Question of the Day: What Makes a Good Horror Film?

Wow, I haven't done one of these in a long time. Since I've been thinking about horror films all summer (and will continue to do so) I was thinking about what makes a horror movie great.  So, what is it that makes a horror movie great for you?  Is it the comfortableness of the genre (i.e. the gore, the violence, the gratuitous nudity, teens in peril, etc.) that gives the viewer the kind of nostalgia that a lot of people opine about when they speak of horror films (specifically the slasher films of the 80's)?  Does it need to obey those rules or the tropes of the genre? Should it be sprinkled with humor, or have its tongue in its cheek? Does a good horror movie need atmosphere?  Does it successfully displace you and make you feel uneasy about what's going on?  Does it have to be realistic? For me there are a few examples of what I think make up a great horror movie (keep in mind I'm not saying these are the best horror movies, I'm just using them as examples):

Halloween: We'll start with the slasher film, and the obvious example at that, but it takes one of the primary hindrances for any horror movie (a limited budget) and creates one of the best looking horror films with its minimalistic and haunting score, and impressive use of the widescreen format.  Evil creeps up on you in the peripheries, and not only that, but John Carpenter places a lot of the initial stalking scenes in plain daylight in a seemingly safe suburban neighborhood.  Everything that screams normal and safe is inverted here, and it's all because of Carpenter's reliance on a classic mise-en-scene rather than ratchetiung up his film with false scares and buckets of blood.

The Beyond/City of the Living Dead: These two Italian horror films are the greatest, but they're perfect examples of what I like in a supernatural horror film. Characters come and go without any explanation, there is no sense of time or place, and the set pieces seem constructed out of Lucio Fulci's deranged nightmares.  Buildings are almost always abandoned, towns deserted, and people do inexplicably evil and nasty things thanks to ancient books being unearthed or curses caused by priests hanging themselves.  These two films are perfect examples of what it is to have an ethereal horror experience.  The plot's are nonsensical mishmashes of ideas, and the threads that connect them are razor thin; however, you don't watch Italian horror for its riveting story...it's all about atmosphere, and Fulci's films (I'll throw Argento's Suspiria and Pupi Avati's The House with Laughing Windows in there as well) are dripping with it.

The Descent: Here you have just enough realism (the opening spelunking scenes) that it gives me the willies just thinking about it (I'm claustrophobic); however, you also have a crazy-as-hell monster movie in its second half. Neil Marshall's brilliant horror film is a perfect example of how to do the monster movie right (have fun), while still maintaining an appropriate tone (something he couldn't do in his follow-up Doomsday) throughout the film.  You also have smart, strong female characters inahbiting this film, the "woman in peril" trope isn't as lame as it normally is because these women fight back, especially Juno, and they're give some time to create their charatcers so they don't just become props to be gnawed on by the crawlers.  Sarah, the main character, is given some heartbreaking context, and her past hovers over the entrie length of the film until we're treated to one a heartbreaking and poignant final shot...something you almost never get in a horror movie.  Marshall's film is also super referential, which makes for tons of geekout moments for nerdy horror fans such as myself.


There ya have it.  That's what I think makes a good horror movie: either play it classically the way Carpenter did, play is ethereal and nonsensical where it's all about atmosphere like Fulci did, or play it referential and have fun like Marshall. I'll be interested to hear what you all have to say.  Discuss in the comments. 

Summer of Slash: Capsule Reviews, Part 3

Here are some more capsule reviews as I am continuing to blitz through a giant to-do list in preparation for the Wonders in the Dark horror countdown. This week I didn't focus on the slasher as I visited and re-visited four "different" horror movies (specifically I re-visited three films and finally got around to watching one that's been on my list since its highly anticipated release, but more on that later). I decided to re-visit one of the worst versions of Frankenstein in a moment of stupidity, but hey it was on Starz in HD so I thought I would give it another chance. I also decided to re-watch Dario Argento's Inferno, a film that is definitely better than its negative reputation. It's odd: at one point I remember liking Inferno more than Suspiria, but upon further review I can safely say that isn't the case. I also decided to re-visit the fun and harmless From Dusk till Dawn, a clear sign that Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino were thinking about Grindhouse long before its release. Finally, I worked up the nerve to finish the Three Mothers trilogy by watching Mother of Tears. Reviews come after the jump…

From Dusk till Dawn – Before Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino had a whole slew of fun with their double-bill homage to the exploitation film, Grindhouse, they made this entertaining-as-hell vampire movie that is actually funnier and more exciting than the first installment of Grindhouse, Planet Terror. The first half of the film – written by Tarantino – is the least interesting as we are introduced to Richie (Tarantino) and Seth (a fresh-from-the-ER George Clooney) fresh from prison and having just robbed a bank. They kidnap the family of a former priest (Harvey Keitel) and take their RV down to Mexico for sweet, sweet freedom. The best thing about this first, non-vampire part of the film is the opening interaction between a sheriff (wonderfully played by grindhouse stalwart Michael Parks) and a liquor store clerk (played by the always likable John Hawkes). After this opening (where we're initially shocked that yes, this is George Clooney all foul-mouthed and tattooed, in front of us) the film slows down into some decent – but ultimately uninspired – Tarantino dialogue as the brothers and the preacher's family make their way across the border. Once the group makes their way to a sleazy strip club called The Titty Twister, the film turns into one of those drive-in exploitation classics where the dialogue is hilariously (and appropriately) self-reflexive. A lot of scenes about vampires get explained away in a cheesy way by such exploitation icons as Fred Williamson and Tom Savini (not to mention a cameo from the John Saxon at the beginning of the film), and these moments are performed with such gusto – and most importantly without a smirk on their face – that make the last half of the film not just a pretty decent horror film (the violence and the vampire effects are pretty good at evoking the appropriate horror tone), but a loving homage to the types of films that Rodriguez and Tarantino no doubt spent the better days of their youth watching and re-watching. As a straight horror movie of the vampire variety I don't think the film as fun as say John Carpenter's Vampires (which had a tremendous performance from James Woods at its center), but it's still great to see Clooney in this pre-Hollywood icon role where he's clearly having a hell of a time hamming it up and spouting as many "f bombs" as possible so the audience knows for sure that he's serious about this not acting on TV thing. From Dusk till Dawn is an interesting precursor to Grindhouse and succeeds in pretty much the same way that esoteric film did: if you find cheesy, bloody, exploitation films entertaining then this film is definitely for you. It probably seems like nothing more than silly fun for others. It's always been one of my favorite horror movies.

Mary Shelly's Frankenstein – Wow. Does this movie stink. Clearly trying to cash in on the success of 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula (a horribly overrated Coppola effort), Kenneth Branagh – Shakespeare producer extraordinaire – decided to try his hand at Mary Shelly's classic Gothic Horror novel about science and the downfall of man's obsession with knowledge. Yes. Kenneth Branagh tried his hand at horror, and failed miserably. Of course he had little chance of making the film any good, because even James Whale's classics couldn't possibly visualize what Shelly does in her brilliant novel, and Branagh takes the most interesting parts of the novel (you know, the cerebral elements), filters them through his hammy eye, and creates a film that not only fails as a horror film, but as a period piece as well. Branagh seems to be in over his head as every "big" scene of the film is clumsily blocked and framed, and strains too much for Effect (case in point: the moment where Dr. Frankenstein's wife has her heart ripped out by the Monster). Robert De Niro's great performance as the Monster is completely wasted because of Branagh's inability to make a coherent film. His direction is so clumsy; in fact, we're even treated to one of those awful period piece candle-lit sex scenes where the camera swirls around the bed while classical music plays over the "passionate" love making of the two main characters. There's nothing remotely scary, creepy, atmospheric, or gothic about this movie. It turns completely laughable by the end as Frankenstein tries to stitch up his dead wife and proceeds to dance with her. The movie was a huge failure in the States, struggling to make half of its 45 million dollar budget; however, it made nearly 90 million globally. I don't care how much money a movie makes because that is irrelevant when discussing whether a movie is good or not, but I don't want to say only bad things about this movie…so there ya go.

Inferno – More ethereal and baroque than Dario Argento's first entry in his Three Mother's trilogy (and surprise hit) Suspiria, this sequel actually feels more like one of the entries of Lucio Fulci's early 80's output (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and House by the Cemetery) as we have harshly lit and colored sets, bizarre camera angles, extreme close-ups and jump cuts, and nonsensical storytelling at its finest…all taking place in what appears to be an otherworldly apartment complex in Rome. In fact, Inferno indeed feels more like City of the Living Dead as characters enter and depart without any explanation while weird shit occurs over and over again (yes, this is the one with rats) to the random people who inhabit the plot. The story is really inconsequential here as Argento really strains to connect this plot with the story of Suspiria. However, it's really irrelevant because this was the beginning of the nonsensical, supernatural Italian horror film that Fulci made famous with his own unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy. There are some impressive sequences throughout Inferno, though, and they make the film an enjoyable horror ride filled with countless haunted house moments (none more so then the impressive ballroom scene at the end). Perhaps the film's most famous moment comes at the beginning where a young woman exploring the depths of her apartment complex finds the aforementioned ballroom immersed in water with some bizarre inscriptions on the walls that match those of a book she's been reading about the three mothers. The scene is a tautly drawn 15+ minutes as we are privy to all kinds of bizarre lighting and set constructions that tip us off immediately that this film is going to be different than Suspiria (for as ethereal as that film was it had a more concrete story for its more nightmarish-aesthetic to swirl around). It's no surprise to any fan of Italian horror that the master himself, Mario Bava, was in charge of directing a lot of the film's most famous – and best looking – moments (Mario's son, Lamberto, was AD on the film). In total Inferno is not as bad as its reputation, and it certainly fits the early 80's Italian horror aesthetic to a tee; however, Argento followed Inferno up with three more interesting film, two gialli that were considerably more interesting in their violence than Inferno (most of the film's gore scenes fade to black before we see anything, and Keith Emerson's annoying rock-opera score gives the death scenes the wrong feel) and another supernatural film, Phenomena, that was far more interesting story-wise. Inferno is an interesting pre-cursor to what Fulci did so well with his classic trilogy of the early 80's. It's filled with some beautifully constructed non-sequiturs and evokes a great mood that makes one nostalgic for 1980's Italian horror; however, it really fails to enrapture the viewer and elicit any real terror.

Mother of Tears – The less said about the third (and final) entry in Dario Argento's Three Mother's trilogy the better as Mother of Tears is a prime example of what's wrong with modern, digital horror. First, one of the major issues I've had with modern Argento is his reliance on DV cameras. Sure it's probably cheaper and easier for the maestro to move around and shoot the scenes he wants, but I've seen other films shot on digital that don't look as cheap as some of his films do. They look no better than the countless straight-to-DVD gore fests that any number of hack filmmaker can make. Second, digital violence is annoying as hell. I'm not such a purist – or even a gorehound – where I need to see "realistic" violence, but one of the things that made the Italian subgenre of horror so great was its shocking violence and gore effects that were often given just as much thought and care as the blocking or lighting of a scene. The famous (and really well done) gore effects of early Argento and Lucio Fulci are usually the reasons people so fervently sought out a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a VHS back in the 90's. Now, anyone can do violence with the push of a button and usually they do it in such excess that it becomes boring because it's so stale. It's not even that the violence isn't "realistic"; it's the fact that it's not as tangible…so, for instance, when a woman gets a giant spear shoved through her babymaker (as is the case with Mother of Tears) it just looks stupid and sadistic. Oh, Argento tries to tidy-up the trilogy here, but he's slowly moving into hack mode as Mother of Tears plays more like those bad German ultra-violent horror rip-offs (they call them "homages") that go straight to DVD these days with its gratuitous nudity, lesbian cannibalism, pornographic violence (which makes pisses me off because it lumps Argento in with idiots like Eli Roth), and countless scenes of sadism and unnecessary brutality. Mother of Tears doesn't just put one in a bad mood because of how ugly its violence is, but also because –maybe more so than any other Argento picture – its aesthetic is so incredibly boring. The digital doesn't help (he's not using it the same way Michael Mann uses it to pick up bright colors), but I think it's a deeper issue than that: I just don't think Argento cares anymore. The last time the man has truly been interesting was with his 1986 giallo, Opera (even that film was hampered by an AWFUL heavy metal soundtrack).

I don't know if Mother of Tears marks the end for Argento (he even cribs better moments from his own films like a scene near the end where Asia Argento struggles to get out of a pit of bone and mud and body parts a la Jennifer Connelly's character in Phenomena), but it's certainly disheartening to see such an auteur result to the hack tendencies found in countless torture porn these days (the amount of blood is amazing in this film and made me think of all those shitty looking horror movies from France like High Tension), and continue to have such a horribly uninteresting output the last 20+ years. I realize I haven't uttered a single word about what the film was about, how it wraps-up the series, and what some of the standout scenes were…well that's because I was just too damn depressed to consider doing a full review of the film. It saddened me to see one of my favorite director's make such an awful movie, and really I don't know if I could tell you what was going on with the story (except that a group of cannibal witches try to resurrect the last remaining "mother") because the film was all over the place, which isn't abnormal with Italian horror, and I'm more than willing to give the story a pass if the aesthetic is arresting enough (like Inferno for example). But everything – and I mean every damn thing – about this film is so depressing and forgettable. It's sad that I'm looking forward to Argento's Giallo starring Adrian Brody solely because Argento has stated his displeasure with the producers cut of the film, essentially disowning the film because it isn't what he envisioned. Based on his recent output that's the most positive review the film (yet to be released in the states as it has been delayed almost a year now, much like Mother of Tears was) could possibly receive.

Italian Horror Blog-a-thon: Links (Updated 10/31)

[Here's what other people have contributed so far to the Italian Horror Blog-a-thon. Keep 'em coming...you can submit a piece anytime you'd like during the blog-a-thon's run. I will continue to update this on a daily basis so that it will be easy to find who has contributed and where you can find it. Everything will be in this one post organized by date. I will try to keep this updated at the top of the blog. All reviews written by me can be found below this post. Enjoy.]

Updated links after the jump...

Update: I have class from 8:30 until 3:45 today so if you send me a link to your post during that time trust that I'm not ignoring you...I will link to your review when I get home. However, my Oregon Ducks have a huge game against USC today at 5:00 (meaning I won't peel myself away from the television) and then I have a Halloween party at 7:30...sooo again, I promise I will post links when I get back from that. I just want to quickly say (and I'll wax poetic in a longer post) that I have been thrilled with the results of this blog-a-thon. It's been great to meet new lovers of the genre and have old friends contribute. I'll definitely be doing this again next year. Happy Halloween everyone!

Update #2: Check out the newly updated links below! Thanks for these amazing last minute entries, guys.


10/31

Jamie Uhler, one of this blogs nicest followers, has a wonderful post on Torso that is being featured and the equally wonderful Sam Juliano hosted Wonders in the Dark blog. Check it out.

Elgringo, author of the fabulous He Shot Cyrus blog, chimes in with some thoughts on Zombi 2.

And last but certainly not least is Dennis Cozzalio author of the amazing (and influential) blog Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule pens an exemplary essay on Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling, and some of the baggage that comes with a Fulci film.

Reviews are still coming in...I expect a few more updates today so keep checking back. A couple early one's for you, though. Chris Voss of the wonderful Celluloid Moon takes a look at one of my favorite Argetno films, Tenebre.

Also Jandy Stone of Rowthree.com checks in with her first attempts at the genre. I'm thrilled that so many people are introducing themselves to Italian horror because of this blog-a-thon. Jandy has some great thoughts up on Argento's Suspiria and Bava's The Mask of Satan. Check it out.


10/30

With just one day left in the blog-a-thon there are still some entries trickling in. Alec Pridgen (who has a picture of Reb Brown on his blog, so he's alright in my book) of the Mondo Bizarro blog has reviews up for Soavi's The Church and Argento's Phantom of the Opera.

Goregirl chimes in with some great thoughts on the classically named Black Belly of the Tarantula.

Samuel Wilson of the wonderful Mondo 70 blog (one of my favorites) gives his thoughts on the kinda-Italian horror/sleaze picture Delirium.

And finally my brother Troy is back from Italy and was inspired enough to write about the least Italian of Italian horror movies: Welcome to Spring Break by Umberto Lenzi. You have to check this review out...Troy has compiled some great stills and clips from the movie that will surely make you want to run out and get this movie. Plus it has Italian horror staple John Saxon! What more do you need? Get on over there and read about this so-bad-it's-good classic.


10/28

Roderick Heath co-contributor of one of my favorite daily stops, Ferdy on Films, contributes a fantastic review on Argento's brilliant Deep Red. Roderick and I share the same opinion on this particular Argento: it's his best film.

Another one of my favorite blogs is Antagony & Ecstasy, and if you've visited Tim's blog you know how prolific he is; but, what's even more impressive than the amount of work he produces is that there is an obvious care and craft that goes into each essay. Tim offers up his thoughts on what is considered the first (and most influential) horror film, I Vampiri. Check it out.

And finally today previous contributor Evil Dead Junkie has some thoughts on Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much.


10/27

Bob Turnbull of the extremely good Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind blog chimes in with some great capsule reviews.

Samuel Wilson of the fantastically entertaining Mondo 70 blog submits a piece on Pupi Avati's masterful and criminally underrated The House With Laughing Windows...easily one of the best Italian horror movies I've seen.

And thanks to my brother Troy there is a Youtube clip of Willy, the crazy caretaker of the sound stage in the movie Stage Fright. I mentioned in my review last Monday that you didn't want to miss Willy's delivery of the line "right between the eyes", and now it's online thanks to my brother. Check it out...it's pretty funny.

10/23

Neil of Agitation of the Mind makes it a hat trick as he covers the giallo The Case of the Bloody Iris.

Francisco Gonzalez chimes in with reviews for Soavi's Cemetery Man, Fulci's 8 1/2-esque A Cat in the Brain, and the famous Italian version of The Exorcist entitled Beyond the Door.

Jacob Burton of the B Movies Forever blog covers a couple of classics by also throwing his hat in the ring for The Case of the Bloody Iris, and Jacob also has some thoughts on Argento's seminal supernatural horror film Suspiria.


10/22

One of my favorite blogs The Basement of Ghoulish Decadence has a great entry up on Fulci's City of the Living Dead (a popular choice for this blog-a-thon).

And Michael Parent is back with some thoughts on Zombi 2.


10/21

Evil Dead Junkie, author of the wonderfully titled blog Things That Don't Suck, has a great review up for Fulci's gore classic City of the Living Dead.

One of my favorite blogs (maybe because Troll 2 is referenced in their banner) belongs to Tower Farm Reviews...two brothers who review horror movies (naturally Troy and I are trying to copy them with our blog Garbage Day), and back in September the brothers reviewed Lamerto Bava's bizarre horror film entitled Delirium. You have to check out the pics...just crazy.

Hans A. has been a good friend to this blog, and over at his site, Quiet Cool, he takes a look at an Exorcist rip off entitled Cries and Shadows. It wasn't uncommon at all for the Italian horror industry to latch onto whatever was trendy at the time. It's what killed Mario Bava's career. Check out Hans' submission.

Neil over at The Agitation of the Mind is back with another stellar contribution...this time it's for Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. Great stuff, Neil.

And last but not least today is Starmummy, author of the B Movies and Beyond blog...here are two links where you can find all of his wonderful and succinct reviews for Fulci and Argento. Enjoy.


10/20

J.D. of the always enjoyable Radiator Heaven tackles one of my favorite Italian zombie films, Michele Soavi's Cemetery Man.

Neil Fulwood author of The Agitation of the Mind gives Fulci's giallo Don't Torture a Ducking a look.

Erich Kuersten of Acidmeic Film has a wonderful piece on the style and allure we Italian fans love so much in a piece that looks to be a part of series entitled Bad Acid 70's-80's. Make sure to check it out.

Michael Parent of Le Mot du Cinephiliaque offers up his take on Argento's Suspiria.

Will Errickson author of Panic on the 4th of July has a post up on one of the seminal Italian horror films (and the one film that a lot people think was the catalyst for Italian horror becoming a pop culture phenomenon), Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters).

Chris Voss of Celluloid Moon has a write-up on Mario Bava's extremely influential Bay of Blood, which introduced to horror world to one of its favorite tropes: the dead teenager film.

Last but certainly not least is Samuel Wilson, a good friend to this blog, author of the always fascinating Mondo 70 film blog. He covers Lucio Fulci's finale to his Gates of Hell trilogy The House by the Cemetery. Check it out.


That's it for now. Keep the reviews coming, though. If you talked to me via email a few backs back I am still interested in you posting something for this. Just email it to me or leave the link here in the comments and I will make sure to link it up. I will continue to update this post.

Italian Horror Blog-a-thon: The Church (aka Cathedral of Demons, aka Demon Cathedral, aka Demons 3, aka In the Land of the Demons)

[Today we have a review for one of my favorite Italian horror films by my favorite Italian horror filmmaker. Here's another one, like City of the Living Dead, that I kind of dismissed when I initially watched, but subsequent viewings have been much kinder to this film. Oh, and it has what is possibly the best Italian horror soundtrack...Keith Emerson and Goblin doing Philip Glass! Enjoy]

Michele Soavi’s The Church is probably the most atmospheric, feast-for-the-eyes type of Italian horror film since Lucio Fulci's 1981 masterpiece The Beyond. It shares a lot of the surreal, nonsensical plot structure of Fulci’s film, too. But as we’ve come to discover through this blog-a-thon, if there’s one general rule to Italian horror it’s that you leave logic at the door. What Soavi has created here, despite less than favorable working conditions (I’ll get to that later), is a visual masterpiece of the subgenre. One of the best Italian horror movies to come out of the 80’s, and clearly shows why everyone thought that Soavi was the savior of Italian horror. He never made an uninteresting film, and The Church is one of his most fascinating.


A group of Teutonic Knights kick starts the story as they decapitate and plumage a small town full of people thought to be devil worshipers. They’re buried hastily, and a church is erected on top of the grave so that it will lock the evil in for eternity, but of course that doesn’t work. Right away Soavi shows his hops as we get plenty shots from the Knight’s POV, masking the screen and allowing us only to see the action through the clearing of their masks which is in the shape of the cross. Soavi seems to be doing two things here: showing us the limited vision of these “with hunters” by not just masking part of the screen, but also showing us the limited vision (or narrow-mindedness) of how organized religions were killing – the death and destruction is seen through the image of a cross. It’s one of many instances where Soavi showcases his skill of wanting to do more with this particular subgenre; Italian horror wasn’t all about gore for him like it was becoming for Fulci and Argento, and the genre was better for it as Soavi was getting back to the more unsettling nature that Italian horror lends itself to.

Back to the story: In modern day Germany we are introduced to what the cathedral looks like today. Lisa (Barbara Cupisti) is restoring a baroque fresco on the wall of the church and is immediately smitten with Evan (Tomas Arana) the new librarian. These characters are the catalyst for the evil that is about to be unleashed within the cathedral. The bishop knows about the architecture of the building and how it holds a key to a horrible secret that will unlock the demons of the past, but he is reluctant to share that information with Father Gus (Hugh Quarshie) who is not well liked by the other priests. All of this is kind of hard to keep track of (there’s not much care with the story as we have three different “main” characters throughout the film) as we keep cutting back and forth between Lisa and Evan’s story, the story of the priests, and the story of the daughter of the family that lives in the cathedral and are employed as caretakers for the priests. The daughters name is Lotte (a young Asia Argento) and she hates having to be cooped up all day in the cathedral. She has a secret getaway that not even the priests know about (because supposedly there’s only one way in and out of the cathedral), which comes in handy towards the end of the film.

Soavi films The Church in an unsettling, unnerving fashion where we are never quite sure what is going to happen next. He relies on hallucinations to displace the viewer (instead of playing the otherworldly scenes as if they were real), and this adds to the nightmarish feeling the film so perfectly evokes. At the hour mark or so the gathering of victims begins and the movie turns from curious and interesting supernatural horror flick to generic Demons-esque gore fest. And I think this is where there was a clear disconnect between Argento and Soavi. The gathering of victims trope doesn’t seem to fit with Soavi’s deliberate pace and moody storytelling (it seems more suited for a slasher movie or the schlocky Demons series helmed by Lamberto Bava…Soavi’s film is sometimes referred to as Demons 3), but somehow Soavi is able to make the film interesting despite the generic nature of the films plot (much like he did with Stage Fright). Soavi is able to fashion some really creepy moments amidst all the banality where people who just happen upon the church enter and die.

One of these scenes is where Evan, after opening the portal to the damned, is obviously not himself. He’s sitting at his typewriter pounding on the keys (wisely Soavi doesn’t use cheesy music to ramp up the creepy factor – he just lets the typewriter noises and the squeaky chair Evan’s sitting in do all the work) while Lotte sits nearby and listens to music. We see immediately that something isn’t right as the only key he is hitting is “6”. This leads to a rather bizarre and scary exchange between Evan and Lotte.

There’s also a creepy tracking shot towards the film’s climax where Lotte is leading Father Gus to her secret escape out of the cathedral. As they make their way underneath the cathedral they walk by what we presume to be the devil making love to Lisa (in a scene that seems cribbed from Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, but it’s effective nonetheless), and Evan leading the group of possessed in a satanic chant. The tracking shot, accompanied by the unnerving organ score by Emerson and Goblin, is one of the down-right creepiest things I’ve seen in a horror movie.

There’s also a great scene at the end (again showing what Soavi could do with a budget) where Father Gus solves the riddle of the architect, and just as the cathedral is about ready to crumble to the ground, the stack of bodies buried beneath the church (from the beginning of the movie) rises up in a muddy blob. It’s one of the weirdest visuals I’ve seen.

Despite the films deliberate pacing Soavi always manages to keep your interest. The man really knows how to frame a shot and make every image pop off the screen. There's a scene that shows Soavi's skill and ability to have a funny/shocking moment without being gratuitous. An old couple locked in the church bicker at each other; after the wife has been infected by the demons she wants her husband to accompany her to the bell tower. When they get up to the bell they notice there aren't any strings to ring the bell. What we get is more generic old married couple humor; however, the punch line is pretty funny as Soavi cuts away from the scene for a moment and then in a completely different scene we hear the bell...Soavi cuts back and it's the old woman hitting the bell with her husbands severed head.

Soavi had fun with this one, too, made evident by the aforementioned scene of the elderly couple in the bell tower. However, despite the fact that Soavi has some fun with certain scenes one aspect of the film that makes it so interesting is how it deals with its bizarre imagery. Soavi plays it straight in this regard unlike the previous camp film Demons and Demons 2, which were more about people morphing into disgusting monsters after becoming possessed; here Soavi seems to take the world of the occult pretty seriously (he would return to the subject just two years later with The Sect). Instead of these bizarre goings-on being played for reality (thus they would inevitably be played for laughs because there’s some pretty bizarre imagery in the film) Soavi has the victims hallucinate the odd things that happen to them – it’s the perfect way to elicit the uncertain feeling he wants his audience to have while watching his movie.

For instance in one scene a man who has been scratched by one of the possessed (or infected, if you will) begins to see weird reflections in the holy water. When he looks closer a giant piranha like fish comes out of the fountain and attaches it to the man’s face. A priest happens upon this and wonders what is going on as all he can see is the man scratching and pulling at his own face. There are numerous occurrences like this throughout the film, and they work so much better than had Soavi tried to legitimately pass off that there is a giant devil fish jumping out of the basin holding the holy water (which someone like Lamberto Bava or Fulci would have done with gory gusto).

Soavi once again ends one of his films with someone smiling at the camera (as he did in Stage Fright), but here I don’t think it’s a sardonic touch, I just think he has a devilish finish in mind. I think what one can extract from that ending (and the fact that Asia Argento plays the little girl in the beginning of the movie) is that Lotte is timeless…that she is always around when this evil is unleashed, so perhaps she is the one that brings the evil from city to city. I don’t know if that’s what Soavi intended, but one can definitely infer that from the smile Lotte gives at the end of the film as the blue light washes over her.

The movie is the epitome of what makes Italian horror so great. It's more than just gross scene after gross scene...it has genuinely scary moments that aren’t accompanied by a thrashing of keys or noises employed only to make the viewer jump, but these unnerving and unsettling scenes are always accompanied by the equally unsettling and unnerving musical score...a norm for Italian horror. The way these Italian horror soundtracks (Emerson and Goblin were favorites of Argento and Soavi) usher the viewer through the film ( I especially like how Soavi’s camera is fluid in introducing the cathedral while Philip Glass’ “Floe” is playing) is exactly how the filmmakers want you to approach their films: these aren’t films designed to make you jump out of your chair with cheap scare tactics, these are more cerebral films designed to get under your skin through a deliberate process – the films put you in a kind of reverie that you wish you could snap out of. I think it’s one of the reasons why this particular subgenre has such a passionate following, because these are definitely different kinds of horror movies…they’re a breath of fresh air from all the blasé horror films that get released in American theaters (this was especially the case during the 80’s).

The Church marked an important time in the Soavi’s career. Fresh off his slasher hit Stage Fright, Soavi was asked to join the production team for Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen after Gilliam had seen Stage Fright at a film festival. Soavi was asked to film over 200 special effects scenes, and after the ordeal was over, longed to be back in Italy making films with a close-knit crew, rather than on a film backed by Hollywood producers. Soavi stated that he liked the intimacy he experienced being First AD for Argento’s Opera, Tenebre, and Phenomena; and that the hugeness of Gilliam’s production just wasn’t for him (though he was thankful for the opportunity, and eventually worked with him again on the 2005 film The Brothers Grim as an AD).

The film also added more stress to the already strained relationship between Soavi the protégé and Argetno the mentor. Apparently during production Argento really wanted Lamberto Bava, another of Argento’s acolytes, to be the director of the film (since The Church was intended to be the third in the Bava/Argento series Demons), but he was kicked off the project after a lackluster script. Soavi was brought in to punch up the story, but Argento wouldn’t allow him to employ any of his own crew members. Argento insisted on using his own crew and breathing down the neck (he was co-writer and producer of the film) of Soavi throughout the production. Amazingly Soavi managed to survive and create something that still had his particular stamp on it. The style may be indebted to Argento, but if you’ve seen any of Soavi’s other films then you know after watching The Church that it’s unequivocally a Soavi film; and the fact that he was able to push his style through despite all the on-set problems proves the talent of this Italian maestro.

Many people felt like Soavi was the savior of Italian horror – especially after the success of this film and his hugely popular Cemetery Man – but family issues derailed his career as he took an extended sabbatical from filmmaking to care for his sickly son. When he returned to making movies it became more apparent that Soavi wasn't joking when he mentioned in a Fangoria interview that he doesn't like to repeat himself with his films and that he's "always trying to do something new with each film". That sentiment couldn't have been more true as he has made a handful of films since returning to filmmaking and none of the have been horror movies. A few have been mob flicks, and another was about the life of St Francis of Assisi…something new indeed. We can only hope that he tries his hand at horror again.

Here are tons of extra stills:

Italian Horror Blog-a-thon: Suspiria

[I need to make this quick as I'm work right now (someone was sick so I got called in) and I don't have a lot of time for the computer at the moment. Since I had to rush out of the apartment this morning to come and sub I didn't have time to post new material for the blog-a-thon...luckily my good friend Alexander Coleman from the superb film blog Coleman's Corner in Cinema has allowed me to reprint his amazing review of Dario Argento's seminal horror film, Suspiria. Enjoy. It's one of the best reviews of the film I've ever read. Thanks, Alexander for bailing me out!]


Originally posted over at Alexander's blog on December 15, 2008.

In Dario Argento's greatest motion picture, Suspiria, every blade of variegated light reaches out and stabs the viewer with a brilliantly calculated precision that is, all by itself, exceptionally haunting. In Argento's relentless scare-fest, every note of the alternative-progressive Italian rock group Goblin's alarmingly terrifying score serves both literally and figuratively as notes on a musical staff, the greater and most ambitious of which is the film's entire multi-pronged construction. Argento's intensely driven desires result in a picture not just of stunning frights springing from the depths of personal, physical and palpable despair but an impeccably-formed picture. Whether interpreted as single-minded obsessiveness as an artist or the ascendancy of that artist's talents, Suspiria nevertheless represents the height of its maker's powers, the apex of his artistic worth.


The son of the highly influential Italian film producer Salvatore Argento, Dario Argento cut his teeth with great commitment as a filmmaker representing the genre of giallo (veritably, “yellow” in Italian, finding its cinematic meaning from the luridly sallow dust jacket covers of Italian pulp detective fiction), beginning with his first picture, 1970's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Giallo's focuses on sensationalistic crimes and occurrences would be an ideal breeding ground for Argento's twisted odysseys. His first movie introduced audiences to what would become thematic touchstones for Argento, which helped to give him the moniker of the "Italian Hitchcock": usually men playing the role of amateur detective, witnessing the violent demise of or attack upon a woman, and frequently finding themselves under suspicion for the ghastly crime(s) by the police.



What Suspiria partly marks is Argento's progression as a filmmaker, and the continuous drifting from pulpy detective archetypes, such as in his second picture, The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971), and bringing forth a purified distillation of the horror/supernatural facet of Deep Red (1975). Deep Red foreshadows Argento's plunge into sheer horror, whereas earlier pictures The Cat O' Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972) display manipulations of the medium of cinema that push the boundaries of the constructions and formulations of cinematic time, plot, space and format that would serve as practical tools with which Argento could create a dreamlike (or rather nightmarish) picture. That film would be endowed with unbridled frankness, lacking in the restrictions that can and often do undermine such efforts.



After setting the time and place with a superfluous but unmistakably arresting formal declaration of the time—in a manner not dissimilar from Hitchcock's introductory notes in Notorious and Psycho—Suspiria opens with a gloriously grisly and histrionic murder. A young, beautiful woman is terrified by the recent happenings of her spiraling life with which she has become all too familiar. Finally she looks through a window, her eyes' moistly swimming and brimming with unadulterated terror. Suddenly an arm bursts through the glass and pulls her. Just as certainly, the viewer is pulled into the tale. The circumstances of the woman's shocking death are incredible, leaving a witness standing in the place of the audience dumbfounded and ushering in the doubtlessness of the supernatural as a decisive force within the framework of the narrative. It is with an overpowering sense of directorial manipulation and control that Argento spreads the lingering importance and relevance of such spellbinding set-pieces, atmospherically pushing the limits of spine-tingling spectacle. This most crucial characteristic of the film is thus immediately established.



Suspiria may be superficially about witches and witchery—derived in no small measure from Argento's fascination with Disney's Snow White and the allegorical trappings of the film's fair princess protagonist Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) being victimized by her metaphorical sisters (other young women) as well as more macabre forces—but its thematic undercurrents are largely about sisterhood, and spiritual awakenings. These are matters innately pertinent to tales of ghosts, ghouls and witches, however, emanating from the haunted environs like fearsome, unresting spirits. In Suspiria, the place of anagogic tumult—creating the conditions for the destruction of the ontic and tangible—is a famous German dance school, but the cadaverous and diabolically elaborate structure, from within and without, is as grandly flagitious and malevolent as the most imposing haunted house. And it is the linkage with that sub-genre where Suspiria finds much of its mood, characterized by long, sustained sequences of wordless terror and fiendish revelation. Shrouded whispers juxtaposed with pulse-pounding horror are richly unsettling at all times and Argento refuses to merely allow his vehicle to coast, driving the film's mounting dread with an awesome alacrity. Yet the commonplace, everyday fears of individuals are the hatchery from which Argento finds the more acutely realized visages of fear, transfixing the wholly captivated attention of the viewer against the diamantine backdrop of garish reds and translucently beryl blues.



That outlandish color scheme by Argento and his cinematographer Luciano Tovoli was considered to mimic the storybook unreality of the splashy coloring of the aforementioned “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Argento described the origins of the color scheme with this very important parallel parable: “We were trying to reproduce the color of Walt Disney's Snow White; it has been said from the beginning Technicolor lacked subdued shades, was without nuances—like cut-out cartoons.” The cumulative potency of the color scheme is magnificent, puissantly aiding Argento in chronicling the gripping tale of demonic evil. In one breathtaking shot after another, Argento allows the asperous obstructions to create a retina-taxing light show—the obstructions enabling him to create those blades of light against dark, shadowy penumbras. In a dynamic manner, Argento inverts many an expectation by making the camerawork only more furtive as the film proceeds, until finally certain bloody occurrences appear before the viewer. Buffeting the spectator with credulous performances, devilish whispers accompanied by eerie musical chords by Goblin and the efficacious usages of lashings of rain, cacophonous thunder, Argento's picture is an exquisitely composed assault on the senses.



The camera work is regularly scintillating in its parallax ramifications. Yet it is also quite frequently disorienting, causing greater discomfort and uneasiness. In one consummately fluid camera movement, Poseidon's Trident is directly, straightforwardly made the focal point of the camera. This pointed configuration, painted in crimson, fantastically portrays the inner truth of the picture, the central point of which is that souls are at stake. Appearing to be the Devil's property, this trident pitchfork is finally cast against the serene coolness of a pool below it, in which the protagonist princess swims with her only good friend at the dancing school, the porcelain-skinned redhead beauty named Sara (Stefania Casini), drawing the frightening implication that they are being brought baptismally into a most sinister nest of satanic iniquity. The unnerving hysteria produced by the elemental components of the picture here unabashedly curdle into the headlong climactic struggle between good and evil.



Argento's iconic cult film statement about inspiring sheer fear from his audience is understandable for those who have braved Suspiria's torrential downpour of aesthetically sumptuous and adventurous horror. Argento is routinely quoted as saying that he wanted to exceed the 375 centigrade degree experience of fear for the audience, reaching a 400 centigrade. With Suspiria, Argento grabbed a hold of a wide canvas and utilized every last nook and cranny. His utensils are varied and precisely applied, as diverse as Goblin's nerve-shattering score to an army of descending maggots symbolizing the rot of humanity to the aplomb of Alida Valli to noir dame goddess Joan Bennett in her last film role, and he makes opulent use of everything in his arsenal. The film he created from these disparate pieces is astonishing in its texture, terrifically resonant in its afterglow. This is cinema of the visceral, of the vibrantly chimeric, of the connaturally aware. Built on the very foundational quiddity of penetrative fear, Suspiria is a cinematic maelstrom, seemingly originating from the very innermost abysm belonging not merely to Argento but to all who bravely dare to peer through subfuscous trappings of the soul.

Italian Horror Blog-a-thon: The Beyond

[Today I dust off an old review I wrote when I started this blog almost two years ago. There's no denying the cult following Fulci has for his 1979 film Zombi 2, but I think his best post-giallo work is found in this weird little nonsensical number from 1981. Enjoy.]

Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond is one of the best films of the Italian Horror genre. The film is definitely better than most horror movies, and it is doubly better than most Italian horror movies. The problem some people have with the film is that it makes no sense and has no interest in following any kind of sensible or linear story path. Fulci was not interested in making stories that made sense, and really to his credit, The Beyond, for all of its craziness and inane moments, probably makes the most sense when held up to his other films. Fulci and the Italian's love to stylize things -- really ever since Fellini decided to abandon the neo-realist movement in Italy, all bets were off -- and Fulci takes after filmmakers not just within the horror genre. Look at some of the films of Bertolucci (like The Conformist) which are almost all style over substance; or the surreal, ethereal nature of Fellini’s final films; but Fulci’s style is mostly akin to the supernatural, non-linear stylings of Dario Argento. The Italian's had an eye for imagery (and Fulci had a thing for shooting eyes...) and for how something could just pop on the screen (or out of sockets); whether it be beautiful shadow play (like The Conformist) or the bright neon and somewhat otherworldly colors seen in Argento’s Suspiria, Fulci definitely knew how to create an eerie atmosphere on par with Argento, and The Beyond is his supernatural masterpiece.


The "plot" of The Beyond, however, is another thing, and usually with Fulci you have more fun at the expense of the story, rather than actually being chilled or thrilled by it. The Beyond is about a favorite theme of Fulci's, the "gates of hell" being opened up for some reason by some ancient artifact or painting, or because a priest hangs himself (all themes from his films). Time travel also comes into play as do psychics and yes, even when they don't belong: zombies.



This was the second film in Fulci's "gates of hell" trilogy (which also included City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery), however it was released before the unofficial first film of the series City of the Living Dead. I could try to go on and on about how there are themes at work here and Fulci really was trying, but I would just be lying and trying to turn a hack filmmaker into something more than he could possibly be. There are a number of retrospectives by people who think Fulci was a great artist, and there are no doubts that he had the eye of a very astute student who studied the Italian masters, but I just don't think he can be taken too seriously. Now to his credit it was the producers who made him add a hospital full of zombies at the end of The Beyond, not Fulci, so he wasn't completely hack-tastic here (he didn't want these films to be like his smash hit Zombi 2). Fulci succeeds in making The Beyond one of those ethereal experiences I always attribute to Argento’s early work. Unfortunately for Fulci, this was about it for him as he would give up any remnants of talent he had for the easy buck, as he would finish his career with awful slasher films like The New York Ripper and Murder Rock(which is sad considering how good his career was in the 70’s when he was making interesting gialli). The Beyond is indeed the best of Fulci’s post-giallo career, but if you are looking for a scary story – something that moves beyond the eeriness of the images, then you should probably look elsewhere.




The film opens when a warlock/artist in 1920's Louisiana paints something evil looking which ends up rousing the interests of a lynch mob. They burst into the 7 Doors Hotel (The butchered American version of the film is called The Seven Doors of Death) and find the man in room 36, they pour lots of quicklime (a favorite of the Italian's) on him as Fulci proceeds to film the scene in typical Italian horror film fashion. Meanwhile there is a little girl downstairs reading out of some book of the occult (the same book used in The City of the Living Dead…so Fulci was trying to have an underlying thread run through this “trilogy”). As the quicklime does its thing, the book (gasp) goes up in flames. That's about all of the story I can relate because there really isn't much else to tell. It's all set up for scene after scene of Fulci's most famous gore moments. And they’re good ones.

The best part about Italian horror (and especially Italian zombie) movies is the fact that things take so long to happen, usually with a really weird funky bass line or synth playing over the action. What easily begins as unsettling and somewhat unnerving, turns into a gross out fest that sometimes turns laughable because of how long the camera lingers on something so grotesque (the famous spider scene or the moment where acid burns off a ladies face are two scene’s that come to mind). Often these loooong moments of gore seem like filler, but sometimes they work in evoking a sense of otherworldiness that displaces the viewer and unsettles the nerves, but whatever the effect one thing is for certain: it's no wonder Fulci didn't tighten things up through the editing process, the film would only be 50 minutes long.

In the opening scene mentioned above the mob pour quicklime on the artist and for about two minutes you get to listen Fabio Frizi's synth play over the imagery while the calcium oxide does its thing. Skin pops, eyes fall out, and then if that weren't enough, Fulci has to nail the dude up to the wall. It's a pretty brutal scene that gives the viewer a sense of things to come and showcases some of what made Fulci so popular with Zombi 2; here he ups the ante substantially.




(Back to the “plot”) Well sure enough cut to present day and the heroine Liza buys up the hotel where the artist was murdered. During the remodel she notices a bad leak in one of the rooms. She calls Joe the Plumber (were the McCain/Palin campaign manager’s fans of Fulci?) and he goes down to investigate. Well this takes him under the hotel and face to face with the artist...who is now a zombie! It's all academic from there as poor Joe the Plumber dies by means of Fulci's favorite death: injury to eye.

The injury to eye death is seen all through Italian horror (especially post-Zombi 2) and Fulci was the master of it. This shot usually consisted of the cheap scare of something that you think is dead springing to life and grabbing the face of the living. This leads to a POV shot and once again the plodding camera of Fulci lingers on things just long enough so we realize how fake things look and how horrible the violence is going to be. Once we (as Joe) see that the fingers are going straight for the eye socket...out it goes. Once Joe is dead, the picture the artist painted reappears and dun dun dun...the gates of hell have been opened.

Another scene that is brilliantly strange and hilarious is when one of the characters is researching the gates of hell, and the weird occurrences around town and in the hotel. He finds the book he needs (a book about the history of the hotel) at the very top of a bookshelf (thanks to the librarian played by Fulci, in a cameo), and as he climbs the ladder for no reasoning whatsoever lightening strikes and what started out as a normal scene turns into something so bizarre and hilarious I think I'll just let you see it for yourselves:



Click here to watch video


Again, the staples of Fulci's "craftsmanship" are at work here. The scene goes on so long that it becomes obvuous that two out of the four spiders have strings attached to them. Not to mention the spiders make a ridiculous hissing noise, and they chomp when they eat this guys flesh as if they were the Simpson's sitting down for dinner. It's always a paradox with Fulci, because the film is pretty squirm inducing, and when he wanted to he could really put the effort in to pull off a great looking gore effect; however, sometimes he just phoned it in as he did with this scene and the obvious fake spiders. Still...it's one of the most memorable (and was one of the most heavily cut) scenes of the film.

There are other great moments like when the zombie artist (remember him) is hooked up to a machine to indicate its heart rate (that should make it obvious what scene will follow), or how about when a beaker of acid (why is there acid just sitting around in a room of corpses?) tips over and eats away at an entire face for what seems like an eternity (again, Fulci getting every last minute out of his budget) and then that same acid slowly approaching a creepy girl in what looks like jell-o; also in this same scene, how does the girl escape? We don’t know because Fulci just ends the scene with the girl screaming, looking up at all the zombies about to attack her in the morgue. But the girl comes back later in the movie just so Fulci can have someone blow her face off (in what is probably the most famous death in the movie, and perhaps in all of Italian Horror). Or, how about the scene where a blind girl gets eaten alive by her seeing eye dog in an obvious homage to Dario Argento's Suspiria? All of these are wonderfully memorable scenes from what is one of the seminal horror films to come out of the 80's.



Click here to watch video



The Beyond is full of wonderful gory death scenes, and that is why it's fondly remembered and was so fervently sought out after it appeared on the infamous "video nasties" list. Every low budget independent zombie (or regular horror) film made today in some way borrows Fulci's philosophy and style of gory filmmaking. Watch when Joe the Plumber’s wife is shocked to see her dead husband approach her. There is a spike in the wall right behind her and then watch how long this scene takes to develop. The pay off is great, and you can see this pacing today in gory torture porn like Hostel and Saw. There's also a head being shot off and glass from a window somehow finding its way onto some poor guys face. If Fulci knew anything he knew that if he spliced in the visceral moments with the deliberate pacing of his story – the fact that the audience had to wait for the big bad gory moment – it made it all the better..


Click here to watch video


Fulci, after the 70's, never made anything as good as The Beyond. For all of the crap I am giving it, the film really does look good on DVD, and Fulci was good a creating an eerie atmosphere and some really nice shots (I especially like the shot of the Medium with no pupils on a vast and expansive highway) that created a unique, ethereal (there’s that word again, but it works so well when talking about Italian horror) mood rare to the horror genre. I would liken it to what Wes Craven did with A Nightmare on Elm Street where you never knew what was real and what was fantasy; however, where Nightmare creates an unsettling feeling as you watch, The Beyond fails to reach that kind of unnerving of our emotions. For example, Fulci never really takes the material seriously or really approaches it at all. Secondly, the Italian filmmakers had Fulci's blueprint from Zombi 2 on every set, so screenplays received very little attention because the producers had an idea of what would make them money: zombies and gore (which explains the zombies at the end of this movie).

Italian exploitation cinema has always been about making movies that are popular in other countries. It's why Mario Bava and some of the other classic Italian horror filmmakers become obsolete in the 70's, because Italian cinema was all about spy movies and cop movies (not to mention Cannibal films and Mad Max type films that would bleed into the 80's). The filmmakers for The Beyond were no different, they knew the blueprint for making enough money that would insure they could finance their next movie (based on Romero's success in the states with his Dead movies) -- Italian hack-filmmaker Umberto Lenzi is a perfect example of this "blueprint theory", only working once with both the cannibal (Cannibal Feroux) and zombie genre (Nightmare City); however, both were arguably his two most famous and profitable films (he also worked in every genre there was, as did Fulci towards the end of his career). This understanding of how Italian exploitation cinema works causes the zombie moments of The Beyond (read: the ending of the film) to feel flat and passé (Fulci's Zombi 2 did in fact gross more than Romero's film, so it only seemed natural that his next film would have zombies in it). However, the rest of the film is daringly original in comparison (and after understanding the circumstances), unlike most horror films of that era.



Some would prefer to see The Beyond as a really crappy, nonsensical film; however, I prefer to view the film through the lens of ethereal, atmospheric horror that displaces the viewer...and it's wonderfully fun camp, too. I can see why Tarantino loved the movie enough to give it a midnight revival in the late 90's. The film has many charms, looks great, has hilarious dubbing, and some of the iconic gore moments in all of horror cinema. If you're a horror fan, there should be no reason that you haven't seen this film yet.