IRON SKY

(Review)

Witness an invasion of Earth like no other in Timo Vuorensola’s Iron Sky, in which Nazis from the dark side of the Moon set about to conquer the planet they abandoned in 1945.

Like Juan de los Muertos, Iron Sky is comedy that’s saying something (about perception and politics, for starters), and if only for that, this should be on your radar.

Yes, there’s a Sarah Palin analogue here (Stephanie Paul, as the unnamed US president gunning for re-election), but, let’s face it, just experiencing the cinematic bliss of Udo Kier as Mondführer Wolfgang Kortzfleisch--who’s only too eager to unleash his terrible Meteorblitzkrieg on the unsuspecting “sub-humans” of Earth--is worth the price of admission…

(Iron Sky OS courtesy of ironsky.net.)

LA TERZA MADRE
(MOTHER OF TEARS:
THE THIRD MOTHER)
(Review)
If you haven’t read my reviews for the first two chapters of Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy—Suspiria and Inferno—you may do so right now, as some of my comments in the review below could reference them. (Both reviews can be found in the Archive.)
I met the Three Mothers and built three houses for them, one in Freiburg, one in New York, and one in Rome.
I discovered too late that these houses hide obscene secrets: it is from here that the Sisters spread pain, tears, and darkness throughout the world.
-- The Three Mothers by E. Varelli

A foreboding discovery at Viterbo Cemetery finds its way to the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome, where Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) becomes inextricably linked to the blood-drenched storm of chaos fast approaching, as Mater Lacrimarum, the Mother of Tears (Moran Atias), makes her bid to reign over the world of man.

It was with this premise that “The Three Mothers” trilogy finally came to a close last year, a full three decades after it kicked off in Dario Argento’s classic work of phantasmagoric cinema, Suspiria.
After all this time though, I’d honestly thought the trilogy would never be completed, since the director’s close personal and collaborative relationship with Daria Nicolodi (who forged the mythology behind the films with Argento) had been severed long ago.
There was, however, one very concrete and substantial link between them: their daughter, Asia.
It’s quite possibly that aspect of La Terza Madre that is the most noteworthy, that it is, in a manner of speaking, an ersatz family reunion.
Beyond that however, the film itself is a rather muddled and dissatisfying affair.


There’s a strange perfunctory air to the proceedings here, as if—as seemed to be the case with Inferno—Argento (who co-scripted his story with Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch) is going through the motions of serving up some of what he feels the audience may expect from a “Three Mothers” film.
The gruesome, gory deaths are here. The sinister score is here (by Claudio Simonetti, who’d also worked on the Suspiria score). The convenient exposition is here (some of which is provided by the one and only Udo Kier, as exorcist Father Johannes).
What is sorely lacking though, aside from the brazen, visual flair of Suspiria, is any sort of genuine menace and urgency, and a main protagonist worthy of our sympathy and respect.


To begin with, Sarah, though a character intimately tied to the “Three Mothers” mythology, seems a lukewarm lead. She’s largely ignorant of her role in the grand scheme of things, and even though she’s given a crash course of what she’s capable of (by Nicolodi, in the little screen time she’s afforded), Sarah never really comes into her destiny in any significant way.
She really only displays one particular Jedi mind trick, neat though it is.
Mostly, there’s just bungling and much casting about from one resource person to the next, sneaking off shoeless into the night (so as to avoid detection by the film’s Evil Monkey; yes, La Terza Madre has one of those), and delivering a vaguely excruciating, half-hearted performance.
While I did like Argento's recent performance in Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate, here, she’s a bit of a mess. And the script doesn’t do her any favours either.


Her father, meanwhile, doesn’t really seem to inform La Terza Madre with any of Suspiria’s inspired “infernal atmosphere.” Even Inferno, which I really don’t much care for, had about it a transitory sense of an inexplicable nightmare.
All La Terza Madre can boast of having are the aforementioned gory deaths, some brief (and ultimately gratuitous) lesbian action, a brief (and ultimately gratuitous) shower scene, some nudity, and lots’a witches with wild hair and bad make-up.
There’s also a parade of Grand Guignol grotesqueries towards film’s end that plays like nothing so much as a low-rent carnival funhouse.
If however, that sounds like your kind of thing, well, the film’s got all that, and, oh yeah… the Evil Monkey.

If I’m sounding glib and snarky here, it’s only because this was such a disappointment.
I really was looking forward to Argento rediscovering the dark territories of his glory days.
But he messes it up here.
He flubs it with the script, which not only displays a distinct lack of anything remotely resembling tension, but also has characters like Detective Enzo Marchi (Cristian Solimeno, from TV’s Footballers’ Wives and Strictly Confidential) who don’t really add anything substantial to the mix, yet inexplicably seem to understand there is more here than meets the eye; characters who are largely off-screen, and yet conveniently surface in the film’s climax to play frustratingly negligible roles.
The film’s riddle (“What you see does not exist, and what you cannot see, is truth.”) and the house’s secret—narrative fixtures in a “Three Mothers” film—are also equally negligible, worse than merely being throw-away. And that’s saying a lot, considering those featured in Inferno weren’t all that substantial either.


La Terza Madre seems to be nothing so much as a catalogue of missed opportunities.
There’s never any real sense of a city tearing itself apart while under the malign influence of Mater Lacrimarum. What could have been disturbing set pieces of violence and carnage (think M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening or The Signal) merely wind up being haphazard, lackluster depictions of pseudo-mayhem. (Admittedly though, the two baby bits are quite nasty.)
Argento likewise misses out on a chance for some interesting narrative symmetry, choosing to end La Terza Madre by earth, instead of fire, which closes both Suspiria and Inferno.


Some of the casting choices are also somewhat dubious, as model turned actress Atias brings nothing (beyond her physical beauty) to the role of Mater Lacrimarum, and Jun Ichikawa (who plays Katerina, one of Mater L’s witchy lackies) is so glaringly over-the-top, it’s embarrassing. Not even the needlessly—and inexplicably—brutal method of dispatch Sarah uses on Katerina can make up for the truly awful performance.
And that curiously hysterical ending…
Talk about inexplicable and embarrassing.


I must apologize for the tone, truly.
But I really wanted this one to be good, not just so the trilogy could close triumphantly, but also because I’ve been waiting quite a while for Argento to once again make the cinema a dark and disturbing place where nightmares breed.
And maybe he’ll do that with his next effort, Giallo.
For now though, La Terza Madre is a distinct and resounding disappointment that merely makes the cinema a dark and sad place where dreams are gutted, and die rather messily.
Ironically enough, just like a victim in an Argento film.

(Mother of Tears OS and images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com and shocktillyoudrop.com.)

Thanx to Jeb, for bridging the language barrier.

reVIEW (43)
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE

“Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture.
“Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will grow and recede. Our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and conceal. Our light will play across living faces that laugh and agonize. And our music will linger and finally overwhelm because it will have a context as certain as the grave.
“We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory. But our memory will neither blur, nor fade.”
-- F.W. Murnau

Nicolas Cage certainly has an interesting view of vampires.
In 1989, he starred in Robert Bierman‘s Vampire’s Kiss, a black comedy in which he played poor, befuddled Peter Loew, who believes—perhaps mistakenly—that he’s been bitten by a vampire.
11 years later, Cage chose as his feature producing debut, E. Elias Merhige’s brilliant take on Nosferatu, Shadow of the Vampire.

Here, noted German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) sets off to film (without the widow Stoker’s permission) Dracula, and in the interests of authenticity, has a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) pretend to be an actor named Max Schreck, to play Nosferatu’s Count Dracula stand-in, Count Orlock.
As early as that singular premise—with its funhouse mirroring of truth masquerading as fiction, to play a fiction which is both truth (as Schreck/Orlock really is a vampire) and a double fiction (Orlock is merely Dracula, under a different name); all of this, of course, a fiction of a truth, as we see a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of the making of Nosferatu—it should be plainly evident that Shadow of the Vampire is so much more than your average cinematic blood-sucking experience.
With a script by Steven Katz, Shadow of the Vampire asks the central question, How far is an artist willing to go for his art? And in asking that question, Shadow also explores the double-headed metaphor of art as vampire, and art as a means to immortality.
It also takes the film industry to task. Humourously, by poking fun at how a star’s ego can hijack a production, and darkly, by presenting the camera (in the film, merely an extension of the director) as cold, apathetic observer and recorder, as leecher of vitality and life, an idea which reaches its apex in a chilling sequence that touches on the ultimate disposability of actresses in the grand old Boy’s Club of movie-making.

Merhige takes all of this weighty material and crafts a tantalizing portrait of the high cost of art and the dangers of obsessively brilliant artists.
And who else to play the narrative’s obsessively brilliant artist, but John Malkovich?
Malkovich’s Murnau is calculating and exacting, a cinema despot who asks his extras not to “act,” but rather, to “be.” In his white lab coat and goggles, he is the mad scientist only too willing to go to extreme lengths to complete his celluloid Monster.
But he meets his nemesis in Schreck, a role that Dafoe clearly dives into with relish. As part of the ruse, his Schreck is apparently the ultimate method actor, appearing to the cast and crew always in costume, and constantly in character.
And if you’ve seen Murnau’s Nosferatu, you’ll note that Dafoe nails the oddly disturbing mannerisms actor Max Schreck displayed in that classic of German Expressionism.
But it isn’t just that peculiar physicality that Dafoe brings to his performance. He also brings a humour, curiously both self-effacing and cunningly self-aware, as when, in one scene, he is at first coached as to his character’s motivation, before taking his first stab at ad lib.
Dafoe also brings a strange air of pathos to his character that serves to inform a role that could easily have been all melodramatic pantomime gesture and Vaudevillian tics, with some genuine longing and emotion.
What gives Shadow even more of a kick is how awesome and effective the rest of its cast is: genre stalwart Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack, who all go about recreating scenes and sequences from Nosferatu like skilled and particularly respectful grave robbers, making the film, aside from everything else, a wonderful homage to a masterpiece of black-and-white cinema.

Shadow of the Vampire also has much in common with films like John Madden‘s Shakespeare In Love and Ken Russell’s Gothic, films which use actual historical figures to propose a fictional scenario that ultimately informs an artist’s work and creative sensibilities.
Or, as I put it earlier, films that show a behind-the-scenes-look-that-never-was of a film, or play, or novel.
So at this point, I think it should be stated in so many words: Shadow of the Vampire may have fangs, but it really isn’t about neck-biting and blood. It’s a fascinating and complex entry in the vaults of vampire cinema, one that is only willing and eager to be discussed and debated over.
After all, with so many funhouse mirrors around, it makes it that much harder to determine, where is the real Monster of the piece?
The ancient, bloodthirsty creature, only seeking to slake its inhuman thirst?
The despotic director, to whom all are merely a means to an end?
Or the film itself, the aforementioned end, for which all else is sacrificed?

Parting shot: A review of Merhige’s follow-up to Shadow of the Vampire, Suspect Zero, can be found in the Archive, where the article series “The Cinematic (Un)Life of Count Dracula” can also be found. Part I (“A Symphony of Shudders”) discusses F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu.

(Shadow of the Vampire OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Samuels Advertising]; DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk.)

HALLOWEEN (2007)
(Review)

I wish this were as simple as “Man, this sucks the original’s a$$!” or “Dude, this so kicks Carpenter in the nuts!” Either option would have meant a far less complicated review to write.

Right from the film’s opening though, which gives us an intimate account of life in the Myers home (stripper mom, deadbeat stepfather, slut sister), it’s clear that Rob Zombie’s reimagining of John Carpenter’s Halloween aims to be a different animal than its predecessor.
So harrowing is the environment, that we can clearly see anyone who was raised there would quite possibly go, at worst, fantastically insane, or at best, require decades of therapy; there’s certainly no fun in the dysfunction here.
With this section bleeding into Michael’s incarceration in Smith’s Grove and his psychiatric treatment under Samuel Loomis (this time out played by Malcolm McDowell), Zombie’s Halloween is as much about the tragedy of the Myers family and the relationship between Loomis and Michael, as it is about Michael’s eventual return to Haddonfield and his reunion with baby sister Laurie (this time out played by Scout Taylor-Compton from Wicked Little Things).

This is where Zombie’s version is quite possibly the strongest.
Though one could argue that this section demystifies the horror icon, the fact remains that this is territory Carpenter did not chart in his original, so this was clearly Zombie’s opportunity to deliver to the modern audience a vision that would not have the shadow of John Carpenter falling so heavily upon it.
And Zombie makes the most of it, crafting a riveting and frankly unsettling portrait of a psychopath in the making, a maniac who goes into a silent, fifteen year hibernation, and comes out the other end as the man who was Sabretooth, Tyler Mane.
Mane, of course, is a towering physical presence, so his Michael is a looming monolith of sinister intent. And though I initially felt irked at the early reveal of the Shatner Halloween mask, the payoff is rather effective, as is the mask fetish, which serves to hide his self-professed “ugliness.”

At around the same time as said payoff occurs, we are introduced to this Halloween’s Laurie, and it’s around this time that Zombie’s ride begins to sputter.
It’s not that Taylor-Compton is necessarily a bad actress, it’s just that this Laurie isn’t the Laurie that made such an impression nearly three decades ago. This is not Jamie Lee Curtis.
This Laurie has more of a sense of humour, this Laurie feels like less of a nerd, this Laurie feels less haunted.
And it’s not as simple as this Laurie doesn’t feel like Laurie either, but rather that this Laurie doesn’t seem as interesting as Curtis’ Laurie; this one seems a lot more ordinary.
And to be completely fair, it isn’t all Taylor-Compton’s fault, as, unlike Carpenter’s Halloween, which focused largely on that specific Halloween night, in Zombie’s redux, we have that pre-Haddonfield section that takes up a substantial portion of the film’s running time, so we don’t really get to spend all our time with Laurie and her friends.

On the plus side though, the performances by Kristina Klebe and Danielle Harris as Lynda and Annie, respectively, are better than the originals. (I’ve never made it a secret that I feel the one laughable element of Carpenter’s original is Nancy Loomis’ “performance” as Annie, so seeing Harris take on the role was honestly a high point of this version. It’s also a nice bit of casting, as Harris is a Halloween alum, having appeared as Michael’s niece Jaime in Halloweens 4 and 5.)
Ironically, as much as Taylor-Compton’s Laurie makes less of an impact than the original’s, Annie and Lynda here feel slightly more real than their earlier counterparts.
Regardless though, the characters just aren’t interesting or involving enough to warrant our attention or invested sympathy.

Another problem of the latter portion of Zombie’s take is that it’s certainly not as rife with tension as the original. It does, however, come alive when Laurie and Lindsey (Jenny Gregg Stewart, who can certainly scream up a storm) discover the bloody mess Michael’s left Annie and Paul (Max Van Ville; Big Momma’s House 2) in.
And when I say “come alive,” it does in a rather loud and shrill way, as everyone seems to start screaming their fool heads off at this point.

And though Zombie takes an interesting tack with Michael’s initial intent regarding Laurie, the film’s climax deteriorates into a lengthy, dragging sequence where Taylor-Compton is made to suffer for her paycheck, as Laurie’s mental and physical health are pummeled to a messy, quivering pulp.
Ultimately, it’s this Haddonfield section that left me terribly dissatisfied. Despite some potentially intriguing beats and the curious sense of pathos Zombie manages to invest his Michael with, the section that comprises “the night he came home” just doesn’t feel very solid.
Also, as much as I love Malcolm McDowell, the classic Loomis lines were just a whole lot weightier when Donald Pleasance was spouting them. (As much as this version allowing us to get to know Michael a little more was interesting for me, getting to know Dr. Loomis more wasn’t, as we see that not only is he a horrible writer, but he seemed rather all-too-willing to make a quick buck off his decade and a half with Michael.)

And while key riffs from Carpenter’s original score—including of course, the signature theme—are intact and used to good effect throughout the film, the blood and gore here is a veritable tsunami compared to the suspense over violence approach of the original. Additionally, the viciousness with which characters are dispatched, is only offset by the depiction of a great many of them as filthy, horny, potty-mouthed miscreants. (I think the nicest characters in Zombie’s Halloween are Laurie’s adoptive parents, played by genre faces Dee Wallace (as it was so famously put in Scream, “E.T.’s mom”) and Pat Skipper (Scully’s brother on The X-Files). Sadly enough though, being nice doesn’t really help them all that much anyway.)

In saying all of that, I believe I’m also saying that Carpenter’s version kicks Zombie’s in the nuts, though honestly, I really don’t think anyone expected otherwise.
Still, that doesn’t totally discount Zombie’s effort.
The intent was there, surely, to give us a Halloween that wasn’t necessarily a retread of the original, to explore different avenues left untravelled by Carpenter, to give us a Halloween that had more of a reason to exist than simply to make some easy money off a previously established brand name.
But somehow, somewhere along the way, in laying down the disquieting dollop of reality in the film’s first half, Zombie defused any inexplicability that may have informed the second half, the way it did so magnificently in the original.
What we have in the end is the uncomfortable and protracted destruction of a family, which takes just over two hours (in the unrated version) to reach its bloody, violent conclusion, far too long and excruciating a journey to make it worth the while.

Parting shot: There are, however, some bright spots: genre stalwarts Udo Kier, Brad Dourif, and the aforementioned Wallace make welcome appearances. This, however, made me both happy and sad; Kier and Dourif are given precious little to do, and Wallace… well… that just got me real upset…
There’s also an interesting appearance by Sybil Danning, who, amusingly enough, starred in a Howling movie (the second and horrible Howling II: …Your Sister Is A Werewolf), just like Wallace (the original and excellent The Howling).

Parting shot 2: Reviews of the original Halloween, Halloween II, and Wicked Little Things can be found in the Archive.

(Halloween OS courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

reVIEW (15)
SUSPIRIA [1 of 2]

The long-anticipated culmination of Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy, La Terza Madre (Mother of Tears: The Third Mother), is nearly upon us. In light of that momentous horror geek occasion, I thought it appropriate to take a look back at the first two installments, 1977’s Suspiria, and 1980’s Inferno.
(It’s also the 30th anniversary of Suspiria, so here’s to the old gal…)

When Daria Nicolodi (who had appeared in Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso and subsequently became romantically involved with the director) suggested a move away from Argento’s beloved giallo, he took the advice to heart. Collaborating with Nicolodi on the script, Argento would end up creating one of his most enduring works, Suspiria.

New Yorker Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper; her more recent films include Todd Haynes’ Safe and Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report) has just arrived in Germany as a new student at the Tanz Akademie, a prominent European dance school. Her arrival at the Akademie in a violent rainstorm coincides with the hurried flight from the premises by third-year student Pat Hingle (Eva Axen), who is soon violently murdered in a horrific setpiece which ends in a devastating rain of glass.
What follows in the wake of this brutal event is a phantasmagorical journey to the dark heart of the mystery that lies in the depths of the Akademie, a journey chronicled in a film that has been described as both a “magical thriller” and a “fairy tale for adults.”
Thirty years after its release, the film’s elements which hold up the strongest are the visual style Argento and his cinematographer Luciano Tovoli adopted, and the disturbing musical score by Italian progressive rock band (and frequent Argento collaborators), Goblin.

In keeping with the adult fairy tale tone of the narrative, Suspiria is drenched with vibrant colours and boasts impressive sets (production design by Giuseppe Bassan, who had worked with Argento on Profondo Rosso, and would again on Inferno and Sotto Gli Occhi Dell’assassino), which bolster the “totally artificial style” the filmmakers were aiming for. Though also heavily influenced by German Expressionism, Argento points to one particular—and rather unlikely—film which was a source of inspiration for Suspiria’s look: Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
It was from this animated classic that Argento and Tovoli drew the rich and deep colours that made Suspiria look quite unlike any horror film that had come before it. (It was shot by Tovoli on the last of the IB Technicolor stock in Italy.)*

Meanwhile, to provide the “infernal atmosphere” needed for the film, Argento collaborated with Goblin, to produce one of the most unsettling scores in horror cinema.
Along with Jerry Goldsmith’s work on Richard Donner’s The Omen, the Goblin/Argento music is one of the most conspicuous and intrusive film scores in cinematic history.
It is also—again, like The Omen score—one of the creepiest soundtracks to ever assault the ears of this particular horror geek. African percussion, Greek string instruments, plastic cups, whispers of “Witch! Witch!” all collide in an aural storm of chaos and foreboding, as the film’s bizarre events unfold before the audience’s eyes.

Given Argento’s tendency to shrug off the conventions of narrative, Suspiria’s plot is not a particularly strong one, subsumed as it is by the dark fairy tale stylings of the piece. It is the sort of tale where the sound of footsteps carries over impossible distances, solely to allow Suzy to uncover the Akademie’s ultimate secret.
If you’re a stickler for story and plot, then Suspiria is not the film for you.
Additionally, Suspiria displays the marvels of postdubbing, a standard practice in Italian cinema, where all sound, including dialogue, is recorded after the film is complete. Thus, some of the English dubbing tends to distract. To further complicate matters, during filming, certain cast members spoke their English lines phonetically, while some didn’t even speak English at all. Thus, some of the performances are questionable in light of the curious on-set language barriers.
And a couple of bits that didn’t work way back in 1977 (you cannot help but note the strangely puppet-like nature of German wildlife) still don’t work today. My sincerest apologies, Signore Argento, but that sadly overweight bat did indeed contribute to the “totally artificial style” of the film, but in a particularly dreadful way.

Still, there is that look, and that score, and Harper is an excellent protagonist (praised by horror writer and unabashed Argento fan, Douglas E. Winter as “the best of Argento’s heroines”). She is the audience’s Alice, simultaneously wonder- and terror-struck, by the Akademie’s sinister mystery, thrust into this shadowed land and left to work her way to the beating heart of it, before she can find surcease and escape.
With the look, rhythm, and logic of a particularly disturbing nightmare, Suspiria may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it’s certainly a must-see, as one of the most visually stimulating horror films ever made.

* Tovoli would collaborate once again with Argento on Sotto Gli Occhi Dell’assassino.
He was also the cinematographer on five consecutive Barbet Schroeder films (the brilliant Reversal of Fortune, the not-so-brilliant Single White Female, Kiss of Death, Before and After, and Desperate Measures).
More recently, he’s shot Julie Taymor’s interesting and kick-a$$ Titus and reunited with Schroeder on the dismal Murder By Numbers.

Parting shot: If you haven’t seen Suspiria yet, check it out, if only to see a really young Udo Kier as Dr. Frank Mandel, who helps provide much of the film’s exposition. Sadly though, he’s in only one scene.

(Suspiria OS courtesy of impawards.com—this particular OS came alongside a truly horrible trailer that had a sophomoric nursery rhyme on VO, a patently fake skeleton with a wig on, and a font whose letters were made to resemble distorted hearts. In the trailer, the letters actually beat; VHS cover art courtesy of amazon.com; DVD cover art courtesy of itsonlyamovie.co.uk.)

Thanx once again to the J&R Travel Agency for getting me that plane ticket to Germany.