Black Sunday (1960).

Review #2468: Black Sunday.

Cast: 

Barbara Steele (Asa Vajda/Katia Vajda), John Richardson (Dr. Andrej Gorobec), Andrea Checchi (Dr. Choma Kruvajan), Ivo Garrani (Prince Vajda), Arturo Dominici (Igor Javutich), Enrico Olivieri (Constantine Vajda), Tino Bianchi (Ivan, the Vajdas' Manservant), Antonio Pierfederici (Priest), Clara Bindi (Innkeeper), Mario Passante (Nikita, the Coachman), Renato Terra (Boris, the Vajdas' Stableman), and Germana Dominici (Sonya, the Innkeeper's Daughter) Directed by Mario Bava (#792 - Black Sabbath)

Review: 

I have to admit that I haven't covered as much Italian horror (in its native language, preferably) as I possibly could. Mario Bava actually wanted to be a painter in his youth, but he found that following in his father Eugenio's footsteps of cameraman was his best option, serving as an assistant working on special effects in the late 1930s. Bava was approached by his friend Riccardo Freda about the idea of developing a horror film one day, which led to I Vampiri (1957), a movie Bava was to shoot and provide special effects for. However, he was thrust into the director's chair for the final two days of production when Freda left production, which had Bava come up with a new ending and include stock footage. There were other movies where Bava did work you could consider directorial work, such as The Day the Sky Exploded (1958), where actor accounts said he directed it more than the credited directed Paulo Heusch. There was also Jacques Tourneur's The Giant of Marathon (1959), a film Bava shot but had to do reshoots for exterior scenes because apparently there were moments where you could see extras smoking on camera. And then of course there was Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959), a sci-fi horror movie with dubious accounts over who really directed it between Bava and Freda, the latter of whom left in the middle of production. But Black Sunday [La maschera del demonio] was his formal debut as a director. Galatea, fresh off peddling movies such as the sword-and-sandal Hercules films, wanted to get another movie for the markets abroad and went with Bava, who wanted to make a horror film because of the recent success of Terence Fisher's Dracula (1957). He chose to base it on the novella "Viy", as written by Nikolai Gogol in 1835. Bava would do a variety of films in the horror genre to varying success, such as The Girl Who Knew Too Much [1963] & Blood and Black Lace [1964] (each considered among the early ones in the giallo genre), Planet of the Vampires [1965] (which some have compared to Alien [1979]), the action/crime comic movie Danger: Diabolik [1968], A Bay of Blood [1971] (likely his most violent movie). Bava's last completed film was with Shock [1977]; he died of a sudden heart attack in 1980 at the age of 65. 

American International bought the movie for the States release and did a re-dub with a few changes to the character names. Known as "La maschera del demonio" in its native country, AIP went with "Black Sunday" for the American title. There is an eerie sense of intrigue that comes with this film from the get-go of its 87-minute runtime. The opening in particular manages to intrigue the viewer closely with its imagery and sheer audacity (masks with spikes on the inside to hammer inside the evil beings). Steele has the double act that you sometimes get with costume dramas: the evil being filled with ambition and yet trapped to a specific place and the unfortunate reincarnation lookalike who can't quite catch a break. Steele became a star in various Italian movies because of the film, which she said "was probably the best of that genre of film I've made...but anybody could have been playing that girl." I think she sold herself a bit short here, there is just something to the way she moves and says her lines that manages an otherworldly feel of odd elegance. One has an unsettled feeling when watching the film at times when it comes what does get shown (sure, the other actors are mildly fine, but that's how it does sometimes). As a whole, Black Sunday has managed to attract so much interest over the years because of the sheer power you can feel in its bones of atmosphere that crisscross with elements of effective gore (such as the parts involving blood). There is something about how the movie feels and acts that you just didn't see back then that just manages to stay as unsettling and dazzling as it did back in 1960. You'll have an interesting treat on your hands with this film or other Bava movies, that's for sure.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

On tap to close out 7 Days of the Week After Halloween, as per tradition, a doubleheader: 

Mayhem / Suitable Flesh

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961).

Review #2295: The Pit and the Pendulum (1961).

Cast:

Vincent Price (Nicholas / Sebastian Medina), John Kerr (Francis Barnard), Barbara Steele (Elizabeth), Luana Anders (Catherine Medina), Antony Carbone (Doctor Leon), Patrick Westwood (Maximillian), and Lynette Bernay (Maria) 

Produced and Directed by Roger Corman (#368 - The Little Shop of Horrors, #684 - It Conquered the World, #852 - The Terror, #931 - Not of This Earth, #1007 - Attack of the Crab Monsters, #1039 - Five Guns West, #1042 - War of the Satellites, #1136 - Gas-s-s-s, #1147 - X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, #1186 - A Bucket of Blood, #1423 - The Wild Angels, #1425 - The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, #1674 - Machine-Gun Kelly, #1684 - Creature from the Haunted Sea, #1918 - House of Usher, #2030 - The Trip, #2113 - The Undead, #2211 - The Intruder, #2275 - The Wasp Woman)

Review: 

"I had a lot of theories I was working with when I did the Poe films... One of my theories was that these stories were created out of the unconscious mind of Poe, and the unconscious mind never really sees reality, so until The Tomb of Ligeia, we never showed the real world. In Pit, John Kerr arrived in a carriage against an ocean background, which I felt was more representative of the unconscious."

Well, when you get one successful movie based on the Poe stories, who not another? House of Usher (1960) and this film share the same screenwriter (Richard Matheson), the same cinematographer (Floyd Crosby), the same set designer (Daniel Haller) and even the same lead actor (Price). Apparently, one plan to follow up Usher was to adapt "The Masque of the Red Death", but either Corman or Samuel Z. Arkoff decided that the 1842 story "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Poe would be better to adapt next (Corman claimed that making Masque would inspire comparisons to The Seventh Seal [1957]); it wasn't exactly set in stone to make a series of Poe films yet, it just so happened that the first was a hell of surprise in being a hit that they thought they could another one. The original story was merely a brief tale involving the Spanish Inquisition that involved a razor pendulum and eventually a contraption involving moving red-hot walls, which made it a tough one to crack for adaptation at first. Matheson reflected on the fact that he basically imposed an "old suspense mystery" in an attempt to do Poe. A prologue was shot for TV that sometimes is included for home media releases to view. The next film in the Poe cycle would be the unusual one of the group in The Premature Burial (1962), which originally started out as a non-AIP venture in financing (before soon becoming one, although Ray Milland was the star). Matheson didn't write that film, but he did write for the next two Corman-Poe films with Tales of Terror (1962) and The Raven (1963).

Admittedly, one probably does have an early sense of familiarity watching this any time after doing so with Usher, since both start with someone going up to a foreboding place involving a doomed Price and a doomed lady. But if you know Corman well enough, you know that he had the spark to make a worthwhile venture when everything comes up his way in execution for 80 minutes. He may have had 15 days to shoot the film, but he makes the film look like it came out of the woodwork with no trouble at all, one that shows his craftsmanship and his imagination in perpetuating his ideas of Poe and the unconscious mind. As spearheaded by Haller, the film utilized a handful of discarded pieces of sets (such as archways and stone wall units) for its look that looks dazzling in unnerving enjoyment. I'm not quite sure which is better among Usher or Pendulum, but one would be forgiven for just going along with the ride when it comes to a seminal actor like Price to lead the way. One can wonder just how to describe how good Price is when you've seen him in plenty of horror movies, but he has that certain type of talent that means one never seems to see him phone it in just for the sake of it all. His descent into madness is our descent because of how lurid everything looks and feels to us. I can't help but smile when the film kicks into the climax in delightful terror, probably because there is something befitting in smiling at what otherwise is a scary prospect: torture-traps and looping into old traumas by manipulation. The fact that the torture device looks spooky enough to actually look dangerous helps to really bring it all together for a movie that could've just as easily weltered with such a specific amount of people to focus on (five, really). Kerr may be ordinary, but he at least is steady enough to keep things Steele may not have much to do, but she does prove a worthy conniving match with Anders when it comes to strange bedfellows, particularly when it comes to that final rundown and shot. In totality, it is a delightful movie, making a worthwhile addition to the horror tradition that plays loosely with the Poe story in the best way possible for one's mind to look with.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Piranha (1978).

Review #2270: Piranha (1978).

Cast: 

Bradford Dillman (Paul Grogan), Heather Menzies (Maggie McKeown), Kevin McCarthy (Dr. Robert Hoak), Keenan Wynn (Jack), Dick Miller (Buck Gardner), Barbara Steele (Dr. Mengers), Belinda Balaski (Betsy), Melody Thomas Scott (Laura Dickinson), Bruce Gordon (Colonel Waxman), Barry Brown (Trooper), Paul Bartel (Dumont), and Shannon Collins (Suzie Grogan) Directed by Joe Dante (#007 - Looney Tunes: Back in Action, #096 - Gremlins, #097 - Small Soldiers, #1494 - Gremlins 2: The New Batch, #1744 - The Howling, #2026 - Twilight Zone: The Movie)

Review: 

"We got a lot of bad comments about Piranha because we killed off all those summer campers and it wasn’t even the end of the movie, which was black humor then and kind of shocking. Today, I don’t think that would shock anybody. I think you are now dealing with an audience that is so much more sophisticated and aware of the cliches and tricks and tropes of the genre and you have to be on your toes in order to keep their interest."

Sure, any big film can inspire a few homages, and who better to get that through the line with Roger Corman? New World Pictures? Among other things, this was filmed around the same time as. Avalanche. Apparently, the budget for Piranha was reduced by $200,000 (essentially making it a production made for roughly under $700,000) prior to production in order to help give more resources to the disaster film Avalanche (which ended up being forgotten by audiences). The film had two credited writers: Richard Robinson and John Sayles. Sayles was brought in to re-write the film for its perceived failings as a script (according to one Dante interview, the original script showed a problem in getting people to actually get in the water). It was the first feature credit for Sayles, who had graduated from Williams College in the 1970s and quickly went to work writing articles and his own novel in Pride of the Bimbos before finding work with New World Pictures (one year after the release of this film, funds used from Corman paying Sayles to write scripts saw him direct/write Return of the Secaucus 7 on his way to a further career as writer/director, which included Dante's The Howling (1981). This was the second feature effort for director Joe Dante, who had gone from editing trailers for New World to co-directing Hollywood Boulevard (1976) with Allan Arkush. He went for the film when offered it as opposed to Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979), since Arkush expressed passion for wanting to do that. Dante would also co-edit Piranha, which he described as being extensive in his dedication to editing. The movie was released in August of 1978, nearly two months after Jaws 2. Apparently, Universal Pictures tried to file an injunction against the release of the film, but they dropped it when Steven Spielberg stated his approval of the film, one that he called "the best of the Jaws rip-offs". While the film was a relative success, Corman did not express interest in doing a sequel, but he sold the rights to people who were interested in doing so, which resulted in the 1982 US-Italian production of Piranha II: The Spawning, which had a young James Cameron for a film with only a hint of a cult audience. The original film has been remade twice, once for television in 1995 and the other with Piranha 3D, released in 2010 (which in turned had a sequel two years later).

There had been plenty of horror films involving killer creatures of the sea before, whether they tried to call themselves parodies such as Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) or ecological threats such as Frogs (1972) or "Jaws ripoffs" such as Orca (coincidentally, Wynn was in that film, released in 1977). But Piranha makes its own mark in delight. It straddles the line between horror and amusement without straining itself in overwrought expression that can be credited to Dante and the company he had with him that wanted to make it more than just a "nature gone wild" movie. You don't really see that much of the piranhas in the film, but it has enthusiasm from a director who clearly grew up on Corman and monster movies and wanted to make one with as much fun as those (complete with name actor enjoyment from McCarthy, Wynn, and the always-on-point Miller). Dillman and Menzies prove to make an interesting pair together. I particularly like the haggard expressions that come from Dillman (amusingly, Dillman was picked because Peter Fonda rejected it because he wouldn't do the film unless it had good effects and it was taking too long). He just has the confidence to just roll with the lines given out involving little killer fish and being thrust into a conspiracy where maybe the real monsters are on the surface. Gordon and Steele provide quality presence in terms of scuzzy behavior on and off the surface, although Miller amuses the most in scuzzy nature for such a brief amount of screentime. The creature effects were done with a mix of mostly rubber piranhas (and some with a few metal teeth, as done by Phil Tippett, while Chris Walas and Rob Short did prosthetic limbs for biting. The movie could've just been a silly one with little commitment from its actors in creature features, but instead they managed to have one with energy, where even a little scene involving a stop motion creature (not a piranha) shows curiosity. The terror involving piranhas (who in real life have a varied diet beyond rare attacks on humans) is handled patiently for 95 minutes (I especially like the sound of the piranhas in their attacks) in carefully executed carnage and danger. The film serves as a representation of just what Dante has to offer in directing and moving around scenes with real belief present. It is a warm fun movie for the movie-lover in all of us that appreciate horror wherever they can find it.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Coming up in the next few days: Terrifier, 50s stuff, 70s stuff, 10s stuff...

Shivers.

Review #1624: Shivers.

Cast: 

Paul Hampton (Roger St. Luc), Joe Silver (Rollo Linsky), Lynn Lowry (Nurse Forsythe), Alan Migicovsky (Nicholas Tudor), Susan Petrie (Janine Tudor), Barbara Steele (Betts), Ronald Mlodzik (Merrick), Barry Boldero (Det. Heller), Camil Ducharme (Mr. Guilbault), Hanka Posnanska (Mrs. Guilbault), Wally Martin (Doorman), Vlasta Vrána (Kresimer Sviben), and Silvie Debois (Benda Sviben) Written and Directed by David Cronenberg (#816 - Crimes of the Future, #1127 - eXistenZ, #1220 - A History of Violence, and #1239 - Stereo)

Review: 

"If you admit to the possibilities of the most horrific things, then maybe they won't happen. It's what I do when I make movies. You're hoping it's going to stay on the screen and not come into your life." 

There have been a variety of important directors in cinema that came from the nation of Canada, but David Cronenberg most certainly is one of the most transgressive to help shape the course of cinema in body horror with films that provoke just as much interpretation as they inspire squeamish feeling. They inspire confrontation as much as they do chills because they involve qualities of life that are not easy to face in clear comfort, as he aspires to take the audience on a journey to ask questions without needing clear answers. The Toronto native had an interest as a child in reading from a young age (owing to his parents, a journalist and a musician in their interests), ranging from science fiction to comic books to EC Comics, and his initial interest was to become a novelist. While he was an avid cinemagoer (ranging from Westerns to Bambi to The Blue Lagoon), it was the screening of Winter Kept Us Warm (1966) by fellow University of Toronto classmate David Secter that sparked him to get into filmmaking, which he started with experimental work in 1966 that led to two shorts and two arthouse features. Cronenberg approached Cinepix with his script first. The company, if one did not know, had been started in 1962 under the leadership of John Dunning and Andre Link, and Cronenberg would note them as crucial influences on him (the former for filmmaking and the latter on the finance side). The Montreal-based company went from distributing films in Canada and the United States to eventually doing their own with Valerie (1969). They had wanted to tap into the independent market with horror (as was the case with Roger Corman and his films at the time) instead of just sensual-tinged work (the company persists on to the day, although you might recognize them under their current name as Lionsgate Films). Cronenberg had just two films to his output at the time (which were basically like underground work), and Cinepix desired to buy his script without having him direct. Cronenberg was not willing to let his script be filmed without him, and he was close to approaching the lower budget-minded studios in Hollywood and doing the film there before funding was found, with the Canadian Film Development Corporation (now known as Telefilm Canada) helping to allocate funds. Ivan Reitman (co-founder of the Toronto Film Co-op with Cronenberg) served as producer for the film (alongside music supervisor), and he would work with Cronenberg and Cinefix again with his next film in Rabid two years later alongside his own breakthrough venture with Meatballs (1979). The film was shot for $185,000 over the course of 15 days. Joe Blasco was the effects man for the film, and it certainly goes to show the state of the Canadian industry to see this as one of the first serious horror films in the nation.

There were numerous titles that came before and after production occurred, with the initial working title being "Orgy of the Blood Parasites", while the title done for filming was "The Parasite Murders", and in America it was released as "They Came from Within". The funny thing is that the uproar over the film nearly overshadowed the fact that the film was a success from the start with audiences. Since it had been funded in part by the government, there was a bit of commotion done about its merits, most notably with an article in Saturday Night magazine, in which it was felt that Canada shouldn't have a film industry if films like this needed to be made to have an industry; reportedly, the article delayed production of Cronenberg's next film with Rabid (1977) in terms of setting up funding. Obviously time has proven Cronenberg infinitely correct in this regard, since Shivers serves as an important shift in the director's career as his first triumph that serves as a creeping gem. I readily enjoyed the film in its low-budget creeping chills, one that that shows a degree of dark humor within a somewhat familiar premise that works over its limitations for interesting entertainment. We are talking about a movie involving hedonistic zombies that desire pleasure while creeping into your body, after all. Cronenberg has noted that some of the elements might seem familiar when compare to Alien (1979). Think about it: we have a creature that go around a location through someone's orifices and lurk within the stomach that happen to burn acid if in contact with someone's face (Cronenberg once noted that if free love really was true, would this not be what it actually looked like?) - interpret it for yourself, since the writer of that film (Dan O'Bannon) noted that he didn't steal the idea from anybody, he stole it "from everybody!" The effects were done through a combination of condoms, tubing, bottles, and coat hangers that helped move the parasite around to simulate being in the body or being outside, and while the wires might be visible at certain times (like the shot involving it going across the grass), I found it fascinating in its gruesomeness, unsettling with its gooey movement, one that will certainly fit for these monsters of lust. 

The acting is okay, showing a mix of somewhat familiar faces and voices with more obscure ones. Hampton for example was more known as a singer and composer, although he did spots on film and TV. He does alright here, even if he seems more indifferent that readily concerned with the growing trend of craven creatures desiring each other's flesh. Silver was noted for his deep voice and roughly a thousand appearances on television alongside occasional appearances in film. He certainly makes a useful impression in terms of moving the plot forward, and he even gets in on the parasite action near the end for effect. Lowry is known for her horror appearances (such as The Crazies), and she proves the best performance for the film, one with captivating spirit that seems out of place with the growing weirdness, and it is her scene in the climax that proves quite fascinating about desire and dreams. Migicovsky and Petrie don't have as much lasting effect, with the former being used more for the stomach (with a creature inside) and the latter to react to all that (plus a scene with Betts), which is okay but not as interesting as the others (Petrie apparently needed to have Cronenberg slap her really hard in order for her to cry when the cameras needed her to cry). Steele doesn't have as much to do, but at least the scene spent in the tub is squirmy enough. Mlodzik is the branch from the previous Cronenberg films, with this being the third of four appearances, and he plays the smarmy manager just fine. The 87 minutes go by with some shivers at what we see play out through a film not afraid of limitations or taboos that strikes a chord with its perversions of the flesh that is entertaining without becoming a lynchpin for weirdness without some sort of interest to keep coming back to where it wants to go. For a director that would only hone his craft further with interesting films involving the body and horror, this is certainly a good starting point to go with Cronenberg and his dazzling display of terror within us. It is a nasty one that might not hit everyone's mark, but I got a kick out of where it wanted to go in unsettling nature to make it count.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.