Faces of Horror

Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or a Witches' Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear -- the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness.

H. P. Lovecraft
"Pickman's Model"


Since most of my free time over the next few days will be taken up with the actual reading of stories and novel(s) in preparation for October, until the 1st I'll be putting up this series of pictures of, and quotes from, the kind of writers I'll be talking about for the next month(!).

Queue Reviews! Rick's Right, That DOES Rhyme!

This is going to be a tough one. I didn't feel much of a spark from any of these films, negative or positive, even though all are highly regarded to one degree or another. I'm just gonna have to plow on through, though.


The River - d. Jean Renoir (1951) - Is it me? I was looking forward to this film -- not least, I admit, because Wes Anderson cited it as a major influence on his marvelous The Darjeeling Limited -- but as I watched it I just...sat there. It looked beautiful, of course. And I realized that the lovely Adrienne Corri, who plays Valerie, was the same woman from that scene in A Clockwork Orange. And Arthur Shields looks an awful lot like my doctor. But it's...it's a bit limp, isn't it? I mean, as drama? I feel horrible even saying that, but Rick and Marilyn have assured me that it's not just me (although their objections to the film are slightly different from mine). The film just seemed to plod along, offering a flourish here and there (like Melanie's dance), lightly pulling the characters apart until tragedy and rebirth could bring them back together. Fine, but...

My Favorite Year - d. Richard Benjamin (1982) - I can't imagine I'll get into too much hot water for being dismissive of Richard Benjamin's ouvre, but this film is held up as something of a comedy classic. And I can see why, as it must represent the end of an era, to a degree, in that I can't remember the last time a comedy of this classic type was released. Add to that a terrific performance from Peter O'Toole, and, well, no, because I didn't laugh very much. Look, early on the film, Bill Macy, the head writer of a Your Show of Shows-style comedy program, comes into the writer's room. He says hello to two other writers, played by Jessica Harper and Basil Hoffman. He asks a question, and Basil Hoffman whispers into Jessica Harper's ear, and Harper gives Macy Hoffman's answer. Macy says something along the lines of "What's wrong with you, anyhow?" Now, this is the first time we've seen these characters, but it's not the first time they've seen each other, and this quirk of Hoffman's is not otherwise presented as something he developed overnight. So Macy knew about it. The filmmakers just wanted to highlight it for the audience, and remind us that they realized that Hoffman's behavior was unusual and hilarious. And what I call that is sloppy. This is still better than Laughter on the 23rd Floor, however.


Young Mr. Lincoln - d. John Ford (1939) - Okay, how do I get out of this one? Well, no, I liked this film. If you could ever say about an actor that they were born to play Abraham Lincoln, you could say it about Henry Fonda (not Liam Neeson). He's effortless here, and Ford offers many beautiful touches, my favorite being the shot, after the killing that will end up driving the film, of a clearing at night, a body lying on the ground, and gunsmoke slowly drifting above it. But a lot of excuses have to be made to onself while watching the courtroom scenes, entertaining as they are. Does it matter that they're not remotely realistic? Probably not. This film plays out like a folktale anyway (I was reminded of William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster) and seen from that angle it works like gangbusters. But really, what's up with Abraham Lincoln cheating at tug-of-war??
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NEXT IN THE QUEUE: Kill Baby...Kill!, Salesman, and My Darling Clementine

The Kind of Face You Hate - Where Your Shocktobers Are Guaranteed to Be Spooktacular!

That's right! An announcement! But don't get too excited, because as announcements go, this one's pretty boring.

The deal is this: before I buckled down and started this blog, I decided that, in order to earn my keep as a member of the wonderful Palimpsest book forums, I would do something fairly blog-like and, for the month of October, read only horror fiction -- a genre I seem to love and hate in equal measure -- and chronicle that experience for my fellow Palimpsest members. I'm still going to do that, but now, in order to kill two monsters with one item effective in killing said monsters, I will be posting my insights and delightfully irreverant musings here, as well. And if all goes well, or even if all goes badly, it might help me work up a big enough head of steam to finish off my State of Fear essay.

I have a lot of fiction, stories and novels, picked out for this, and there's no way that I can read all of it in one month, but if you want some idea of what's in store, I can tell you that I know I'll be reading the following: horror fiction written by people you wouldn't normally associate with the genre (this will mostly be short fiction, though I do have a novel picked out); some translated, non-English horror fiction (mainly because my own experience of this branch of horror is weak); writers I think are the best the genre has produced (like Thomas Ligotti and Robert Aickman); classic writers of the genre (Poe, Lovecraft, M. R. James, maybe even Henry James); and a fair number of writers who I've never read before. I can get into more specifics in the comments, if anyone cares. Otherwise, the contents of the syllabus will be a delightful surprise.

So, there you go. My blog is booked clean through next month. Which means there will be a marked decrease in movie posts in that time. Sorry about that, for those of you who will feel that absence like a knife in your heart.

PS - BOO!!!!!!

Queue Reviews! Or, Possibly, a Less Crappy Title!

If I don't get started on this post now, I never will, so the title is going to have to stand until I think of something better (i.e., not horrible) and go back and change it.

So anyway. Capsule reviews of previous Netflix rentals, is what this is all about, you see. I mean to write this one several days ago, but other posts and -- let us not forget -- laziness have pushed it until today. I watched all three of these films last weekend, so my memory, and therefore reviews, of them won't be as sharp as I'd like. Also, I slept in really late this morning, and it's fuzzing up my brain. And now that my excuses are all in play, I shall proceed.

Brute Force - d. Jules Dassin (1947) - This film, if you haven't seen it, is kind of messed up. It's a prison film of the "noble criminal" variety, meaning that all the inmates we discover anything about are basically good guys who, through desperation or a brief, minor weakness, have transgressed the law. Their punishment ends up far outweighing their crimes, because not only do they have to go to prison (a fate, the movie seemed to imply, that even criminals should be spared), but they have Hume Cronyn's sadistic prison guard making their lives hell.

But I don't mean to sound so negative. This is really, in many ways, an excellent film. Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Roman Bohnen, and especially Cronyn, give terrific performances, and the film looks beautiful -- the last twenty or so minutes of this film highlights the odd, otherworldly beauty that black and white photography can bring to screen violence. But the "noble criminal" cliche', while fine in small doses, when taken to its extreme rankles me quite a bit. Yes, it's true, I'm not a fan of Bonnie and Clyde for much the same reason.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul - d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1974) - So, okay, I don't know much about Fassbinder's aesthetic (by which I mean what was planned and what wasn't) or his influences (beyond what I can try and guess at), so I'll just ask straight-out: are the sudden shots of melodrama injected into this otherwise spare, almost kitchen-sink drama, intentional? Obviously they're intentional, because he put them there, but did he intend them to play like melodrama?

Quickly, for those who don't know, this is the story of Emmi, a middle-aged German woman, and Ali, a Moroccan immigrant worker many years her junior, who fall in love and have to weather the prejudices of a German society who remembers all too well the Munich Olypmics massacre of two years previous. And to be honest, with that set up, the film is almost as schematic as you might guess. So add that to the occasionally jarring melodrama (Ali's sudden collapses and illness), and I have to ask, "Okay, so why is this still so compelling?" Because I did find it very compelling, and I have to admit that I haven't yet figured out why. Perhaps Fassbinder is trying to remind us that however much an audience might giggle at the overheated nature of melodrama, they may be doing so because they can sometimes recognize the reality of it, and Fassbinder does this by wrapping the more eyebrow-raising moments of his film in the most straightforward, stripped-down and down-played style possible. Maybe.

De Sade - d. Cy Endfield (1969) - Sorry, Cy Endfield and Richard Matheson, but this film is trash. For one thing, the film is not, as I'd previously thought, a horror film, but rather a frickin' biopic as fever dream, or fever dream as biopic, or some such nonsense. It's fractured, in any case, and not to any positive effect that I could see.

Keir Dullea is ridiculously miscast as De Sade, a man whose adult drift into perversion and, well, sadism was all instigated when he was but an innocent youth, whose uncle (John Huston, less badly miscast) exposed him to cruel and painful sexual humiliation. And there you have it. Now just imagine how the rest of a movie with such a premise might play out, but, you know, fracture it. Also, every so often put a red filter on your lens. I would also add that you shouldn't forget about tits, but I hardly think I need to point that out.

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NEXT IN THE QUEUE: Young Mr. Lincoln, My Favorite Year, and Renoir's The River

Affinity 4

12

So Dennis has "tagged" me to take part in a "meme". Is that what this is? A meme? I think so. Anyway, this one, as I'm sure you're aware, has to do with twelve films that I've never seen and would really, really like to. Originally, it was supposed to be twelve movies that aren't readily available, but Dennis, brash iconoclast that he is, said screw that noise, I'm just gonna pick twelve movies I ain't never seen, and to heck with your rules (his words). Jonathan followed suit, while imposing a few (meaning one) rules of his own.

I, myself, am also a brash iconoclast, so I've chosen to construct a list that falls somewhere in the middle, in that some of these movies can be easily seen, and others can't. Yes, I agree, that is a pretty crazy and original way to go about it. Up is down, black is white, and so on. So let's begin!

1. La Dolce Vita - This film is right at the top of my list of movies I feel like a dick for not having seen yet. The fact that I haven't has to do with the fact that my early, limited experience with Fellini was not especially pleasurable. I started with Fellini Satyricon -- a choice I believe even the most aggresive Fellini fan would agree was a bad one -- and then went on to Amacord. I actually did like that one well enough, but there are certain elements of Italian cinema, and Fellini films in particular, that I don't really get along with: the grotesqueness, the broad humor, the general bigness of it all. But later, much later, I went ahead and watched Nights of Cabiria, and loved it. And I realized that when someone uses the word "Fellini-esque", they're talking about something I'm probably not going to care for, but that doesn't describe all of Fellini's own films. And I'm thinking that La Dolce Vita falls more in line with Nights of Cabiria. So up in the queue it goes.

2. The Stepfather - This was written by Donald E. Westlake. And it stars Terry O'Quinn. And look, O'Quinn's face is all bloody. So make with the region 1 DVD, you sonsabitches!

3. Babe: Pig in the City - I know, this movie is supposed to be better than anything, and kids should see it so you don't have to teach them about death yourself or whatever, but I'm gonna be honest with you: when it comes to seeing animals killed and/or abused in films, I'm a humongous pussy. I do not like it. I'm not saying I'm taking a moral stand, I just get really sad when I see a dog or monkey or what have you being treated badly. I won't even watch that episode of Futurama about Frye's dog. But, I know: this movie's great. So I'll see it. One day.

4. 10 Rillington Place - I missed a golden opportunity to see this one years ago, on cable. I can't remember why I didn't just stay up and watch it -- maybe I had to "work" the next day -- but I did try to record it. This is before DVR (or before I had DVR, anyway), and I must have set it up wrong, because I only got about half of it. Since then, I haven't seen it listed on any channel. There is a region 2 DVD of it, and I do have a region-free DVD player (of which I've taken very little advantage), but I don't know if it's worth the scratch. Is the movie as good as I hope? I'm guessing yeah, probably, but is the DVD itself a good one? Good extras and whatnot? Anybody know?

5. Satantango - Because why the hell not? For one thing, Satantango is the film equivalent of a book like Moby-Dick or Ulysses: one of the reasons you (I) watch it is so that you can tell people you've seen it. I have to admit that I have seen Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, and I never once clicked with it. But I wanted to. Not for bragging rights this time, but because Tarr is clearly all on his own, making films that he needs to make, with no thought about any other factors. His movies are the way they are because he made them, and if you don't like it then he'll catch you in the funny papers. At the moment, I don't know what Tarr is up to, I'm not tuned into his wavelength, but I'm willing to try to understand, even if I never really like his work. And I recently heard a quote attributed to the playwright Alan Bennett that I think applies here, at least in part. He said that there should be a sign hung outside the National Gallery that reads: "You don't have to like everything." Amen. But you should be willing to give everything a chance.

6. Salesman - Why isn't this available on Netflix? The Criterion disc is still in print, so what's the deal? I remember seeing clips of this in a college class I took on documentary films, and I was immediately absorbed, because this was as close to a time machine as I was ever going to get. Quite frankly, the ultimate point of this film, its argument (I assume it has one) is not as interesting to me as simply seeing these people from another time living and working and talking, free of any (or as little as possible) outside filmmaker influence. I've heard that the appeal of certain of Warhol's films is similar, but Warhol, from what I can tell, preferred it when nothing much was happening in front of his camera, and the people he hung with were affected going in, so I'll take the Maysles, thank you.


7. Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices - I first heard about this in the early days of my obsession with Werner Herzog. The way I heard it, on one of those alt.net movie groups, was that this documentary is about a relatively obscure classical composer who did something along these lines: killed his family, and then wrote music about it. I'm pretty sure that's not quite correct, but I'm also pretty sure that it's not that far off, either. I have no idea what watching this film will be like, but I have to see it. And I'm pretty sure it's available, too.

8. The 47 Ronin - You might say that, in the case of Kenji Mizoguchi's The 47 Ronin, I ran out of excuses a long time ago. And you'd be right. No, it's not readily available on DVD, but IFC aired both parts of the film several months ago, and I've had the sucker lingering in my DVR ever since. So no more excuses. Get on it, you douche. (PS - I'm the douche in that last sentence.)

9. The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse - Fritz Lang's last film, it was also his first film about the diabolical Dr. Mabuse since 1933's brilliant and bizarre The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. I have no idea what this movie's about, apart from that it obviously has something to do with some deeply unsettling plot by Dr. Mabuse, but look at that picture above: creepy! What's up with that dude's eyes, anyway? So, yeah, a DVD of this would be much appreciated.

10. Titicut Follies - A bit obvious, maybe? Anyhow, as you all know, this movie is decidedly not available -- I think my chances of seeing it fall somewhere between the possibility of my seeing The Other Side of the Wind and The Day the Clown Cried -- and even if I did see it, afterwards I may wish I hadn't. But, as with Salesman, the pull of getting an unfiltered look into a time and a world that no longer exists is impossible to ignore. This movie must be considered one of the most important filmed historical documents of all time, and I want to experience it some day.

11. Last Year at Marienbad - The idea that the true meaning of this supposedly quite eerie Alain Resnais classic is that it has no meaning intrigues me no end. There's not much more I can say about it -- the only Resnais film I've seen thus far is Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and I'm not sure what I think about that one -- but that's why I want to see this. Criterion is bound to release this sooner or later, but as of now there's a region 2 DVD I could plunk down my money for. Anybody know if it's worth it?

12. The Sorcerers - One of the dangers of finally watching a film that you've been wanting to see for years is that, if you're anything like me, the film has a lot of living-up-to-unreasonably-high-expectations to do. I've been let down by many films this way (or you might say that I've actually let down many films), although I'm not going to tell you what those films are, because then I'll probably get flooded with about five comments yelling at me for not liking Hawmps!, or something. But three films that did meet all of my expectations are the original The Wicker Man, Peter Bogdonavich's Targets, and Witchfinder General. The fact that all of those are either horror films or horror film-related is probably not a coincidence. And The Sorcerers is like a mash-up of Targets (in that they both star Boris Karloff) and Witchfinder General (in that they were both made by Michael Reeves). Reeves only directed three films, of which The Sorcerers is his second, before dying at the horribly young age of 25. Witchfinder General, his last film, contains a career-best performance by Vincent Price, and is overall such a nasty, harrowing, unblinking piece of work that, as a horror fan, I can't help but think that the genre lost someone who could have been one of its greatest interpreters. Well, at least we have these three...except for The goddamn Sorcerers, which is still floating around somewhere in DVD limbo, despite MGM's recent release of Witchfinder General. I mean, the thing stars Boris Karloff, for Christ's sake! What the hell is the hold-up!? And why is it that I can't see The Sorcerers, but Reeves's first film, The She-Beast, which not even his fans seem to give much of a shit about, is available on Netflix?? This problem needs to be fixed. Now.

All right, well, that's all she wrote, folks. I hope knowing about twelve movies I want to see but haven't yet has been as elucidating for you as I imagine it must have been. Enjoy your dinners.

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Crap, I was supposed to tag someone for this, wasn't I? Pretty much everybody I know in what is known as the "blogtmosphere" has already gotten this thing, however. I am a regular commenter on Glenn Kenny's blog, and even though I'm pretty sure he doesn't know about this blog, I'm going to tag him anyway. Should he take part, I imagine his answers will be pretty interesting.

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Forgot to add some important links! Thanks to Movieman at The Dancing Image, as well as the folks at Out 1 and The Lazy Eye Theater, for getting this meme rolling. And sorry to all of them for not linking to them earlier.

David Foster Wallace: Suicide as a Sort of Present

Last night, I began reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a collection of short fiction by the late David Foster Wallace, a writer with whom I was previously more or less unfamiliar. I certainly knew of him, but before last night the only major piece of writing I'd read by Wallace was his fascinating and infuriating essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head". I'm not crazy about the idea that this choice of reading material shows me up as the kind of person who waits for a tragedy to begin educating themselves about a particular person, and I'm even less crazy about the possibility that anyone might think I'm now taking up this particular habit in order to ferret out clues to explain why Wallace took his own life. But while I'll have to take the hit regarding the first part, I assure you that the second part is the furthest thing from my mind.


Okay, not the furthest thing from my mind. After all, one of the stories I read last night is called "Suicide as a Sort of Present", and I'm currently in the middle of a long, footnote-heavy story called "The Depressed Person". Your antennae can't help but go up.

But a lot of people seem to be jumping on certain things -- Wallace's 2005 Kenyon University Commencement speech; "Good Old Neon", a story from his collection Oblivion; page 696 of Infinite Jest -- and claiming that they might contain valuable clues. Some people (and I believe I've seen this in the comments of the Onion AV story about Wallace) have said that the deep veins of caring and sympathy that run through his work were some sort of clue, because anyone who cares as much as Wallace did finds it difficult to exist in this world (which seems to imply that those making this point don't care all that much). And I've even seen one or two comments to the effect that Wallace's coverage of the McCain campaign are what drove him to it (classy...and that one I'm sure I read at the Onion AV).

I have to admit that while talking about Wallace with my wife, I fell into this trap myself: "You know, he never wrote another novel after Infinite Jest. Maybe that had something to do..."; "Whatever you think of his writing, he was clearly some sort of genius. Maybe he had a hard time with...". But that's all bullshit, and arrogant into the bargain. His reasons are in no way our business. His death isn't even our business, or at least the details of it aren't. It's news, and I'm not claiming otherwise, but it somehow doesn't seem right that I know the very sad details of the death of David Foster Wallace, a stranger to me.

But enough. How's the actual reading of Wallace going? Better than I would have expected. As with pretty much the rest of the world, I first became aware of David Foster Wallace when his mammoth, forboding slab of a novel Infinite Jest came out in 1996. The flurry of praise that both preceded and followed its release made me instantly curious, and the title indicated that it wouldn't be all gloomy portent: there might be fun to be had in its pages, as well. And damn it, twelve years later I still want to read that son of a bitch, and I'm going to, but for now I'm finding myself fairly engrossed in Wallace's short fiction. The infuriation I felt while reading his David Lynch essay is still there, but so is the fascination. For instance, the first story I read (out of, I admit, completely morbid curiosity) was the aforementioned "Suicide as a Sort of Present". It's short, about four pages, and it tells the story of a woman who is filled with self-loathing due to her belief that she is a failure. When she has a child, a son, she wants him to succeed as she believes she has not. She feels hatred for her son when he doesn't meet her expectations, but never acts on it. She gives him unconditional love, even when his bad behavior starts to become alarming. With great subtlety, the end of the story implies a level of violence far beyond suicide, although that's part of it, and after finishing it I just sat there for a second, slowly realizing what had happened.

The story I'm reading now, "The Depressed Person", is starting to bring Wallace's infuriating qualities to the forefront. Wallace, apparently, had a thing about footnotes, and right now the footnotes to the story (which are really as much a part of the story as the main narrative, and what is the main narrative and what acts as a footnote has become blurry) take up about 4/5ths of the page. This may or may not be intentional, but just the layout, the appearance, of the pages has, at this point, become absurd. Given what I'm becoming to regard (based, I admit, on very little experience) as Wallace's particularly restless kind of genius, I'm guessing that's on purpose.

So, I'm now reading David Foster Wallace, after meaning to for over a decade. I wish I could have found a different type of motivation, but there's no use worrying about that now. I'm reading him, finally. And, even if you find him frustrating, you should probably be reading him, too.