Dressed to Kill (1980)

Director: Brian De Palma
Writer(s): De Palma
Starring: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen, and Keith Gordon

I have not seen a lot of Brian De Palma’s filmography, but an almost universal acceptance—even amongst his own fans—is that the results are wildly uneven. Having seen Dressed to Kill, I can only imagine such feedback is accurate, because even the results within this 105-minute love affair to Italian giallos manages to run the entire gamut from unintentionally hilarious, to feverishly original.

Angie Dickinson plays Kate Miller, a sexually-frustrated wife who vents about her husband’s poor performance in the sack to her psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine). So desperate is she for an intense sexual encounter that she throws herself at him, to which he denies her, on the basis that he is both married, and a doctor. So she heads to an art museum, where she catches the eye of a mysterious man. In a ballsy scene that seems to go on forever, Kate searches for the man, while he plays “hard to get”. First, she drops (or intentionally leaves?) one of her gloves on the ground. The man picks it up and tries giving it back to her, but she seems to think she is being attacked (?) and runs away. Then she realizes he was just trying to give her back her glove and goes searching for him, only to discover that he is gone. Just as she’s about to give up for good, she spots him, waving her glove, in a taxi cab.

The entire above sequence lasts close to nine minutes, and features no dialogue whatsoever; it is accompanied entirely by symphonic score. Somehow, despite Kate’s ignorance over the whole glove fiasco, it works, but it’s not the only time De Palma allows substance to fight with style; thanks to his assured direction, style generally manages to win, but the margin always seems to be too close for comfort.

Anyway, having just met this man, they proceed to make out (and then some) in the back of the taxi. She goes home with him and spends some intimate time with him, before they both crash on the couch, to the soothing sounds of television. She gets up and plans to sneak out, but then contemplates calling her husband, which she finally does. Like in all these movies, she can’t bring herself to speak to him, but his uncaring attitude after answering the phone tells her all she needs to know, so she hangs up. Next, Kate goes to leave her man a note, only to discover paperwork that affirms he has a venereal disease. Oops! This pointless plot contrivance will be a moot point in only a matter of moments. She gets on an elevator to head to the lobby, but the forgetful bitch has once again forgotten something…this time it’s only her wedding ring. Again, it's another moot point--once she hits the seventh floor, she is viciously slaughtered by a woman wielding a straight razor.

As with many giallo films, there are a couple witnesses: a prostitute and her latest customer. He jets the moment he sees Kate’s mutilated body, but in true Italian slasher film fashion, the prostitute eventually teams up with Kate’s son, Peter, and the two launch their own investigation into the murder. It just so happens, too, that Peter is a science nerd; his freewheeling creations, paired up with Kate’s fascination (in both the case and, eventually and inexplicably, Peter himself) put them hot on the trail, and directly in the crosshairs of, the killer!

I have to confess that I never care enough to guess the identity of the killer in any of these films; oftentimes, the clues laid out don’t add up to much, but here I have to say it all comes together surprisingly well. I still didn’t even try guessing as to the killer’s identity, but once it’s revealed, it does actually make sense. Also true to similar films from the genre, there’s even an obligatory “wrap up” at the end, featuring a panel of characters more or less breaking down every little detail of the movie, just to make sure we understand everything and were following along. It also goes deeper into the murderer’s motivations, and I have to say, it’s pretty inspired stuff, especially considering I don’t even like most of these scenes in authentic giallos.

In the end, Dressed to Kill is often dated, but at least it’s never boring. De Palma utilizes some elongated sequences to incredible effect (the whole elevator murder sequence is a thing of beauty), but also slips up with several split-screen scenes that are so unnecessary, they’re singlehandedly the “unintentionally hilarious” scenes I alluded to in my intro. It also doesn’t quite have the same level of inventiveness or wild visual splendor that a great film by, say, Argento might have, but it’s probably as close to capturing the same level of whimsy that any American director could hope to achieve, especially within the era this movie was made.

RECAP: It alternates seamlessly between “pointless”, “dated”, “inspired”, and “original”, but De Palma’s work is certainly never boring. There are a few moments of unintentional hilarity, and there’s not nearly as much style as one would find in a typical giallo film (of which this was clearly inspired by), but it’s helped along by some excellent shots, a great orchestral score (by Pino Donaggio), and confident direction from De Palma. Of course, sometimes that confidence is entirely misplaced, but it’s still confidence nonetheless. Worth a look for giallo fans, but slasher fans and gore hounds take note: aside from the murder that serves as centerpiece to the story, there’s not a lot of additional violence at all.

RATING: 6/10

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The Ruins (2008)

Director: Carter Smith
Writer(s): Scott B. Smith, adapted from his own novel
Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker, and Laura Ramsey

Take out the “I” in the title, and you have a pretty fitting description of this movie: it’s a shitty, sloppy, dirty mess. It features a cast of young, generalized caricatures running through the tired, unimaginative landscape of a trillion films before it, with the added misstep of firmly believing that computerized shrubbery attacking humans is anything but completely and utterly laughable. My wife and I had the misfortune of seeing this in the theater upon its first release; it was a terrible movie in 2008, and it’s every bit as much of a terrible movie now.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Four friends, both boyfriend/girlfriend sets, go to vacation in Mexico. There, they meet a German guy on vacation, who’s looking for his missing brother. Apparently, he disappeared while navigating some Mayan ruins that—surprise!—conveniently aren’t located on any map, and of course he talks the four Americans into joining him in the search. After all, what could go wrong?

Well things go wrong immediately. Right after arriving at said ruins, a group of Mayans completely surround them, and to show they mean business, kill a random character thrown in simply to serve as fodder. The remaining characters run to the top of a hill, where they discover an old tent belonging to the last group that climbed up there. Uh oh, what could have happened to them?

Eh…I’m just going to stop there with the synopsis, because I already feel like I’ve wasted too much time. All you need to know is that the main protagonist are “talking” vines. That’s right…it’s apparently not ignorant enough that weeds are a movie’s main villain, so they also get to talk. This communication is done via “flowers” that are attached to the vines; they function basically as tape recorders and parrots, able to “play back” sounds that they hear around them. If that sounds funny to you, that’s because it is—these scenes are so atrociously done that one can’t help but laugh.  How this idea was greenlit is already above me; the fact that it played at thousands of theaters during the recession--a time, you will recall, that the movie industry was claiming that piracy was killing it, yet refused to alter its excessive budgets and overblown payrolls--is mindboggling.

Aside from this, it all ends up the way a vast majority of these movies do: the top-billed woman survives while everyone else ends up dead. The only thing this movie manages to do slightly well are the practical effects. No, I’m not talking about the terrible CGI vines crawling around everywhere and "talking"—I’m talking about the actual gore effects, which seem to be done using prosthetics. These scenes, though few and far between, are mildly effective, and could have been even moreso if they were contained in a film without such a ridiculous premise.

You probably already knew if this was a movie for you or not before you sat down to read this review, and I highly doubt this changed it for you. Hey, I won’t judge: we all like what we like. But be forewarned that, in order to truthfully enjoy The Ruins, you have to shut your mind completely off, be under the age of twelve, and have an incredibly high tolerance for stupidity and ignorance.

If you still want to watch it and don't fit that criteria, then go right ahead: I won’t judge.

RECAP: It’s an uninspired, formulaic “horror” movie with the addition of computer generated, “talking” vines for Christ’s sake—if that doesn’t set it up for failure right off the bat, I don’t know what will. There’s nary an ounce of imagination in this droll mess, with everything ending more or less the way you know it will. But it’s how you take the magical, talking weeds—played straight, and with the filmmakers’ earnest belief that such a thing is scary instead of one of the stupidest ideas ever committed to celluloid, and thus unintentionally hilarious—that will singlehandedly decide what you think of this movie. We already know where I stand on that.

RATING: 2/10 

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Angst (aka Fear) (1983)

Director: Gerald Kargl
Writer(s): Kargl and Zbigniew Rybczynski
Starring: Erwin Leder, Edith Rosset, Silvia Rabenreither, and Rudolf Götz

I had been wanting to see Angst for a while before finally sitting down to watch it one winter evening. If I remember correctly, I learned about its existence from a local theater that was playing it as part of an ongoing weekly horror series—I read its plot and was immediately enamored with the idea. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make either of the film’s showings, so I had to postpone its viewing until later.

What drew me to this project was its dark and unrelenting subject matter: Erwin Leder, in a solid performance, plays a man known only as The Psychopath. He is serving a ten-year sentence for stabbing his mother (who, for the record, survived), and today is the day that he is going to be released. But prison did not change him; no, The Psychopath turns out to be a fitting name, because he knows the moment that he becomes a free man, he is immediately going to find a victim (or two, or three) to kill. The only difference is, this time he is not going to get caught.

And sure enough, his quest for murder is the entire plot—so great is his desire to kill, that he will let nothing get in his way, and we are along with him for the ride as he attempts to do what comes naturally to him. It kind of plays out like Man Bites Dog, only this killer isn’t in on the joke. With favorable comparisons to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, I was expecting the whole affair to have the feeling of Otis and Henry’s taped home invasion attack, only elongated to feature length. That isn’t quite what I got.

Unsurprisingly, a man nicknamed The Psychopath who stabbed his mother, has no family or friends to pick him up after he is released, and so he goes to the first café that he sees. Inside is an older man, two young girls, and a waitress. He orders what appears to be Italian sausage, sees the two girls looking at him, and desperately wants to kill them. But he knows performing such an act in a public place would lead to his immediate arrest, so he resists the urge. He goes outside and hails a cab. The driver, conveniently a female, would make an excellent victim, but she catches him just as he is about to strangle her with his shoelace. Panicked and desperate, he bolts out of the cab—conveniently leaving behind his briefcase—and just runs until his lungs can’t take it anymore.

Conveniently, this takes him to an old, secluded house, which he feels would be the perfect place to carry out a murder. No one is home—or so he thinks—so he breaks a window and plans to await the return of the inhabitants. He soon learns that one person is home…a mentally handicapped man in his forties, who can’t say much more than “mommy” and “daddy”, and gets around via a wheelchair. Why anyone would leave a person in this condition home alone at all is beyond me, but we’ll just say the owners made a quick trip to the store and give them the benefit of the doubt, because very soon after, the house’s inhabitants return. Thankfully for our psychopath, it’s a mother and daughter!

From here, he kills everyone in the house, attempts to clean himself up, decides to carry the bodies with him rather than leave them behind, goes in search of more victims, and that takes us to the finale. But what sets Angst apart from others in its ilk is the straightforward manner in which the murders are committed: the camera lingers on each murder, giving them a gritty realism that’s missing from other films. At least, that’s the mood they were trying to cultivate, but Angst is a film where its lofty ideas just don’t match up with what makes it onto the screen.

For starters, and a [SPOILER ALERT], we have the murder of the mentally-handicapped brother. He is drowned in a bathtub. Now, human feelings and emotions are not lost on me: I completely understand the heinousness of such an act. I mean, murder itself is already about as disgusting as it can get, but to kill someone so defenseless is somehow even more heartbreaking. I get that. Only here, it’s not, because the character is treated like a caricature: the first time we see him, he has slobber on his face, right before uttering “Da-da?” It might sound depressing, but the scene is presented in such an unconvincing way that it almost approaches self-parody. [END SPOILER ALERT]

The whole protracted murder sequence itself has a bizarre surrealism about it that I just couldn’t wrap my head around. Why is it these women are being tied up and attacked, yet never once scream for help or even seem to fight back? They just lay there as he wraps them up with tape, or stockings, or whatever other item seems to be nearby. The most shocking part of the deaths, at least for me, is merely how cheesy they are. I was expecting the murder set pieces to really deliver, considering they are mostly the point of the movie, but they ranged from hokey, to just plain ridiculous.

One thing that works, that I haven’t seen mentioned very often is the film’s pitch black humor…or at least, what I hope was supposed to be intentional. Like the way the killer doesn’t want to get caught, yet doesn’t even attempt to cover his tracks or clean up after himself. Or the way his plans are always getting foiled by little more than bad luck. Or the way he attempts to revive an unconscious woman by force-feeding her a dozen pills. I chuckled aloud at a couple of these scenes; they manage to be humorous without lightening up the atmosphere.

The cinematography, with its almost constant use of tracking shots, especially during the outdoor scenes, is a thing of beauty. The filmmakers, lead by director Gerald Kargl and cinematographer (as well as co-writer) Zbigniew Rybczynski make extensive use of close-up shots of The Psychopath as he treks through the town, looking for fresh victims, shots that appear as if the killer has a camera attached to himself. These scenes actually really give the film some kinetic energy and a sense of urgency that really makes it come alive…it’s a wonder more films don’t utilize this technique, because it’s a simple, yet very effective way to put your audience right there with a character. But even the photography isn’t without its faults: some scenes go on way too long, giving the film a “real-time” feeling that just isn’t necessary here. For example, when The Psychopath is dragging bodies throughout the house, there’s no implied passage of time where he grabs the body, then it cuts to the final location. No, we have to watch him drag it through every room, and down stairs, and through doors before finally laying it to rest, only to go back to where he came from so he can do the same to the other body. I get this is supposed to give kind of a “documentary” feel that puts us right in the action, but a lot of it just felt unnecessary elongated.

When it was all said and done, I just couldn’t help but feel quite strongly underwhelmed. It started off excellently and had loads of potential, but the lack of good performances outside of the lead doesn’t do it any favors, nor do the overlong takes that make some scenes a drag. It also builds up to the ending that you’re expecting, so there are no twists to look forward to…it’s just a straight shot from point A to point B without much in between.

RECAP: Made in the early ‘80s, which would have been at one of the peaks of the slasher film, Angst is a film that goes in the opposite direction, instead attempting to deliver a realistic expose on the mind of a man who, quite simply put, is born to kill. While it deals with some pretty intense themes (such as the murder of a mentally-handicapped man), the actual execution of this material, from director Gerald Kargl, leaves a lot to be desired, with results often bordering on the amateur: scenes go on way too long, characters being attacked refuse to scream, and vulnerable characters are treated simply as unengaging sterotypes. Erwin Leder is good, and fascinating, in the main role, but Henry he is not, and Angst is a clumsy mess of a film that’s more disturbing, and powerful, on paper than it is on screen.

RATING: 5/10 

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(it's honestly an amazing trailer)

Kuroneko (1968)

Director: Kaneto Shindo
Writer(s): Shindo
Starring:  Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kiwako Taichi, and Hideo Kanze

I have seen a lot of well-shot horror movies lately—Night of the Hunter and Eyes Without a Face spring immediately to mind—and yet none of them can touch the visual poetry on display in Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko. Oftentimes, when focusing on primarily-visual films, critics will mention how you can take a snapshot of every single frame of film, and every one would be a beautifully composed, perfect picture. But more often than not, this comes off as pure hyperbole. Kuroneko is perhaps the closest, if not the only one, where such lavish praise is completely true—every scene seems intent on furthering its eerie atmosphere, and it does this through a series of inventive shots. Just from witnessing this movie, I am unsurprised that Mr. Shindo lasted a whopping seven decades in the film industry.

Though sometimes touted as a horror story, Kuroneko is, at its heart, a surprisingly poignant tale of love. There are the typical trademarks of a horror film—some graphic violence (for the time), the haunting images, and two ghosts as the main stars—but it never seems interested in crossing the line from eerie to truly terrifying, instead focusing on the emotional aspects of its tale.  This is a welcome change from the norm; one that attacks and plays on our emotions in an attempt to elicit fear, rather than relying on a series of shocks that quickly wear off.

In a house surrounded by a bamboo grove (in fact, its full Japanese title translates to “A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove”) lives Yone, and her daughter-in-law Shige. As the film opens, a group of samurai close in on the house, looking for some food and perhaps a place to stay. When they find two women, they see a way to release some built-up desires; the group take turns raping the women, before leaving them for dead. To ensure that they complete their task, they set the house on fire.

Curiously, the house burns down around the corpses, leaving them in relatively good shape for having suffered third-degree burns over their entire bodies. A black cat enters the frame, and begins to purr and meow around them, before licking their faces.

A short while later, a man who is related to the two women, and who is a swordsman, returns from fighting in a war. He sees the burned-down shell of his former house, and interrogates the neighbors about the events, hoping to find someone that knows what happened; since none of the neighbors witnessed anything concrete, he remains unsure as to the circumstances surrounding their fates.

As it turns out, the women have made pacts with a demon to grant them revenge—in exchange for the ability to roam about the Earth as ghosts, thus avoiding a hellish eternity in the underworld, they must lure and kill every samurai that they encounter. To do this, Shige, who is young and attractive, lures passing samurai to their elegant home, by pretending she is lonely and in need of help. When they arrive at their destination, she invites them in; perhaps sensing an opportunity to sleep with the young lady, they always accept. From there, the mother loads them up on some strong sake, and once the samurai pass out, usually frolicking in the sheets with the young woman, Shige bites out their throats.

This happens like clockwork many times before it captures the attention of local Japanese authorities, who send Hachi, their best swordsman, to figure out what is leaving throatless male corpses all over the Japanese countryside. But as it turns out, Hachi is Shige’s husband, and Yone’s son, who was off for several years fighting in a war, where he attained the role of samurai. This leads to a conflict of interest on both sides: Do the ghosts ignore their pact and let Hachi go, thus incurring the wrath of the underworld? Does Hachi have the nerve to kill his own wife and mother?

Kuroneko’s biggest problem is how much stock it puts into its images: we’ve already mentioned that it’s a gorgeous work, but the story is rather repetitive. Even worse, it squanders a rather emotional middle section, by far the peak of the entire film, by featuring a lackluster ending that feels like a total regression. Judging from the way Mr. Shindo confidently handles his material, I figured he had a final trick up his sleeve; a final image or scene to one-up them all. On these grounds, the finale was a huge disappointment.

If you like your horror Japanese, then you will probably love Kuroneko even more than I did. Fans of visually-driven horror will also find plenty to like, so I’m recommending it heartily to this kind of crowd—all others should approach with a fair amount of caution.

RECAP: I liked Kuroneko, but for me, visuals can only carry a film so far. The story is good, but doesn’t even come close to matching the level of quality that the visuals clearly strive to maintain. There is some depth to the story—the aforementioned relationship between Hachi and his dead wife, which sounds creepy when I say it that way, is surprisingly resonant—but it relies all too often on repetition, which really bogs certain sections down, all the while leading to an ending that just feels anti-climactic. Recommended to fans of Japanese horror cinema, but others should approach with caution; this certainly isn’t a movie I’d want to watch again, at least anytime soon, despite the excellent photography.

RATING: 6.5/10

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