Unhinged (1982)

Short (1:16). Open-matte 4:3. Nice synth score. Perky shower scene. Atmospheric rain. Car crash. Mrs Penrose is American Gothic spooky. Some weird dialogue ("Next time...") that goes nowhere. Mother doesn't like to be kept waiting... wooo! A Northern version of The Glass Menagerie's Amanda Wingfield in a wheelchair. An awkward dinner. Piano and dominoes. Peeping Tom. A rogue tooth under the bed! Nocturnal orgasmic heavy-breathing. Onanistic double-perky shower scene. Why haven't we seen the third friend? Walking on your own through a wood when you're a supporting actress is a bad idea. Don't go in the shed! I told you not to walk through the woods! Back-story. What is it about the salt-cellar that's so freaky? Mother is reminding more and more of the Wicked Witch of the West as time passes. Piano but no dominoes. Peeping tom again! More rain and thunder and heavy breathing. Our heroine investigates. A gun, a knife and some toys. Tom makes his bug-eyed appearance. More back-story. Missing girls? The third friend makes her re-appearance. More heavy breathing. The third friend leaves us. Searching in a thunderstorm. Don't go in the shed! Eew, body parts and jars of eyeballs! Running and screaming. The gun. What the fuck? No, this is a knife! Raining blood.

I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea and not a great deal happens until the end but I really liked this film's feeling of Northern Gothic decay and its crazy ending.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Brides of Dracula (1960)

Brides of Dracula has no Christopher Lee but instead stars David Peel as blonde, Drac-a-like, Baron Meinster. But at least Peter Cushing's here and Cushing does what Cushing does best - the bounciest and most athletic Van Helsing we all know and love.

Jack Asher as DP shoots like Bava and the film is vivid and full of purples and reds and yellows. The sets are wonderful and how they managed to create those European villages mansions and castles in a small country house in Berkshire, I'll never know. The dressers, sculpters and technicians all deserve medals. A beautiful film.

There are so many memorable performances apart from the aforementioned Cushing. Peel is excellent as Drac... ahem, Meinster and starts as boyish and charming but swiftly turns cruel and quietly commanding. Yvonne Monlaur is very, very French and vulnerable as his Bride to be. Andree Melly as Gina, another bride, is beautiful in a wide-eyed Barbara Steele way. Normally I dislike comic-relief in horror films but Miles Malleson as Dr. Tobler was pretty funny and didn't irritate me all all. I kept expecting Martita Hunt's Baroness Meinster to exclaim "A handbag!". But, out of all these great performances the one that will stick in your memory is Freda Jackson as Greta/Frau Blücher; insane, cackling and hilarious.

Hammer managed to cram a huge amount of vampire mythology into this film that would pave the way for further excursions into Transylvania and I love the way they were so creative with their vampire deaths. Nowadays Brides of Dracula would be considered quite tame (how times change - the original X certificate has been reduced to a 12) but it still has plenty of gothic chills - the scene where a newly created bride claws her way out of her grave is great. There are occasional scenes of gore though including some very good holy water burns. And what a score!

If there is a fault, it has to be the decision to have a blonde vampire. Blonde... really? I'll have no truck with blonde vampires!

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Reflecting Skin (1990)

A prairie fairytale full of biblical symbolism (Cain/Cameron, Abel/Aben, Seth and there's more than a touch of Lilith to Lindsay Duncan's Dolphin Blue) and stunning imagery, told through the warped eyes of a child. The film reminded me a lot of the strange, almost-real world narrated in Tom Wait's Kentucky Avenue.

The Reflecting Skin has more than a touch of David Lynch and Terrence Malick and is stylised, off-kilter, strange, horrifying, funny and touching with a beautiful Samuel Barber-like score. A child's tale of abuse, neglect, loss, religion and sexuality.

EDIT: I've been thinking about the score and I think there's a lot of Gallipoli in it as well.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

Not the psychedelic and existential terror of The Masque of the Red Death, but a quite different beast indeed; the tale of a man driven to the edge of insanity by the possibility that evil can be inherited.

Knowing the slender plot of the original short story, screenwriter extraordinaire, Richard Matheson wisely blends several elements from Poe into a hideously deformed, bastard child of the sort that you would lock away in your deepest dungeon, knowing that one day they would break free!

Price plays the haunted and fragile Medina brilliantly, but if there's one complaint, it's that The Pit and the Pendulum, like all good gothic horrors, needs more Barbara Steele.

Cobwebs, dungeons, gargoyles, secret passages, torture devices, lightning, skeletons, and red candles, lots and lots of red candles. This is high-gothic!

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Innocents (1961)

The whisper of dark secrets can corrupt, even the most innocent. But who is the innocent?

"Big rooms get bigger at night" sums up perfectly the way that the rules of the universe twist and reform, when you're young, into something otherworldly; sometimes innocent and fey, sometimes cruel and dark. A beautifully spooky film - the angles, the framing, the sound-design, the depth and contrast.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

My favourite horror film as a child and the most poetic, beautiful (with stunning set designs and shot by Nicolas "Don't Look Now" Roeg) and terrifying (feudalism becomes modern neo-feudalism) of Corman's Poe adaptations. Contains nods to other Poe works including The Pit and the Pendulum, The Cask of Amontillado, The Raven and Hop-Frog. Vincent Price at his most despicable and decadent.

It's ridiculous that The Masque of the Red Death is still not available as a UK Blu-Ray - this was the German Koch Media Blu and the picture and sound quality was great.

Sic transit gloria mundi

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Seven Death's In the Cats Eye (1973)

Set in 1920's Scotland, a young and innocent convent girl moves back to her ancestral castle home and uncovers a trail of dead bodies, money, and vampires.

Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye is a Gothic horror (the castle, crypt, fog, secret passages, candles), heavily influenced by the Hammer films of the period and whilst not a pure gialli it does contain various superficial motifs including black gloves, bizarre dreams, sex and a straight razor. As well as Hammer there are touches of Edgar Allan Poe, with the, admittedly terrible, ape being a nod towards his Murders in the Rue Morgue short story, considered the be the worlds first modern whodunnit, and also the inclusion of the cat as a constant witness (The Black Cat). There are some nice touches of humour; one that jumped out at me, whether intentional or not, was when James mentions that the blood on his palette knife is actually red paint - and we all know that Italian movie blood looks just like bright red paint!

The cast are all pretty good with Jane Birkin standing out as a wholesome young naïf. The photography and lighting is above standard and sometimes rises to the great; the zoomed freeze-frame on James and Corrinda stands out (used to great effect in Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot), as did the lighting in the dark castle passageways and the crypt. The soundtrack is suitably overblown and melodramatic with kettle drums, quivering violins and crescendoing horns.

The Blue Underground transfer was good with only a slightly muddy soundtrack slightly marring what would otherwise be a great DVD. Although the dialogue is all in English there are three scenes in the original Italian which I'm guessing were cut from the international release.

Agatha Christie crossed with Poe and M.R. James with a dash of Nancy Drew.

If Hammer did giallo then it would look something like Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye.

Je t'aime!

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