as everyday wear.
I don't think anyone exposed full fashion hosiery the way Bava did in that
scene within a macabre setting.
The only other images I can think of like this are the nosy lady reporter in
the film PIECES who gets killed on the water mattress where there is a lot
of slow motion raised skirt action, and the strangulation at the start of
Cronenberg's THEY CAME FROM WITHIN. The last murder has a cute take of its
own. The actual killing is not as elaborate, but the dark haired model is
wearing a towel from the waist down, as if Bava was sort of mindful of
possible censorship of this scene. But no, surprise! surprise! the
assailant unwraps the towel from the dead lady exposing here legs and
panties. (By the by this is the closest Bava comes to nudity in the film,
the white bra and panties become somewhat translucent in the water.)
[actually there is full nudity in the Twitch of the Death Nerve and Five
Dolls for an August Moon - JD] Though there are close ups Bava always has
mid-range shots so everything can be seen. It's strange how many times I
have seen the same kind of scene set up by somebody like Franco, Fulci or
someone like them, only to blunt the eroticism with a close up only.
Another interesting anti-cliche (though it's not unusual in the European
film) is that the women victims are NOT prostitutes or bimbos or teenagers.
They are sophisticated mature women. How different from the tiresome lineup
that came later in the slasher films from the US. I am not sure what
happened later to Bava's sense for this kind of erotic violence. It of
course occurs again in BAY OF BLOOD. One especially notes the lady with her
white turtleneck, skirt and boots who gets strangled. (Though for that one
I always wondered if Bava shot a more 'leg-show' version that he never
used.) I don't think I have seen his last film, but I do remember being
disappointed with FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON and HATCHET FOR THE
HONEYMOON, unless there exist director's cuts of these films with stronger
eroticism. And I am not sure I have ever seen 'euro' versions of LISA AND
THE DEVIL and BARON BLOOD so I am not sure about those. Now I like Dario
Argento for different reasons but I must admit I don't recall him having the
same eye for this kind of Grand Guignol striptease eroticism in his films.
There is some, but not to the degree of elaboration that Bava used. In fact
Bava's eye for this was unlike anyone else.
Al Jackson,
al.jackson@atomiccafe.com
**********************************
I liked FUNHOUSE! issues #1 and #2 a lot. Anyone who goes into that much
depth on Harry Novak is a sick, sick puppy.
So, yeah, send me #3, if you would.
Yours,
Jacob Anderson
janders1@cc.swarthmore.edu
**********************************
To the esteemed editor (hi, Jeff),
Just recently I ran into FUNHOUSE while browsing cyberspace [sic], and was I
mightily impressed? Indeed! Especially the mutant rocker profiles in
number 2 left me positively delirious. Such a detailed account and wealth
of information on the Standells and the Flamin' Groovies, two bands whose
rhythm my very own heart beats to. It is in this regard I write to you,
revered editor, with one question, one suggestion, and some additional
information which you might enjoy. Here 'tis:
In the Standells extravaganza you referred to a selfpublished booklet,
"Voices Green and Purple: A Comprehensive Guide to California's Amazing
Garage and Freakbeat Bands Of the Sixties" by Beverly Patterson. This
sounds very, very, *very* interesting, and I would like to know if you have
some information on how to contact the author?
[The book was copyrighted 1987, and the author's address is listed as such:
Beverly Paterson, P.O. Box 6612, San Mateo, CA, 94403 - JD]
In addition to your excellent information on the Flamin' Groovies, here are
some record, tracks, and reissue facts I dug out of my Groovies collection:
* Sneakers: also reissued on AIM records (Collect 1).
* Supersnazz: reissued on Edsel records (ED 173).
* Flamingo: reissued on Big Beat CD (CDWIK 925) with 6 extra tracks which
are outtakes from the Teenage Head recording session: Going Out Theme
(version 2)/Walking the Dog/Somethin' Else/My Girl Josephine/Louie
Louie/Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
The last three were also on Still Shaking.
* Teenage Head: reissued on Big Beat CD (CDWIK 926) with 4 extra tracks:
Shakin' All Over/That'll Be the Day/Around and Around/Going Out Theme
all of which were also on Still Shaking.
* Step Up: AIM records CD (AIM 1030), 1991: She's Got a Hold On Me/
Step Up/Way Over My Head/Thanks John/Little Girl/Nineteen Eighty-Four/
Searching/Give It Away/I'm Only What You Want Me to Be/Way Down Under/
Land of the Few/Milkcow Blues/Can't Stay Away From You
Jordan & Alexander + Jack Johnson (guitar & vocals), Paul Zahl (drums)
and Bobby Ronco (vocals)
The cover states that the songs were recorded from 1984 to 1989, mixed
in 1989 and produced by Jordan. From your information on the Rock
Juice record (which I have not found, alas) there seems to be a rather
large intersection between these two. Whether or not the coinciding
songs are actually the same recordings, I have no idea.
Regarding "other releases":
* '68: Eva records (12044), 1984: Cabiria/The Slide/In Between/Doin'
My Time/Night Owl Blues/Wild About My Lovin'/Local Boy Makes Good/Sportin'
Life/My Yada/Good Morning, Mr. Stone
* Grease (EP, 1974): Let Me Rock/Dog Meat/Slow Death/Sweet Little Rock 'n
Roller
* More Grease (EP, 1974): Jumpin' Jack Flash/Blues for Phyllis
* Slow Death, Live!: Lolita records (5004), 1983: Sweet Little Rock 'n
Roller/Have You Seen My Baby/Doctor Boogie/Walking the Dog/Roadhouse/
Slow Death/Shakin' All Over/Can't Explain/Teenage Head/Louie Louie
* Supergrease: Skydog MLP (SKI 2226), 1984: Grease + More Grease
* Live at the Whisky-a-gogo: Lolita (5037)
* Roadhouse: Edsel (XED 183), 1985: Compilation
* Rockfield Sessions: AIM (Collect 2), 1989: Married Woman/Get a Shot of
Rhythm & Blues/Little Queenie/Slow Death/ Shake Some Action (orig. version)/
You Tore Me Down/Tallahassee Lassie (From the very first 1972 recording
session with Dave Edmunds.)
* Sixteen Tunes: Skydog CD (62247-2): Gold Star Tapes + Grease + More Grease
+ Can't Explain/Little Queenie (from Skydog 7" FG001) + Feel a Whole Lot
Better/Paint it Black/Shake Some Action (alternate version) (from Sire-UK
7" 4018)
* Groove In: Revenge records CD (AUF 1): Cabiria/In Between/Doin' My Time/
Night Owl Blues/Wild About My Lovin'/ Local Boy Makes Good/Sportin' Life/
Good Morning Mr. Stone/Carol/I'm a Man/Jam Sandwich/Heading for the Texas
Border/Louie Louie/Slow Death/ Shake Some Action/First Plane Home (Live
compilation with tracks from '68, '70, Slow Death Live and Live at the
Whisky-a-gogo.)
And now for the suggestion: There once was a band out there with their name
taken from a Standells song, a band who absolutely idolized the Flamin'
Groovies, a band who had Chris Wilson playing with them for a while in the
mid-eighties. Of course, Jeff, you guessed it: the Barracudas. And, yes, I
know they are back. Holy holy! If you are equally packed with information
about the 'Cudas as you are about the Standells and the Groovies, Jeff,
please, please, please,...
Kjetil Svarstad
kjetil.svarstad@delab.sintef.no
**********************************
hello, please talk to us
nv1 in sumpan
Christina Hallback
chha@tele.su.se
**********************************
Three Italian Masters: Mario Bava, Sergio Leone, and Dario Argento
------------------------------------------------------------------
Defy Hollywood Conventions. The Critics Balk! Part II-A - Argento
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Simply a director of incomparable incompetence"
- Vincent Canby on Dario Argento, from a New York Times review of Deep Red
Dario Argento's career definitely allows for his labeling as an auteur.
With a single exception his body of work consists of horror and crime
thriller films, and that is probably the primary reason for his complete
rejection by the motion picture establishment (at least in America) as any
kind of "serious" filmmaker. However, rather than just being ignored by
those who feel that no sort of aesthetic can be achieved in an exploitation
movie, Argento has instead been rather viciously lambasted by the critics,
commentators, and pundits. Similar to his countrymen Sergio Leone and Mario
Bava (see FUNHOUSE! #3), Argento's films, while not unusual to Europeans,
are made in an unconventional style by the standards the Hollywood system
and its sycophants. These director's perspectives aren't entirely guided by
a strict adherence to narrative, and thus reviewers who don't recognize this
label their works with descriptions such as "confusing, "unfocused", and
"muddled". The "spaghetti western" is still a pejorative to most American
reviewers, even if they have come to appreciate the work of Leone over the
years. This largely hasn't been true for Bava or Argento.
The genres which they have chosen to work in compound this criticism. Leone
is most famous for his westerns, and Bava, who worked within a wide range of
exploitation themes, for his horror titles. With the crime thrillers/murder
mysteries mostly created by Argento these are all areas of film where
conventions are well established and paradigms are usually strictly adhered
to in any studio film. The western movie paradigm is exclusively American
in origin, and while the crime and horror genres have plenty of precedent in
Europe (as well as elsewhere, but these directors are Italians and so
European influences are of primary importance), there has been established
through the Universal/Monogram/ Republic thrillers of the thirties and
forties, and the film noir/detective stories of the forties and fifties,
certain expectations as to what is a correct methodology.
These director's films aren't motivated completely by a need to reach a
conclusion which will answer some question established early in the story,
and so not every scene is constructed to further the narrative in a linear
fashion and in the direction of that ultimate goal. Thus when sections of a
film are created to be pleasing in their own right, separate from the
furtherance of the story, or when they serve to add to an overall subtextual
message, the critics respond negatively. When established routines in genre
films are not adhered to their venom is further unleashed. The most staid
of these conservative establishments, the Motion Picture Academy, seemed to
be showing signs of a changing attitude when for two years running they gave
their best picture award to American projects which are closely related
stylistically to the films of Leone and Argento. Jonathan Demme's all
around excellent The Silence of the Lambs (1991) has many elements in common
with an Argento film, and while Clint Eastwood's imperfect The Unforgiven
(1992) might actually be more of a lifetime achievement award for the
actor/director (there's precedent for this in John Wayne's best actor award
for True Grit [1969] and Paul Newman's for The Color of Money [1986]) it's
encouraging that a film of its style was recognized. As far as I'm
concerned, Eastwood's best director award is in fact an award for Leone,
whose films not only created the style mimicked by The Unforgiven (most
notably his Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo [aka The Good, The Bad, and The
Ugly, 1967] and C'era una Volta il West [aka Once Upon a Time in the West,
1968] but made a star out of Eastwood. Those two consecutive awards were an
enigma, however, for an organization which really only considers heavy
handed dramas or pseudo-historical epics for their top honor. I don't
direct the "pseudo" label to last year's Schindler's List, but there's
plenty of evidence for its accuracy in past winners such as Amadeus, Ghandi,
and The Last Emperor (made by Leone and Argento cohort Bernardo Bertolucci).
Note that it took Spielberg's moving away from genre films, even if only his
fairytale versions of them, and into comfortable territory for the Academy
voters before they could be persuaded to honor their top moneymaker. And
Demme, the director of not only Silence of the Lambs but also Caged Heat
(1974) and Stop Making Sense (1984), seems to have moved into a style more
to the establishment's liking with his latest release, Philadelphia.
The subject of dubbing should also be briefly addressed. Frequently the
films of all three men, as well as many other European directors, are
criticized for their "bad dubbing". All of Argento's films up to Opera
(1987), and all of Leone's westerns, were filmed silent and then post-dubbed
in a sound studio. This was a common practice in Italian cinema. Many of
the higher budgeted films had a mixture of American stars (Charles Bronson,
Karl Malden, Jessica Harper) with a supporting cast of Italians and other
Europeans. Often the actors would not be able to speak the same language
and would deliver their lines in their native tongues. This made direct
sound recording impractical, and as the films needed to also be made in
English for foreign distribution, dubbing after shooting was already
necessary. Usually the voice you hear on the soundtrack is not that of the
actor, if his or her primary language is different from that which you are
hearing the film in. Many times the same voice actor provided the dialog
for a number of characters. The post-dubbing process creates a noticeably
different look, and as it is one not familiar to Americans used to Hollywood
product, this often is interpreted as a quality of a bad film.
Dario Argento came from a filmmaking family, which was almost a necessary
prerequisite for penetrating Italy's production system at the time he began.
His father Salvatore Argento was a producer, and served that function on
Dario's first four films. He was forced to intervene to save Argento's
position as director on the first, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage.
Argento worked as a film critic for Paese Sera, a Rome newspaper, and from
there his break into the world of actual filmmaking came when he and
Bertolucci co-wrote the story for Once Upon a Time in the West. A prolific
few years followed as the writer on a number of Italian films in then
popular genres such as western (Cimitero Senza Croci aka Cemetary Without
Crosses, 1968), war (La Legione dei Dannati aka Legion of the Damned, 1969)
and softcore (La Rivoluzione Sessuale aka The Love Circle, 1968). When
given the opportunity to direct on his own, in 1970, he abandoned all of
these styles in favor of one which drew upon his literary influences, Edgar
Wallace, Cornell Woolrich, and especially Edgar Allan Poe, and his film
influences, most notably Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Mario Bava.
Brother Claudio was brought in as producer after his father stepped aside,
and he performed those duties on the films Deep Red through Tenebrae, and
then again on Two Evil Eyes. Claudio Argento's most well known work not
with his brother is as the producer and co-writer of Alejandro Jodorowsky's
Santa Sangre (1990). Argento surrounds himself with regular assistants and
collaborators. Partner Daria Nicolodi co-wrote Suspiria and Inferno and
appeared in Deep Red, Suspiria (very briefly), Inferno, Tenebrae, Phenomena,
and Opera. Mario Bava's son Lamberto Bava carved out a directorial career
of his own after assisting his father back to 1965, and then later Argento
who produced and co-wrote his Demoni (aka Demons, 1985) and Demoni 2 (aka
Demons 2, 1986). The first of these features Argento's daughter Fiore, who
he utilized himself in Phenomena, while the latter stars his other daughter
Asia, who later would appear in Argento's own Trauma. Michele Soavi is
another assistant director who eventually stepped out on his own as a
principle director. He created the documentary Dario Argento's World of
Horror (1985), which provides interviews with its subject and behind the
scenes looks at the creation of Suspiria, Tenebrae, Phenomena, and Demons,
and has footage from most of the other titles. It is a valuable source for
Americans for some scenes edited out of releases here. Soavi directed the
Argento produced and co-written La Chiesa (aka The Church, 1989 - originally
Demons 3!) and La Setta (aka The Sect, 1991) as well as other Argento
influenced films such as The Bloody Bird (aka Stagefright, 1988). Luigi
Cozzi served as a co-writer with Argento dating back to Four Flies on Grey
Velvet and also did some work as an assistant director. While none of his
own projects directly involve his mentor creatively, he did create a follow
up documentary to World of Horror titled Dario Argento: Master of Horror
(1990), and his 1982 film The Black Cat is an homage to his pal. What began
as Cozzi's attempt to complete the Three Mothers Trilogy, the first two
parts being Suspiria and Inferno, shifted to a story about a director of
horror films preparing to make a film, starring his wife in her usual
leading role, based on the story of the Three Mothers. A witch becomes
angered by this and seeks revenge. It even contains dialog referring to
Argento and Suspiria by name.
Much will be said in describing Argento's style in the discussions of
individual films that follow. There are however some common themes present
throughout. An obsession with perception permeates, both on the part of a
film's characters and thus by extension the audience. This relationship to
the audience is more than indirect, as Argento strives to put them into a
position of participating in his films. This is accomplished most obviously
through point of view shots which allow the viewer to psychologically assume
the role of the killer. This technique is not unfamiliar today, being
utilized successfully in John Carpenter's Argento influenced Halloween
(1978), which then served as the influence for many "slasher" films which
followed. While Argento uses this technique successfully he also employs
more intricate methods. Subtextual elements apart from the main storyline
play on the audience's psyche to provide them with a link to the action. A
common narrative theme has the protagonist struggling to make sense of some
puzzling bit of information that he or she has glimpsed, and in parallel to
that theme the viewer is introduced to all sort of clues, messages, notions,
and ideas that he is asked to evaluate, ponder, or interpret.
Not only are these films complex in plot, but they are so cinematically as
well. They are all very carefully constructed, and each scene is very
intricately designed. Along with Mario Bava's pioneering work on the giallo
film in general, this is another area where the influence of his work on
Argento is evident. The films are very stylistic in their execution, making
great use of camera angle and movement, of art and set direction, of sound
and score, and of editing. Bava, who was a trained painter, considered the
look of his films to be important to their overall quality, and he treated
the visual content of a narrative film as being central to its success.
This attitude was adopted by Argento. His films are loaded with elaborate
shots utilizing highly mobile cameras, which often record action from very
extreme or improbable positions. Argento has said that he likes to present
his audience with perspectives which couldn't be had from a person in the
world of the film, and thus the camera will explore and emphasize elements
of the mise en scene from areas where no one in the film could be. By
implication a film which has been described as not being primarily motivated
by narrative must rely on other factors.
In Argento's films colors, locales, and especially the soundtrack all
contribute to the message. All of these pieces are put together to create a
sense of the materialization of a bad dream, and the situations which the
characters find themselves in could be seen as a realization of their worst
nightmares. Argento has stated that many of his inspirations come to him in
dreams, and it is this experience that he tries to project to his audience.
A curious aspect to his tactics is that the knife wielding, black gloved
hands seen on camera are usually Argento's. He has said that he can best
achieve the effect he desires from his images of violence. As the depth of
Argento's films offer some of their most enjoyable aspects much can be said
in analyzing them. As I decide to do so liberally in this article space
requires that it be divided into two parts. Section A follows and covers
work from Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) through Suspiria (1977).
FUNHOUSE! #5 will pick up with part B, which will cover Inferno (1980)
through Trauma (1992). Section A includes a complete filmography while
section B will be accompanied by a soundtrack discography and an American
videography, which will make an attempt to detail the extensive editing done
to Argento's films here, and will provide information as to the various
versions available on video. Each section is followed by the complete
reference list.
Argento was approached to direct a film in 1970, and with this opportunity
the former writer/critic departed from the western and war genres in which
he had been working in his previous endeavors. Instead, Argento reflected
back on the personal influences previously mentioned: Edgar Allan Poe,
Alfred Hitchcock, Edgar Wallace, Fritz Lang, and especially Mario Bava. The
Italian take on the crime thriller was just starting to emerge as a major
theme. It was then represented by such titles as Giulio Questi's La Morte
ha Fatto L'Uovo (aka Death Laid an Egg, 1967), Antonio Margheriti's
Nude...Si Muore (aka The Young, the Evil, and the Savage, 1967), Massimo
Dallamano's La Morte Non ha Sesso (aka Death has No Sex, 1968), and
especially Bava, who was in the midst of creating a trio of the murderous
dramas in succession. These were Il Rosso Segno Della Follia (aka A Hatchet
For the Honeymoon, 1969), Cinque Bambole Per la Luna D'Agosto (aka Five
Dolls For an August Moon, 1970), and Ecologia del Delitto (aka Twitch of the
Death Nerve aka Bay of Blood and numerous other retitlings, 1971). Bava had
defined this field structurally with his La Ragazza che Sapeva Troppo (aka
The Girl Who Knew too Much aka The Evil Eye, 1963) and stylistically with
Sei Donne per L'Assassino (aka Blood and Black Lace, 1964). All of these
influenced the novice director's effort, and all would eventually add to
Argento's own distinct, manic, style upon its reaching maturity. However
his initial effort LUUCCELLO DALLE PIUME DI CRISTALLO (aka The Bird With the
Crystal Plumage, 1970) is his most conventional project.
For The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Argento surrounded himself with film
veterans, including father Salvatore as producer and cinematographer
Vittorio Storaro. The story is a derivative of Frederic Brown's "The
Screaming Mimi," which it follows closely. Bird stars Tony Musante as Sam
Dalmas, a down on his luck American writer plodding through Rome in an
attempt to regain some direction to his career. He has been undergoing
extensive writer's block, and the only work he can come across is ghost
writing an ornithological text for a biologist friend. Dalmas is
immediately portrayed as a unlikeable guy. Upon being paid for his work on
the bird book he gruffly rejects a copy, stating that his check is all that
he wants. With money in hand he and his Italian girlfriend Julia (played by
Suzy Kendall) prepare to leave for the US, but on his trip home from being
paid he stumbles across an event that alters his plans significantly.
Dalmas spots a struggle inside an art gallery. It's night and thus the
black clad man and the woman grappling are clearly visible to him from
across the street. Before he can rush over to get a closer look the man
flees. The woman has a stab wound to her stomach, and a large ceiling to
floor glass door blocks him from entering to help. When he pushes a button
to open this door a similar outer door closes behind him, and thus he is
trapped at the scene of the crime, able to be observed from both inside and
outside of the building but not able to escape. His situation is emphasized
by an encounter with a man on the street. When the camera in between the
glass doors we hear Dalmas' frantic screams highly amplified on the
soundtrack, however when the camera takes the spectator's point of view
outside we are overcome by the quiet as Dalmas tries to communicate the need
for the police. This is a more obvious example of a reoccurring set up in
Argento's films.
Dalmas is an interloper who becomes trapped by a situation not of his
making, and the story which follows is just as much about the effect of this
event on the psychological stability of his unbalanced character as it is
about the final resolution of what he has seen. The resolutions are often
purposefully preposterous in order to more emphasize the events up to that
point - Argento is suggesting that the conclusion is not the most important
part of the film. This methodology is pointed to most obviously in the
"animal trilogy." (Argento's first three films also include The Cat O' Nine
Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet. These relate to animals mostly in
title only.) In each of these films the crime is solved with the use of
some extra-logical bit of pseudoscientific technology, thus again diverting
attention away from the importance of the solution by reaching it through an
exaggerated means. The writer Dalmas also carries the attribute of being
artistically oriented, which is something common to protagonists in all of
Argento's films, as they are in certain ways created to be extensions of the
director himself.
The stabbing victim (Eva Renzi as Monica Ranieri) does not die, and when the
police arrive and rescue the witness from his cage he becomes a suspect in
what appears to be a failed attempt by the perpetrator of a recent string of
serial murder slashings. Dalmas has his passport confiscated and, at first
very unwillingly, is forced to stay in Rome while the criminal investigation
continues. The police in Argento's films also will match a formula set down
here. They are dull, monotonous, and the viewer is given the impression
that they are not capable of providing the deeply analytical and logical
thought required to solve the crime (and they never do). That skill is
reserved for the artistic protagonist, if he can first overcome his own
borderline madness. As the investigation continues, Dalmas and his
girlfriend become fascinated with the case. They dig up information on the
past victims and begin to trace down leads. The writer becomes obsessed
with the mystery, and in the process his mental state is uplifted and he
comments on being able to produce his first bit of original, productive
writing in a long time. The message of an artist being stimulated in his
work by violence is to some degree a commentary on Argento himself.
Meanwhile the murders continue. Dalmas receives threatening phone calls,
and the stone faced and antagonistic husband of the gallery victim (Umberto
Raho as Alberto Ranieri) emerges as his prime suspect. Argento throws the
viewer some glaring evidence by showing Dalmas to figure out that Alberto
matches the description of the black clad man by way of his height and
left-handedness, and his attitude is hostile.
Dalmas continues with his investigation by looking into the previous
victims' circumstances, and he uncovers a grisly, child-like painting of a
woman being stabbed to death. The painting was sold by the killer's first
victim, who was a clerk in a curio shop, just before her murder. The
killer's motivation, which is always a major factor in Argento's films, is
starting to be revealed through piecemeal clues. The case is cracked by way
of one of this story's examples of curious science. A phone threat to
Dalmas from the killer is captured on tape, and his bird studying friend is
able to identify the strange sounds in the background as the squawk of a
rare species which cannot survive naturally in the climate of Rome. The
only place that this bird exists locally is the zoo (it is in fact "The Bird
With the Crystal Plumage") and when Dalmas, the professor, Julia, and the
cops investigate, the film's resolution is set up. Their attention is drawn
to a room above the bird's cage by a woman's scream. When they reach the
room they find Alberto and Monica, the husband and wife art dealers,
struggling over a knife, in an image that mirrors the opening moments of the
film. Alberto recoils from the police, refuses to drop the blade, and
finally plunges out the open window to his death. With his last breath he
confesses to the crimes. His story is accepted by the cops but Dalmas is
troubled, and when he realized that Monica has fled with Julia and the
professor in pursuit he chases after them.
Nothing is exactly as it seems, neither at this time nor in the earlier
struggle. Dalmas follows Monica back to the gallery where the film's final,
eerie set piece takes place. As he nervously edges through a darkened room
the camera suspensfully peers into corners and crevices. The cinematography
makes it quite clear that danger lurks, and this feeling is confirmed when
we glimpse Julia bound and gagged under a bed as Dalmas walks by. The
professor is found with a knife buried in his back, and then the guilty
Monica emerges dressed in black. Dalmas pieces together the details of what
he has been struggling to remember about the events at the art gallery.
With his mental image now clear it is revealed that in the struggle he
witnessed while trapped between the doors he actually saw Alberto attempt to
take a knife away from Monica. She is the crazed serial killer, and she was
injured accidentally in that fight. Monica now has the upper hand on
Dalmas, and she drops a large, spiked sculpture on top of him, pinning him
to the ground between its projections. The story has circled back on itself
as its protagonist is again left trapped and impotent. Monica slashes at
Dalmas while taunting him in a maniacal voice that he is going to die,
before the police arrive and save him by clubbing her from behind. The cops
didn't figure out the crime - Julia was able to escape and bring them to the
rescue. A second bit of scientific nonsense serves as an epilog, when on a
news show discussing the case a still befuddled police inspector hands over
its explanation of motive to a stuffy psychiatrist. The psychiatrist
pontificates that the act pictured in the painting resurrected some previous
trauma in Monica. She recalled her own victimization of a violent crime
upon spotting it in the shop, and her psychosis triggered from the repressed
memories acted so that she came to identify with her attacker.
This film is the most straightforward of all of Argento's work, and is the
most reliant on plotting. While the plot is not subjugated to the mise en
scene on a large scale, there are still some very dominant stylistic
elements present. The most obvious are the incidents surrounding the
murders themselves. As was the case in Bava's influential Blood and Black
Lace, these depictions are not necessary to further the narrative, but are
nevertheless created in a meticulous and drawn out manner so as to allow
them to convey sensations to the viewer apart from the story. The point of
view shot is used, as it would be quite extensively in later works. The
opening scenes are from the killer's perspective, and show her (gender and
identity are not known at the time) carefully going through her pre-murder
ritual. Photos of the next victim are studied, a weapon is chosen from a
collection of cutlery housed in an red cloth lined drawer, and the black
gloved costume is flashed. The choice of victims helps motivate certain
critic's who label Argento as misogynistic. Like Bava's targets, they are
all young, female, and visually appealing. No reason is given in the story
for this demographic, and in fact it is barely acknowledged, but it does
allow for the creation of some deliberate sado-sexual tension. The viewer
is put into the position of killer by the editing, and thus his own sexual
neuroses are played upon. In one scene, which was trimmed in the US
release, the killer confronts a victim who is dressed for bed. While the
victim screams in terror, writhing on the sheets, the knife hovers over and
around her flesh in a phallic exploration. The part of the scene cut by the
US distributor shows the woman's underwear being sliced away from her body.
This level of explicit sexual content to a murder scene is only matched, and
in fact is actually exceeded, in the very erotically violent Tenebrae.
There is a good deal of fluid camerawork on display, which is unusual to
viewers of more conventional fare, however the playing with notions of
cinematic space and the extreme use of visual effects, color, and sounds
that would appear in later Argento films are largely absent. Several more
conventions of the director's work are established. The artistic
protagonist has been mentioned. The theme of an outsider catching a
fleeting glimpse of some important clue, and then struggling throughout the
story to interpret it, would become common throughout Argento's filmography.
He often interjects bizarre, and even humorous, interludes which seem to be
included for their own sake, and are only tangential to the principal
message. These diversions within a multi-layered film frequently employ
singular ideas away from a larger context. An example in Bird is Dalmas'
pursuit of Monica's accomplice into a hotel convention room. After the
camera tracks up to a door, depicting the pursuer anxiously preparing to
confront the man, the door is flung open to reveal all of the conventioneers
dressed identically, thus making identification of the fleeing individual
impossible. There is also a wacky visit to the key painting's artist, an
offbeat guy who makes meals of his cats. The owner of the curio shop where
the first woman killed was employed is an obvious, openly gay character
whose sexuality is not directly related to any other events. Argento
frequently uses gay characters whose orientation is only germane on a
subconscious level. The image of a killer as black gloved and black garbed
is also established. This convention, another with its roots in Bava's
Blood and Black Lace, immediately defined the disposition of its bearer in
the giallo genre. It was picked up by just about every director in this
field by the seventies, Argento included.
Bird was distributed in America by Sidney Galzier who had a huge success
with it. It was also very profitable in Europe, and thus Argento was
quickly established as a commercially viable filmmaker. Italian film
maestro Ennio Morricone provided a typical score, dense and with subtle
effects, as he would for the second and third "animal" films.
In only his second film IL GATTO A NOVE CODE (aka The Cat O' Nine Tails,
1971) Argento starts to move away from a strong adherence to narrative.
While Bird With the Crystal Plumage was derived from an existing story, and
thus demanded a certain degree of fidelity to it, Cat is an original story
written by Argento with Luigi Collo and Dardano Sacchetti. It begins a
transition from a plot driven films to those in which plot serves as a
framework in which to interweave other ideas, and eventually to those in
which plot is only a necessary device to string together disparate elements,
or where it is almost non existent (Suspiria and Inferno). Coexisting with
the de-emphasis of the narrative is an increase in other elements, such as
using the cinematography and editing to play with the viewer's perceptions,
and disorienting the audience through carefully positioned manipulations of
space and time. Cat O' Nine Tails contains the common components of all of
his gialli, and coming in 1971 it thus begins to establish the iconography
of his style, and also to a certain extent the iconography of the genre.
Expected notions which came to be attached to these icons would in fact
provide opportunities for playing on audience perceptions in later projects.
Cat has a protagonist who stumbles across a clue which draws him into the
world of the criminal. The twist in this film is that there come to be two
main characters obsessed with uncovering the truth, and that the puzzle come
across by one of them is aural, as he is blind. Cat O' Nine Tails also
maintains the loose theme of the animal trilogy in that its eventual
motivation is based upon a bit of exaggerated science, however its title is
the most tenuous of the three, only coming from an observation that the nine
leads to follow in reaching the single truth are like "a cat with nine
tails," a comment which is followed with the correction "a cat o' nine
tails, like the old navy whip."
The twin protagonists in Cat O' Nine Tails are blind ex-newspaperman Franco
Arno (Karl Malden) and working reporter Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus).
Both are drawn into the suspicious activities at The Terzi Institute, a
Genetic Research facility. Arno has a strong desire for puzzle solving and
he passes his time creating crosswords. While walking past a parked car
with his pre-teen niece Lori, he by chance overhears one man inside say to
another "I have no choice, I'm not interested in blackmailing you. I have to
pass on the information." This snippet of dialog is barely audible on the
soundtrack, but it is curious enough to intrigue the sightless, and by
implication more sound cognizant, Arno. Arno lives in an apartment behind
the Institute, and becomes drawn in further when he detects a scuffle
outside his window later that night. In front of Terzi the next day
reporter Giordani shows up to investigate a break-in the previous night.
After being knocked over in Giordani's haste, Arno learns of the crime from
the reporter, which furthers his curiosity. A man is killed by an oncoming
train and it is ruled an accident, but when Lori describes his picture in
the paper to Arno as being one of the men overheard in the car he becomes
suspicious and visits the author of the piece, who is Giordani. Giordani's
photographer partner had been at the train station awaiting the arrival of a
starlet and fortuitously shot the victim just as he was being hit by the
oncoming locomotive. Arno, suspicious from all that he knows, has Giordani
get the photographer to print the full, uncropped photo, and visible on its
edge is a fuzzy image of hands pushing the man. The photographer is slashed
to death just after reporting back his finding, and subsequently the
photographic evidence is snatched by a black gloved person. The head of the
Institute, Professor Terzi, reports to the police that nothing was stolen in
the break-in, but we see one of the scientists, Dr. Calabresi, brag to his
fiancee Bianca that he knows what has happened and is going to profit from
it. Calabressi is the man pushed in front of the train.
With two murders now centered on the break-in, Arno and Giordani join forces
to investigate the crimes. They question those surrounding the case; Terzi
and his daughter Anna, Bianca, the German Dr. Braun, and Dr. Casoni, who
informs Giordani of the projects being worked on at the Institute. The two
main avenues of research he explains are the development of a genetically
based "wonder drug," and work with the government on "XYY syndrome," a
chromosomal disorder in which those males who are born with it have a
greater propensity toward violence (editor's note: XYY Syndrome has in fact
been studied and a higher percentage of XYY men are found to be criminals
than normal, XY men. There has also been documented a higher propensity
toward aggression and self gratification in these people.). Suspicious
circumstances surround all those who are associated with the Terzi
Institute. Professor Terzi has a far too close relationship with Anna, and
Giordani learns through some snooping into Terzi's journal that the now
twentyish woman was adopted at age fourteen, and that Terzi has been lusting
after her. Bianca is shown to have been engaged to Calabressi only to get
access to information on the wonder drug in order to sell it to a rival
pharmaceutical firm. Her partner in the scheme is Dr. Braun, a high living
and arrogant homosexual who hangs out at a club populated by transvestites.
Bianca knows who the killer is from what she learned from Calabressi and
attempts to blackmail him herself. This decision causes her to wind up
dead. When her scam with Braun is learned, the police leak his name as the
murder suspect to the papers before they arrest him, but he also winds up
dead while trying to flee. The curious Arno and Giordani are next
threatened, and attempted to be killed, causing Arno to send away Lori for
her safety. They deduce that Bianca hid her evidence in a locket which she
was buried with, and they invade her tomb to retrieve it. The murderer
confronts Arno outside the crypt while Giordani is inside, and informs him
that he has kidnapped Lori. He demands the evidence and their silence in
exchange for her safety, but Arno is able to stab him with a hidden blade in
his cane before the criminal can get away.
Arno and Giordani accompany the police on a search of the Terzi Institute,
where the killer has Lori hidden. Before he can stab her with his knife,
Giordani interrupts and these two engage in a dragged out battle which
spills out onto the roof, and in which the killer is revealed to be Casoni.
He gets the best of Giordani, who struggles with Casoni's knife stuck in his
shoulder. In a fit of madness Casoni reveals his motivation to be his own
infliction with XYY syndrome, something only Calabresi also knew. He
initially sneaked into the Institute to swap his file containing this
information with a doctored one, but when Calabresi decided to blackmail him
the murderous chain of events began. Casoni escapes Giordani but is trapped
by the blind Arno with his sword-cane. When Casoni claims to have killed
Lori, Arno flies into a murderous rage himself and throws the madman through
a skylight and into an elevator shaft, where he falls to his death while
vainly trying to break his fall by gripping the cables, which only serves to
flay the flesh off of his hands. As he hits bottom there is a voice over of
Lori calling to Arno while the credits roll. The open question is whether
Casoni's condition, or just his deepening fear of it, led to his violent
insanity. Arno himself was driven to violence when told that Lori had been
harmed, and thus a different motivation for killing is presented.
Some of the camera effects that were explored in Bird With the Crystal
Plumage are extended in Cat. There is a great fluidity and point of view
shots from the killer are used throughout. There is also a step away from
the conventional is the construction of the film. The plot is only a
reoccurring device, and is in fact abandoned in places only to be recalled
later when the story needed to be forwarded. The first fifteen or so
minutes do almost nothing towards introducing a story, with only the brief
scene of Arno overhearing something about blackmail being important to the
narrative, and this is included early on only by necessity as it is the
device that draws Arno into the story. The largest portion of the opening
is used in establishing the cinematic space, and in developing a convention
which will be recalled. The credits are accompanied by a tracking shot
which explores the Terzi rooftop at nighttime, and then there is a cut to
Arno and Lori strolling down the sidewalk which links them, and what they
overhear, with the Institute. This bridges to a scene in their apartment
where Lori goes to bed and Arno works on a puzzle. He detects something out
his window, and in an vocalization of his recollection on the soundtrack the
blackmail line is clearly repeated. The camera then matches Arno's window
in the background to a struggle below, outside of the Institute. Casoni is
seen clubbing a guard, from his point of view, which is preceded by a close
up of his eye and a flourish on the Ennio Morricone soundtrack as a signal.
What follows is a point of view exploration of the inside of the building,
in which the camera peers through its darkened corners and crevices, all
accompanied by more closeups of eyeballs. Thus in this opening sequence we
have learned that Arno, the Terzi Institute, a discussion of blackmail, and
this burglary are all linked in the story, but we have know idea how, or
even what that story will be. The principle of conventional narrative
filmmaking in which characters and their dilemmas are initially defined has
already been broken. A visual indication of the Casoni's presence has also
been created, and a flash of his eyeball and accompanying Morricone music,
followed by a point of view shot, will be used throughout Cat to signal his
lurking presence. The eyeball shot is significant in another way in that it
contrasts with, and emphasizes, Arno's blindness, which in turn underlines
his high perception of the details of the case. Almost as if by necessity a
bit of narrative establishment follows in which, through Giordani's
investigation of the scene of the crime, some of the principle characters are
defined and Calabresi's plot is revealed.
After Calabresi's murder solidifies the role that Arno and Giordani will
play together, furthering the story is again set aside as Cat explores the
guilty worlds of its characters. As each one's shortcoming is revealed
there is an implicit suggestion of culpability, but equally this serves to
further some of the subtextual messages of the film. Terzi and his daughter
Anna's odd relationship is paralleled with that of Arno and Lori, who calls
him "Cookie." Wh
en we cut to them in their apartment after they are
introduced, the first image is of Arno kissing Lori goodnight. At first
glance this appears a bit too passionate, but when it quickly ends the image
subsides. On its own this scene doesn't mean much, but it will add to later
implications. Early on Arno tells Giordani that Lori's parents are dead,
that he has no relatives, and that they need each other. Thus like Terzi
and Anna they are not truly related. At another time when Arno is saddened
over having to send Lori away, Giordani describes one of their suspects as
"fishy," to which the melancholy Arno replies, "but don't we all have
something fishy in our lives" as Giordani's face casts an awkward look
toward the blind man. The character of Dr. Braun is another whose
peculiarities are explored. Argento frequently incorporates gays into his
films, and they usually wind up killed as tragic victim's of circumstance.
Make what you will of this, but he never portrays them in a negative light
due to there homosexuality, and probably uses their orientation as a device
for playing with his audience's perceptions. There is a common methodology
in his films of furthering viewer's tension through manipulation of their
sexual neuroses, and thus homosexuality is part of a mix of voyeurism,
incest, and gender confusion.
Bianca's initial image as a grieving victim of Calabresi's death is also
quickly set aside when her we learn that her relationship with him was a
scam, and when she takes up the position of blackmailer. These character
explorations not only provide for temporary suspects, but also hint at guilt
so as to frame the set pieces in which they are killed. Argento frequently
includes sequences which are tangential to the story, and which are designed
to be visual experiences which can stand on their own merit apart from it.
The scenes of the killer in action are the most obvious example of this, and
in Cat they take a big step forward in their depiction of gore over its
predecessor. Bianca's murder is especially nasty and is one of the
interludes where the hyperviolence is used in a choreographed manner. A
tight shot of her head is shown as the killer is out of frame. Her face is
repeatedly thrust into the ground, and eventually bits of blood stained
drool form a line between her mouth and the ground. This sequence provides
the clearest glimpse of the prototype black leather gloves on the fiend's
hands. Calabresi's death is likewise highly stylized. In real time his body
is shown making contact with the train, which is intercut with a slow motion
close up of his head upon impact, and then a return to his decapitated body
rolling by the wayside.
A return to narrative development sets up the film's best sequence. Arno's
and Giordani's lives are threatened, and thus the mystery takes on a greater
urgency for them. When they decide that Bianca's information on the killer
is held inside her locket, they decide to rob her grave to get it. As we
track them through the graveyard at night, we also see Casoni's eyeball and
his point of view shot as he follows them. With the blind Arno keeping
watch outside, Giordani opens her casket and indeed finds a folded piece of
paper that he gives to Arno. Before he can re-seal the coffin, the door to
the crypt crashes closed over a last glimpse of Arno's cane outside. A
panicked Giordani tries to get out, but when he realizes he can't he settles
down to ponder his position. There is some question raised as to Arno's
culpability, as he was last seen just outside the door. It then opens and
Arno stumbles in with the blade at the end of his cane, revealed for the
first time, soaked in blood. There is additionally some suspicious tension
in Arno's voice as he calls out to Giordani. It is resolved that what
happened was that Arno was confronted by Casoni outside, who told of Lori's
capture and took the information from the locket before it could be read,
but not before Arno could inflict a wound. The irony of the ultimate
solution being in the hands of the blind man, and thus not quite being
learned, is displayed. The struggle between Giordani and Casoni on the roof
is the most derivative of Leone in any Argento film. The sound of their
blows are highly amplified on the soundtrack, and the image of Giordani
struggling with a dagger protruding from his shoulder is striking. There is
eventually a slow pan up from the ground, past a bleeding wound to the gut,
and to the face of the killer as he is identified for the audience. Argento
is of course familiar with Leone's work, having co-written that director's
Once Upon a Time in the West, a film which like Cat opens with a drawn out
sequence which isn't narrative in function, but does set a mood for what is
to follow.
There is an attempt to incorporate segments of humor in Cat O' Nine Tails as
well, a strategy which moves into segments of outright slapstick in Four
Flies on Grey Velvet before the comedy film Five Day in Milan placated those
urges in the director for good. One of the stand alone segments has
Giordani in a barber's chair getting a shave with a straight razor. He
reads the paper that tells of the photographer's death. The barber, who
doesn't know that his client is the story's author, objects to the
suggestion that due to a blade being used the culprit might be a barber. He
dismisses this notion by saying that a barber wouldn't be so sloppy, and
describes the cuts a one would make as he shaves Giordani's neck. Giordani
grows nervous and eventually jumps up from the confused barber. Another
segment introduces a character called Gigi the Loser, whom we encounter
engaged in an insult contest. Giordani hires him to help with the break in
at Terzi's house. The use of the soundtrack is also further developed with
this film. Morricone's omnipresent strains of awkward music provide
messages, especially when they shift to emphasize the killer's presence. The
music is so constant that it causes silence to be quite effective. The
score would eventually become a very important component to Argento's
overall presentation. Here his ideas are in development, and they won't
reach a high level of success until his initial collaboration with Goblin,
on Deep Red. Argento frequently builds the character of the protagonist
around his notions of himself. He has claimed that Suspiria's Suzy Banion
is the character most modeled after himself, and those of Four Flies on Grey
Velvet's Roberto Tobias, Tenebrae's Peter Neal, and Opera's Marco seem
obvious. One can't help but notice the relation of the blind man Arno's
name to Argento, whatever message that may contain. Cat O' Nine Tails was
released in the US by National-General, who tried to sell it with a highly
exploitative campaign. It didn't reach the success of its predecessor in
Europe or America.
QUATTRO MOSCHE DI VELLUTO GRIGIO (aka Four Flies on Grey Velvet, 1972) is
where Argento first begins to play with both the conventions established in
his first two films, and those of other directors working in the giallo
genre. It also contains a greater movement toward extravagant editing and
story construction techniques, and includes more attempts at humor than any
of his thriller or horror films. It is one his most linear films, however
with all of the additional plot twists and filmic devices employed it
doesn't seem that way. Cat O' Nine Tails was criticized for indulging in
too many details which veered away from a cohesive furthering of the plot;
similarly Four Flies was criticized for its excesses, though mainly for its
cinematic overindulgence. A consolidation of the best ideas from each animal
trilogy entry would come in Argento's fourth giallo and fifth film, Deep
Red, making for a better overall film. These techniques, while existing in
a less refined manner, are still a joy to watch in his first three projects.
This is true even if the film's various subsections only succeed on an
immediate level, and apart from the whole. Few films made are so carefully
constructed from shot to shot and from scene to scene, and watching an
Argento film presents the viewer with an interpretative puzzle every step of
the way.
The first and most obvious deviation of Four Flies from the paradigm of the
previous films is in the character of its protagonist. That role is filled
by Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon), whose artistic tendencies lie in his
being a drummer in a prog-rock band. Past protagonists were innocent
interlopers, either Sam Dalmas who happened upon the struggle in the
gallery, or Franco Arno and Carlo Girodani who investigate an event that
happened in their midst through either their instinct or profession. Tobias
is however a guilty victim of circumstance, and it is he who is, or at least
it initially seems, responsible for the film's opening murder. He is more
blamable of being a dupe than viscous however, and this distances him from
the pure guilt that Peter Neal would embody in Tenebrae. The structure of
the lead character being drawn into something not of his making, and being
threatened by it, is maintained even if it is on different terms. Flies
opens with a jam session by Tobias' band. This opening utilizes some
drastic contrasts in its editing. The band jams in a well-lit studio, while
Tobias is distracted by a man in dark hat, glasses, and coat spying in on
him. He recognizes the man as a person who has been following him for
several days. The present action is cut into with flashbacks showing these
previous encounters, and flashforwards to just after this session where
Tobias is chasing after the dark glassed man. All of these action sequences
are themselves interrupted by contrasting cuts to the credits, where the
music drops out to be replaced only by the sound of a heartbeat, and the
titles are displayed against a plain black background containing the image
of a beating heart. The frenzied notion of some drastic event surrounding
Tobias and this man is conveyed by the kinetic pacing of these scenes, and
is startlingly broken with the credit sequences. The pounding heart
maintains a link to Tobias' tension over these events. Violations of
continuity are already introduced in the temporal construction of this
sequence. One popular bit of odd photography during this credit sequence
shows members of the band playing in a shot bordered by a circular blocking
on the screen. It isn't until a hand is seen waving back and forth that the
viewer realizes that this is from the point of view of the inside of an
acoustic guitar.
After the credits the pursuit resumes. Tobias chases the man into an
abandoned opera house (a building with an opulent, and by association hints
of decadent, look which would be utilized to a greater extent fifteen years
later in Opera) where he confronts him. The dark man's surprised and
incredulous reaction draws into question Tobias' mental stability. The man
removes a knife from his pocket in a defensive gesture, Tobias grabs it from
him, and quickly the man tumbles into the orchestra pit with a bloody wound.
Tobias has accidentally killed his antagonist. Throughout the confrontation
a figure in a wickedly smiling mask has been snapping photos from an upper
level, and this person is glimpsed just as the body is falling to the
ground. A twist on Argento's conventional tactic is introduced in that this
film's central character is a killer, and it is he who has been observed by
an unknown person while "caught in the act." This incident is the axis on
which the story turns. The wickedly smiling, unnerving mask worn by the
photographer provides a threatening overtone to what has happened. Its
unisex quality is also important in a larger context as gender ambiguity
will come to be a central theme. The black clad man's role is also a shift
away from expectations, as he is a victim rather than a perpetrator, and
thus the iconography of the genre is already being played with. Tobias is
then taunted by the onlooker to his crime, causing him a great deal of
anguish. The dead man's identification is mailed to him and photos taken by
the masked figure turn up in his home. A theme of the breakdown of an
unstable character when thrust into a situation not of his making is
developed.
An important element that will serve as a reoccurring comment on Tobias'
state of mind is introduced. At a party in his home, a friend describes to
Tobias, his wife Nina (Mimsy Farmer), and other guests an execution
witnessed in Saudi Arabia. In detail he recalls the condemned man being
brought to a public square in front of many onlookers, and then of the
executioner's use of a dagger to the neck followed by a sword swipe to
remove the head. Recollection of this story by Tobias, in a series of
progressive and visually distinct nightmares, serves as a temporal tracking
of the development of his psychosis. The first nightmare sequence is the
longest. After discovering the incriminating evidence, he dreams of the
scene described. The onscreen image is quite unusual in that it is visually
very distinct from the contrasting real world depiction. The lighting is
unusually bright, and there in an unnerving buzzing music on the soundtrack
provided by Ennio Morricone. The execution is unusually slow in developing,
as the action is displayed with a slowed down film speed. Tobias' dream is
interrupted just as the sword is about to reach impact, and its swooshing
sound is used as an overlapping sound match to his jolting awake in bed. He
confides in Nina as to his predicament, and just after his confession a
noise draws him to another room and into a direct confrontation with his
tormentor. A knife is held to Tobias' throat and in a raspy whisper the
intruder speaks of how easy it would be to kill him, and then disappears.
Not only is he being threatened over his guilt, but this person is now
threatening his life, and Tobias has no idea who it is or why.
During this encounter Nina remains in bed, but the maid is shown lurking in
the background. She had previously been seen observing Tobias find the
planted photos. From what she has learned the maid engages in blackmail,
but it is not made known who she is extorting. A good example of Argento's
taste for the use of unorthodox photography is observed in this exchange.
The maid uses a pay phone to deliver her threat, and she is shown claiming
to someone that she knows who they are and what is going on, and that the
person on the other end of the line should meet with her in a park with a
payoff. Tension is built towards the revelation of who she is talking to by
a tracking shot in which the camera slowly travels along the phone line
which links the blackmailer and blackmailee. The camera follows a chord out
of the booth, moves along phone lines through the city, and shows them
arriving at the distant building. The score builds as we are forced to wait
to see this person, who most viewers probably suspect will be Tobias. The
construction of the scene leads the viewer to think that a big revelation is
being built to, and the maid's prior activities around him suggest we may be
learning more about his role in the affair. At the last instant however the
audience is cheated, as there is a quick cut to the maid waiting in a park.
The sequence also reflects Argento's obsession with the definition of
cinematic space. He is precisely describing the relative positions of these
two people to each other. The maid is seated at midday amongst some
expected park inhabitants; playing children, young families, and a kissing
couple. In a series of jump cuts the park is shown to gradually empty as
the sky begins to darken. The environment appears continuously more hostile
as the jump cuts proceed. The maid is eventually the only remaining person,
and the shot from which this temporal progression is shown becomes a point
of view shot of her arriving target. This person has no intention of paying
however, and instead turns violent as is evidenced by the terrified look on
the maid's face. She is chased through the dark corners of the park, and
the maintenance of the point of view shot of the killer gives some clue as
to identity, as while the thin maid struggles through a tight spot between
two walls her attacker moves through it effortlessly. The maid reaches a
high wall and screams frantically for help as a young couple strolls by on
the other, well lit side. Her death comes as the male passerby haplessly
tries to scale the wall.
The scene that follows maintains the point of view shot momentum, and thus
implies the continued presence of the killer. A major twist is introduced
through an encounter with the man Tobias chased into the opera house. As
with the maid, he demands a payoff, and implies that since a real murder has
occurred his accomplice should give him more money. Also like the maid the
blackmail causes his death, which is by hammer blows to the head. In
showing this, a flamboyant effect is used where the point of view switches
from the killer holding the hammer to the murder weapon itself as it lands
on the victim's skull. All that the audience has been shown and led to
believe to this point is revealed to be false. The viewer was under the
presumption that Tobias had killed a man when in fact he did not. It was
also logical to believe that it was Tobias who was the target of the maid's
blackmail attempt, and thus was also her killer. Although he doesn't know
it, Tobias is innocent of any wrongdoing and the only murders committed have
been done by this other person. A bit of explanation is given by the black
clad man, before he is killed, as to the nature of their trick. During this
he displays the retractable blade that he used, complete with false blood.
Argento would recycle the idea of a phony murder weapon in the hands of
Tenebrae's Peter Neal.
As Tobias has been the innocent victim of some malicious scam, the question
becomes one of who is responsible and why. The attentive viewer should be
able to conclude now that the perpetrator has to be Nina, and by extension
she must be responsible for the two real slayings. The remainder of the
film becomes driven by a revelation of her motive. The idea was previously
presented that the technical solution of the crime is not Argento's primary
focal point. If the theory that the preposterous methods used in reaching a
solution are intended to emphasize this is correct, then Four Flies falls
right in line as its methodology in drawing a conclusion is probably the
most ridiculous of all. The remainder of the film concerns itself with a
gradual supplying of clues as to motivation, as none is yet apparent. It is
also concerned with Tobias' sinking mental state, as he never becomes aware
of the truth of the opera house incident, and he continues to be stalked.
Critics accustomed to Hollywood films frequently fault Four Flies for the
obviousness of its villain, but again this more demonstrates their lack of
understanding of the film's technique than its weakness, as this revelation
is not what Four Flies is about.
Argento has inserted bits of humor into all of his previous films, and in
fact some of the excessive violence, broad analogies, and extreme subtexts
can be viewed as humorous in their outrageousness. In Four Flies however
there are blatant examples of slapstick and verbal silliness. A goofy
mailman is verbally attacked by a neighbor of Tobias' for delivering
pornography to the wrong address. Tobias later physically attacks the
mailman in an overdrawn manner when he mistakes him for his tormentor, and
this sets up a later comic episode where the spooked letter carrier is
afraid to come too close. Spaghetti western vet Bud Spencer plays an
extroverted friend of Tobias' who lives in a shack by a polluted urban
river. In an idea left over from "The Screaming Mimi" he is named Godfrey,
but is referred to as "God." Upon his introduction Tobias calls out to God,
and Morricone answers on the soundtrack with a bit of the "Hallelujah"
chorus. God's sidekick is a nutty character called "The Professor" (ala
Harpo Marx?) who is hired by Tobias to keep watch over his house for
"blackmailers, murderers, and the like." At one time when Tobias meets with
God and The Professor it is at a "funeral arts" exhibition. Humor is drawn
in relation to the theme of death, which has increasingly surrounded the
story, but the placement of the scene provides no subtextual element or
furthering of the narrative. It is just a comic device. These humor
attempts are not utilized as a strategically placed tool to lighten tension,
or give a false suggestion that tension should be lightened, as is often
done in terror films. Tobias decides that a private eye can help him, and
he visits one named Arrosio. His trip to Arrosio's office provides for
another indulgence in fluid editing which is contrary to convention. Tobias
drives his car through the streets of Rome, and there is a matched point of
view sequence of his traveling by foot through Arrosio's building. As the
car races forward there are intervening shots of Tobias traveling forward,
first up some stairs, then down a hallway, and finally to the detective's
door, which is marked by a sketch of an eye on the handle. The editing cuts
back and forth between car and building, and the two environments are
bridged by the continuing sound of a racing engine on the soundtrack, which
links the events with the forward camera movement. It is another play with
non-linearity, as the events are occurring out of sequence. Other examples
of non-linearity in Four Flies are the opening flashbacks and flashforwards
encompassing the black coated man's interactions with Tobias, and the
continuing dream sequence, which on each reoccurrence begins later in its
progression, carries further toward the final decapitation, and is of a
shorter duration. The intensity of what is happening in the Arabian square
is brought out to a greater extent with each succeeding depiction, just as
the immediacy of the dangers to Tobias are becoming more and more obvious.
Arrossio is this film's expected gay character, and his openness and
flamboyance provide some additional bits of comic interjection. His
presence also serves to underline the sexual tensions central to the film's
principle subtext. Arrossio is hired by Tobias. He states to his patron
rather brashly that he has yet to solve a case, bragging that he may be
heading toward some kind of record in futility. Arrosio does eventually
piece together an explanation, but is murdered before Tobias can be told.
The idea of a failed investigator achieving his first success at the expense
of the story's protagonist will be utilized more subtly with Detective
Giermani in Tenebrae. The episode comments negatively on Tobias, as here is
another character, along with the maid and Nina's original accomplice, who
has been able to solve the crimes. They all die with their knowledge while
the clueless Tobias continues to remain oblivious throughout. Arrossio also
provides a narrative function, as it is through his investigation that
Nina's motivation is revealed. In Tobias' family photos the detective
comments on a remarkable similarity. He traces Nina's history back to her
institutionalization as a child. He uncovers the fact that her father
locked her up out of his anger over her being a girl. None of this is
explicitly spelled out, and in fact the film has yet to admit that it is
Nina who has done the killings, but these pieces of evidence are gradually
dropped. They are mixed with flashback sequences containing more point of
view shots from inside a padded cell. Over these shots a tormentor is heard
to shout, "I wanted a son, not a weakling like you!" Arrossio's murder
significantly is committed when he is cornered in a coed bathroom, where
explicitly shown on the door are the interlinked male and female (mars and
venus) symbols.
The allusions to gender form the main subtext of Four Flies on Grey Velvet.
Both Michael Brandon and Mimsy Farmer have somewhat androgynous appearances.
He is skinny, long haired, and wears flashy clothes, much as is to be
expected from an early seventies rock performer. She has a short haircut,
is unshapely, and wears pants and button down shirts. The entire story
revolves around her motivation, which is shown to be born from a psychosis
instilled in her by her father, through his abuse due to her being born
female. There is a definite masculine streak to her character (A reaction?
It's not explicitly stated). The plot reveals that she has married Tobias
as he looks like her father, and she wishes to use him as the target of her
revenge. Tobias' masculinity is also presented with some question. He is
propositioned by Arrossio, and subtle points such as a male friend
comforting him with an arm tightly around his shoulders are included. None
of these shots by themselves are significant, but taken together they play
on the viewer's psychology. It is interesting to recall that Argento's
artistic characters are often referred to by him as extensions of himself.
While I know of no comments by the director as to Roberto Tobias, Michael
Brandon's physical resemblance to him should be considered. Gender
ambiguity is also played upon in the non-specific nature of the opera house
photographer's mask (who was Nina), and the location of Arrosio's killing.
Tobias' is eventually confirmed as heterosexual through his liaison with
Nina's young cousin Dalia. She arrives to visit in the midst of the trouble
and stays in the house even when Nina moves out over claimed stress from the
threats. Tobias' seduces the young girl, but her build is quite slight and
boy-like, and thus still allows for some subtle suggestions of ambiguity in
orientation.
Dalia serves several other functions. One is to re-emphasize Tobias as an
unlikeable character, as he is quick to lure the teenager into bed soon
after his wife has left the house. She also serves as a victim, as Nina
kills her when she is found in the house instead of Tobias. Dalia's murder
is the basis for Four Flies' version of weird science being used as a tool
to move the story to a close. The legitimacy of the methodology in this
film is the most outrageous of all, but as I said previously these
explanations can be seen as merely a means to an end, and in fact their
fantastical nature may be a tool to de-emphasize them. After Dalia's death
the police inform Tobias of a new investigative technique and ask his
permission to try it out. When he is agreeable they lead him into a room
where Dalia's eyeball, complete with protruding optic nerve, is mounted in a
camera device. Tobias is told that this instrument can resolve the last
image seen by the person before they died, and when it is used what is
projected are four flies arranged along an arc. As offbeat as the notion
is, the mounted eyeball does provide for a strange sight.
The conclusion of the film has Tobias arming himself with a gun and waiting
out an eventual encounter with the killer in his house. There is a storm
raging outside. As he positions himself with pistol in hand he falls asleep
and the reoccurring Arabian nightmare is allowed to play out to its ending.
The final segment picks up just as the sword is descending towards the neck,
and as the head is finally shown to be lopped off, the dream is interrupted
by a phone call from God. As that nightmare has reached its conclusion so
must the real life one. God is cut off when the phone line is sliced, and
as Tobias awaits the confrontation he is shocked when Nina walks through the
door. He is still not able to identify her role and warns of the danger,
and only upon spotting a pendant hanging from her neck containing an encased
fly does he realize her culpability. The four flies in an arc seen last be
Dalia was the fly hanging from Nina's neck swinging on its chain. The
masculine Nina is still able to better the feminine Tobias when she wrests
the gun from him. She hits him with a non-fatal shot while screeching out
her hatred. She shouts, "You're so much like HIM!". God charges in to
rescue Tobias, but Nina is able to flee out the door. She meets her demise
fittingly by decapitation, being executed for her sins by an oncoming truck
her car collides with in the rain. This final shot is another bit a
photographic trickery, captured utilizing an extremely high shutter speed
camera borrowed from a university and usually used in scientific
experimentation.
Four Flies on Grey Velvet offers a great deal of offbeat cinematography,
plot construction, and editing, as has been described. These qualities,
coupled with the humor and manipulation of convention, make it a dense film
that can be enjoyed on many levels. The "kitchen sink" approach does
present some coherency problems which is reminiscent of Cat O' Nine Tails
and its convoluted script. A lack of tight cohesion amongst all of these
techniques prevents Four Flies from being the complete achievement that Deep
Red, Argento's next giallo, would be. Critics of the film mostly direct
their disapproval toward the acting of Michael Brandon. While his
performance is a bit wooden and unemotional, this isn't necessarily the
catastrophe that it could be, as the nature of Four Flies isn't such that
acting is the preeminent concern. A truly fine performance can improve a
film of this sort however, as is the case with David Hemmings in his role as
Marc Daly in Deep Red. Four Flies on Grey Velvet is a transitional film,
especially in its look and the manner in which it is constructed. It is a
big step forward in the maturation of the unconventional style that Argento
is known for. Even with their eccentricities, Bird and Cat are still much
more conventional than this film and what is to follow. A much greater use
of intricate camera movements and angles, as well as a greater use of
editing and non-linearity, are utilized in Four Flies. For the first time a
strong concentration on the color composition of shots is used. Bright
colors are used to dominate scenes, and large sections of primaries are
played off of each other. Luxuriant art direction would continue to expand
in the dark world of Deep Red, but would really come to be dominant in the
carefully constructed otherworldliness of Suspiria and Inferno. A final
element to the complete Argento milieu that is still missing from Four Flies
is an overwhelming score. While Morricone provides some fun flourishes,
even he is too conventional for the mature Argento vehicle. It would take
the first collaboration with Goblin, again on Deep Red, for the director to
take the use of the soundtrack to new hyperkinetic levels.
Argento's next project was as the producer of an Italian television show
titled LA PORTA SUL BUIO (aka The Door into Darkness, 1972), which was
designed to capitalize on the popular giallo genre. Four hour long episodes
were made, two of which Argento directed himself. The episodes are THE TRAM
(aka Il Tram) directed by Argento under the pseudonym Sirio Bernadotte,
EYEWITNESS (Testimone Oculare) directed by Argento under the name of Roberto
Pariente, NEIGHBOUR (aka Il Vicino di Casa) directed by Luigi Cozzi, and LA
BAMBOLA (aka The Doll). Argento had to take over the direction of
Eyewitness from his assistant Pariente, but left his name on it. He also
appeared in an introduction at the beginning of each episode Hitchcock style
and became a recognizable star in Italy from this. Cozzi has said that
there were plans to create two theatrical movies from the shows but nothing
ever came of it. I haven't been able to see these and so I don't know how
they fit in with the rest of Argento's work as to style or artistic
achievment.
After the animal trilogy, Argento took an 180 degree turn away from the
area in which he had been working. He and writing partner Luigi Cozzi
attempted a historical comedy set during the wars over Italian unification
in 1848. LE CINQUE GIORNATE (aka The Five Days of Milan, 1973) resembles
the European westerns that were reaching the end of their cycle at the
time. It most resembles Leone's Giu La Testa (aka Duck You Sucker! aka A
Fistful of Dynamite, 1971) in that it attempts situational humor derived
from a couple of characters who wander through the backdrop of a chaotic
revolution. Five Days' Cainazzo (Adriano Celentano) is a similar character
to Rod Steiger's Juan in Duck You Sucker. He is a small time hood who is
oblivious to any of the politics which surround him, and is much more
interested in scheming a fast buck from the conflict than in any sense of
patriotism. Like Juan however, his scams lead him to an active interest in
the revolution. Argento takes a very liberal approach to the comedy
writing, in which he essentially includes every joke that he and Cozzi could
think up and hopes that enough of them stick. There is a lot of physical
comedy, as well as verbal and situational jokes, which obviously are very
Italian in nature and are designed to appeal to their compatriots. Cainazzo
begins as a thief behind bars who is fortuitously broken out as he shares
his cell with some captured soldiers. He grows to be "curious about this
revolution" and eventually interjects himself into the conflict between the
republicans, the nobility, and the Austrians. Along the way he picks up a
completely clueless sidekick named Romolo (Enzo Cerusico) who winds up dead
from his association with Cainazzo. The absolute chaos and the shifting
allegiances seem to be used as a commentary on the modern Italian political
situation. The only Argento trademark that is apparent is fluid camera
work, and that is used in an attempt at wacky slapstick humor. A couple of
the better scenes show a mob blindly following Cainazzo as he grabs a
tri-color flag (which he doesn't even recognize) for protection, and a scene
where different characters interpret Romolo's dying words according to their
own wishes. One person hears "long live Italy", another "Austrians are
assholes" and a third "long live the church." Five Days in Milan was never
released outside of Italy and was not a highly successful project
financially. Some of its comedy works for a non-Italian viewer but it is
really for Argento completists only.
Rosso, or red, is a shocking color which conjures up notions of perversity,
sexuality, and violence. It is the classic color of the insides of whore
houses and it is the color of blood. PROFONDO ROSSO (aka Deep Red, 1975) is
Argento's return to the giallo and it is so named as it is deeply involved
with themes of sexuality and violence. This film is a synthesis of ideas
toyed with in the animal trilogy, but it is also a great step forward in
terms of creativity. The structural elements introduced in the early
sections much rely on the iconography established in the first three films,
and thus they rely on themes common to the giallo in general. The
experimentations with accepted conventions of cinema in Cat O' Nine Tails
and Four Flies on Grey Velvet were exciting, but many times they detracted
from the overall cohesiveness of those films. After a shift in style with
The Five Days of Milan and three years since the completion of his last
giallo, Argento was able to reflect on the most successful of his earlier
stylistic excesses and combine them in a clear manner toward a more focused
result. Like all of Argento's work, Deep Red can be interpreted as
depiction of a nightmare. It is structured so that it could be the
realization of a particularly long and intense bad dream by its protagonist.
It is a film about deep and dark secrets, and thus the overall darkness of
the film is both intentional and appropriate. Many of Argento's signature
tricks are used. There is a fluid camera which explores the film's
environment with the most careful attention to detail, there are many point
of view shots, and there is a manipulation of editing conventions used to
establish space and time. But while these tricks seemed quite obvious in
their audacity in the earlier works, they are less jarring here as they are
integral to the overall message of the film, and they work together in a
cumulative fashion. Hollywood directors wish to use editing and cinema-
tography to convey information to the audience without their noticing the
process. Argento has now achieved the same effect without abandoning his
non-traditional methodology.
Deep Red also benefits from stylistic advances in the areas of art direction
and sound. Mario Bava achieved a great deal of his effectiveness as a
visual director by way of the color composition of his shots. Argento began
to emulate this in Four Flies, where areas of primary color on the screen
are set apart from each other to emphasize an aspect of the shot. An
example can be seen in the opening opera house scene, where the brightness
of Roberto Tobias' tormentor's mask is highlighted against the gothic reds
of its surroundings. The color red is naturally dominant in Deep Red's mise
en scene; it is preeminent in backgrounds throughout. Darkness is also
omnipresent as most scenes take place at night, or within cluttered, dim,
crowded buildings. There is a sense of darkness closing in on this world as
a result. Deep Red is Argento's first collaboration with the Italian synth
band Goblin. Their loud, harsh, pounding music is used to accompany the
killer's bloody deeds. Argento would use Goblin or members of them again on
Suspiria, Tenebrae, and George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and would attempt
to get similar effects from Keith Emerson in Inferno and assorted heavy
metal acts in Phenomena and Lamberto Bava's Demons. They are used to their
best effect, however, in Deep Red and Suspiria. It is not only the murder
scenes that benefit from the more carefully constructed soundtrack. Bits of
music are used throughout to signal the audience as to the context of the
scene being viewed. It adds emphasis as well as points attention in the
appropriate direction in a film which can make sudden jumps in space and
time.
As in Four Flies on Grey Velvet, the opening credits are interrupted by an
interlude establishing the violent nature of what is to unfold. In contrast
to the kinetic Goblin score, which accompanies the titles displayed against
a dark background, there is a cut to a scene with a childish lullaby playing
over an image of a shadowy figure stabbing someone with a knife against a
Christmas time background. The bloody knife drops to the floor in front of
the camera and a child's feet walk into the picture (which recalls the
opening of Mario Bava's Kill, Baby Kill.) The viewer doesn't know where or
when this event takes place, or what its relevance is to the scenes that
immediately follow, but its positioning suggests that it is important to the
story. The set up scenes of Deep Red match previous events from all of the
animal trilogy. The opening shot, after the credits, is of Marc Daly (David
Hemmings), a jazz pianist and music instructor, playing with his group.
This matches the opening of Four Flies where Roberto Tobias is jamming with
his rock band. In a subtle message Daly admonishes his pupils to bring more
intensity to the music, as it was "born in the bordellos." This is followed
by another sequence which matches Four Flies. From a point of view shot
(suggesting a guilty person in Argento's world, and one whose identity is to
be withheld from the viewer) we see a person pass through some curtains and
enter a large theatre. This was significant in the life of Roberto Tobias
and thus should be significant here. A lecture is taking place inside and a
table seating three speakers is on the stage. Red is the dominant color as
it is used for the tablecloth, the seats, and the curtains that hang around
the multi-story building. The principal speaker is Helga Ulman who is to
demonstrate her psychic powers. In the midst of her talk she is overcome by
violent reactions and spits out that she senses the presence of an intensely
evil person in the room. The point of view shot resumes as the target of
this reaction, suggested to be so by the editing, rises and moves out of the
auditorium. This person enters a rest room where a man inside offers that
the person does not look well. The perception encouraged is that this is a
man, but that would be to ignore the lesson of Arrosio's death in Four
Flies.
Apart from the eerie quality of this scene, its use for an early emphasis of
the color red, its play on gender notions, and its narrative match to Four
Flies on Grey Velvet, it also serves to provide some plot information as to
the story of Deep Red. In the midst of her reaction Helga mutters things
about a house, secrets, and a song (and a specific song has been presented
to us as the background to a significant, and evil, event), and while this
doesn't mean much to the viewer yet, it will as the mystery of Deep Red
unravels. Deep Red is the Argento film that works best as an actual
mystery, and along with Bird With the Crystal Plumage it is really the only
one of his gialli in which the killer either isn't obvious, or is so arcane
that he isn't able to be identified. While this may sound like a
condemnation of many of Argento's films that depends upon your perspective,
as most were not designed to be vehicles in the Conan Doyle/Agatha Christie
mode. When Helga mentions that she knows who the evil person was it doesn't
foretell good things for her. Another symbolic interlude follows
accompanied by throbbing Goblin music. Against a dark background the camera
tracks over a series of peculiar objects, which suggest both childhood and
violence. It moves in close-up, examining a doll with pins stuck in it, a
childish sketch of a bloody, stabbed figure, and figurines that include a
red demon, and after exploring this layout it reaches a black gloved figure
selecting a pair of switchblades. The final shot of the sequence recalls
Casoni in Cat O' Nine Tails, as the black gloved hands are shown to apply
black eye liner in a close up of a single eye. The images of black gloves,
blades, and the eye are used to tie a villain in with images of a violent
childhood, and to associate him or her with a signaling piece of Goblin
music.
The story now shifts to Helga in her apartment that night. This room is
strange looking and is also red dominated. The decor is unusual and odd
paintings line the walls. Helga is recording her earlier experience when
she again detects the lullaby in her head. This is replaced by the sound of
the music outside, shown to be played by the black gloved person on a tape
recorder. When there is a knock on the door and the Goblin music rises on
the soundtrack. It is a signal that Helga is in danger, and when the door
bursts open Argento's most bloody depiction of murder to date unfolds. The
black clad figure brings a meat cleaver down on Helga, which slices into her
body accompanied by flowing bright red blood. The gory scene and its music
are then interrupted by a return to character development. We see Marc exit
the building in which he was performing and encounter Carlo, a very drunk
friend, out on the street. It is revealed that Carlo is also a pianist, and
certain similarities and differences between the two men begin to be
established. Carlo suggests that while they are both talented with their
instrument, Marc is bourgeois while he, who plays in a male dominated club
called Blue Bar, is proletarian. This is a notion which Marc doesn't
dismiss. When the interior of Blue Bar is shown images of Braun's club in
Cat O' Nine Tails are recalled. The defining of their relationship is
interrupted by a return to visual dominance when a piercing scream distracts
them. In an shot establishing a spatial relationship, the camera quickly
pulls up and away from Marc and Carlo and in the direction of their stare, a
window above the street. In another subtle nod to sexual perversion, the
drunken Carlo toasts the "deflowered virgin" in what he deems to be a rape
in progress, just before Helga's bloody body is thrust through the window
and lies impaled by shards of glass. The black gloved hands are seen
grabbing Helga's notes.
Non-linearity has been persistent up to this point. The film began at night
with Marc in rehearsal, shifted to the day time lecture at which Helga
spoke, and then moved back to night time just before her murder. When the
murder is in progress there is a cut to a parallel event, which actually
began before the attack, where Marc emerges from his building and encounters
Carlo. In a purely linear sense this event follows the film's opening
scene, but here a number a previously occurring activities have been
interjected. Likewise Marc's conversation with Carlo, which by necessity of
its duration begins temporally previous to the start of the attack on Helga,
is located in the film wedged within the depiction of her killing.
Unsignalled jumps forward and backward in time between scenes are unusual in
conventional films, and their presence may lead to some complaints as to
Deep Red being confusing. What is achieved by them is to inextricably tie
the two characters of Marc and Carlo to the child related violence which has
surrounded Helga. Their seemingly simple conversation is framed by riveting
action, and thus focuses the viewer's attention strongly on this
conversation. Argento's standard convention of a glimpsed and confusing bit
of evidence is next introduced. Marc rushes upstairs to investigate but
when he arrives he doesn't find the murderer. He becomes bothered by what
he thinks is something missing from the wall, which was there when he first
entered the room but soon after can't be found. His intuition is that one
of the many odd paintings that line the apartment's wall has disappeared.
What he does see for sure is a fleeing, black garbed figure when he peers
out of the window. Marc is convinced that the missing artwork is a vital
clue.
When the police arrive, he is questioned and brought to the station, and
thus in pure structure the opening of Deep Red strongly reflects The Bird
With the Crystal Plumage. But Marc Daly's involvement with Helga's murder
is far more complex on a subtextual level than Sam Dalmas' was with the
crime that he witnessed. At the crime scene reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria
Nicolodi) arrives. She is brash and forward, and her personality
immediately is contrasted with the cautious reservation of Marc Daly. When
she publishes his photo on the next day's front page with an exaggerated
story that he will identify the killer, another similarity to Bird is set up
as he becomes a target. Marc, at first reluctantly, forms an investigative
team with Gianna and their contrasting personalities contribute to the
subtext, which like in other Argento films is a sexual one. In Deep Red,
Marc's masculinity is questioned throughout by comparisons of the parallel
characters of he and Carlo, and Gianna contributes to this with their
interactions. She is aggressive, extols her femininity, and all but forces
a date upon him. Marc is hesitant to her advances and appears somewhat
intimidated. His masculinity is threatened when she taunts him for his
reply of "neither do I" to her statement of being without a boyfriend,
terrifies him with her aggressive driving through the streets of Rome, and
beats him in arm wrestling after he lectures her about the fallacy of an
equal standing between the sexes.
An interesting stylistic technique has the scenes of character development
between Marc and Gianna as the only ones in bright light and open space, and
except for of a few establishing or transitional shots they are the only
ones which occur outside during the daytime. Now immersed in the crime,
Marc is intrigued by a drunken observation of Carlo's. Carlo had mentioned
that Marc's perception of the missing painting suggests something
significant and he expounds upon finding "the truth." An increasingly
obsessed Marc wishes to further discuss Carlo's thoughts on the matter, and
the following night goes to his home. Carlo is not there but his mother
Marta is. She is ghostly looking and heavily made up for her age, which
creates a somewhat monstrous image. She appears to size him up as a mother
would a suitor for her daughter, before she informs him where Carlo can be
found. When Marc goes to the address he is taken back by the transvestite
who answers the door, which reveals Carlo's homosexuality. Carlo had been
depicted with many symbolic traits associated with heterosexuals, and even
had compared his piano playing with his handling of a woman. After Marc's
initial surprise he treats the situation as perfectly normal. Marc's
cinematic alter ego is however seen in a whole new light. His self-
destructive alcoholism is heavily emphasized, and he is now shown to be a
troubled person living with a strange and overbearing mother. These are, at
least in popular perception, traits connected with gay men. As they stroll
to the Blue Bar, Carlo reverses himself on his previous advice. He warns
Marc away, but is rebuffed as Marc explains that his intrigue arises from
being "attracted to madmen." The scene closes with a visual reinforcement
of their connection when they are depicted playing the same piano side by
side in the club.
With both its structural and subtextual foundations now established, the
film next shows an artistic cat and mouse game, which emphasizes the
structural elements while being highly intriguing in its own carefully
crafted excessiveness. The murderer arrives outside of Marc's door playing
the childish music. Only a call from Gianna scares away the attacker, who
hisses through the closed door that Marc will be killed. Marc finds a
record of the song he heard and brings it to Giordani, Helga's colleague on
stage. Argento uses a non-diegetic to diegetic switch in sound, a trick
which will be expanded upon in Tenebrae. A scene of Marc walking down the
street with a record in his hand uses the lullaby in the background. It is
bridged to his meeting with Giordani where the record plays on a turntable.
Giordani speaks of the killer as a "paranoid schizophrenic" who might appear
normal but is triggered to violence by some thing or event. Giordani's
partner offers a more supernatural suggestion when he links Helga's comments
about a song, a house, and violence to an account in a book on modern ghost
lore. Unfortunately for the book's authoress, the killer's zeal in stopping
the investigation's progress leads to her house. Argento creates one of
this films beautifully executed set pieces in depicting this murder. The
woman finds a red tinged doll hanging in a noose from her ceiling. The
taped lullaby is played and we glimpse another shot of a single, black
circled eye appearing out of a black background in the darkened recesses of
a closet. Recognition of the tune comes to the victim and she fearfully
grabs some knitting needles, but the only result is to spear her frenzied
pet raven as it flies into them. The image of ghostly evil associated with
that black bird is ingrained in our minds from tales dating back to Poe, and
a raven's use here foreshadows the much greater extent to which Argento will
use them in Opera. The authoress' death comes when her head is thrust
repeatedly under scalding water in a bathtub, each time emerging a deeper
red in color. The killer grabs something from a bookshelf and leaves. With
her last bit of life the victim attempts to write a clue in the steam. When
Marc arrives to seek her assistance he finds her dead, and interprets her
intended message as her pointing at the wall. He realizes that his being
the first to arrive at another murder scene will not look good in the eyes
of the police, and as his fingerprints are in the house he is now on a
deadline to solve the crime. He has an additional motivation apart from his
being stalked and his morbid curiosity.
>From a copy of the ghost book Marc gets a photo of the house, and by
quizzing nursery owners he is able to locate it through the identification
of some rare trees in the picture. The exploration of this house is the
film's best section. The photography of its interiors brings about a
quality of living evil, with techniques which recall Bava at his best.
Marc's explorations are intercut with the resolution of Giordani's fate. He
visits the scene of the authoress' death and is able to correctly interpret
what Marc could not. By turning on the hot water in the bathroom he sees
that she wrote a clue in the steam, but his knowledge is deadly and sets up
another great extended set piece. Giordani sits in his darkened and
ominously quiet study, and is startled by a maniacal mechanical doll that
comes charging from a dark corner. He is then descended upon by the black
clad slasher who kills him by repeatedly and violently smashing his teeth
against the corner of his desk, in graphic close up, before pinning his head
to the desk with a knife through the back of the neck. The evil house
scenes in Deep Red are a fleshing out of ideas that would be expanded into
the central themes of both Suspiria and Inferno, Argento's next two films.
The set up builds expectations of significance. Marc obtains the keys from
the landlord, who has a peculiar daughter who tortures animals and warns of
ghosts in the house (Nicoletta Emmi from Bava's Torture Chamber of Baron
Blood). When Marc approaches the house and we view its exteriors the Goblin
score is heard for the first time not directly associated with the killer.
Inside it is dark, old, and strange. Objects fall and a window shatters
above him raining down glass, which suggest an organic quality to the
building, and that it is attacking him. His exploration reveals a flooded
basement, a concept that will be key to Inferno's mise en scene. The theme
of perception returns when Marc notices something strange about some paint
peeling away from a wall. He is now able to make the correct inter-
pretation, and chips it away to uncover a large child's drawing of a bloody
knife attack, thus linking this house with the images introduced early in
the film. With more foreshadowing of the next two films, Marc discovers a
hidden room. A window shown in his photo is missing, and he finds it
covered by a makeshift wall, which hides the house's secret. In this hidden
room lies a rotting corpse and the remnants of a Christmas tree, indicating
that the events depicted in the opening credits occurred here. Just as he
makes his discovery Marc is clubbed from behind and left to die as the house
erupts in flames around him. It is Gianna who arrives to save him, dragging
him from danger as the flames in the background produce an eerie and
illogical glow on his unconscious face.
The identification of the killer is set up when Marc notices a similar
drawing in the landlord's house to that which was painted over. The weird
little girl tells of copying it from something she found in her school's
archives. Marc and Gianna break into the school and find the original
pictures. When they hear another person in the building Gianna calls the
police. She is attacked by the same person whose name Marc finds attached
to the drawings - Carlo. He's near psychotic as he raves to Marc about his
warning to leave things alone. It seems to be that Carlo is revealed as a
homicidal maniac whose torment drove him to kill as a child, and again now,
as well as to bring on his other "problems" of alcoholism and homosexuality.
Gianna is wounded, but the police arrive before Carlo can kill Marc, and he
flees out onto the street to meet an especially gruesome end. Carlo trips
as he runs and becomes entangled behind a truck. He is dragged in the
street behind it until it makes a turn which causes his head to smash into
the curb. Just as his body comes to rest, another car speeds over his head
and smashes it to a bloody pulp. The police are incompetent, as is usual in
an Argento film, and accept Carlo as the culprit. Even Marc initially fails
to realize that this would be impossible. It is not until he is later
walking in front of the building in which Helga was killed that he recalls
that Carlo was with him then. Back upstairs in Helga's apartment Marc
pieces together the puzzle left over from his first visit. It wasn't a
picture missing from the wall but the reflection of a face in a hanging
mirror. The camera moves so as to re-examine this phenomenon when it shows
a mirror on the wall reflecting three faces - two ghastly images from
paintings across the hall, and perfectly matched with them that of the old
and overly made up Marta. She attacks Marc with a cleaver and seriously
wounds him. The weak Marc appears to succumb to the killer whom he couldn't
identify. A complete version of the opening flashback is played out. It
reveals that Carlo's father was preparing to have an insane Marta committed,
but rather than go away she stabs him with a kitchen knife while their young
son looks on. Before she can finish Marc off, her necklace is caught in an
elevator mechanism, and when Marc starts the car moving it results in her
decapitation as the chain slices through her neck in detailed close up.
The film's final image is of Marc's reflection as he ponders himself,
significantly in a pool of Marta's red blood.
There are two main subtextual themes that run through Deep Red. The first
draws a parallel between Marc and Carlo and uses the more obvious psychosis
and personality traits of Carlo to reflect upon Marc. Marc's masculinity is
continuously called into question, such as when the police first interrogate
him and the inspector questions the legitimacy of a man earning his living
by playing music. The image of Marc being a head shorter than Gianna as he
sits in her car's broken passenger seat gives a definite visual image of her
dominance. It is also she who saves him from the burning house. Even Marta
overpowers him, and it is only through a lucky circumstance that he escapes
from her. Marc's unstable psyche is the larger theme at work. His mental
state is shown to slip to a greater extent as he is drawn into investigating
the crimes. The terrors in Marc's own mind compound the terrors that he is
experiencing, which build upon the overall anxiety of his experience, and by
extension the audience's. The second subtext deals with perception. The
use of Marta's eyeball throughout underlines the process of seeing, and
clearly in the world of Deep Red things often are different than they may
initially seem. Marc struggles for the correct interpretation of what he
saw in Helga's apartment, he misinterprets the clue from the dead authoress
in her bathroom, and he initially misdiagnosis the guilt of Carlo even
though they were clearly together at the time of Helga's death. The
perception theme is materialized in a series of tighter and tighter shots on
Marc's head, his face, both eyes, and finally a single eye as he first
encounters the old house, which is a key link to the resolution of the
mystery.
There are a number of illogical leaps of faith in the progression of Deep
Red's story. It is quite a coincidence that the man who imported the trees
is found and can identify the location of the house, and that the landlord's
strange daughter happened to dig out Carlo's drawing from the school
archives to copy. (Her oddness probably is used to de-emphasize this
unlikely coincidence. Her character masks it by the occultishness of her
personality.) Marc's encounter with Carlo in the vicinity of Helga's
murder is likewise coincidental, and why Marta was at Helga's lecture is
never explained. None of this matters, as the effect of the film is not
achieved through its ability to tell a complete story. These are just links
from one important element of it the to the next. The dismissal of
narrative as no more than a necessary means for delivering more subtle
messages is one of the traits of Argento and Leone that make them
interestingas filmmakers. It is at the same time one of the principal
driving forces for the rabidly angry negative criticism of their work from
American reviewers. Deep Red's use of horrific elements is interesting.
The supernatural is constantly invoked: in Helga's demonstration, by
Giordani's partner, by the strange little girl, and by the occurrences
inside the house. Argento is careful however to always offer a logical and
scientific explanation after the fact. He clearly implies by the end that
all the events of the story were the results of a twisted criminal mind and
not of magic, but the point where one begins and the other ends is so gray
that he seems to be making at least a subliminal comment as to the
relationship between the two. Ventures into spiritualism, or at least hints
of it, is another watershed event in Deep Red. The animal trilogy is
comprised of films that fit well into the giallo mold, even if they are more
extravagant examples of it. After Deep Red, elements of horror enter into
Argento's films, ranging from a complete dedication to them in Suspiria's
and Inferno's tales of witchcraft, a mixing of the giallo and the
supernatural in the insect communication theme of Phenomena, or in Trauma's
use of a technique similar to, but more ambiguous than, Deep Red's.
Deep Red was distributed in America by Mahler Films, who issued it under the
exploitative title The Hatchet Murders. The level of violence begins to
increase greatly with this release, which influenced their trimming of it
down to 100 min from its original 121 min running time. The gore was
lessened and a number of scenes of dialog between Marc and Gianna, as well
as some between Marc and Carlo, were cut out. This editing and a shock
value ad campaign attempted to play it up for its more horrific elements,
but it mostly succeeded only in making a convoluted film quite confusion by
taking out some defining sequences. Details of the cuts can be found in the
summation of Argento on video in part B.
In the United States, Argento is usually referred to as a director of horror
films. This somewhat erroneous classification is probably largely due to
the success of SUSPIRIA (1977), his most well known work here. The wide
release given to Phenomena (1983), in its edited form as Creepers (by New
Line Cinema), and to Two Evil Eyes (1990), as well as his production roles
on George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1979) and Lamberto Bava's Demons
(1985), solidify this image. While Suspiria is markedly distinct from it's
predecessors, it still contains some structure similar to the gialli. In
fact, Suspiria's follow-up, Inferno, which was shelved by Twentieth Century
Fox and never theatrically released in America, and Phenomena are much
closer to true horror films. Suspiria incorporates themes of supernatural
evil and magic, and thus it does stand apart from the pure crime thrillers.
It is a film in which the mise en scene is absolutely dominant, and one in
which everything is purposely done to excess in pursuit of its desired
effect. Argento's previous work, as has been discussed, did not adhere to
the idea of narrative preeminence, and each project veered further away from
a traditional use of it than its predecessor. Another huge step in this
direction is taken with Suspiria, as its narrative is almost completely
subjugated to its reliance on visual and aural effects.
The story concerns American ballet student Suzy Banyon, who travels alone
to the Tanz Academy in Freiberg, Germany in order to continue her dance
studies. The Academy is an awkward place, habituated by superfici
al
students and a frightening collection of instructors and servants. Suzy is
very much played as the outsider within this eerie realm. Concurrent with
her arrival, a series of brutal murders surrounding the Academy take place.
Most of her fellow students are aloof to the matter or hostile to its
investigation, and the two who are concerned by the violence are killed
themselves in horrible ways. The only distinct plot has the curious
American newcomer unearthing the secrets the Academy. It is found to be the
home of a coven of witches, comprised of the instructors and the head
mistress, and headed by the Academy's powerful founder Helena Marcos. Her
living but decrepit 100+ year old body is kept hidden away within the
building. Suzy is able to expose them by piecing together bits of
information from an encounter upon her arrival, from learning secrets
uncovered by her inquisitive roommate before she mysteriously disappears,
and from an awkward research psychiatrist who believes in witches. Upon
discovering the witches' existence and finding their hidden lair within the
old house, Suzy destroys them by destroying their leader. There is a basic
plot developed through her ordeal, but the real strength of the film is in
its representations of Suzy's struggle against the coven, of her position as
an outsider within the creepy environment, and of the presence of a lurking,
pure evil.
The elements of the giallo utilized are a part of Suzy's investigation into
the strange deaths that occur around her. The opening approximately twenty
minutes are some of the most striking cinema ever created by the director.
Anyone put off by the cliched methodologies of some of the more mundane
"slasher" films should observe that acts of violence can be built up to and
executed in a thrilling and beautiful manner, and one in which all elements
of film construction, both in their presence and their absence, are
masterfully manipulated. The opening of Suspiria probably represents
Argento's best work. The film begins with Suzy arriving at the airport in
Freiberg. She is by herself in a foreign land, and a threatening storm is
raging outside. The color scheme of the film is demonstrated immediately;
it is one in which lights bathe sections of the mise en scene with deep
dominant reds and blues, and less prominent yellows as greens. This
unnatural lighting and the overamplified sounds of the storm create the
feeling that Suzy is vulnerable and in a hostile environment. Taxis zoom by
without stopping for her as the rain pours down. She is forced to jump in
front of one, and when it pulls over the driver is rude and refuses to help
her with her bags. Suzy is yet to be identified but her situation is
alluded to immediately. When she exits the airport, the camera tracks
toward the doors leading outside from her point of view. When they open,
the contrasting darkness and loud, raging storm on the other side meta-
phorically represent what she will be stepping into. The world seems odd,
with a subtle, strange character to it. Suzy's face is bathed in blue light
of indeterminable source as she slumps in the corner of the cab's back seat.
The surly driver sarcastically questions her not-perfect-enough German when
the American gives her destination, and then they begin speaking in English
to each other without explanation or reflection on his previous supposed
inability to understand her. Throughout Suzy remains sturdy and confident,
and in no way is she presented as someone who is frail or easily defeated.
The primary nature of the color scheme is maintained upon reaching the
Academy, as the building itself is solid red. The front door opens just as
she arrives and a young woman is shown arguing with someone inside. The
woman runs into the night after frantically warning Suzy to stay away.
This encounter supplies a clue which Suzy will struggle to interpret, and
eventually will use to solve the building's puzzle. The only thing that she
could understand from the conversation are the words "secrets" and "irises,"
and the meaning of this utterance is immediately intriguing to her. With
this plotting Argento has preserved a key element of his style, even while
moving into a story of a completely different sort. Suzy can't get anyone
to let her in and so she returns to the cab. As they drive away the eerie
image of the woman she encountered is shown running terrified through the
forest from a shot through the car window as they pass her. The story now
follows the woman. She arrives at the home of a classmate living away from
the Academy. This building maintains the film's look with its two story
lobby painted a solid green, and in its angular and modern design. The
visitor is still highly excited and informs her hostess that she is leaving
Tanz the next morning. She is allowed to stay overnight and uses an
upstairs bathroom. There has been a constant assault on the senses in all
areas of perception up to this point, through the extreme colors, an
intensely loud soundtrack, and Argento's usual frenzied direction. This
makes the eerie silence and steady mid-range camera that is now adopted
somewhat striking. Accompanied by the spooky silence her attention is drawn
out the window she is standing next to. She peers into the darkness and
then uneasily pulls back. A flash of demonic eyes comes from outside, she
returns to the window, and then the shrieking Goblin score returns in a
startling fashion to accompany the inhuman hands which smash through the
window and get her in their grasp. Her screams are ultra-amplified on the
soundtrack to accompany the attack. The camera switches its perspective to
outside the window with a brutal shot, which shows her face being pulled
forcefully against a pane of glass in an unbroken section, until it smashes
through amongst flying pieces. A knife is buried in her chest, and in a
match to Four Flies on Grey Velvet's beating heart credits, her own beating
heart is exposed and penetrated with the blade. The finale has her bound by
a rope at the feet and thrown through a skylight from the roof. Her body
comes to a rest, bloodily hanging inches from the floor below, as her
hostess lies dead nearby, impaled by debris falling from the broken
skylight. Argento realized the disturbing feeling induced by the image of
multiple wounds inflicted by numerous pieces of sharp, shattered glass. He
developed this idea with Helga's murder in Deep Red, and a variation is
later employed in the opening murder of Phenomena.
>From this point the film is mostly a series of carefully constructed and
sensually striking sequences which serve to demonstrate the evil presence.
The film world is dark and peculiar looking in all its aspects, and its
inhabitants are mostly unlikeable and threatening. Suzy returns to the
Academy the next day, arriving in the middle of the police investigation
into the previous night's events. As in other Argento films the detectives
are completely unsuccessful in their work. The environment is hostile. Suzy
is scolded by the headmistress, Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett), for not
arriving the night before. The instructors are terse and masculine,
especially Miss Tanner (Alida Valli) who has a stereotypical stern manner
and appearance with her large frame, tightly constrained hair, and
unfeminine style. The students are almost all petty and greedy, and they
bicker constantly. Other odd characters inhabiting the house are a giant,
monstrous-looking, mute servant, a blind piano player, and Madame Blanc's
annoying, prissy young nephew. As in the filmic elements of Suspiria, these
characters are all purposefully exaggerated to emphasize the strangeness of
their world.
Suzy is told that her room is not yet ready, and so she will have to stay in
an older student's apartment, which she is glad to do. After one night
Madame Blanc informs her that her room at the Academy is prepared, but Suzy
resists the headmistress' angry pressure for her to move in. Already
tension is developing between the new student and the establishment, and a
tense Miss Tanner is driven to hiss a comment at Suzy concerning her strong
spirit. At her first practice session she mysteriously collapses, and when
she awakes she finds that she has been moved into the Academy, and is being
treated by a questionable doctor who prescribes red wine to "build up the
corpuscles." Her new roommate is Sara (Stefania Casini), an American who
had been the only student friendly to her previously. Sara reveals that she
was the person to whom the frightened woman Suzy encountered on her first
arrival was speaking, and she tells of her suspicions of the presence of a
coven at Tanz. Sara has detected footsteps while lying in bed at night
which lead to somewhere other than the house's exit, at a time when the
staff is supposed to be going home. When she is driven to investigate one
evening, she never returns. It is explained to Suzy that her roommate
simply decided to leave the school and promptly did so. Suzy's suspicion of
this explanation leads her to contact a psychiatrist who Sara had been
discussing her fears with. She arranges to meet him at a professional
conference he is attending. Their encounter is interesting for the
contrasting style in which it is filmed. She meets him outdoors within the
city. This is one of the only scenes is Suspiria that takes place in the
daytime, and it the only one which is brightly lit, set against a modern
background, and is not dominated by an overwhelming color scheme. Sara's
psychiatrist is skeptical of the occult, but he introduces Suzy to his
colleague, an author and expert on the subject who tells her the history of
Tanz. It was built and founded by Helena Marcos, a powerful and evil witch,
in the 19th century. He explains that she was destroyed and that her coven
was broken apart long ago, and since then the dance school has occupied the
space that was designed as the housing for the practice of black magic. He
informs her that a coven draws all of its power from its leader, and if the
leader is destroyed the coven's head will be removed, and then the remaining
members will be rendered powerless. This scene invokes logic, science, and
reason, apart from the mysticism that has been dominating the story, and the
look of it may be designed to underline this contrast. It also provides an
important narrative link from the establishment of the film's environment to
its method of conclusion.
Suzy uses this information, along with that which she learned from her
roommate, and her solution as to the meaning of the words "secrets" and
"irises," to uncover the witches' hidden lair. In typical Argento style,
she is convinced that the overheard words are very important, and she
struggles first to figure out exactly what was said, and then to interpret
its meaning. When she awakens one night to find everyone supposedly gone to
a concert she is spurned into action. The final sequence builds upon the
effect Argento created with Marc Daly's exploration of "The House of the
Screaming Child" in Deep Red. A full sense of foreboding and uncertainty as
to what will occur next is created by the set decor, the lighting, and the
camera movement, while the house is being explored. She deciphers the
meaning of "secrets" and "irises" when she studies the painted wall behind
Madame Blanc's desk. The words are a clue to the location of a secret door,
opened by manipulating a switch hidden in the flowers pictured there. When
Suzy passes through the hidden door into the outer reaches of the witches'
lair logical space ceases to exist. The geometry of the areas she moves
through is confusing. Hallways circle about in seemingly impossible
directions, and hidden rooms are found in spaces that they should not be
able to occupy. The deep, bathing blue and red light and the Goblin
soundtrack add to the sense that there is something otherworldly to her
surroundings. When she finally reaches the inner sanctum, she spies on a
meeting in progress. All of the Academy's strange inhabitants are present,
and Madam Blanc is raving that Suzy knows too much and must be destroyed.
Her attention is drawn away however by some heavy breathing, which she
believes belongs to Helena Marcos, who she suspects is still living
somewhere in the house. Suzy stealthily creeps past the meeting room and
toward the lair of the powerful leader. She enters a room in which the
heavily breathing figure is hidden in a bed behind a translucent white
curtain. An odd looking glass statue of a peacock dominates the room's
decor, and when Suzy knocks it over Argento uses this as a device to draw
attention toward the figure in the bed. It shatters loudly and the camera
tracks several balls, which were part of the figure as they roll on the
ground, drawing Suzy, and the audience, toward Helena's bed. She grips a
sharp spike from the peacock in her hand as she approaches. The blackened,
crusty, old face of the ancient woman is horrific when she makes herself
visible to the intruder. Suzy is able to stab her with the glass spike,
which kills her and thus destroys the coven. The house explodes into flames
and collapses around her as she flees, and the final shot has her running
out into the rain through the familiar front red door of Tanz as it burns
brightly behind her.
The story is very straightforward, but it only serves as a framework for the
cinematographically over the top depiction of an evil and illogical world.
Apart from the persistent sensual overload there are diversions away from
the main plot which further this depiction. The red wine served nightly to
Suzy makes her gag, and when she tosses it into the sink it has a thick,
opaque, blood-like appearance for which no explanation is given. During one
evening the girls are preparing for bed when one finds maggots crawling
through the brush she is using on her hair. Quickly there are more of them
as they fall down through the cracks in the ceiling until they cover every
exposed surface. This is explained away by the discovery of some rotted
food stored in the attic, but clearly it is designed to increase the level
of uneasiness perceived by the audience toward the Academy.
A classic Argento set piece revolves around the death of the blind piano
player. He is abruptly fired after his seeing eye dog attacks Madam Blanc's
creepy nephew. As he strolls home with his dog and red tipped cane, we see
him emerge within the center of a vast plaza. It is night time, the place
is deserted, and the surrounding buildings are many meters away. They are
large, dark, of an old styled architecture, and they completely encompass
the flat open space that he is in. The camera reveals from a long shot that
he is absolutely alone within this space between buildings, but this sense
of aloneness can't be perceived by the sightless man. While standing there,
his dog becomes agitated, and barks and snaps in all directions. He senses
something around him, but the audience can see that there is nothing visible
there. An extravagant shot follows in which the camera takes a point of
view from atop one of the buildings where a demonic statue is located. In
one continuous take it swoops down at the piano player from about fifty
meters away, giving the image of an unseen entity attacking. The blind
man's dog then turns against him and grabs him by the throat until he dies.
In another night time sequence, a bat unexpectedly charges at Suzy through
her bedroom window. The first appearance of its ghostly eyes matches the
ghoul's appearance outside the window at the film's beginning. When Sara
explores the house just prior to her death, she passes through areas of
unusual and illogical design, until she eventually is killed by the evil
force after stepping down into a room improbably filled with barbed wire.
All of these diversions are more important to the construction of Suspiria's
twisted mise en scene than is any portion of the story. Much has been said
about the color scheme and the shrieking Goblin music in Suspiria, but their
effect has to be experienced to be completely understood. No other film
that I have seen uses these components to such extremes. Color is
everywhere. The practice rooms at the Academy are named the "red room" and
the "yellow room" in a subtle nod to the photography; virtually every scene
is dominated by, and saturated with, rich colored light. Faces may be
bathed in blue and the background in red while a bright yellow shines
through from beyond a nearby doorway. Bava is again an obvious influence,
as he used a similar technique to great effect in films such as Hercules in
the Haunted World, The Whip and the Body, and Planet of the Vampires. As
with all aspects of Suspiria, Argento amplifies the effect to a level
designed to contribute to an overall sense of unreality. Argento describes
the filming process this way: "I...used out-dated old Kodak stock, a formula
nearly forty years old. Then when the film was processed it was processed
using the old three-pack process, again very old and never used these days.
You can alter the look of the film in the lab by those means. The same
process was used a lot in the early fifties, as in War of the Worlds.
Republic Films and their 'Trucolor' process. Very striking. I can't use it
again because Suspiria used up the last of the stock. There's no more left
anywhere in the world, except in China..." The cinematography of Luciano
Tovoli contributed greatly to Suspiria's look. He again worked with Argento
on Tenebrae, a film drastically different from Suspiria visually.
Suspiria's look is recalled in Tovoli's recent work on Obsession: A Taste
for Fear (1988, dir: Piccio Raffanini). The score of Suspiria was actually
composed and recorded prior to the actual shooting. Argento has said that
he played it loudly and continuously on the set during filming, as he
"wanted the cast to really feel the terror."
Suspiria was co-written with Daria Nicolodi, whom Argento met when she
co-starred in Deep Red. Nicolodi recalled a story told to her by her
grandmother involving a girl's school occupied by witches, and together they
created a script inspired by this concept. Argento originally intended to
have the students be young children who are abused by the older women, but
this was decided to be too excessive. The basic plot is enriched by a theme
which Argento took from the work of Thomas DeQuincy, a 19th century British
writer most well known for his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" (see
the interesting film adaptation starring Vincent Price titled Confessions of
an Opium Eater [aka Souls for Sale, 1962, dir: Albert Zugsmith]). DeQuincy
wrote a hallucinatory tract, while under the influence of his favorite
substance, titled "Levana and Our Lady of Sorrows," in which he sketched out
a fable of "The Three Mothers". They are a trio of evil witches comprised
of Mater Suspiriorum (Our Lady of Sighs), Mater Lachrymarum (Our Lady of
Tears), and Mater Tenebrarum (Our Lady of Darkness). This story loosely
forms the basis of The Three Mothers Trilogy, of which Suspiria is the first
part and Inferno the second, with the third installment yet to be made. Not
much of this theme is evident in Suspiria, but the fable is spelled out in
Inferno, where Helena Marcos as Mater Suspiriorum is referred back to. The
specifics of the Three Mothers story will be outlined when Inferno is
addressed in FUNHOUSE! #5, as it basically provides the only narrative to be
found in that film. Suspiria is a great departure from Argento's previous
work, but it also contains some of the unique styles developed in those
films taken to their extremes. It was released by Twentieth Century Fox in
America, who snipped a few of the more graphic bits of gore from the first
killing, under their International Classics subsidiary. They had great
success with it commercially, which led them to contribute to the financing
of Inferno.
references:
books -
Broken Mirrors Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento by Maitland
McDonagh, Sun Tavern Fields (UK), 1991, ISBN: 0-9517012-4-X
"Opera of Violence: The Films of Dario Argento" by Douglas E. Winter in
Cut!: Horror Writers on Horror Films, edited by Christopher Golden,
Berkley, 1992, ISBN: 0-425-13282-X
Il Cinema dei Mostri : Da Godzilla a Dario Argento by Luigi Cozzi, Fanucci
(Italy), 1987, ISBN: 8-834-70018-X
"Dario Argento: Myth and Murder" by Todd French in The Deep Red Horror
Handbook edited by Chas. Balun, Fantaco Enterprises Inc., 1989, ISBN:
"The Butchering of Dario Argento " by Tim Lucas in The Video Watchdog Book,
Video Watchdog, 1992, ISBN: 0-9633756-0-1
The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies ed. by Phil Hardy, Harper & Row,
1986, ISBN: 0-06-096146-5
The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film by Michael Weldon, Ballantine,
1983, ISBN: 345-34345-5
Profondo Thrilling (Italy), 1975, (scripts for first three films)
The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers: vol. IV - Writers
and Production Artists, entry by Anthony Ambrogio, St. James Press, 1984,
ISBN: 0-912289-09-0
articles -
Dario Argento Special by Jean-Paul Aubry, Cine 2000 (special issue),
Sep 1977
"La Paura la Musica il Cinema" by E. Ghezzi and M. Giusti, Filmcritica,
Feb 1981
"Nel Mio Spettacolo di Festa Sanguinario" by F. Bettelli and A. Grimaldi,
Filmcritica, Feb/Mar 1983
"Europe's Master of Horror" by Martin Coxhead, Fangoria no 34, Mar 1984
"The Italian Hitchcock" by Martin Coxhead, Fangoria no 35, Apr 1984
"Dario Argento by Luigi Cozzi" by Martin Coxhead, Cine-Zine-Zone no 8,
Autumn 1981
"Dario Argento Profile" by Alan Jones, Cinema no 5, Sep 1982
"Argento" by Alan Jones, Cinefantastique, vol 13 no 8 , Dec 1983
"Argento" by Alan Jones, Cinefantastique, vol 14 no 1, Jan 1984
"Dario Argento" by E. Caron-Lowins, Revue du Cinema, Mar 1986
"Magic All Around Us: A New Approach to the Films of Dario Argento, Part 1",
by John Martin, Samhain no 6, Nov/Dec 1987
"Magic All Around Us: A New Approach to the Films of Dario Argento, Part 2",
by John Martin, Samhain no 7, Jan/Feb 1988
"Magic All Around Us: A New Approach to the Films of Dario Argento, Part 3",
by John Martin, Samhain no 8, Mar/Apr 1988
"Retrospective: Dario Argento" by Maitland McDonagh, Horror Fan vol 1
no 4, Winter 1989
"Dario Argento Interview", The Dark Side, Dec 1990
"Argento: In at the Deep End" - Dario Argento interview, Fantasynopsis no 4,
1991
"Valdets Maestro" by R. Svenson, Chaplin vol 33 no 3, 1991
Special Giallo Issue by Craig Ledbetter, European Trash Cinema vol 2,
no. 6, 1992
"Profondo Argento" - Dario Argento interview, Giallo Pages no 1, 1992
Directed by Dario Argento, Fantasy Film Memory no 4 and 5 (UK, special
edition) by John Martin, 1993
"The Elegant Brutality of Dario Argento" by Maitland McDonagh, Film
Comment vol 29 no 1, Jan/Feb, 1993
"Three Italian Masters: Part I - Bava" by Jeff Dove, FUNHOUSE! cyberzine
vol 1 no 3, Dec 29, 1993
"Daria Nicolodi on..." - Daria Nicolodi interview, Giallo Pages no 2, 1993
filmography:
as director -
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (L'uccello Dalle Piume di Cristallo) aka
The Phantom of Terror aka The Gallery Murders aka The Bird With the Glass
Feathers - 1970. A Seda Spettacoli (Italy), CCC (W.Germany), Sidney
Glazier/UMC Pictures (US) release; Dr/Wr: Dario Argento, Pr: Salvatore
Argento, C: Vittorio Storaro, M: Ennio Morricone, E: Franco Fraticelli,
Art-Dr: Dario Micheli, S: Carlo Diotavelli, Asst-Dr: Roberto Pariente, Cast:
Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Eva Renzi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Mario Adorf,
Renato Romano, Umberto Raho, color, 98 min
THE CAT O' NINE TAILS (Il Gatto Nove Code) - 1971. A Seda Spettacoli/
Mondial Films (Italy), Terra Filmkunst (W.Germany), Labrador Films (France),
National-General Pictures (US) release; Dr/Co-Wr: Dario Argento, Pr:
Salvatore Argento, Co-Wr: Luigi Collo, Dardano Sacchetti, C: Enrico Menczer,
M: Ennio Morricone, E: Franco Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Carlo Leva, S: Luciano
Vittori, Asst-Dr: Roberto Pariente, Cast: Karl Malden, James Franciscus,
Catherine Spaak, Cinzia de Carolis, Carlo Alighiero, Vittorio Congia, Pier
Paolo Capponi, Corrando Olmi, Tino Carraro, Aldo Reggiani, Horst Frank,
Emilio Marchesini, Tom Felleghy, Rada Rassimov, color, 112 min
FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio) aka Four Flies
on Gray Velvet aka Four Patches of Grey Velvet - 1972. A Seda Spettacoli
(Italy), Marianne/Universal Productions (France), Paramount Pictures (US)
release; Dr/Co-Wr: Dario Argento, Pr: Salvatore Argento, Co-Wr: Luigi Cozzi,
Mario Foglietti, C: Franco di Giacomo, M: Ennio Morricone, E: Francoise
Bonnot, Art-Dr: Enrico Sabbatini, Angelo Jacono, S: Nick Alexander, Asst-Dr:
Roberto Pariente, Luigi Cozzi, Cast: Michael Brandon, Mimsy Farmer,
Jean-Pierre Marielle, Francine Racette, Carlo Pedersoli (as Bud Spencer),
Calisto Calisti, Marisa Fabbri, Oreste Lionello, Fabrizio Moroni, Stefano
Sattaflores, Constanza Spada, color, 101 min
THE TRAM (Il Tram) - 1972. An episode of the TV series The Door of
Darkness (La Porta Sul Buio). Directed under the name Sirio Bernadotte.
EYEWITNESS (Testimone Ocular) - 1972. An episode of the TV series The Door
of Darkness (La Ports Sul Buio). Directed under the name Roberto Pariente.
THE FIVE DAYS OF MILAN (Le Cinque Giornate) - 1973. A Seda Spettacoli/Euro
International Films/Salvatore Argento Presentation release; Dr/Co-Wr: Dario
Argento, Pr: Salvatore Argento, Ex-Pr: Claudio Argento, Co-Wr: Vanni
Balustrini, Vincenzo Ungari, Luigi Cozzi, C: Luigi Kuveiller, M: Giorgio
Gaslini, E: Franco Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Giuseppe Bassan, Cast: Adriano
Celentano, Enzo Cerusico, Marilu Tolo, Sergio Graziani, Carla Tato, Luisa
DeSantis, Glauco Onorato, Ivana Monti, color, 100 min
DEEP RED (Profondo Rosso) aka The Hatchet Murders aka Dripping Deep Red aka
The Sabre Tooth Tiger aka Suspiria 2 - 1975. A Seda Spettacoli/ Salvatore
Argento (Italy), Lea J. Marks/Radcliffe Associates/Howard Mahler/TriStar
Distributors (US) release; Dr/Co-Wr: Dario Argento, Pr: Claudio Argento,
Co-Wr: Bernardino Zapponi, C: Luigi Kuveiller, M: Giorgio Gaslini, Goblin,
E: Franco Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Giuseppe Bassan, S: Mario Farrami, Sp-Ef:
Germano Natali, Carol Rambaldi, Cast: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi,
Gabriele Lavia, Macha Meril, Clara Calamai, Glauco Mauri, Eros Pagni,
Giuliana Calandra, Nicoletta Elmi, Piero Mazzinghi, color, 121/105/100 min
SUSPIRIA - 1977. A Seda Spettacoli (Italy) and Twentieth Century Fox (US)
release; Dr/Co-Wr/M: Dario Argento, Pr: Claudio Argento, Ex-Pr: Salvatore
Argento, Co-Wr: Daria Nicolodi, C: Luciano Tovoli, M: Goblin (The Goblins in
English print), E: Franco Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Giuseppe Bassan, S: Mario
Dallimonte, Asst-Dr: Antonio Gabrielli, Sp-Ef: Germano Natali, Cast: Jessica
Harper, Stefania Casini, Joan Bennet, Alida Valli, Flavio Bucci, Udo Kier,
color, 100/98 min
INFERNO - 1980. A Produzioni Intersound (Italy) and Twentieth Century Fox
(US, unreleased) release; Dr/Wr: Dario Argento, Pr: Claudio Argento, Ex-Pr:
William Garroni (US), C: Romano Albani, M: Keith Emerson, E: Franco
Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Giuseppe Bassan, S: Francesco Groppioni, Luciano and
Massimo Anzellotti, Asst-Dr: Lamberto Bava, Mario Bava (uncredited), Sp-Ef:
Germano Natali, Cast: Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria
Nicolodi, Sacha Pitoeff, Alida Valli, Veronica Lazar, Gabrielle Lavia,
Feodor Chaliapin, Leopoldo Mastelloni, Ania Pieroni, James Fleetwood,
Rosario Rigutini, Ryan Hilliard, Paolo Pauloni, Fulvio Mingozzi, Luigi
Lodoli, Rudolfo Lodi, color, 107 min
TENEBRAE (Sotto Gli Occhi Dell'Assassino) aka Unsane - 1982. A Salvatore
Argento/Sigma Cinematografia (Italy) release; Dr/Co-Wr: Dario Argento, Pr:
Claudio Argento, Co-Wr: George Kemp, C: Luciano Tovoli, M: Simonetti,
Pignatelli, Morante (all of Goblin), E: Franco Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Giuseppe
Bassan, Maurizio Garrone, S: Mario Dallimonti, Luciano and Massimo
Anzellotti, Asst-Dr: Lambert Bava, Michele Soavi, Sp-Ef: Giovanni Corridori,
Cast: Anthony Franciosa, Daria Nicolodi, John Saxon, Giuliano Gemma, Eva
Roberts/Roberto Coatti, Mirella D'Angelo, John Steiner, Veronica Laria, Ania
Pieroni, Lara Wendel, Carola Stagnaro, Christian Borromeo, color, 101/100/89
min
PHENOMENA aka Creepers - 1985. A Dacfilm (Italy) and New Line Cinema (US)
release; Dr/Co-Wr/Pr: Dario Argento, Co-Wr: Franco Ferrini, C: Romano
Albani, M: Bill Wyman and Terry Taylor, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Andy Sex
Gang, Simon Boswell, Claudio Simmonetti, Fabio Pignatelli, Piero Bozza,
E: Franco Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Maurizio Garrone, Nello Giorgetti, Luciano
Spadoni, Umberto Turco, S: Franco Fraticelli, Nick Alexander, Asst-Dr:
Michele Soavi, Bettina Graeba, Sp-Ef: Sergio Stivaletti, The Corridori
Brothers, Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Daria Nicolodi, Dalia di Lazzaro, Donald
Pleasance, Patrick Bauchau, Fiore Argento, color, 110/82 min
PHENOMENA - 1985. A music video by Claudio Simonetti, produced and directed
by Argento.
OPERA aka Terror at the Opera - 1987. A Cecchi Gori Group/Tiger Cinema-
tografica/ADC Production/RAI Radio Televisione Italiana (Italy) release:
Dr/Co-Wr/Pr: Dario Argento, Ex-Pr: Ferdinando Caputo, Co-Wr: Franco Ferrini,
C: Ronnie Taylor, M: Brian Eno and Roger Eno, Claudio Simonetti, Bill Wyman
and Terry Taylor, Steel Grave, Northern Light, Giuseppe Verdi, Vincenzo
Bellini, Giacomo Puccini, E: Franco Fraticelli, Art-Dr: Davide Bassan,
Gianmaurizio Fercioni, S: I.M. Anzelotti, Asst-Dr: Michele Soavi, Paulo
Zenatello, Antonio Gabriella, Alessandro Engamgiola, Sp-Ef: Renato Agostini,
Sergio Stivaletti, Barbara Morosetti, Antonio and Giovanni Corridori,
Germano Natale, Cast: Cristina Marsillach, Ian Charleson, Urbano Berberini,
Antonella Vitale, Barbara Cupisti, Coralina Cataldi Tassoni, Daria Nicolodi,
Francesca Cassola, William McNamara, 100/98/?. min
FIAT CROMA - 1987. A television commercial for a car, the Fiat Croma.
TRUSSARDI ACTION - 1988. A fashion show for Trussardi.
TWO EVIL EYES (Due Occhi Diabolici) aka Due Occhi Malocchio, the segment The
Black Cat (Il Gatto Nero) - 1990. A Penta Film (Italy) and Taurus
Entertainmanet (US) release. Black Cat segment: Dr/Co-Pr/Co-Wr: Dario
Argento, Co-Pr: Achille Manzotti, Ex-Pr: Claudio Argento, Co-Wr: Franco
Ferrini, Edgar Allan Poe, C: Peter Reniers, E: Pat Buba, Art-Dr: Fernando
Franchi, Cletus Anderson, Asst-Dr: Luigi Cozzi, Nick Mastandrea, Maria
Melograne, Fred Donatelli, Sp-Ef: Tom Savini, Everett Burrell, John Vulich,
Will Huff, Gerald Gergely, Cast: Harvey Keitel, Madeleine Potter, John Amos,
Martin Balsam, Kim Hunter, Sally Kirkland. color, 115 min (both segments).
The other segment is The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, directed by
George A. Romero.
TRAUMA - 1993. A Penta Film (Italy) and Overseas Filmgroup (US) release:
Dr/Pr/Co-Wr: Dario Argento, Co-Wr: Franco Ferrini, T.E.D. Klein, Giovanni
Romoli, C: Raffaele Mertes, M: Pino Donaggio, Paul Vincent. E: Bennett
Goldberg, Art-Dr: Billy Jett, Simone Bergmann, Sp-Ef: Tom Savini, Cast: Asia
Argento, Piper Laurie, Brad Dourif, Frederic Forrest, Hope Alexander,
Sharon Barr, Gregory Beech, Ira Belgrade, E.A. Violet Boor, David Chase,
Stephen D'Ambrose, Kevin Dutcher, Cory Garvin, Laura Johnson, Jacqui Kim,
Isabell Monk, Peter Moore, Bonita Parsons, Terry Perkins, Lester Purry,
Kathy Quirk, James Russo, Christopher Rydell, Tony Saffold, Dominique
Serrand, Rita Vassallo, color, 115 min
as writer (but not director) -
Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una Volta il West) - 1968, Dr: Sergio
Leone (co-writer)
Cemetery Without Crosses (Cimitero Senza Croci) - 1968, Dr:
(co-writer)
One Night at Dinner (Metti una Sera a Cena) - 1968, Dr: Giuseppe Patroni-
Griffi (co-writer)
The Love Circle (La Rivoluzione Sessuale) - 1968, Dr: Ghione
Today It's Me...Tomorrow You! (Oggi a Me...Domani a Te!) - 1968, Dr: Tonino
Cervi (co-writer)
Probability Zero (Propabilita Zero) - 1968, Dr: (co-writer)
The Five-Man Army (Un Esercito di Cinque Uomini) - 1969, Dr: Don Taylor
Legion of the Damned aka Battle of the Commandos (La Legione dei Dannati)
- 1969, Dr: Umberto Lenzi (co-writer)
Commandos - 1969, Dr: Armando Crispino (co-writer)
La Stagione dei Sensi - 1969, Dr: Franciosa (co-writer)
Comandanti Per un Gangster - 1969, Dr:
Dawn of the Dead (Zombie) - 1979, Dr: George Romero (co-writer)
Demons (Demoni) - 1985, Dr: Lamberto Bava (co-writer)
Demons 2 (Demoni 2...L'incubo Ritorna) - 1986, Dr: Lamberto Bava (co-writer)
Giallo: Gli Incubo di Dario Argento (Italian TV series) - 1987 (contributor
and creative consultant)
Turno di Notte (Italian TV series) - 1988 (contributor and creative
consultant)
The Church (La Chiesa) - 1989, Dr: Michele Soavi (co-writer)
The Sect (La Setta) - 1991, Dr: Michele Soavi (co-writer)
as producer (but not director) -
Er Piu - 1971, Dr: (co-producer)
The Man Upstairs aka Neighbour (Il Vicino di Casa) - 1972, Dr: Luigi Cozzi
(episode of Italian TV show The Door of Darkness [La Porta Sul Buio])
The Puppet (La Bambola) -1972, Dr: (episode of Italian TV
show The Door of Darkness [La Porta Sul Buio])
L'Albero Dalle Foglia Rosa - 1973, Dr: (co-producer)
Carioca Tigre - 1973, Dr: (co-producer)
Dawn of the Dead (Zombie) - 1979, Dr: George Romero
Valley (a music video by Bill Wyman) - 1985
Demons (Demoni) - 1985, Dr: Lamberto Bava
Demons 2 (Demoni 2...L'incubo Ritorna) - 1986, Dr: Lamberto Bava
The Church (La Chiesa) - 1989, Dr: Michele Soavi
The Sect (La Setta) - 1991, Dr: Michele Soavi
about Dario Argento -
Dario Argento's World of Horror - 1985, Dr: Michele Soavi
The Making of Opera - 1987, Dr: Giovani Torinesi
Dario Argento: Master of Horror - 1990, Dr: Luigi Cozzi
Argento is also credited with "figuration" on Scusi Lei e' Favorevole o
Contrario? (1966)
write to Argento at: via Annone 20, 00199, Rome, Italy
All-Night Video Drive-In number one
-----------------------------------
by Jeffrey Frentzen (jfrentzen@pcweek.ziff.com)
STRANGERS IN PARADISE (1984)
Produced and directed by Ulli Lommel
Written by Lommel and Suzanna Love
With: Lommel, Ken Letner, Thom Jones, Geoffrey Barker
German-born Ulli Lommel matured from light leading man of 1960s Deutschland
cinema to an apprenticeship with filmmaker Rainier Werner Fassbinder, then
onto the United States to produce and direct films. His first American-made
film, COCAINE COWBOYS (1979), was a strange intersection of Andy Warhol,
rock 'n roll and Jack Palance. THE BOOGEYMAN (1981), his second attempt,
was a strong ghost story somewhat inspired by THE EXORCIST. Prior to
that, he played numerous roles in his homeland - even a lead part in Russ
Meyer's 1965 version of FANNY HILL - and, in Fassbinder's hands, was one of
the adulterers in CHINESE ROULETTE. He directed a few films in Germany
(notably the rare TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES). After the financial success of
THE BOOGEYMAN, Lommel made a mark with a series of offbeat horror movies,
including THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR, TASTE OF SIN (aka OLIVIA), BRAINWAVES, and
the abortive BOOGEYMAN II. His films stand out from the norm, with their
mixture of American horror movie staples and a unique European perspective.
None is more "different" than STRANGERS IN PARADISE, which follows Jonathan
Sage, mesmerist and master of mind control, who finds himself repeatedly
courted and controlled by the power-mad.
Part musical romp, science-fiction, comedy, and anti-fascist rant, STRANGERS
IN PARADISE emerges as an extended put-down of the politics of power, as
well as an admonishing comparison between present-day America and Nazi
Germany. Although Lommel's obvious low budget keeps him from successfully
pulling off this uneasy combination, STRANGERS IN PARADISE deserves praise
for its energy, and is better than most of the political science-fiction
Hollywood has attempted. In a black-and-white prologue, Sage (played by the
director) visits Hitler (also played by Lommel) in 1939 Berlin. Drafted to
mesmerize the Allied forces at the Russian front, Sage instead flees to
London, where he performs at a smoke-filled hall while an energetic emcee
sings, "Nobody's gonna put me down." Almost immediately, war planes start
dropping bombs and he must again seek refuge. This time, though, he places
himself in a cryogenic tube. The movie turns color, advances to 1984, and
doctors nearly fail to wake him. Sage is taken to a Los Angeles suburb
called Paradise Hills, a nameless tract development filled with "good"
families. Some of the parents chastise their children for liking "horrible,
aggressive music" and dyeing their hair. For a while, Sage is still groggy
from his thawing out, but retains his unusual abilities. He's brought under
the control of the reactionary parents, right-wingers who want to fulfill a
"master plan" that includes brainwashing and vanquishing anyone who doesn't
agree with them. The group's leader, Staggers (Ken Letner), rants about the
country being overrun by a "horde of perverted cretins." The usual targets
- including homosexuals, rock 'n roll music, and drugs - are blamed for
America's decline. However, Lommel scores points (perhaps accurately, in
this suburban setting) by portraying the "perverts" as normal and the
upstanding citizens as ludicrous nuts. This covert group has money and
connections in high places, and communicates via computer between cities,
country and suburbs.
The centerpiece of their activities is a subterranean bomb shelter in
Staggers' back yard. Here a small group of sympathetic scientists
experiment with undesirables hooked up to a computer called a Repentogram.
Using this comically anachronistic array of flashing lights mounted on
control panels, they try to literally de-program the various gays, gamblers,
druggies and rockers they have locked up in a makeshift jail. Lommel
doesn't take the story very seriously. Staggers and his group are lampooned
throughout the film, and the Repentogram turns out to be a total failure.
The message behind Lommel's put-on, though, seems serious enough. Someone
in Staggers' grassroots network identifies Sage as a possible pawn in their
scheme. Upon arriving at the bomb shelter, Sage turns two homosexuals
"straight" just by looking at them. However, he gradually grows more aware
of the big picture and, after spending some time with Staggers' punker
daughter, discovers who's sane and who's mad. Staggers, ecstatic over these
mind-bending successes, stages a telethon to broadcast his message of
law-and-order and "moral responsibility," but Sage has something else in
mind for this TV debut. The movie ends on an upbeat note, although Sage's
newfound fascination for the TV enables him to somehow control others'
behavior over the airwaves - a hitherto unknown property of the medium. All
this aside, STRANGERS IN PARADISE is foremost a musical, although there's
way too much singing and dancing, and some of it is really bad. Most of the
14 MOR rock songs were composed and performed by a forgotten band called
Moonlight Drive, with the lyrics mouthed by the actors. Their songs propel
the plot but are not very good, with some imitation Beatles and Doors songs.
Additional tunes by Richard Green and Sukey are better. Nearly all the
songs play out as fantasies in characters' minds, and this formula is
overused.
Most of Lommel's films are vivace, tightly plotted and edited; STRANGERS IN
PARADISE gets bogged down by these interludes. Nonetheless, the movie is
compelling and has quite a few amusing and ironic moments. For example,
Sage's encounter with Hitler is funny - he cannot get Der Fuehrer to look
him in the eye, so he hypnotizes a young soldier to run off-camera yelling
about how one should never wear a Nazi uniform. Also, Staggers and his
coterie of moralists sing, "All we ever wanted was the world," as they wash
dishes, roll hair in curlers and prance around Paradise Hills; while
watching a televised newscast, Sage turns his head to one side and the
commentator unaccountably mimics the movement; on a more grim note, a one
rock singer is "transformed" to a bland country-and-western crooner who
finishes a song by casually tossing his guitar into a bonfire, followed by
onlookers who throw some LPs into the blaze. STRANGERS IN PARADISE has its
share of idiotic moments, too. For some reason, Sage carries a TV remote
wherever he goes, pointing it at everyone and everything; and for his
entrance at the telethon, he inexplicably pops into a room out of thin air,
an effect that is supposed to hint at his vast power, but is just poorly
done. The choreography doesn't always appear in synch with the songs. I
think this disconnect is intentional, and is underscored by Lommel the
actor, who looks very intelligent and underplays Sage to the point where the
character is little more than a cipher. This oddball performance contrasts
with the other actors, who overcompensate by mugging uncontrollably. The
results are disorienting and add to the film's off-kilter tone. Director
Lommel does well with what was no doubt a rushed schedule - some of the
scenes have that "one-shot wonder" quality - and you gotta admire a guy who
can do interesting dramatic things by re-using some footage two or three
times.
FUTURE SHOCK (1994)
Sequences: "Jenny Potter"
Directed by Eric Parkinson
Written by Vivian Schilling
Produced by Parkinson and Randolph Turrow
With: Schilling, Brion James, Sydney Lassick
"Future Shock"
Written and directed by Eric Parkinson
Produced by Parkinson and Turrow
With: Martin Kove
"The Roommate"
Written and directed by Francis G. "Oley" Sassone
Produced by Frederick Baron
With: Scott Thompson, Bill Paxton, James Karen
"Mr. Petrified Forest"
Written and directed by Matt Reeves
Produced by Bryan Burk and Gary Grunberg
With: Sam Clay, Amanda Foreman
Even though I knew FUTURE SHOCK's packaging was a scam - "The Roommate"
short subject has made the "tournee" circuit a couple of times since 1987 -
this three-part anthology is still pretty good. "The Roommate" is by far
the best segment. Bill Paxton excels as a squirrely, abrasive con artist
who barges his way into a roomie relationship with meek apprentice coroner
Scott Thompson. He rips off, torments and abuses Thompson who, in a fit,
tries to kill his unwelcome roommate, with ironic results. The short's
black humor saves it from being a thoroughly unpleasant experience. James
Karen has a fun welcome supporting role as one of Thompson's co-workers.
The least successful entry, "Mr. Petrified Forest," was a USC master thesis
and is predictably filled with arty composition and paper-thin sentiment.
The title character is a "chicken little" type who waits nervously for a
predicted earthquake to hit L.A. It never hits, but he falls in love with
another paranoid. He relates the whole story from a heavenly "wait
station," as doctors on earth frantically try to revive him from a
mysterious accident. Another examination of paranoia, "Jenny Potter," stars
and was written by interesting actress Vivian Schilling. She lives in a
Malibu house decked out like a fortress, with silent alarms and a
computerized security system that talks. Her husband (Brion James) leaves
her alone one night and her nightmare fears of being attacked by dogs edges
into her real world. The episode is scary but pointless. As you might
expect, the weakest link in FUTURE SHOCK is its framing sequence, in which
doctor Martin Kove interviews each segments' protagonists. He uses a funky
strobe light thingie to hypnotize them and lead into each of the stories.
STEPSISTERS (1974)
Written, produced and directed by Perry W. Tong
With Hal Fletcher, Bond Gideon, Sheryn Talbert
Filmed near Peaster, Texas, STEPSISTERS opens with incoherent, jarring cuts
between an ambulance's flashing light, a glum-looking cop, and a spooky old
house. When this first-year film student collage subsides, we get our first
view of down-and-out charter pilot Thorpe Russell (Hal Fletcher): He
stumbles out of a cottage, looks back at a woman he spent the night with,
and squeezes into his beat-up Hudson for a ride across the prairie to his
home. When he arrives, he spots one of his wife Norma's gigolos leaving by
the front door. Seeming to forget where's he been, Thorpe accuses Norma of
being a slut and angrily threatens her with a gun, but she looks down her
nose at this red-eyed pig and calmly walks away. These two do nothing but
tell the other to fuck off for the rest of the movie. Enter Diana, Norma's
half-sister, who at first resents Thorpe's bad attitude but eventually sides
with him. We're deep in the heart here, folks, and it's messy business.
Perry Tong's crude melodrama doesn't do a whole lot for 90 minutes, but the
atmosphere is delightfully sleazy, the surprisingly good music score is
straight from a honky tonk, and the photography is appropriately washed-out.
I knew STEPSISTERS was a wayward winner when, after the main characters
scrape through another argument, Thorpe tackles and starts molesting Diana,
and she likes it! Unbelievably, she becomes his lover and they conspire to
kill Norma. With Norma out of the way, Thorpe can sell off their
dilapidated farm and maybe buy himself a better plane. Tong unsuccessfully
tries to generate a murder mystery out of the situation - one of Diana's
boyfriends ends up with an ax in his chest, and Norma is repeatedly visited
by a mysterious, new lover who wears slick boots. Loyalties are unclear
until the finale, which should wake up most viewers long enough to finish
their popcorn. This is one of those movies in which people pour wine out of
a jug, smoke a ton of cigarettes and talk about how things have gotten
really bad lately. Everything and everyone is in decay - the beautiful
gothic mansion Thorpe inherited from his father is falling apart, and it's
no shock when one of the characters literally goes insane. A lot of footage
is devoted to people driving around in cars and flying airplanes, and some
of it is in focus. The acting is a bit shrill but not bad - Fletcher in
particular makes Thorpe more vulgar and cold than the script could possibly
have suggested - and the locations are excellent. Peaster is not too far
outside Dallas, but Tong's camera renders it as remote as the Australian
outback
DON'T PANIC (1977)
Directed and Written by Carlos Puerto
With: Angel Aranda, Sandra Alberti, Marian Karr, Jose Maria Guillemo
Andy and Thelma, an urbanite couple living in Madrid, leave their apartment
for a pleasant day around the city with their dog, and on their way home
meet up with a Bruno and Anne, a strange couple who invite them to their
foreboding country estate. The man claims he knew Andy in college, but his
story doesn't add up. A storm hits that evening and the two stay overnight.
At first, the couples engage is a bit of harmless communication with spirits
via a Ouija board, but past conflicts arise - Thelma had an affair with
Andy's brother, and Bruno is lambasted by Anne for an attempted suicide. As
this surprisingly effective thriller opens with a nasty rape-murder in a
Satanists' coven, lead by a black-robed, Sam Jaffe-lookalike, you know the
estate is probably the muder scene and Andy and Thelma will soon be dog
meat. The first victim, though, is the dog, who ends up strung up in a
walk-in meat locker. The film quickly moves away from plotted motivations
and the remaining action shifts uneasily between reality and fantasy - Bruno
and Anne are bonafide devilworshippers who engage the other couple in a
fuzzy-lensed orgy on the living room floor; Andy and Thelma seemingly don't
recall the event in the morning, and try several times to leave but don't;
Bruno apparently kills himself, followed by Anne, and both appears later as
the living dead, who must be killed again. A creepy, "walking" life-size
porcelain child doll strolls out of Thelma's dreams and into a room at one
point, trying to keep the terrified couple from leaving the estate. After
they make their way back home, their furniture is gone and an old couple who
live in a neighboring apartment invite them back into the Satanic nightmare.
An unusual and creepy Spanish horror film, co-produced by Juan Piquer
(Simon) and well-directed by Carlos Puerto.
THE DEMONS (1972)
Directed by Clifford Brown (Jesus Franco)
Written by Franco
Produced by Victor deCosta
With: Anne Libert, Britt Nichols, Doris Thomas, Karin Field, John Foster,
Howard Vernon
This is Unicorn Video's rare U.S. video release of Franco's LES DEMONS, also
known as SEX DEMONS. It's a follow-up to Franco's earlier NIGHT OF THE
BLOOD MONSTER, with John Foster (real name, Cihangir Gaffari) taking the
role of witch-hunter Lord Jeffreys, previously limned by Christopher Lee.
THE DEMONS is a cut above the usual Franco film, with some good acting and
production values. However, the numerous torture scenes make it difficult
to watch. As a witch burns at the stake, she puts a curse on Jeffreys and
her accusers, claiming her daughters will avenge her death. Jeffreys, his
lieutenant Renfield and the wicked Lady de Winter search for the witch's two
daughters at a convent lead by Mother Superior Rosa Linda, who is concerned
that some of her nuns are playing with themselves too much. (Naturally,
Franco's voyeuristic camera provides ample evidence of the problem.) When
Lady de Winter arrives at the convent, she must (of course) personally
inspect the two daughters to see if they are virgins. When one of them,
Kathleen (Anne Libert), is not, they conclude that she must be a witch. Not
only is Lady de Winter a lesbian, she's a closet sadist as well - after a
few minutes of watching Kathleen's first torture session she coos, "She's
exquisite, such tender flesh," and demands that Renfield keep her posted on
any "fun and games" he has planned.
Later, the two play "inquisition games," in which she is the witch and he
whips a confession out of her. What she doesn't know is that Renfield wants
to keep Kathleen to himself. He falls deeply in love with her, at first
suspicious she's a witch and later convinced that she is not. He helps her
escape the de Winter castle, but the Lady and Jeffreys suspect the truth.
Kathleen stumbles around the "English" forest - THE DEMONS was filmed in
Portugal - and eventually collapses into the arms of a hermit painter who
hobbles her into his "sad house." In a direct rip-off of a sequence out of
Franco's own JUSTINE AND JULIET (aka DEADLY SANCTUARY), Kathleen lounges
around his home, posing for paintings, and gets healthy. Not for long,
though. To save face with Jeffreys and to be with her, Renfield tracks her
down and Franco once again has a good excuse for showing Anne Libert bound
in chains and abused. Luis Barboo, the chief torturer, played a sinister
doctor in DON'T PANIC (see above) and looks like an older Charlton Heston.
At the nunnery, the second daughter, Margaret, is raped by Satan and tries
to seduce the Mother Superior, who refuses to submit and jumps to her death.
Margaret later visits a "mistress of the master Satan," a blind crone who
gives her a few tips on how to get even with the de Winters and Jeffreys.
Later, Lady de Winter gives Margaret a ride to the castle. Renfield finally
succumbs to his earthly desires - "I despise you, you made me experience
sensations I did not know could only find in a Franco film.
During a feast at which Renfield and Kathleen are supposed to be tortured to
death in public, Lady de Winter and Margaret sneak off for an extended sex
scene. We get to see more of Britt Nichols and Karin Field than we ever
asked for, in a sequence punctuated with the director's trademark
out-of-control zooms and blurry close-ups. In the film's most surprising
scene, Margaret thanks the Lady with a kiss that kills her and turns her
into a skeleton. The Lord Malcolm de Winter, who throughout the movie is
too kind and noble to get wrapped up in all the barbarity, is played by
Howard Vernon, who wears a Mickey Mouse-type astrologer's cap. His plans to
help overthrow the King of England (and Jeffreys) go on hold when he
discovers that Kathleen and Margaret are his daughters (!). In an attempt
to flee his own castle, the Lord is killed by Jeffreys. Renfield, Margaret,
and Kathleen hightail it for the forest again. They get about 3 miles this
time, when Margaret lays a kiss on Renfield - he was one of her
witch-mother's accusers - and he's ready for the boneyard. Kathleen turns
in her own sister. Margaret has one dying request at the stake, that
Jeffreys grace her pardon with a ... kiss. Despite THE DEMONS' fairly
strong storyline, it's never explained how Margaret and Kathleen can be the
daughters of both the witch and Lord de Winter. Franco's attention to
detail is more apparent in the unpleasant torture and rape scenes, and there
are several drawn-out moments of women screaming in agony. THE DEMONS
doesn't improve on a sub-genre already well represented by films like MARK
OF THE DEVIL and THE CONQUEROR WORM; nevertheless, it does have a decent
music score made up of 70's rock (complete with "wawka-wawka" guitar riffs),
lyrical guitar interludes and cool jazz themes.
ARCADE (1994)
Directed by Albert Pyun
Produced by Cathy Gesualdo
Screenplay by David S. Goyer
With: Megan Ward, Peter Billingsley, John DeLancie, Sharon Farrell,
Norbert Weisser
After being disappointed by TRON several years ago, I've been waiting for an
"adventures in an arcade game" where something exciting happens. Looks like
I'm still going to have to wait. The people at Full Moon Video, who seem to
put out a new movie every three weeks, claim to have been hard at work on
ARCADE for three years. Judging by the results, it must have taken a long
time to generate the extensive computer graphics, while principal
photography looks like the familiar rush job. Megan Ward plays Alex, one of
several teenagers who test-market Arcade, a virtual reality game with a
sinister personality, which boots up and automatically knows their names.
It threateningly invites them to a chase through cartoonish dungeons and
alien worlds, but if a player is captured by the game's resident monster -
the Screamer - they're absorbed into Arcade for real. When Alex's boyfriend
disappears, and another kid evaporates in front of a TV after losing a game,
Alex and a skeptical buddy (Billingsley) don power glove and eyewear to
rescue the victims and destroy Arcade. Director Pyun, an old hand at
science-fiction B-movies, does little to pump up the excitement. The whole
second half of the film, in which Alex single-handedly races through virtual
worlds, is surprisingly dull. However, there's one effective scene in which
Alex Is "killed" by Arcade and revisits her mother's suicide, only to see
her mom's bloodied corpse get up and use a gun on her. Besides that, a
fairly good cast is overcome by the script's teenage swill and TV-style
happy ending. Ward convincingly swats at swooping metallic hawks and other
two-dimensional menaces, and Norbert Weisser does well as the thankless
inventor of Arcade, who knows his creation has a mind of its own and doesn't
quite know what to do about it.
FEAST FOR THE DEVIL (198?)
Directed by Joe Lacy (Jose Maria Elorrieta)
Written by Jose'Luis Navarro, Marino Girolami, Micael Skife
With: Krista Nell, Espartaco Santoni, Teresa Gimpere, Thomas Moore, Julio
Pena
Other than a suspenseful opening scene - in which a frightened woman eludes
a black-robbed man through a dense thicket - there's hardly anything to
recommend in this trance-inducing modern-day witch story. The woman is
brought to a hospital more or less catatonic, except she spazzes out
whenever she sees the junk-jewelry-like medallion worn by a jet-setting
witch (Espartaco Santoni, who is credited with the original story). Her
sister (Krista Nell), bent on getting to the bottom of the mystery, unwisely
falls under Santoni's spell. After interminable talk, she is taken to his
mansion, with its basement full of chained women, and realizes she's to be
the next butterfly in his collection. Thing is, Santoni's partner (Teresa
Gimpere) takes an unhealthy liking to Nell and thwarts the bad guy with a
well-placed rubber stage knife in the back. Nell is rescued, both witches
die, and by the film's end she's a dead-eyed wreck like her sister. I felt
the same way by the time a long overdue "Fin" plopped onscreen.
BUMMER (1973)
Produced by David F. Friedman and William Allen Castleman
Directed by Castleman
With: Kipp Whitman, Connie Strickland, Dennis Burkley, Carol Speed
In the early 1970s, as sex movies moved away from the wink-'n-jiggle genre
prevalent in the 60s to outright pornography, drive-in mogul David Friedman
fashioned some R-rated programmers to compete in the mainstream movie
markets. One of these attempts, BUMMER, shows why the formula didn't work.
The film's themes include rebel youth, rock 'n roll and vicarious drug use -
which conceivably could "play" to the teenage movie audience of the time -
but BUMMER is really intended for the conservative audiences who might have
secretly attended a Friedman sex flick in the button-down 60s. The hippie
members of a rock band, called The Group, labor over a decision to stop
playing dance clubs in LA and hit the road. After about 40 minutes of
talking, dancing and casual sex, the musicians and a small circle of female
groupies journey to Bakersfield and Las Vegas to see if they can get their
act together. On the way, they are sidetracked by Butts (Dennis Buckley),
the big-bear bassist who can't land a woman on account of he's a
short-tempered psycho. During a house party in LA, he forces two of the
women to strip and take a shower while he plays with himself (offscreen).
On the road, he kills one the groupies, which mobilizes the fuzz to round up
the whole gang. The finale is extraordinary. The dead girl is wheeled in
on a stretcher, Butts grabs a shotgun from a police cruiser and starts
blasting, killing Duke, the band leader (Stuart Whitman's actor son); one
girl (Carol Speed, later in ABBY) takes the gun from Butts and blows a hole
in his gut. Meanwhile, a bunch of cops stand around scratching their heads.
The camera pans up to the sky and zooms out to a shot of a moon's-eye view
of planet earth. Wow, man, what does it all mean? This post-"summer of
love" flick displays considerable contempt for its hippie protagonists - the
mad-dog bassist is only a hair more crazed than Duke. True to form,
Friedman and director Castleman don't have enough plot to sustain the whole
movie. Early in the film, an embarrassed-looking Connie Strickland performs
a gratuitous, unending striptease (a nod to the button-down crowd).
Actually, whenever the story wanes his actresses strip or dance, or both.
DEMON QUEEN (1986)
With: Mary Fanaro, Dennis Webster
Produced by Donald Farmer and David Reed
Written and Directed by Farmer
A vanity production, running about an hour long and shot on tape in
Tennessee and Florida by ex-horror magazine editor Farmer, armed with about
ten bucks, half a script and gallons of stage blood. Lucinda (Mary Fanaro),
immortal witch-bitch with a lot of time on her hands, enjoys ripping out the
hearts and necks of her victims. Some of them get back up again and run
around Nashville looking for flesh to munch on. Meanwhile, Lucinda hooks up
with an obnoxious street-punk cocaine dealer (Dennis Webster) and beds down
at his apartment. Webster's couch-potato girlfriend objects, for which she
ends up in the bathtub with a tap in her neck. By the time Webster figures
out what's up, Lucinda is attacked by one of her own victims and supposedly
killed. One of Farmer's early look-I'm-a-gorehound quickies, DEMON QUEEN
features a sleazy video store owner who tries to talk a customer into
renting MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY ("I counted 24 acts of mutilation"). Over the
last year or so, I've watched a bunch of amateur-hour horror flicks
containing gratuitous "let's visit the video store" sequences, or one of the
main characters works at a video store...it's become a hallmark of bad,
low-budget gore movies. You also know you're getting screwed by a movie
that announces a "special guest star" with a name no one's ever heard of.
The make-up effects are so-so, and include lumbering, drooling zombies and a
gooey monster mask that appears to slip off an actor's face in mid-shot.
DUNGEON OF TERROR (1971)
Written and directed by Jean Rollin
With: Marie Pierre Castel, Mireille D'Argent, Philippe Caste
Rollin's REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE was first released in the U.S. as CAGED
VIRGINS, then THE VIRGINS AND THE VAMPIRES (in 1975 by Boxoffice
International). Now it's packaged by Best Video under the name DUNGEON OF
TERROR, part of a VHS double feature with THE CHILD (1977). While the
latter is a tepid reworking of BAD SEED crossed with NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD cliches, DUNGEON OF TERROR is a sentimental, nearly plotless and
one-of-a-kind vampire film that is more concerned with gloomy imagery than
suspense. As the movie opens, a car careens down a French back road.
Inside, two young women and a male friend elude a car-full of gun-toting
pursuers, and the man is killed by a stray bullet. Wandering through the
countryside, the two stumble across an atmospheric but dilapidated castle
fortress inhabited by vampires, led by a tall, solemn bloodsucker who
eventually admits his family line has come to an inglorious end. The girls
are temporarily recruited into his harem, relieved of their virginity, and
kill off most of the vampire's commune (with guns) before running off into
the rising sun (and still armed). Although DUNGEON OF TERROR doesn't make
sense, Rollin has a knack for horrific imagery - a struggling hand pushing
through the dirt of a premature grave; the head vampire makes his entrance
by lifting his cape and releasing a cache of bats (there are some excellent
close-ups of bats); in the castle dungeon, skeletons are arranged in absurd,
inquisitive poses. When the arty tedium starts to wane, Rollin throws in
some red-tinted scenes of unnamed virgins being mauled by the vampire's
grunting henchmen. The first half of the film is practically without
dialogue, and when the characters start interacting, the vampires are
revealed to be melancholy, ostracized creatures who look sad and wait for
death. Imagine going to a drive-in to watch this. Best Video's master
print looks like it's been around through all those title changes, and as
this is the R-rated version, the more explicit sex and violence found in
Rollin's European cut has been noticeably chopped out.
MURDERLUST (1988)
With Eli Rich, Rochelle Taylor, Dennis Gannon, Bonnie Schneider
Written and Produced by James Lane
Directed by Donald Jones
Steve Belmont, Sunday school teacher and part-time security guard, has a big
chip on his shoulder towards the opposite sex, and moonlights as a serial
strangler. "The Mojave Murderer" leads an interesting double life, but he
never smiles and has trouble holding down a job - while on guard duty, he
repeatedly threatens a woman (in front of his boss, who doesn't hear him!),
gets the sack and turns to his snot-nosed cousin/neighbor for a job as a
supermarket janitor. Things start looking up - two or three victims later -
when Steve starts dating a woman he comes close to killing. Then he
gets a
job as a psychologist! His mysoginistic tendencies come out in the end,
though, and before he can finish off the girlfriend, she gets a hold of his
revolver and shoots him. Steve staggers into the desert and dies. Director
Don Jones has made some other sick movies about sociopaths, such as THE LOVE
BUTCHER and SCHOOLGIRLS IN CHAINS. Although MURDERLUST isn't his most
aberrant effort, it's pretty grim and disturbing. But the stalking
sequences are pretty unbelievable. For example, in one of several
badly-staged sequences, an unshaven, sloppily-dressed Steve entices a
school girl into his apartment with promises of making her a famous model.
She buys this line of bull and, once they're isolated, finds a gun pointed
at the top of her head, with Steve demanding a blow job before he strangles
her. It's in these moments when Jones seems to really know what he's doing.
Despite this dubious expertise, Jones' script destroys what little
credibility and suspense can be generated. More examples: Even after Steve
knows the cops have found his stash of bodies in the desert, he continues to
drop them off in the same place; and we wonder how the protagonist, played
by Eli Rich mostly as a down-in-the-mouth, uncouth character, could lure
otherwise intelligent-looking women into his van or to his apartment. But
Jones isn't all that interested in the character, just the handful of
(mostly bloodless) killings. To the film's credit, there is something sly
about plopping this unsufferable character in Spielbergian, "valley girl"
suburbia, but that sort of touch seems like an afterthought (or an accident)
in a movie like this.
NATAS - THE REFLECTION (1983)
Produced, Written and Directed by Jack Dunlap
With: Randy Mulkey, Pat Bolt, Craig Hensley, Kelli Kuhn
An obsessed young newspaper reporter (Randy Mulkey), determined to prove the
existence of an obscure Indian legend, trundles off to a mountain cave in
search of a "living" spirit to tell him where to find Natas, the evil one of
the desert mountains who imprisoned 100 souls back in the wild-west days.
On the way, he wanders into a ghost town populated by blackened, shuffling
zombies in ten-gallon hats, and sees his face on a "wanted" poster; however,
before these chatty creatures can hang him, he escapes and runs smack into
"109 year old" Nino Cochise. Cochise, the living spirit (who rides a white
horse), gives him a wooden peace-symbol necklace as protection against the
evil spirits, says, "Beware the serpent," and disappears in a puff of smoke.
Mulkey returns to Tucson, Arizona and alerts his girlfriend, a TV newswoman
who has had it up to here with talk of Natas. They return to the ghost town
with a camera crew and all hell breaks loose. One fellow is staked through
the neck by a ghost, another is decapitated by a flying scythe - a nice
effect - and a naked woman crawls into bed to find a decayed but lively,
murderous zombie waiting for her. Having endured these improprieties,
Mulkey and his girlfriend head up the mountain and encounter Natas - that's
"Satan" spelled backwards - a weird-looking bat-like beast that takes one
look at the reporter, says effoe and spikes him with a red, electrical force
ray. No one's looking when Mulkey's girlfriend shines a mirror in Natas'
face, which sends him back to the wherever. The ghost town's "100 souls" (I
counted about eight) have been released, and in a stupid ending the camera
crew reappears, apparently with no knowledge that they've been resurrected.
Overall, NATAS-THE REFLECTION mixes equal parts of the ridiculous and
genuinely eerie. The net effect doesn't add up, but the early scenes in the
ghost town and Natas' anti-climactic appearance make the rest of it
tolerable. The 16mm photography is so dark the bathed-in-blue night scenes
are difficult to see.
DEMON HUNTER (aka THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN, 1965)
Directed by Massey Cramer
Written by Bob Corley
Produced by Don Hadley
With: George Ellis, Marriane Gordon, Erin Fleming
If you see one camp/cult/crap movie this year, go out of your way to rent or
buy this jaw-dropping schlock, disguised by Camp Video to look like just
another routine horror quickie. "Blood Mountain is bleeding again,"
according to a TV news report, and middle-aged copy boy Bestoink Dooley sees
his chance for a promotion. Poking around the mountain woods, Bestoink runs
into geologist Dr. Stinson, who dismisses the phenomenon as "rock rust."
When a hunter turns up dead with a torn-out heart and his "blood sucked dry
out," Dooley correctly assumes the Blood Mountain monster is responsible.
It finally shows up and kills a few people. As most of the monster stuff
unreels in the last ten minutes, we must wade through a lot of inept,
low-ball comedy shtick for about an hour. The opening third of the movie
introduces Dooley (George Ellis, who looks kinda like an Italian Joe Besser)
and shows him, well, doing things - we watch as he prepares for bed, goes to
sleep, has a dream, wakes up...It's all done like a silent movie, slightly
tongue-in-cheek, in the style of a backwoods high-school play. After Dooley
drives his convertible MG to Blood Mountain, there is even more padding -
Dr. Stinson must deliver a 50s-monster-movie type speech telling everyone
not to panic, even though two of the locals insist a monster exists. One
highlight is when Dooley stops by a mountain lake to warn some partying
teenagers about the danger, but they'd rather do the twist to ersatz Beach
Boys music - "It may be a homicidal maniac, or worse!" He tells them. A
dumb-looking sheriff threatens to bring in "the hounds and a man" to storm
the mountain and kill the thing, but instead a deputy gets his face clawed
off. Eventually, Dooley engages the creature in a slapstick chase over
rocks and through the woods before setting it on fire. The creature backs
up and falls down a ravine. If the dialogue looks dubbed, that's because
all of it was added later. Listen for the laughable "library music" (you
can even hear someone dropping a needle on an LP before the opening scene).
The monster suit is hilariously tacky - the actor is made up to look like
Santo with a beehive for hair, wearing lambskin chaps, with cotton balls
glued to his navel and chest. It has two big rat-tails on the thighs!
Everyone says "Bestoink" with a straight face, the women have classic 60s
coifs, and there are footstep sounds on the soundtrack even though no one is
walking around. Decatur University of Cosmetology gets credit for the great
hair. THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN, filmed at Stone Mountain Memorial Park,
near Atlanta, Georgia, was probably the first Bigfoot movie. See it.
NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1983)
Directed by James C. Wasson
Produced by Jim L. Ball
Written by Mark Williams
With: Michael J. Cutt, Joy Allen, Bob Collins, Jodi Lazarus
NIGHT OF THE DEMON may have been one of the last Bigfoot movies, and proves
that they hadn't improved much since THE LEGEND OF BLOOD MOUNTAIN. It's
definitely the goriest one, and an overlong, episodic tale told in flashback
(in fact, there are flashbacks within flashbacks, which gets confusing).
The lone survivor of an encounter with the Halkomelem horror watches the
members of his student research group fall vinctim to another tall actor in
a bearskin rug and ape makeup. The most interesting segueway involves
Sasquatch's origins, detailed in the story of how a backwoods child was
raped by Grandpa Bigfoot and gave birth to a howling, furry humanoid. As
the directing, writing and acting is expectedly substandard, the film
thrives on lingering closeups on bloody, open wounds. The pace picks up
near the end, when "Bearskin Bob" kills most of the characters in a coat
closet. Goremongers may enjoy gratuitous arm-ripping, penis-ripping, axe in
the neck, pitchfork in the back, face- scalding, and other unpleasantness.
SAVAGE ATTRACTION (1973)
Written, produced and directed by John Lawrence
With: Tom Drake, Stephen Oliver, Joseph Turkel, Sean David Kenney,
Amy Thomson, Stafford Repp
Also in release as NUMBERED DAYS and CYCLE PSYCHO. A mama-obsessed psycho
kills the wife of a respected lawyer, and then blackmails the lawyer into
kidnapping two teenage girls for more unsound fun. Most of the story,
though, is devoted to the poverty-row mototrcycle gang, led by Stephen
Oliver, who captures the teenagers. Oliver, his woman and two feeble
sidekicks bicker and fight constantly. Turkel gets his hands on the girls,
but a sympathetic biker overpowers him and puts him out of his sick misery.
Lawrence's slow-moving quickie promises teenager torture, but never
delivers. The highlight is actor Joseph Turkel, who seduces a mannikin and
plays the middle-aged lunatic in bug-eyed lunatic fashion, although his
wardrobe - consisting of early-70s styled flowered shirts - is pretty
obnoxious, too. Stafford Repp (the Irish cop from TV's "Batman") has a
cameo role.
[I missed this one in FUNHOUSE! #2's cycle flick round up - JD]
PRIVATE WARS (1993)
Produced by Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin
Directed by John Weidner
Written by Ken Lamplugh and Weidner
With: Steven Railsback, Michael Champion, Stuart Whitman, Holly Floria
Railsback is a "good cop" railroaded into prison because he wouldn't take
bribes and tried to investigate a corrupt police captain (Champion, doing
Michael J. Pollard on brain medication). Years later, he's shown reduced to
the life of a perpetually drunk private eye heading down a slippery slope.
An old buddy recruits him to defend a crime-ridden LA neighborhood against
tycoon Stuart Whitman's for-hire punks, who are trying to scare the
residents out to make way for "the future" - a bunch of office buildings.
The by-the-numbers plot has Railsback dry out and rally the frightened "good
folk" to fight back. This drives Whitman up a wall, so he sends in a
private army to mop up the streets. Along the way, tough but thoroughly
WASP-ey Floria rekindles Railsback's washed-out sex life. PRIVATE WARS is
ridiculous and heartless, but has a few moments of goofy humor. A
neighborhood "crime watch" group interviews prospective urban mercenaries
before they hire Railsback, including a clumsy, leather-bound midget, a
fellow who breaks beer bottles against his head, and someone who claims,
"I'll kill anyone, anything," to get the job. There's some fun in watching
Whitman, who gets to hiss his lines and swear a lot; and the many scenes of
gaunt, scrawny Railsback kicking the shit out of bikers, hardened criminals
and other scary big guys. I'm still waiting for producers Merhi and Pepin
to make a decent film; PRIVATE WARS is probably their best one so far, but
it's still pretty lame. Towing the considerable salaries of Railsback and
Whitman, as well as good production values, I thought, these guys have made
something like 400 movies since the 1980s and someday it's gotta catch fire.
And let's talk a sec about Holly Floria. Although you wouldn't know it from
the inane dialogue she is forced to utter in PRIVATE WARS, Floria is
talented but wasted in one low-budget film after another. Someone in
Hollywood, wake up and give her a good part.
SLIME CITY (198?)
Produced by Gregory Lamberson, Peter J. Clark, Marc J. Makowski
Written and directed by Lamberson
With: Robert C. Sabin, Mary Huner, T.J. Merrick, Dennis Embry
"We could use some fresh blood around here," claims a punk-poet inhabitant
of the low-rent boarding house where most of SLIME CITY takes place, as Alex
(Robert C. Sabin) gets settled into his new apartment in Flushing, New York.
He meets a few of his strange neighbors, most of which have already
succumbed to the house spirit, Zachary. Alex soon learns that Zach replaced
their personalities with those of his long-dead buddies. Alex is warned
that he'll soon be host to Zachary's ghost, who in life was a malevolent
mystic and wrote a book of alchemist's recipes called "Flesh Control." But
does he move out? Instead, he shares a meal of "Himalayan yogurt" with the
poet, a sampling of multicolored ectoplasm, and the next morning awakes in a
pool of slime. The only way the slime goes away is when he kills ("The
slime must be appeased!"). Another neighbor, Nicole (Mary Huner), dresses
like a sorceress who works strip joints, has clothed sex with Alex, and
murders her one-night stands. Alex's straight-laced girlfriend Lori (also
played by Huner) doesn't notice when he sweats slime. As hard as the cast
tries to make it work, SLIME CITY is so badly assembled that most of the
ghoulish action falls flat. This is especially apparent in the closing
sequence, in which Alex - now transformed into pus-faced Zachary - battles
it out with Lori, who chops him up but must also stop various disembodied
parts from attacking. As Alex's head barks orders from one end of the
apartment, his arms, hands and even internal organs attempt to get her. It
sounds better in the retelling - Lamberson's staging is spiritless, his
camera holds too long on some truly awful special effects, and the editing
doesn't cut fast enough to build suspense.
THEY (1982)
Produced by Bill Rebane
Directed by "Ito"
With Paul Bentzen, Debbi Pick, Nick Holt, Karl Wallace
"They" are aliens who strike an invasion of Earth at both poles and
unleash a mysterious epidemic on humankind, as well as knock out all
commercial TV and radio. Most of this tame, paceless film is set in an
isolated, snowbound lodge in Manitoba, where a handful of uninfected people
wonder what's going on, run out of food, bitch about having to drink coffee
made from recycled grounds, and receive advice from the aliens via shortwave
radio (in 50s sci-fi movie style, the monotone alien voice speaks with
built-in reverb). The invasion is explained as being either from Mars or
Uranus, or maybe from the earth's core. There's even a bearded scientist
onboard - vacationing at the lodge when the invasion hit - who rattles off
half a dozen laughable theories about what's happened, while the others nod
their heads and say stuff like, "How interesting." Michigan-based producer
Bill Rebane also made THE ALPHA INCIDENT, an equally dreadful entry that
dealt with an invasion from space and a resulting government cover-up; THEY
offers the flipside of that situation, showing how plain folk deal with it.
The special effects are of the flying-hubcap variety, but be thankful that
the acting is a few steps above amateur. There's one amusing scene in a TV
studio, including an interview with two bumpkins who've seen the aliens -
"Them fellers said they was from Uran-i-us," exclaims one of them. We never
get to see them, which may be a blessing in a film like this. Despite a few
intentional lapses of humor, THEY doesn't have enough story or budget to
contain a feature-length film, ushering in padded scenes of people wandering
through the woods, snowmobiling, or staring into space. The tedious
synthesizer score and endless bits and blips of library music must have been
a sound editor's nightmare (the movie's theme song rips off "The Good, the
Bad and the Ugly," of all things). Eventually, the lodgers run out of
coffee and set out on foot over 60 miles of tundra to the nearest hamlet,
which the alien voice claims is safe. Superimposed "alien" lights and the
mysterious disease - which appears in the form of a bogus red gas - disptch
all but two of the group, who arrive in town and are transformed into naked
children. They head down a grassy knoll into, who knows? A brighter
future, or maybe a Dunkin Donuts. The video carries no copyright notice and
would probably get a G-rating. The display box for THEY shows a
poorly-drawn monster head with fangs - a warning for those who think they're
getting a legitimate horror film.
KISS OF THE TARANTULA (1977)
Directed by Chris Munger
Produced by Daniel Cady
Written by Warren Hamilton, Jr.
With: Eric Mason, Suzanna Ling, Herman Wallner, Patricia Landon
KISS OF THE TARANTULA, filmed in Columbus, Ohio, followed invisibly in the
wake of WILLARD, and doesn't add much to the introverted-but-sympathetic-
protagonist-befriends-slimy-creature scenario. It does, however, contain
an alarming bit of (dare I say?) typecasting for actor Eric Mason, who
believably portrays the sleazy, serpentine uncle of misunderstood Susan
(Suzanna Ling), whose several arachnid friends do her every bidding. Mason
spends most of the film pawing and fawning all over the actress, and
punctuates his lines with an irritating bluster. Susan, who as a little
girl unleashed a deadly pet spider on her vain mother, lives a sequestered
life with her mortician father. She thwarts three teenage hoodlums who
attempt to steal a casket from her father's basement workshop, terrorize her
a bit and kill some of her spiders. She tracks them down and lets the furry
eight-leggers loose on them, and gradually feels less and less guilty with
each killing. The scene of one victim trapped in an air duct with a dozen
creepy bugs is a stand-out. KISS OF THE TARANTULA is a supreme gross-out
for spider-haters, though for the rest of us the action isn't too horrific.
In the end, Mason's rewarded for his lewd behavior - a buried-alive scene
that is much scarier than the spider sequences.
SKEETER (1993)
Directed by Clark Brandon
Written by Lanny Horn and Brandon
Produced by James Glenn Dudelson, Kelly Andrea Rubin, John Lambert
With: Tracy Griffith, Jim Youngs, Charles Napier, Jay Richardson,
William Sanderson
If you crave a good ol' mindless monster flick, SKEETER updates 1950s
science-fiction cliches to the 90s with style. Deputy Roy Boone (Jim
Youngs), noticing the people and livestock dropping at a quick clip in the
mountain town of Clear Sky, calls in a quirky EPA officer (Sanderson) to
figure out what gives. Turns out the town's water supply is contaminated by
a nearby toxic waste dump, which is now the lair for a zillion mutated
mosquitoes. Corrupt sheriff Charles (Harry) Napier harasses landowners to
sell out to unctuous businessman Jay Robinson, who wants to bulldoze
everything to make room for new houses. Meanwhile, the bizarre Michael J.
Pollard lurks in an abandoned warehouse, making pets of some of the skeeters
and feeding them his own blood. Boone ruffles too many feathers trying to
do what's right, and Robinson sends out his henchman (twice) to gun him
down. During the first attempt, Boone watches a swarm of cat-sized
mosquitoes drain his attackers. His girlfriend (Tracy Griffith) and the EPA
dude trace the mosquitoes to an abandoned mine, which leads to a showdown
between buzzing B.E.M.'s and Boone's flamethrower. The cast really makes
this one worth a watch. The leads aren't sappy, Pollard in particular
overdoes it, and Napier has a good death scene. Despite some good dialogue
and a realistic location, the movie is sabotaged by an ending that leaves a
lot of plot-ends unresolved. The occasional "skeeter's eye" camera is
impressive, but most of the special effects show the flying bugs for what
they are: slimy, plastic-looking props. There is one excellent shot,
though, of a skeeter hovering outside a car window, viciously flapping its
wings.
Mutant Rocker Profile: Red Cross / Redd Kross
---------------------------------------------
I grew up with Red Cross. They're about my age, and as I evolved through
the SoCal punk scene so did they. They first emerged as a group of pre/
early teens singing pop-punk anthems on the Rodney on the Roq show on
KROQ-FM, back when that station really was cutting edge. They frequently
were found opening for the likes of Black Flag (pre-Hank) and the Circle
Jerks (pre-Flea), until they transmogrified, in a reaction to the rigidity
the hardcore scene was taking on, into the ultimate tongue-in-cheek rock and
roll poseurs. Their hair grew outrageously long and their outrageous
clothing got flashier. While preaching the musical value of the likes of
New York Dolls, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Stooges, they still maintained their
punk rock energy. The change in name to Redd Kross wasn't to take on a more
dinosaur-like quality, but was forced on them by the charity in 1982. At
the same time the psych-revivalists the Salvation Army were forced to become
the Three O'Clock before they drifted off into obscurity; it must have been
a conspiracy. Now on about their sixth life, the brothers Jeff and Steve
McDonald, who are the heart of Redd Kross, keep on trucking. Through the
many line-up changes and label switches, they've continued to progress their
manic music, which is equal parts garage rave-up, acid-soaked psych, and
bubble gum power pop, all with a basis firmly in second wave LA punk rock.
Their lyrical themes have likewise been straight out of idol, post-sixties,
suburban youth culture. Icons such as Russ Meyer, Charlie Manson, and The
Brady Bunch frequently pop up. Thus, in the midst of their latest shot at
making it as a working rock and roll band, I've decided to compile what
information I have on their checkered past and present it for those who may
be just catching on. These lists are bound to be incomplete, and the
entries that I have are missing some information, so I welcome and encourage
all additions and corrections. I still catch Redd Kross when they come
through town. The last time, a few months ago, it was great to yell out for
encores of "Annette's Got the Hits" and "Cease To Exist", which Jeff was
glad to play, while whoever it is that's currently playing the other guitar
for them could only stare on in bewilderment at songs he didn't know. If
you're completely uninitiated, my recommendation is 1987's Neurotica LP.
Note the unlisted recording of the Charles Manson composition "Cease to
Exist" on 1982's Born Innocent LP. That's more than ten years prior to Axyl
Rose's brainstorm. This song was recorded by the Beach Boys in 1968 as the
B-side of a single whose A-side I have forgotten (and don't care to
remember). It was retitled "Never Learn Not to Love", and the "cease to
exist" line was changed to "cease to resist". Charlie's buddy Dennis Wilson
was responsible.
Discography -
As Red Cross:
RED CROSS (EP) - Posh Boy 1010 (1980): Cover Band / Annette's Got the Hits /
I Hate My School / Clorox Girls / S & M Party / Standing in Front of
Poseur; the original cover was a generic "new wave" design sleeve with
a center hole cut out. This record was reissued by Posh Boy as one
half of an LP called THE SIREN (PBS-123) with two other bands, and by
itself with a new cover in 1987
BORN INNOCENT (LP) - Smoke Seven SMK 7-103 (1982) - Linda Blair / White
Trash / Every Day There's Someone New / Solid Gold / Burnout / Charlie /
Self-Respect / Pseudo Intellectual / Kill Someone You Hate / Look on
up at the Bottom / Cellulite City / I'm Alright / Cease to Exist (unlisted);
reissued on LP (1987?) and CD (1993) on Frontier FRO 31018 with a different
cover
BORN INNOCENT DEMOS (7" boot) - no label: Everyday There's Someone New /
Don't Matter (?) / White Trash / Self-Respect / Solid Gold / Fuck This
Shit (?); green vinyl
As Redd Kross:
TEEN BABES FROM MONSANTO (EP) - Gasatanka E-1110 (1984): Deuce (Kiss) /
Citadel (Rolling Stones) / Heaven Only Knows (Shangra-Las) / Ann
(Stooges) / Savior Machine (David Bowie) / Blow You a Kiss in the
Wind (Boyce and Hart, and Serena on "Bewitched") / Linda Blair (Red
Cross); since reissued - as a public service I've noted above the
original artists of the songs on this "rock and roll retrospective"
NEUROTICA (CD/LP) - Big Time 6034-1-B (1987): Neurotica / Play My Song /
Frosted Flake / Janus, Jeanie, and George Harrison / Love is You / Peach
Kelli Pop / McKenzie / Ballad of a Love Doll / What They Say / Ghandi Is
Dead (I'm the Cartoon Man) / Beautiful Bye-Byes
THERE'S A MRS. KRAVITZ IN THE PIT!: NEUROTICA DEMOS (7" boot) - no label:
Glad to be Gladys! / Janus, Jeanie, and George Harrison / Love Is You /
Ghandi Is Dead (I'm the Cartoon Man) / Beautiful Bye-Byes
DINNER WITH REDD KROSS (2LP) - Big Time 6055-1-BDJ, (promo, 1987): Play
My Song (remix) [red vinyl record] / Interview, 5/31/87, WBCN Boston,
featuring Peach Kelli Pop / Love Is You / Neurotica / Janus, Jeanie,
and George Harrison / McKenzie / Play My Song [black vinyl record]
SMITH FAMILY #1 (7") - Flexi #15; from Bob Magazine vol. 2, no. 4
RHIANNON (7") - Red Records TR-520835-7; free record given away inside
Pulsebeat magazine
THIRD EYE (CD/LP) - Atlantic 82148-1 (1990): The Faith Healer / Annie's Gone /
I Don't Know How to Be Your Friend / Shonen Knife / Bubblegum Factory /
Where I Am Today / Zira (Call Out My Name) / Love Is Not Love / 1976 /
Debbie and Kim / Elephant Flares
TRANCE (CDEP/7") - Seminal Twang Twang 14 CD (UK, 1992): Trance / Byrds and
Fleas / Huge Wonder
HUGE WONDER (7") - Insipid Vinyl IV-06 (AUS, 1993): Huge Wonder / Super
Sunny Christmas
SWITCHBLADE SISTER (CDEP/7") - This Way Up 422 862 523-2 (UK, 1993):
Switchblade Sister / What's Wrong with Me / Trance / Byrds and Fleas /
I Don't Know How to Be Your Friend (live); 7" on red vinyl
JIMMY'S FANTASY (CDEP/7") - This Way Up Way 1533 (UK, 1993): Jimmy's Fantasy /
Tico and Yolanda (Underground Again) / Disco Bitch; 7" on green vinyl
LADY IN THE FRONT ROW (CDEP/10"EP) - This Way Up Way 2088 (UK, 1993):
Lady in the Front Row / Standing in Front of Poseur / Oh My Lover / Fancy
LADY IN THE FRONT ROW (7"gatefold) - This Way Up Way ? (UK, 1993):
Lady in the Front Row / Oh My Lover / Halfway
2500 REDD KROSS FANS CAN'T BE WRONG (10"EP) - Sympathy for the Record
Industry 260 (1993): Any Hour, Every Day / Switchblade Sister / What's
Wrong with Me / Trance / Byrds and Fleas / Huge Wonder
PHASESHIFTER (CD/LP) - This Way Up 518 167-1 (UK) Polygram POL 1518167 (US)
(1993): Jimmy's Fantasy / Lady in the Front Row / Monolith / Crazy World /
Dumb Angel / Huge Wonder / Visionary / Pay for Love / Ms. Lady Evans /
Only a Girl / Saragon / After School Special
KROSS WORDS (promo cassette) - Mercury SAC751 (US, Nov 1993): Thurston Moore
interviewing the McDonalds
I believe there is another 7" on Australia's Insipid Vinyl label, and
another 10" with a Phaseshifter track on the A-side from This Way Up in
the UK (Visionary?)
compilations -
As Red Cross:
HELL COMES TO YOUR HOUSE - Bemisbrain 123/124 (1981): Puss N Boots
PUBLIC SERVICE - Smoke Seven SMK 7-101B (1981): Cease to Exist / Everyday
There's Someone New / Kill Someone You Hate
RODNEY ON THE ROQ II - Posh Boy PBS-103 (1982): Burnout
AMERICAN YOUTH REPORT - Invasion Invasion 1 (1982): Notes and Chords Mean
Nothing to Me (as "Red Kross")
POSH HITS VOL I - Posh Boy PBS 8138 (1983): Annette's Got the Hits /
Cover Band
As Redd Kross:
THE ENIGMA VARIATIONS - Enigma 72001-4 (1985): Citadel
DESPERATE TEENAGE LOVEDOLLS ST - SST 072 (1986): Ballad of a Love Doll /
Legend [with Joanna Spockolla McDonald on vocals] / Charly / Self
Respect / Ballad of a Lovedoll (instrumental); Charly and Self Respect
are the BORN INNOCENT versions. Ballad of a Love Doll is a different
version than on NEUROTICA.
LOVEDOLLS SUPERSTAR ST - SST 062 (1986): Lovedoll Superstar; Redd Kross
also wrote and play the following "Lovedolls" tracks, with Jennifer
Schwartz ["Kitty Carryall"] on vocals: Beer and Ludes / Rex Smith 9
(I Wanna Be a Cholo Chick) and play on Sunshine Day [written by Eve
Plumb and Barry Williams]
THE BIGTIME SYNDROME - Big Time: Play My Song (remix)
THE ALLNIGHTER ST : Love Is You
SPIRIT OF '76 ST - Rhino R2 70799 (1991): 1976; Jeff and Steve are two
of the stars of the movie
FREEDOM OF CHOICE - Caroline Carol 1715-2 (1992): How Much More
Redd Kross (McDonald's) are members of the following "bands" -
SKY SAXON AND PURPLE ELECTRICITY - Voxx, 1985; Redd Kross backed up Sky
live on his own "compositions", which are Redd Kross playing songs such
as "Dazed and Confused" while Sky bables over it with his insights
TATER TOTZ - ALIEN SLEESTACKS FROM BRAZIL - Gasatanka
TATER TOTZ - SGT. SHONEN'S EXPLODING PLASTIC EASTMAN BAND REQUEST
MONO STEREO - Giant GR16027-1 (1989); Shonen Knife are also on this.
They have a song titled "Redd Kross" on one of their own records. There
was also a Tater Totz 7" with Cherie Currie
ANARCHY SIX - HARDCORE LIVES - Gasatanka/Giant; Anarchy Six also appear on
the Lovedoll Superstar record
Redd Kross also contribute songs and play on the latest Belinda Carlisle
album. The "Mudhoney Live in Hollywood" 10" boot has the McDonalds and
Sonic Youth joining Mudhoney onstage for a cover of the Stooges "I Wanna
Be Your Dog."
line-up history:
Again, this probably isn't complete. I've compiled it from interviews,
record covers, and my own memory, but undoubtedly missed someone along the
way. Of course Jeff and Steve McDonald are the constants throughout.
1979: (Tourists): Greg Hetson (g), John Cookbook (d), Jeff McDonald (v),
Steve McDonald (b,v)
1979-1980: (Red Cross): Greg Hetson (g), Ron Reyes (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v),
Steve McDonald (b,v)
1980: Greg Hetson (g), Lucky Leher (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve
McDonald (b,v)
1980: Chet Leher (g), John Nobody (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve
McDonald (b,v)
1980: Chet Leher (g), Dez Cadena (g), John Nobody (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v),
Steve McDonald (b,v)
1981-1982: John Stielow (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve McDonald (b,v)
1982: Tracy Lea (g), John Stielow (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve
McDonald (b,v)
1982: Tracy Lea (g), Janet Brady (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve
McDonald (b,v)
1982-1983: (Redd Kross) Dez Cadena (g), Tracy Lea (g), ? (d), Jeff
McDonald (g,v), Steve McDonald (b,v)
1984-1986: Dave Peterson (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve McDonald (b,v)
1986-1988: Robert Hecker (g), Roy McDonald (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v),
Steve McDonald (b,v)
1989-1990: Robert Hecker (g), Victor Indrizzo (d), Jeff McDonald (g,v),
Steve McDonald (b,v)
1990-1991: Robert Hecker (g), Brian Reitzell (d), Gere Fennelly (kb),
Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve McDonald (b,v)
1992-present: Edward Kurdziel (g), Brian Reitzell (d), Gere Fennelly (kb),
Jeff McDonald (g,v), Steve McDonald (b,v)
Red Cross Interview:
Here's a transcription of a Red Cross interview from Flipside fanzine
#31, published in April 1982. The band members were Jeff (guitar,
vocals) and Steve (bass, vocals) McDonald, Tracy Lea (guitar), and
Janet Brady (drums) - The BORN INNOCENT line up.
Red Cross were interviewed by Al and Hud in April at the McDonald's
house in Hawthorne. They live in a run down neighborhood that is being
torn down for a future freeway. Red Cross (or as they would say
"Linda BlairUs Cross") are trying their hardest to be LA's best all
girl band.
Flipside: Are you and Steve getting sex changes?
Jeff: Yeah, when we can afford it. When we make as much money as the
Circle Jerks.
FS: You want to be an all girl band?
J: It's definitely our goal.
Steve: Then we can play all Runaways songs. Cool all girl bands are
hot, but there aren't any more.
Tracy: Me and Janet are planning on kicking Jeff and Steve out.
FS: Why did you quit that other "all girl" band Castration Squad?
T: Certain members made it impossible to...live.
FS: Tell us about the album.
J: The two foxy models on the cover are our main influence.
FS: How do you like Smoke 7?
S: They're great. They're happening right now. They let us do whatever
we wanted on the record and on the cover. Felix is totally cool.
FS: What about Posh re-releasing that...
J: What can I say about Posh Boy.
T: He looks like Roman Polanski.
J: Oh, you have a crush on Posy Boy!
T: No!
FS: He's getting married.
T: Yeah, I saw a picture of her. She's really pretty.
S: Who? Rik L. Rik he's marrying!?
J: It's just good publicity for us if Posh re-releases that stuff. I
just hope he makes a good cover. He has these real awful pictures of
us. I was upset with his new wave birthday party cover on it last
time. And his production is uh, it's overproduced and underproduced
at the same time. It's like mud, professional mud. Rodney's great
though, he's been playing us for a long time. If it was not for him
we'd be nowhere.
FS: Where are you?
J: We are nowhere. We'd be beyond nowhere...Beyond the Valley of the
Dolls is the movie that changed my life. Russ Meyer is our idol.
S: This all girl band goes to Hollywood and gets caught up in the
sleaziness of it all. It's buxotic! It's like being on acid and
you're not!
Janet: A song on the album is about that movie.
FS: You also do a Charlie Manson song?
S: Yeah, the Beach Boys did it and the Beach Boys went to our high
school.
J: They sang "Be True to Your School" and we did "I Hate My School"
but I didn't think about that. It might have been subconscious.
They're the most lame band in history.
FS: Do you worry about Charlie's Family? I mean you didn't give him
credit.
J: Yeah, it's a bonus cut in the album so it's not listed. On the
insert it thanks Charlie for writing a hot tune. We are going to send
him some records in the mail and maybe some money.
FS: So he won't kill you?
S: Well, he fucking wrote it!
J: After the thing about music on the Tom Snyder show, wait 'till he
hears what is coming out now. They should let him out for the fuck of
it, he'd just be a bum.
T: There's still some Family members out there.
FS: Remember what happened when the Beach Boys covered his song!
Janet: My brother was Tex Watson for Halloween, and he carved a real
"X" in his forehead.
T: Charles Starkweather is the best. Badlands is about that guy.
J: All the stoners around here thought Steve was murdered by the
Freeway Strangler.
S: That was when I was on my trip to Vegas.
T: Me and Jenny sat in on his trial once, he's such a little guy.
J: Patty Hearst...Tanya, oops!, was me and Steve's idol.
FS: A lot of people still think Steve is 12.
S: Fuck I'm 14, they're living in the past.
FS: What are your favorite bands?
S: My favorite band is Naughty Women. They're LA's only all
transvestite band. They're ultra. (Steve is a member).
J: They blow Vox Pop away!
FS: What's your favorite color?
T: Purple! It's so pretty.
J: Mine's egg shell white.
FS: What do you think of people getting stolen from your band?
S: The only person stolen was Dez, Ron we were glad to have out of the
band, and he was already out of the band really. Hetson quit because
he was trying to hustle Lucky into the band.
J: He was too good of a drummer, the old stuff was made for a drummer
like Ron.
S: He was too professional for the material and finally Greg never
came to practice. We didn't want a band then anyways 'cause it was
such a disaster with Ron, he was such an asshole.
J: What does Chavo Pederast really mean?, something like buttfuck.
Black Flag named him that, besides he was in love with Gerber at the
time. Fuck, Gerber is crazier than ever now, she hit me in the face
about five times, she was screaming, "Mike Ness won't fuck me!"
S: And carrying around a canteen full of hardcore liquor.
J: Oh I swear dogshit couldn't have been worse. Then she was rolling
on the floor, taking her pants off, you know how she is. She's
hilarious!
FS: What do you write about?
S: Linda Blair, Russ Meyer.
J: We're into exploitation of all kind.
FS: What do your parents think of the band now days?
J: Oh, they're real supportive. They didn't like it at first, they
haven't seen us live yet.
S: We told them we're not going to go to work, whatever, we're not
going to be welders so you might as well support us. This is what
we're gonna do, make music so...
J: We got a young start and probably by the time I'm 25 I'll be a real
guitarist. He got his bass when he was 11.
Janet: My parent are glad I'm in the band 'cause at least I'm doing
something. I quit school and won't get a job and they're glad I'm in
this band 'cause of the album.
J: My grandmother bought a bunch our first record and gave them to all
of our family for Christmas.
T: My parents are glad I'm not sitting at home doing nothing anymore.
FS: Are you in school?
T: I really started taking a class at Santa Monica College.
Janet: I was thinking of going back but I can't stand the people.
FS: What about the new punks?
Janet: I used to be real obnoxiuos, light hippies hair on fire, but
now it's not the same. There's no sense of humor. It's just a bunch
of dicks trying to prove they're cool. They're bummed because they
missed out on punk rock. They're just macho-jocks. They've got no
place in anything.
J: Like Wasted Youth have songs like "Born Deprived" or "WeUre on
Heroin", whatever, and they live in like the most expensive...it's
their whole intent to appear that way. Chet's cool. I donUt want to
say anything bad, they're just not my most favorite band.
FS: Where do you guys get the Velvet Underground influences?
S: We didn't get into them until later. We started with David Bowie
and the New York Dolls. Our aunts, like ever since Jeff was born,
were total Beatle freaks.
J: I saw the Beatles in San Diego, and then we got into Bowie and T
Rex and all that other stuff.
Janet: Rock bands used to always practice behind my house and my
parents would call the cops on them. That was when I was like 3 or 4.
Now they have to take the same shit from our neighbors.
<Talk goes into 1) crank calling Serena Dank, 2) getting a ticket for
"live music without a permit", 3) being on a TV show with Serena, 4)
anti-rock and roll preachers, 5) Linda Blair in Born Innocent, 6)
John Holmes eating dinner at Tracy's house, 7) Omlits [Janet's ex
band] playing Camarillo, 8) what bullshit hair length is. All these
subjects took more time than we have space.>
FS: Is this band gonna stay together?
S: I hope so! We have to record something for a compilation album on
Bomp. It's not punk stuff.
Janet: I don't feel obligated to look punk rock, 'cause now it's
bullshit. Baldies...
S: But that's not really punk rock anyway , so it doesn't matter.
J: Anyone's cool who really likes the music and goes out to have a
good time. Anyone who goes out "let's kick someone's ass" or "I like
to get banged up" are just bullshit.
S: All's there doing is having sex in the slam pit, they got off on it!
FS: Are you a punk rock band?
J: We're a punk rock band.
Janet: Punk rock means a lot of things.
J: If it's hoodlum, vandelizing teenager then we are, we are as
obnoxious as anybody. It's not getting into beating each other up. I
would be in pain and I wouldn't like that.
Janet: They don't care about the music, it's just there to slam to.
But the best thing that's happening is punk. Now it's commercial
punk. You want to see something bad, go to Gazzari's on any Sunday,
it's battle of heavy metal bands. Ya know Charlie had a lot of good
ideas. Baldy isn't into Charlie because Baldy doesn't know.
J: Bald is alright if you're not an ass.
Janet: Baldy is different, there's Baldy at every show.
S: Baldy is Godzilla's.
Janet: Godzilla's was a real bald place. I mean commercial punk is
totally against the whole idea. They got rules, you can't be punk
rock if you're not this tough...
J: Rules and standardism is bullshit. Trendyism is not an uncool
thing anymore. People don't even know what the trends are.
FS: Was it a trend when you started?
J: No! it wasn't "in fashion" back then. I just went to see bands I
liked, I freaked out. Music was what got me into it. I dress weird
because it's fun. Setting standards for yourself and others is what
you try to get away from in high school and shit.
Janet: Still the only good bands are punk rock. There's assholes and
they suck!
S: I think we should all have lesbian sex.
Janet: Someone should put acid in the beer at Godzilla's and they'd
all kill themselves 'cause they'd all look at themselves and go, "God
what a dick!" and that would be it!
S: Too many bands have the audience more in mind than what they really
want to write.
J: What makes the band? The people in the band, not the people who go
to see the band.
S: If you don't like it why should you even be playing?
J: Hardcore is another term that bugs me. Hardcore is dedication, you
are really into what you are doing, but now hardcore has these bounds.
People might not consider us "hardcore" but dedication is dedication,
anarchy is anarchy. Why don't they stop being fascists?
* end of Funhouse-1.4 *
