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The Joy of Recycling: THE WHITE GORILLA (1945)

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If your idea of endlessly re-watchable half-asleep outsider gold /accidental surrealist multi-meta collage is the same as mine--which seems almost impossible--viddy well the THE WHITE GORILLA (1945), streamable everywhere. and don't even bother trying to figure out what's going on with all the flashbacks and animal reaction stock footage cutaways. It's better that way. Just find the best transfer you can, wait until you're nodding off in your easy chair with  slippers, loyal wolfhound, glass of port, and unlit pipe at your side, and stream away (you can find it on my YouTube mix Vintage Jungle Madness). Why? Low stakes, a pleasing narration, and the gorillas, and the liberating sense of 'seeing the seams', whereas the tools of covering lack of budget are revealed. Stock footage, foreign releases, public domain classics, home movies, silent documentaries--whatever is in the fridge, so to speak, can become integral to some story tellable only by the few actors and sets you have at your temporary disposal. When it 'works' it's priceless, that sense of found object outsider art you might get at the gallery show at a mental hospital.  
Ed Wood validating his cross-dressing via blue collar conversation heard over industrial footage of steel girders pumping white hot out of the forge, or building a movie around a home movie of Bela Lugosi sniffing a flower outside his house for Plan Nine--it's like poetry structured from whatever word magnets happen to be on the fridge. And what about the way Game of Death II composites a Bruce Lee performance out of classic footage (stretching back even to when Lee was a child actor), outtakes from Enter the Dragon, and even Lee's actual funeral? Ingenious, even if it, or especially because, it never quite gels. And Curtis Harrington Queen of Blood with young pre-fame John Saxon and Dennis Hopper as astronauts encountering a a martian queen conjured up via footage from a Russian sci-fi film?  Sublime! Peter Bogdanovich making Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women from a different Russian sci-fi film by folding in new scenes of Mamie Van Doren in a blonde wig and glittery silver hip huggers? I'm floating on a lava sea of Lady from Shanghai references. And like Ed Wood's BRIDE AND THE BEAST (1) and the Luigi Cozzi GODZILLA Redux, of late, two composite gems I keep on my emergency dial, so to speak. I've recently found a new favorite... alas it's barely an hour long. Would it was a million.

THE WHITE GORILLA
 (1941) Dir. Harry L. Fraser
Starring  Ray "Crash" Corrigan

"The jungle.... weird...."

Godardesque meta manna cascades like a waterfall, thundering library stock music crashes and recedes in glittering harp glissandos over the credits proudly kicking off the post-modern edge with a credit that says "An All-Star Cast." We know right away that the normal handrails of narrative are going to be coming and going. And then there is Ray Crash Corrigan"--usually inside a gorilla suit or doing stunts-- stars, narrates, and probably fights himself. He's kind of got an Ed wood drinking buddy vibe. He's no milquetoast. He's played gorillas in every movie ever made, and here is in a gorilla movie, as himself. We're off and walking! We cut through the usual roster of dangerous African animal stock footage as his narration sets the scene.

He plays Steve Collins, a chewed-up guide who stumbles out of the African jungle and into the trading post (the actual only non-stock set) where three white guys are drinking and kvetching about jungle noise. Naturally after a drink to steady himself he starts with his tale of the doomed safari he was guiding, and how his client, Bradford "wouldn't listen" to him. And would always camps near a stream ("always near a stream,"--an odd detail, he'll mention again, though we never see one, or even a camp). And so we flashback to the meat of the movie, highlights lifted from a silent serial from 1927' Perils of the Jungle. Silent Tarzan Frank Merrill as handsome Bradford, sporting an arm band tattoo and getting into all sorts of scrapes while searching for 'the Cave of the Cyclops' (just a statue, alas). We get lots of lions try to break through the cabin door, while sad-eyed apes look on, or charging elephants, angry natives, a little jungle boy (it's all good cuz he's fiercely Hawksian deadpan rather than Sheffield cutesy) and--most anachronistic of all--tigers. Bradford even rescues a  comely (white) daughter from a marauding hippo! 

Steve, wishing he could help
These scenes are all narrated by Steve and peppered with regular cutaways of him peeking out from behind bushes or up in trees, periodically offering rationalizations like "with the lions between my hiding spot and the endangered party, I was powerless to help" to explain why he never shares their frame.  Like a good guide that he is, he merely bears witness. 

Yes, he's less of a fighter and more of a rationalizer, and Corrigan does his weirdest bit of acting when spying his nemesis the White Gorilla through the trading post window back in the present, while about to take a shot of whiskey. Instead of pounding it to steady his nerves like a real man he lets it slip through his fingers and starts this intense little pule / whine of "there it is," almost like he's in a long bathroom line, barely holding it in. Always near a stream.

Since Corrigan is usually the one growling and snarling (he plays every gorilla in 40s movies), it's surprising to hear his soothing, masculine and low-key voice that fits him perfectly. He's kind of a beefy, normal looking guy, but the lyrical language and conversational way he speaks (in a kind of repetitive hypnotic style where the key word of the previous sentence is the first word of the next) creates a pleasant kind of trance. Distant jungle noises outside the trading post, the nature footage, and the rich music, and foley for the silent film flashbacks, all run under his voice, like soothing 'green noise.' 

Furthering the pleasant sense of dislocation is the use non-spatial distance and tribal relations in this part of the jungle ("jungle where the natives hated the white man.") Steve says he and Bradford stayed at he old man's camp 'for months' while coming ever closer to finding the treasure via his coveted map. So they trek all day and then turn around and trek back? The inner jungle turns out to be almost two-dimensional, with native villages overlapping each other and the camp in a foggy blur. It turns out the cyclops cave (which is where Steve leads Bradford and co about to to be fed to tigers as a sacrifice)  is close enough to the trading post that the point the men listening to Steve's story go off to check it out in the night and are back the next afternoon, empty-handed. It's OK as this gives the chewed-up Steve just time enough to face off with his deadly alabaster foe and rescue the girl. The scene where she shoots once, then throws the gun to the ground and passes out at the white gorilla's feet is so hilarious I watch it again and again. (Steve narrates this part too, though he's back in the cabin nursing his wounds).

It's only an hour long, alas, with absolutely zero resolution on the fate of Bradford and company, but they can barely remember them by then. Case closed. Their likely grim fate, better left unsaid. The white gorilla is shot and laying out on the lawn Steve is going home to America, rationalizing once again in his conversational tone: 
"After all, we have no right to the jungle. It belongs to the natives, and the animals, not the white man. It was theirs before we came, it should be theirs now." 
t. And his narration even continues, no longer bearing witness, but imagining the jungle giving the gorilla a kind of animal memorial. It almost makes me cry, every time, if I'm still awake by then. This was an age of unconscious colonial  Considering the blithe unconscious colonial racism, animal cruelty of 99% of all other jungle movies from that era, it's almost woke. Not that you'll be by then, if you watch it late at night in bed like I do, always near a stream. 


NOTES:
1.Corrigan knows, he and Wood were apparently drinking buddies.  And you could always find old Crash at a table at the Brown Derby, quietly drinking and waiting for someone to stagger over and ask to rent out his gorilla for some low budget opus (it appears in Bride and the Beast as does Corrigan's other suits. If you're wondering why there are so many gorillas running around in those movies, you know who to thank!'
2. See The Love Witch for my shocking true story.
1.I can only imagine how long the filmmakers must have tried to get the kid up on the elephant before this compromise

Derek Love vs. the Buzz Killer : TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE; REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE

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Tough GenX SWMs like me were confused when we first saw James Dean in movies. He looked badass enough on the posters that adorned our dorm walls, smoking with his feet kicked up over his steering wheel in the one from Giant, or his loafing against the wall with his red windbreaker and cigarette for Rebel, or smoking in his big black coat up in a rainy Times Square for Dennis Stock-but who had seen his movies? No one. So when Rebel without a Cause came to our college's revival house we were psyched for a dash of serious cool. 

Instead we got goddamned crybaby narc!

This doe-eyed gentle little greaser faun who cries cuz his parents are too easy on him? Who snivels at the cops' office because his dad doesn't hit his mom? This kid was worse than a narc, he was a jinx. Such a coward over a friendly little knife fight he gets three people killed? 

"If he'd just... belt her one, occasionally."
You doubt me? Consider the facts: No sooner has he arrived at his new school than he's stomping on the school seal, befriending a craven puppy killer, and trying to crash the A-list with his stupid planetarium "Moo!" The A-list, a rowdy gang of toughs (that include Dennis Hopper!) give him a chance to audition for the gang, a friendly invitations to gentlemanly switchblade duel. Outside the planetarium on a nice sunny LA day, what a pleasant way to get to know the boys. Sure maybe a few little cuts, punctures, but that's hazing, Jim! You want in, you gotta play be the rules, not run to momma. It takes so long to goad Jim into that by the time he's finally started his stick and move routine, the afternoon is over--the astronomer in residence is yelling at them to stop. That kind of leaves everybody hangin' as they say, so they have to reschedule for an evening chicken run instead 

He's a jinx, that's the thing. Picked up on a public drunkeness? What did he get a little sip of a beer somewhere? A weensy little pint of Wild Irish Rose? Crying like a little bitch in a cop's office because his dad's not mean enough, trying to give his jacket to a little wuss hauled in for killing puppies!  Screaming at his parents like a hissy fit-throwing neurotic because mom and dad can't decide how to punish him.  This is the guy with the cigarette on the posters in our dorm rooms!??? 

Rumors were Dean was bi, into sub/dom shizz, would go to gay bars and ask guys to stamp their cigarettes out on his chest. This was the 80s -- we couldn't believe it. Right up there with Richard Gere mouse rectum scandal - maybe just a rumor. That was enough back then. 

We couldn't know just how brave it was back in the early 50s for a young man too be gentle and faun-like. It was a time when men had to pose and posture in studded leather straddling hogs to indicate they weren't gay. Times change, but the thin My point is, I wouldn't even be saying all this but I feel like any formerly homophobic idiot should come clean, because most of us are just like that because we're scared to death we would suddenly turn out gay. That it would just hit us like some fever. Then we picked up on the reverse, that tolerance meant you were secure in your orientation, homophobia meant you were terrified to even look in the closet, let alone be there.

Rebel has all the markers of cool, though, which makes Dean's narc attitude problematic. This is a Nicholas Ray film, after all, a man who never met a drug he didn't want to get at least an ounce of, and who understands the importance of masculine rites of pugilistic passage, and is second only to John Ford as far as violence to denote and enhance rites of masculine passage. Ray was like that Ford energy suddenly thrown into a world where it was no longer accepted, or where the violence and its ceremonial initiatory function had become seperated, either by laws or draggy moms. If you couch Rebel with Ray's Bigger than Life, and In a Lonely Place, you get the full spectrum of male dysfunction. And so we could have easily overlooked Dean's many faux pas in the police station, and even the planetarium.... because suddenly that night at the chicken run he's all of a sudden cool as McQueen. It's his one big moment of Wild One moxy, and he does it all real good, but then after Buzz goes over the cliff, he undoes it all by trying to rat out the attendees after everyone runs home.  Jim, the jinx. And now the narc. You've got one person killed already. But the night is young, isn't it Jim?

That whole narc thing, man. I'd call him a momma's boy, but even his mom is cooler than he is! After Buzz's death she wants him to just shut up about it, never say a word to anyone, and go to bed, like all the other kids who were there. 

Son, that's what you call a'free pass'!! 

The gang sure made the right choice by scorning him. Imagine is someone gave him his first reefer. He'd probably have one puff, get really paranoid, check himself into the ER, and then tell the cops, shouting 'Sorry, but just this once I wantes do something right!'as everyone at the party is led past him in a handcuffed row... for their own good. So they don't get hooked, right Jim?


And just imagine who Jim would want to bring around to gang meetings if he was in. Considering his new best friend is a super needy rich kid who just killed a whole boxful of puppies the night before, which is the slam dunk hat trick of red flags.

God help your cat, Jim, if you ever cancel a playdate. 

And man was he getting close! Luckily three guys from the gang found him first - So Plato shoots one, then hides out in the planetarium (where the days trouble began). Our bright 'right'-doing Jim Stark decides to save the day by racing past past the cop's cordon and into the planetarium to try and talk Plato into coming out, without even explaining his intention to the cops. Think, Jim! How can they know for sure you're not bringing Plato ammo rather than taking it away!? 

Then, in a final jinx move, staggering in its idiocy, Jim gets Plato to give him the gun, then takes the bullets out, but then gives him back the gun!! You should have just given him the bullets, Jim. The cops don't shoots kids who wave bullets at them, as you will soon find out.

Dean's big acting moment, the one that almost made him live up to the hype as a powerhouse actor, is his great slur-shout of "I-got-the-BULL-ets!" after Plato falls dead. Waving them ineffectually, as if trying to shoehorn his own roaring teen angst into Plato's big Buffalo Bill butterfly moment, I think we're supposed to 'feel' for his chutzpah at this juncture, and even rail against the callousness of the Big Bad World. But I say if its big and bad, its to protect itself by 'heroes' like Jim Stark.

 Jim, next time, just shut the fuck up when people make animal noises. You're worse than Tony in West Side Story, who gets two people killed just because a girl he met a few hours ago tells him "any kind of fight's no good for us."  Well, at any rate, Jimbo my lad, now now you don't have to worry about your cat. 

I know it's not a popular trope these days, but as a deep tissue Jungian I'm partial to the idea of masculine rites of passage. I think it's imperative for masculine identity to make a social rite out of the brave facing of fear, pain, death and humiliation, and above all, most importantly, cuts and bruises (women's reproductive system includes built-in rites, they don't need any more).

 John Ford gets it. Nicholas Ray gets it, Colonel Blimp and Crocodile Dundee get it. Apollo Creed every boxer in the world gets it. Tyler Durden, John Wayne eventually gets it, and all of Ireland.

Luke Skywalker, squares, Maria, Jim Stark don't get it. Cops and school principals don't get it but they're not supposed to, so it's OK (they're the referees) 

If we'd all just belt each other occasionally. 

You got to do something. 

I used some color screenshots, as I generally don't like colorizing, but in this case it's
by a fan on YouTube, and looks pretty good- giving it an extra weird sense of dislocation

Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) does plenty -- it's the rampaging Yin to Rebel's puling Yang.  Dean might get all the posters can't hold a candle to the endearingly Dumbo-eared Derek (David Love) as one of the....TEENAGERS. Almost totally emotiionless, he gives an actually lovely demonstration of how a man might be sensitive, and decent, and nice yet no coward, kibbitzer, or narc. He's not some 'rebel' against middle class conformity, to him middle-class conformity is rebellion. The planet he comes from is void of things like comfort and emotion. So when he winds up in a perfect small town, as warm, inviting as Rebel's is dour and lockstep, in soothing b&w instead of Rebel's garish color (Natalie Wood's garish lipstick makes me shudder just to think about). But after that the similarities are striking. 

For example: both occur within a single day/night. Both involve a new guy in town who finds himself protected by a girl who likes him and pursued by a gang of boys who want him to stop trying to change the Way Things Are. Both involve puppy killers who pay for their crimes, alas, indirectly. In Rebel the black sheep is surrounded by perfectly into their small town 50s conservative (heteronormative) social structure; he finds a small group of fellow outcasts, who like him are unable to sublimate their dysfunctional daddy issues.  Meanwhile a runt with a gun tags after him, demanding full attention -i.e.trying to Jim into his daddy.

Derek comes to a new town from a lockstep conservative but all male (structured around one big daddy issue) social order where being an outcast means longing for small town heteronormativity, and finds one in a friendly 50s social structure where there is no daddy at all just a friendly old suspenders-wearing Harvey P. Dunn, and you know he's harmless and gentle because just the sight of a girl with long nails nearly kills him in Ed Wood's NIGHT OF THE GHOULS, and his cool granddaughter, just about Dereks's age.

 If only Jim and Derek could trade places! 

I'll grant you, Derek really lucks out when he stumbles onto friendly gramps and his nerdy-cool granddaughter. Unlike Jim Stark, he doesn't need to be all "you're tearing me apart!" whiny about feeling alienated from his assigned-at-birth tribe. Derek never freaks out, just flatly asserts his preference for a warm, emotional environment. But you know how that team can be when you try to jump ship and who can blame them?

I love a lot about Teenagers from Outer Space (though the title put me off seeing it until only a few years ago): I'm a big fan of post-sync dubbing with these lower budget numbers as it lends them a weird dreamlike unrealistic air--Carnival of Souls wouldn't be half as surreal without it, and it's a perfect vehicle for Derek's flat emotionless (in character) delivery, he's like the anti-Dean. His rebellion stems from realizling his peers are going to bring in the 'gargal' (indestructible giant shadow lobsters) and turn Earth into kind of giant pasture / feed lot / lobster bed. How does it feel to be thought of as food for someone else's food, America? Probably not very good. You might ask the third world how they cope. You migth ask the buffalo... or Black Elk. 

The hypocrisy here comes not from American society but from the aliens. They're not supposed to bring the gargans to an inhabited civilization-havin' world, but Thor, his psychopathic saucer mate, decides a zapped dog's tag is not sufficient evidence to halt the plan. As far as Thor goes, they're not supposed to wipe out sentient beings, the way the US Cavalry is not supposed to massacre all the Native Americans, including unarmed women and children. In other words, the powers that be want 'plausible deniability' in order to get rid of the problem once and forever, therefore the underlying (nonspoken) orders are carried out ("with extreme prejudice") contrary to the written 'official' order.  Feigning empathy with those you kill in order give your country's liberals are a panacea for their guilt is the bedrock of 'colonization.' Thor--jealous and bloodthirsty, trades on the friendliness of the townsfolk in his pursuit of Derek, but repaying kindness with merciless zapping as he goes, like any good 'civilizing' influence might wipe out the indigenous population of a land they were claiming for the crow after first getting to know them, maybe taking some pictures, directions, gold... and then, almost as an afterthought, wiping them out on your way to the next. 

But Derek, true teenager in his liberal phase, undoes the hidden meaning in a reverse counter-revolution --sticking to the letter of the law, using the oppressor's law against the unwritten (he even gets the press involved, symbolically at least). You go, Derek! That's the kind of teenager rebellion that works - a rebel with a cause. 

Take a lesson, James Dean / Jim Stark, Derek rebels against his corrupted order via its own strict guidelines, like a boss. 


WHEN STRAIGHTNESS WAS A BIG TENT.

Luckily the more rabidly homophobic the society the less gaydar they seem to have. Dawn Bender surely doesn't have any--all but chasing Derek around and instructing him to make decisions based on her interpretation of things she doesn't understand, clueless her new man's alien orientation. She uses her old boyfriend-friend (i.e. the equivalent of that guy who loves her unconditionally, even under the condition he's relegated to 'friend' status, so common to movies even today, though the 'gay bestie' has now taken his place), a reporter played by Graef himself, to do the legwork so we can easily go from q) to z) as far as getting the whole town to back Derek up as Thor comes blasting. It's a refreshing switch from the tedious swaths of parents and cops not believing the teens in the more conventional (i.e. straight shot) films, perhaps reflecting a kind of 'grass is always greener' along the outlaw divide effect, where the outcast fantasizes about communal acceptance and vice versa. Meanwhile, in her naive moral certitude, Dawn becomes a kind of saint /  heroine / representative of all Anytown USA has to offer. She and gramps become kind of a fantasy for lonely orphans--- instant love and acceptance, as if they'd been waiting all this time just for them. For St. Sebastians lashed to the wheel of intolerance, they are the ultimate heteronormative/tolerant backup, the solace they dream of. Meanwhile, someone like Ray Stark has to go to all sorts of ugly lengths to escape the accepting arms of his own family, clumsily lashing himself to whatever wheel he can find, invariably leaving one arm free in case he needs to itch, or take a selfie of his anguished struggle. 


NEITHER WAKE NOR ALEEP NOR DEAD

As with a lot of post-sync films from the era, the air itself seems different -- eerily still. There is no wind, very few birds, everything is muted, the voices all right up front, the way people's talking sounds when you come to from a concussion, the way Carnival's small Kansas town becomes when Candace Hiligoss is suddenly plunged into an in-between place where no one can see or hear her. The difference here is that the weird quiet is benevolent. Before this film I didn't think a benevolent alienation was remotely possible. There's something for everyone here in town! There's even a foxy and sexually assertive single girl down the street-- with a pool! I mean, I suddenly wouldn't want to leave either. Too bad his jealous ex is stalking him, disintegrating everyone he meets--all of whom are too nice and kind to realize what he threat he poses, including the pool girl. It breaks my heart every time. Why not leave her alive, Thor!!!?

Like Jim in Rebel, Derek is a stranger in a strange world, but unlike him, Derek is no narc. In the end he makes the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity in general and the small town in particular, and he does so without any browbeating, giggling, grandstanding or adult-shaming.  Even after the boys send for his sugar daddy, his hairy-chested biological papa, the leader of their planet, he stands firm. I don't think Jim Stark would be able to. For him and his daddy-starved friends, Derek's papa would be like a gift from god. 
--


With those hooded Peter Lorre eyes, Bette Page bangs, Edith Massey teeth, 'Bette Davis whispering into the ear of a sleeping Val Lewton' vibe, and that starchy retro-hipster dress, Dawn Bender is a totally unique presence in movies. It's like a whole new category of 'types' has to be invented to support her her.  A whole new kind of 'small town cool' is born. Perhaps it's the queer perspective of the film that she--the only woman with any real skin in the game--is the most unique and thoughtful character, a true lead and not just another endangered love interest / lab assistant. In yet another of his innovative but weird editing choices, Graeff lets all her scenes play out a few seconds longer than an ordinary editor would, letting his camera keep an eye on what she does after the action in the script is completed, how she fills out the gap between the end of the scene and the actual cut. She uses the time by wistfully gazing through windows as if she's Lilian Gish on the lonesome prairie after yet another day with no mail from her far-flung fella in a DW Griffith silent. It's archaic yet ahead of its time. It wouldn't matter if she just shut down emotionally at the end, like a robot; we'd still be with her all the way, enraptured and confused by her weird charisma. (As in so many films by gay auteurs, the women are as handsome as the boys are beautiful.)

Regardless of which tent you currently live in, Dawn's gentle sewing needle and Dunn's folksy business can patch the tears, reminding us not all small towners are intolerant, that all they need to change is the right alien boy, the right Bronson Canyon cave mouth, and the right stock volcano explosion. Sincerity can exist without sacrificing weirdness. At least this once.

Oh, also in Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter.  Just these two times. 

Wait, that's right--Night of the Hunter--another movie about the strength of innocence that was made by a gay man? And the only movie that man directed? And recognized as a cult classic only long after it was made? 

What is wrong with this f--ed up world? 

A decade after making Teens, Graef would kill himself with car exhaust. At least after making Hunter, Laughton lasted..... oh right, seven.

God bless little children. They abide. 

Eventually.


The Hairs of Incoherence: AFTER BLUE: Dirty Paradise (2021)

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French women, ah, mon ami, ils sont sauvages! Their five main differences from American women? O Monsieur! They speak the language of love and fine wine; they stay fierce and cool into their 40s and 50s; they find male artists and writers sexy more for their talent than their success; they treat premarital and extramarital sex (Le cinq à septs, etc.) like any other necessity rather than a luxury; and they let their lady hairs grow wild and free where they wilt. If you're an American girl and are bristling with indignant umbrage reading this, then your own extreme reaction proves the sixth difference: they don't take the childish generalities of men as something worth a single bristle, let alone umbrage. And I didn't mean you anyway, obviously,

Give me a fierce middle-aged, art-loving Frenchwoman any time, or give me to them, for they belong to no one and take what they want. I'm a dilettante aesthete of no common rankness; I stand, however wobbly, a man unafraid of menstrual blood, DSM-IV-charting madness, beaucoup hair, or if she's already married or seeing other people--especially if it means I don't have to go out to dinner with her petit-bourgeois amies. Vive la France! (oui, mi amor, Rormandy aussi). 

I burden you with all this so you know I'm the ideal audience for the gender-broken utterly original and daring films of Bertrand Mandico (The Wild Boys,) so you don't go into see his films thinking they're suitable for the whole family, or anyone who isn't at least somewhat debauched a priori. If you are, on the other hand, and you love vintage European science fiction, cursing, smoking, blue fire and azure skies and éros sans la érotique - welcome to After Blue, your Dirty Paradise.

Of course it's not really paradise. A crystalized embodiment of Camille Paglia's infamous quote (1), After Blue's matriarchal council (everything's run by 'council' on all-women planets in science fiction) is determined to keep science and technology off the planet so they live in grass huts, and still use horses instead of flying cars. But these are French women, the category that produced Isabelles Huppert and Adjani, and la Beatrice Dalle, so they're rougher than any Harvest Home-style matriarchy. Turns out even without men, human savagery thrives on- only more sinister, catlike, with more screaming and glowing jewelry-lined Meiko Kaji hats.

Adult French women, ranting and raving in all their screaming, moaning, tripping, swigging, swinging, overacting, flirting and not giving a shit about your stupid feelings, their neck and arm hairs growing wondrously out-of-control, you will find them all on After Blue where--even in the wilderness of unsettled 'Poison Mountains' they somehow never run out of cigarettes or whiskey. And the skies roar pink; the fire burns blue; surrealist set design gaps the bridge between statue and landscape; a dreamy artificiality eschews realism (frond's silhouetted against wild-colored rear projection to evoke forests), and every shot is a perfect overload of originality from eight different directions. 

Half a century ago, After Blue's mix of sex and psychedelia would need a thick shellac of cutesy camp (alaBarbarella) to avoid critical circumcision. It defies description as it wriggles through the tight hallways between all genres and styles. You can't find camp anywhere, making it much more of a piece with Paris's 20s-30s surrealists (Bunuel, Cocteau, Clair) than the post-68 Parisian dream eroticists (i.e. Rollin, Metzger, Vadim), even while somehow out obscene-ing and out-dreaming all of them. 

In fact it's so unique it needs its own film movement just to figure out to have a place to belong. In meta echo of the luddite matriarchy of After Blue, Mandico and some peers (like (which includes Yann Gonzalez, whose adorable You and the Night I've written about earlier) have formed Incoherence movement. Some tenets include: shooting only on expired film; keeping all special effects in-camera (rear-projection rather than blue screen, etc.); using found objects for set design; post-syncing all sound but adding no post-production; and avoiding anything resembling a familiar trope or narrative 'act' structure. In the age of the mood-altering gummy, it's the perfect post-dosed park picnic or party pick. 

AFTER BLUE (Dirty Paradise)
(2021) Dir. Bertrand Mandico

In a mythic story kind of sourced from Androcles & the Lion, or Aladdin, a young bullied gamin named Roxy helps free a wild-eyed, glitter-covered naked woman named Kate Bush who she finds buried up to her neck in the sand. But that's where all familiarity ends. Freeing the wild Kate turns out to be a catastrophically bad idea; she starts blasting everyone in sight. Then, she turns the gun on Roxy; and then, turns on Roxy and soon Kate Bush is riding naked on a horse with a Nordic crown and sword through Roxy's erotic dreams while drenched in gold glitter, while three of Kate's victims haunt her nightmares, tearing Roxy apart in a perfect illustration of Lacanian jouissanc. And now, since she freed the demon, Roxy has to pack up her hairdresser mother and le cheval and set off to the poison mountain to kill.... Kate Bush. 

And so begins Roxy's call to adventure, kicking, puling, licking, and sulking all the way while her wide-eyed mom, Zora (Elina Lowensohn) slowly goes mad from hunger and motherhood. So ushers forth a hypnogogic haze of frond-shadowed alien landscapes, blue fire, azure beaches, blue forests, filthy Dickensian outlaw vagrants sniffing around their saddlebags in search of food and/or a new wife; a gaggle of local inhabitants, easily colonized triffid shamblers with crystal cave mouths who can become your dreams (everything is fluid here, not just gender but between animal, vegetable and mineral). 

Once the arrive, Roxy finds plenty of distractions: trees to climb, holes to hide in, nightmares to scream to, and an enchanted grotto with phallic little monsters to kiss. Zora runs into a very cool and sexually slithering expat artist ("The second avant-garde") Sternberg (Vimala Pons) who lives 'next door' with her dog and android-male lover/muse Olgar 2 (Michaël Erpelding) and loves to drink and shoot everything in sight with her designer gu. If Kate is a new high of wildness in the wild woman archetype, Sternberg is a new quintessential aesthete, a libertine, alcoholic, rich, decadent, and ultimately both supportive and unhinged. She kind of steals the picture, even though everyone else more than holds their own. I love her. And Kate. Roxy is a whiner; Zora is a wide-eyed sad sack, but the other ladies, beaux sauvages for the revisionist fairy tale ages. 

It's all very colorful and helped immensely by the electronic score by Pierre Desprats: an eerie electronic/ambient mix of Morricpme western grandeur, spiked with well-timed deep pitch shifts dropping the bottom of almost Vangelis' Bladerunner-style cathedral Hell elegance (helligance?), like we're plunging way way down over Deckard's rainy 10th floor parapet. It's in French with English subtitles, but don't worry about having to read while your pupils are still micro-dilated, tu monolinguiste analphabète américain lâche fils de pute! Words can't hurt you if you pretend not to read them. Listen instead to the musicality of the le langage de l'amor; don't even look at the subtitles until first trying to decode the words and be grateful. French art movies never work in English dubs. The pretentiously unpretentious poeticism of lines like "you like my hat? It is an extension of my thoughts" or "I'm just a woman... as inoffensive as the wind" might wake you from the hypno-erotique spell in a fit of cringy twitching. But in French, with English subtitles, c'est adorable. Even the occasional overdone nod to contemporary chic, like giving all the guns names of designers (Guccis and Chanels instead of Lugers and Colts) is forgivable as its exotified by the musicality of the language.

But be warned: this is a world where everyone is almost always almost kissing and any actual kisses must drool comically with secretions; any fondling is done with clawed fingers that tear clothes and skin. We're not in some foamy Venusian clamshell anymore, honey; this is Red Riding Hood's wolfblood-baptized honeymoon nightmare, evoking a whole network of weird femme-fantastique gender-devouring mythic revival. Think Angela Carter (Passion of New Eve, Company of Wolves), Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White & The Huntsman, Wizard of Oz, only with props scrounged at Cronenberg's post-Naked Luch yard sale (phallic alien protuberances and smokable caterpillars), a setting from the Cat Women of the MoonQueen of Outer Spaceall-woman planet tradition, and awash in Jean Rollin 'two girls in a weird world' dreaminess. That's not to say Mandico is not also checking in with the more sophomoric French sci-fi ancestors (i.e. Gandahar, Barbarella), just that the target demographic isn't horny16 year-olds but experienced adult libertines, as debauched as Zorg in Betty Blue. It may have the second (sub?) title Dirty Paradise but rest assured, the 'dirty' is real dirt, or rather gold glitter; we're no longer ripping beamers with your little brother's friends in the basement on Sat. night cuz we ain't got girlfriends; we're upstairs snorting lines with Maria Louise von Franz and Tennessee Williams (After Blue would make a good double feature with Suddenly Last Summer, for all the right and wrong reasons). 

RETURN OF THE (REALLY) WILD WOMAN

Above all, forget about that stacked broad in Heavy Metal, and remember Kate Bush! Kate gives Anita Pallenberg's horned dictator in Barbarella, Beatrice Dalle (in everything) and all of the Baader Meinhof Complex a sound trundling. Hairy-armed, heavily clawed, jagged of teeth, this wild sandy blonde runs rampant through the mist and the wild fantasies of our young Roxy; gleefully shooting down anyone she pleases, disguising herself and harnessing the local 'Indians' to ride. Assertive and carnally violent as Tura Satana. wilder than Marsha Quist in The Howling, there's no woman capable of undoing After Blue's snippy power structure as singlehandedly as she. 

On the masculine spectrum of wild man Jungian archetype is a vivid neighbor to the sage/senex'who represents the wild man energy absorbed into the hero/soul and thus acquiring the best of both worlds - outside of the social sphere but able to step in and out of it easily. For my CinemArchetype series I found plenty of both to choose from, so tried to pick as wide an array as I could. For female characters I could only find a handful wild  (Un-absorbed) examples, hence the categories were merged 'The Wild/Wise Woman." Even within fairy tales that have female protagonists, the wild element is usually a male for girl's myths, i.e. the animus (think Edward in Twilight, Hannibal Lecter, or the Big Bad Wolf/Woodsman), so bringing in a voraciously homicidal wild woman archetype/shadow into a girl's story (where the female villain is usually a devouring mother/stepmother - a gatekeeper of a social sphere out of balance, rigged by hypocrisy and patriarchal fear, or 'the Red Queen' - an evil narcissit  rather than a true outsider of 'Iron Jane' style magnitude.) is truly revolutionary; Kate is agressive enough to shatter any old Grimm's fairy tale paradigm. You can almost hear Jung wake up and start clawing footnotes on his coffin lid, excited to contextualize her within the pantheon, and maybe use her in an paper trying to update his theories to the #mefirst movement.  There's only like three or four women in her archetypal class in all of cinema, which is so outrageous it should make any Frenchwoman reading grab her scissors and cut Willem DaFoe's genitals off instead of her own in Antichrist We need more! But Zulawski is dead (one of the other best examples is in Szvamanka (aka She-Shaman). Figures both Kate and Zulawski are Polish. Polish women be like French woman on angel (mountain) dust/

The real name of Kate Bush (Agata Buzek) is Katarzyna Buszowska -as there are Polish settlements on After Blue, and it was the Polish militia who buried her originally) and in her way she's the female equivalent to Manny in Runaway Train or the thing in Where the Wild Things Are. It's the kind of role Beatrice Dalle could have played a few years earlier, but luckily Buzek is there to carry the blazing out-of-control (laughing even as it catches her dress on fire) torch!     


Obscenity - who Really Cares? (answer - AMERICA)

Reviews across the US (where sex is too esteemed in theory to be anything but degrading in practice) have been mixed. Mainstream film critics can't help but follow certain patterns and key signatures to denote quality and 'appeal.' They see too many films a week, and need to turn in reviews too fast, to really get deep into some weird morass of pre-Oedipal confusion like After Blue. How can you even judge it after one viewing? You don't even know what's going on. I've seen four times and I don't know either!  Can you, as a critic, think a film can funny without slapstick, artsy without depth, erotic without titillation, stylish without campiness? Are the effects meant intentionally to be artificial? Are we supposed to find it Brechtian, Godardesque (if intentional) or Woodian (if not)? 

There is no clear answer, unless the viewer is either micro- or macro-dosing. I might be confused and annoyed too if I was a critic on the clock on some cold screening room; but if you can visit it in 20 minute spurts, with long breaks in between, it's amazing; I've watched it, three times over 12 different viewings. Never in one sitting, unless showing it to friends in an 'altered' state.

As Mandico demonstrated in Les Garçons Sauvage, only after you clear out all the stale genre tropes, getting down to the nitty gritty, can eros chew its way out of the softcore bower, to burst forth flashing the R-rated fangs of some Fassbinder cocaine withdrawal nightmare and the gaudy peacock strut of an Almodovar or Jarman fashion show/Pride float. 

What a gift we have in the nouveau Incoherence. And in Mandico, a new luminary of dangerous Parisian surrealist transgression fit to slide in next to De Sade, Huysmanns, Batailles, Genet, Corbiere, Baudelaire, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. There's surely a reason American literary icons like Terry Southern, Hemingway, and Henry Miller all had to go to Paris before they could unleash the full gorgeous obscenity of their human howls, for America's rock-tossing scene-censoring petit-bourgeoisie only admire their own depravity once the French show them how. 

Get over it, America! it's just hair. 

(above) from Mandico's newest, She is Conann - a gender revisionist Conan the Barbarian if played by seven different female actresses of different ages, slashing their way into legend. "What if there was a talking dog,"  you ask? Let it be so. Your cannibalized artist souffle de violence glam punk prétentieux is ready.

NOTES
1.("If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.")



FURTHER RELEVANT READING:

Isles of Löwensohn: THE WILD BOYS, LET THE CORPSES TAN

Telly on the Plane / Telly on the Mountain / Telly on the Train: LISA AND THE DEVIL, HORROR EXPRESS, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

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I'm not saying times are tough, I'm saying now more than ever we could use a man like Aristotle "Telly" Savalas to toss us a shiny lollipop and/or a cigarette and regale us with that marvelously sonorous poli kala voice, that deep octave Greek zest for whatever comes along, that signature oral fixation. And ain't it our good luck he didn't just do Kojak? That show was and is a little too rugged for my taste, but I'm a fan of the man from Garden City, NJ, especially a bunch of wild and wooly films he made in Europe during the early 70s. Sometimes he just pops in for a few scenes, but he always leaves an impression. He steals the show and sometimes saves it from the abyss. Like an actor version of the counterpoint melody in an Ennio Morricone theme, he instinctually recognizes dead areas on the spectrum and fills them in, and always without seeming to ever act at all, at least not in any other role but himself. 

Who could forget his sonorous cooing ("remember when you came here? How you hated chiggens? ") as the best of all Blofeldts in maybe the best of all Bonds? How about his swaggering Cossack officer in Horror Express ("Who are da killers? Who? Who are da troublemakas?")? And of course, the the mannequin-toting mephistophelean butler in Lisa and the Devil  ("Very little escapes me")? Those films are all classics in their respective ways, largely, or at least partly, because of that charismatic bald-headed, chain-smoking, stuffy nosed Greek-American with that wonderfully sonorous boom of a voice. Paradoxically debonair and earthy, larger than life yet hardly a ham, he'd be perfect doing one man show about the Russian revolution, oscillating between Rasputin, Czar Nicholas, Lenin, Marx, Stalin and even Peter III, crushing every part without even needing a wig. Regardless of whether he's supposed to be Italian, Russian, or Swiss, his characters all disappear into his oceanic vastness. He encompasses them, devours and forgets them without so much a waiver in that groovy New York accent. 

Every moment in his company is a treasure. I can't really watch Kojak (too gritty) but man do I want to hang out with him every moment he's in Europe, gluing cracked mannequins back together with him while knocking back cognac and cakes at his fog-wreathed Italian villa, knocking back cognac and cigarettes in his wintry Alpine mountaintop fortress, or knocking back vodka and cigarettes in a cozy Trans-Siberian train station.

On that note, here are the troublemakers. 


 LISA AND THE DEVIL
(1974) Dir. Mario Bava 

Lisa (Elke Sommer) is a German tourist on a bus tour in Spain who gets left behind after getting lost at one of the stops, a maze-like small Spanish town. Her time is thrown of of joint after spying a jolly demon in a Middle Ages fresco that looks just like Telly Savalas. Then she sees a swaggering man in a natty beret who looks just like him buying a mannequin at an antique shop. The dream symbolism has.... begun. She can never find her way back to the bus. She's thrown into what Carlos Castaneda might call 'non-ordinary reality' and what Lisa's director Mario Bava might call purgatorio, but what we, today, call 'surreal 70s Euro-cult heaven...' 

Or hell, of course. It is the same. 

Obsessed by a little musical carousel of macabre figures chronicling the looped procession of love and death and back around, Lisa begins to wake into that special nightmare we've all had wherein you turn around on a cool autumn afternoon and suddenly its dark and you're all alone and lost in an empty narrow streeted maze in a foreign land, all the windows shuttered and no one in sight. You finally catch a ride in old car from a rich couple (the younger wife having an affair with the chauffeur, the older husband too world-weary to care) But then their car breaks down near a weird old villa where you run up against a cockblocking Hitchcockian matriarch played by Alida Vialli (Suspiria, The Third Man) keeping her deliriously John LaZar-eyed son Maximillian (Alessio Orano) from hooking up with you. And he's..... so lonely. And of course, emceeing the show is Telly as their mephistophelean butler, replete with white gloves and a lollipop since Madame doesn't like smoke in the house. 

Naturally, Lisa looks just like Alessio's dead wife and--when he later corpses her in the same bed as his dead wife's sleeping skeleton, his lonesome kinkiness gets so creepy on so many levels you just have to laugh a mirthless mocking laugh. Then it's like he hears you, and thinks it's his dead wife's ghostly mocking, ringing out at what was probably his inability to get it up with a girl who could look back at him; eventually she takes a lover, who of course ends up cracked in the head, and of course he's also the cracked mannequin she sees in the beginning. 

Yes, this is a zone where mannequins come to life and play the parts of long dead lovers or whomever is needed, and the killer kills them. Funeral marches are held on the spot, as the latest body is wheeled around on a serving cart through the vast semi-decayed mansion, around in an endless procession, life to death, two by two, in procession, crib and corpse cart all bound up in one ornate dessert tray. So much death being around, a whole lavish room of the mansion has been converted to a wake/funeral parlor, which Alessio later tries to change into a marriage chapel by kicking over the plethora of decaying wreaths. Of course for him it's really all the same, but he's too far gone to see the music box procession tightening around his neck with a song i
n its black heart. And that song is of course Rodrigo's Concerto of Aranjuez. 

Depending on your affection for that 'giant pointed 70s collar out over smoking jacket lapel' look Alessio sports you may not like the fashions. And if the score was Morricone twang instead of lush, endlessly repeating orchestrations of Rodrigo's Concerto of Aranjuez or if Bava was his own cinematographer and giving us his usual deep painterly colors instead of the twinkly romantic haze offered by DP Cicilio Panaqua (union rules dictated the film needed a Spanish DP), this would be Bava's best 70s work, but hey, there's interesting giallo-esque sing-song motif playing under all the broken clock cutaways, of which there are enough to rival Bergman's Wild Strawberries. 

And I almost forgot, whether macking on a lollipop the color of Elke's raincoat, dropping double meaning Satanic inferences like "very little escapes me," sneaking one of the chauffeur's cigarettes before loudly admonishing him for smoking indoors when the blind Madame complains, or wryly talking to himself and having a good time drinking cognac and repairing mannequins, Telly loves the screen, and he loves you, baby, and the screen loves Telly.  Devil or not, he's divine.  Some say his performance swamps the rest of the film; it becomes the Telly show. But you can't blame the devil for doing the devil's work. 

(1969) Dir. Peter R. Hunt


George Lazenby's first and last Bond is also the one where he goes undercover as a posh British snob and then later gets married and then cries when he loses her. He also goes undercover as a poncy genealogist to infiltrate Blofeldt's top of the Alps allergy clinic. Between the crying and the poncy airs, and all falling in love and showing weakness, Lazenby was derided as a weak, bland, snobby Bond. But criticizing Lazenby for having range isn't really fair. I can't even imagine Connery being vulnerable or actually dimming down his swagger and actually turning dull, stiff and pompous to go undercover as a dull genealogist or falling in love, not in a tacky way, but in a real way. Especially in the 60s, for some reason, the public rejected a good actor as Bond-- they want a handsome mannequin tough guy to project themselves on. So Pierce Brosnan is picked over Timothy Dalton, and it's not really until Daniel Craig that we finally get both, and then some. But for Craig's era, men were allowed to cry. We'd all gone WEAK! 

Lazenby's Bond has since been reappraised in today's more socially enlightened clime, and we can't help but admire how he fearlessly puts on a posh droning bore professor demeanor that--on closer viewing--is a dead-on impression of the posh genealogist who briefed him. So rather than label Lazenby dull, why not blame Salzman and Broccoli for daring to expand a working, beloved formula into something more meaningful. I guess it's like if Michael Myers started talking, or Groucho Marx decided to do a serious dramatic role, sans mustache and cigar and glasses. Even if they nailed it, and the movie was great, maybe later on hailed as a masterpiece, the damage to the characters cohesiveness would be done. Fans would consider it a betrayal. And rightly. The movie is not made for them, but for the future audiences to finally appreciate. 1969 was a year of major upheavals, of course, so Bond was simultaneously an imperialist relic for the hippies and a source of macho comfort for the hard-hats. This sensitive Bond was a source of alarm for a core audience whose idea of a swinging sexually-satisfied super-hipster was being directly threatened both onscreen and off. 

And another one who got slightly drubbed is Savalas, who for some makes a funny Blofeldt. And he is, but there's no way you can say a line like "to begin with, I was born without ear lobes" and keep a totally straight face and yet let you know he's cracking up deep inside?

Me, I always crack up when Bond's mountain fortress conquest throws herself to sleep at the sound of Telly's voice booming out with mind control tape and color lights: "You remember when you first came here? How you hated chiggens?" Savalas' nicotine perma-cold nasal voice can't do the hard-K but he makes up with it by turning the cooing Telly magic on full blast. It's just so random ---no chickens have even been mentioned up to now. Nor are any ever seen. Filthy things. But Telly gets the ladies over that hump: "But all of that is over now.. I've taught you to love chickens.. to love their flesh, their voice..." 

But I love that he doesn't put on any phony airs--he's already bald so that's covered but rather than get all feline like Dr. No or Donald Pleasance's or Charles Gray-ish like Charles Gray, he just stays himself but with more of a self-satisfied air. You get the impression he could be launching this cockeyed 'Vida Omega" scheme, or speeding along in his luge, or doing any other macho cool thing Bond can do as well as, in the end, getting the ultimate revenge by sten gunning Bond's bride and then making him cry like a little bitch!  

And though she's nowhere near the level of Lotte Lenya, Ilse Stepatt  comes off like Divine crossed with a German shepherd as Blofeldt's butch administrative assistant/enforcer. Together they're as tenacious and relentless as Bond in that justifiably renowned downhill skiing to parade to ice rink, to car chase sequence, the grim shadow to Bond and Emma Peel - who does some great defensive driving to show she's just as capable and cool as anyone else, and so there's a much more even match between them, which is refreshing, as it's almost always Bond and his target gallery while the villain just boasts of his master plan and then maybe blows up.  Savalas is more like a gypsy than royalty, but unlike so many others in his role, he seems at ease and believable as someone who enjoys being evil for the sake of it, like a true megalomaniac, which explains why he's so quick to brag out his plan to Bond, that's what those guys do - they can't not do it. Yet he's also legit believable as a leader--the type who wouldn't throw a lackey to a shark just for failing some difficult task 


HORROR EXPRESS
Original title: Pánico en el Transiberiano
(1972) Dir Eugenio Martin

This Spanish-British horror union of Horror Express (1972)  is really the best of everything--the best pairing of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing (as posh scientists), Alberto de Mendoza as a superstitious priest playing the Rasputin to a bemused young countess (Silvia Tortosa) and her older inventor husband), and the best 'frozen ape man/alien defrosts aboard the Orient Express' film ever. The Chariots of the Gods-savvy script zips along most pleasingly and in addition to the countess there are several strong female characters, including Miss Jones ((Alice Reinheart) the droll older assistant to Cushing who wryly sizes up the other women and delivers acidic bon mots: a sultry corporate spy (Helga Liné) and a lady passenger, friend for the countess (Faith Clift)

I love train films in general but when they switch tracks as deftly as this one, like when a drop of ocular fluid from the ape man's eye is seen under the microscope revealing images of dinosaurs and what the earth looks like from outer space. But that's not the reason that superstitious beady-eyed monk steals it off the tray and offers it to its new host, the detective investigating the first murder, now possessed, flipping over to worship him as the devil ("thy will be done as it is in Hell!"). Hey, he plays the favorite, you can't blame him. Or can you? 

As a fan of classic Mexican horror I also notice a lot of weird similarities between the Horror Express alien and its habid sucking brain contents through the victim's eyes and the comet-riding, brain-sucking baron in The Brainiac (1961). They even both drink the brain of an inventor of a new steel that can withstand a flight to space, so they can each presumably build a rocket to finally leave this shitty brain-dead planet, if they ever get a chance. The alien may be relentless here, hopping from body to body, but his possessed characters hint at the intense centuries of loneliness it's gone through and we also feel for it. Crash-landed here long before life even began, working his way up from single cells up to the caveman he was then frozen in since the last Ice Age; it's bound to make anyone a little desperate. 

All that is rather marvelous, but then comes the final perfect late-inning addition as scene stealer Telly Savalas and his Cossack crew come barging onto the train once it stops on the Siberian border, rocking his usual awesome ridiculous hamminess after receiving orders to board the train and take charge, rounding up everyone in first class in the dining car and giving them the collective third degree: "Who are da killas!? WHO!??" he shouts at them, waving his gun and whip around. "Who are da trubble makers!?" We love you, Telly! 


"You're excellency," says the possessed cop, "I'm a police inspector." He shouts back "Everybody here Is UNDER ARREST!

And there's so much else to love, especially if you grew up watching this on TV all panned, scanned and truncated into oblivion and you still loved it. Now it's like you pinch yourself to see if you're dreaming, because what a beautiful world to have such clear, anamoprhic pictures. . Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing make an engaging Holmes-and-other-Holmes style duo (aided well by Tortosa's countess) and the Orient Express makes a perfect setting for a tale of existential steam-powered escape, where the steady movement of the train makes a fine metaphor for the ever-increasing momentum of early 20th century progress, with an alien who has spent so long trying to guide life on earth into a form that can build a rocket so he can escape at last, after all these billions of years. His devouring red eye pairs poetically with the train's lone guiding red light, hurtling through the snowy Siberian tundra like the Ice Age is still in effect; the train whistle's scream perfectly folded blended into John Cacavaslectric guitar score, and the whistling refrain that passes from one character to another like "Isn't it Romantic?"Love Me Tonight, is an ingenious way to remind us where the alien is now (he picks it up from the baggage car guard who picks it up from the Countess playing piano in their private car, and whistles it through the rest of the film, even from his frozen ape form. And it all makes a perfect metaphor for human evolution on this fickle earth--roaring through the cold vastness, blazing across the aeons, ripping through time and space like a steam-powered mega zipper. 

The alien red eyes sucks up information way fast, especially the count's knowledge of metallurgy, but we get a tragic and profound sense of science still having a long way to go before we can escape the gravity of these archaic bone machines, and return to our true home... out there, in a galaxy far away. 

With plenty of droll humor, lush atmosphere, nonstop action, no wasted time on pathos or some lame romance, instead there's this liberating feeling that everything that happens is quickly disseminated through the passengers and crew, taken as fact rather than scoffed at, "you mean to tell me a two million year old ape man is alive on this train, killed the baggage man and locked him in the crate all neat and tidy!?" / "YES!" and all of it building to its apocalyptic finale as Telly's men get their brains wiped out by those glowing red eyes (but that's just the start of it, once the light goes out. The result of all this makes Horror Express a shining jewel in the Euro-horror crown. And Telly, you bald-headed bounty of badass bliss, who loves ya? Europe, since it's smart, and me of course (don't ya think ahm smaht?!). You're the walking talking equivalent of a warm fire, ready to burn you or save your life if you need thawing. And damn do we ever. 

Famous Monsters of Mexico I: EL VAMPIRO (1957), THE VAMPIRE'S COFFIN (1958)

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Hey Classic Mexican horror fans, this is Mil Errores, escritor que lucha libre de adicciones y ego monstrouo y, here to offer this October a whole series "Famous Monsters of Mexico" - because all of it is, if nothing else, imaginative and just plain crazy AND with a strong matriachal through line thanks the numero uno monster of Mexico being la Lorona, the Crying Woman, Mexico's big crossover horror icon, recurring again and again in one form or another -- evoking a very strong matriarchal through-line - devouring aunts and mothers luring her niece to the hacienda for a sacrifice, to inhale her youth and/or drown and kill children, to keep the devil happy. Yes, queen... of evil!

Repetitious, threadbare movies, the same passages of bombastic score over and over, endlessly recycled sets and props--sound familiar!? but unlike Monogram or PIC North of the border, the imagination on display is pretty jaw-dropping. So let's get in on the madness! Starting (according to some half-memory of a documentary extra seen ten years ago).,

Kicking things off we salute Abel Salazar (left) the Mexican Carl Laemmle Jr, if Carl was also an ex-matinee idol, with a more than passing resemblance to Sheldon Leonard. He generally shows up as the good lead in the thankless role of hapless husband, passing stranger, etc. the shaky heteronormative alternative to the evil seduction of the heroine's maternal ancestors, i.e. the ultimate wicked stepmother/s, but with his name as producer in the credits as well, so you can understand why he might come off a tad distracted

The big notable differences between these Mexican horrors and ours, besides language/dubbing involves the big soundstage standing set of a hacienda, which appears over and over in many many Mexican movies of the era: it looks great, with front gate, a well in the center of the courtyard, a row of balconies like a motel, all visible and overlain with big soundstage surrealist atmosphere, and a strong matriarchal through line thanks to the power wielded by older Mexican women in the social structure, and Mexico's big crossover horror icon, recurring again and again in one form or another, devouring aunts and mothers luring her niece to the hacienda for a sacrifice, to inhale her youth and/or drown and kill children, to keep the devil happy. Yes, queen... of evil! 

Yes, Mexico is muy viejo. America can't find its own la Lorona, or Inquisition, rather than just wipe out the native inhabitants, the Spanish had children with them, Catholicism making it all OK in a way super-racist America never understood --and that's how Mexicans, LatinX-ers were born and that's the root of la Lorona, the Native mistress and the Spanish nobleman who fathered her children, but then mistreated her and triggered a Medea reaction. In the US horror movies if we do luck out and get a woman monster, she has to fall for some bland young white cipher who prefers Evelyn Ankers or something, to appease our uptight racist censors. We have to set our films in Europe to evoke ghostliness, but Mexico... it's gotta go nowhere - it's already home. And the monsters are in their blood, in the sand, in the bull ring, the wrestling mat, the spooky hacienda engulfed by evil... 

THE VAMPIRE (EL VAMPIRO)
(1957) Dir. Fernando Méndez

Producer Abel Salazar is the nominal mortal hero here, playing the super skittish and inconsistent psychiatrist Dr. Enrique, who's been called to the Sicomoros, a remote, crumbling, spooky villa way out in Sierra Negra, under the guise of helping fellow traveler an all-around clueless naif Marta (Ariadne Welter) get 'home' safe after they get off the train (they hitch a ride on a wagon with a big coffin full of earth, so you know whassupa. She hasn't been there since she was a kid, and it was sunny and normal--now; she find the whole landscape is twisted and foggy and dangerous; the hacienda is rundown, cobwebbed and twisty tree roots and fog. Servants have all fled or bled- Oh dios mio. She's been working in a shop, now called back because the good aunt who raised her-- Maria (Alicia Montoya)--is sick, or crazy; and actually dead, or at least has a funeral procession to Sicomoros' atmosphere drenched crypt. She is the one who Enrique was called in to diagnose since she was raving about vampires --now she's dead, and the medical association is pretty strict about psychiatric diagnoses once the patient is dead. On the other hand, the bad sister, Eloisa (Carmen Montejo) is alive, but not really. She hasn't aged a day since Marta left. Now she sleeps all day, dresses all in black, can't be seen in mirrors, is averse to crosses but--you know, the idea of vampirism is scoffed at. In between, a milquetoast uncle Emilio (José Luis Jiménez) tries to stay out of it. Salazar's shrink however just can't leave without diagnosing someone, so spends his time trying to put his clumsy flirt moves on Marta rather than letting her grieve. But vampiros?! Dr. Enrique would much rather commit the dead body of Amelia to the sanitarium than risk his standing in the scientific community by believing his own eyes. Any layman can easily to diagnose a vampire--and in case he forgot there's a book from the library that the not-dead Maria pushes out from her hideout behind the bookshelf, to catch him up. But he only thinks it's fiction; leaves Marta foolishly exposed to Eloisa and her urbane, hip vamp novio Count Duval (the amazing German Robles), then promptly pronounces her dead after she drinks drugged wine, and declares its "impossible" when her finger moves. This guy is really a terrible doctor! Marta's aunt is less than 48 hours dead but he doesn't want to believe she might still be alive in her crypt, either. He pronounces Marta dead but she's alive too, and he thinks Eloisa is alive, but she's dead! 
The atomsphere is great, though, when you're in the Halloween type of mood. The problem with this film alas is that we spend way too much time with the fussy Enrique--Salazar vacillating between trying to be romantic lead and Van Helsing at the same time, regularly giving the distraught Marta a kind of super lame "let's see a smile" come-on, saying she shouldn't cry over her aunt because he thinks it makes her less attractive--one can't tell if he's meant to be so creepy about hitting on her, invading her space. One really appreciates Bob's tact and light touch in The Cat and the Canary all the more after this.  And Marta isn't any better. Her crazy scream seems uncalled for, and refusal to believe her own eyes--over and over, stretches credulity and patience to the limit. Vampires are pretty easy to spot, so you really need to not think about it too closely. Just how old is she supposed to be?

And thus it's hard not to root for Eloisa and her Dracula-esque novio. Soaking up the night vapors, standing very straight and still deep in the great soundstage forests wreathed in fog, webs and twisty branches, her black scarf whipping out behind her like the lady version of a cape, staring out at nothing and then slowly vanishing or turning into bats, what a kind of a love story! He bit her first (before the credits) and now wants to own the Sicomoros and has made a good offer, alljust so he can visit his brother's crypt (Duval backwards!) which adjoins the property and maybe disinter him. I'm not sure why he doesn't just marry Eloisa and not have to deal with real estate taxes. Instead Duval puts the bite on Marta and maybe Eloisa suspects he won't be the freshest nest in the roost, or whatever. But hey, dig his crazy mirthless laugh where looks like Richard Devon as Satan in The Undead

Luckily, all those dumb little narrative points vanish in the bat-filled breeze once Aunt Maria appears, creeping  in and out of her niece's bedroom via secret panels to plant little straw crosses on her pillow and otherwise save the day. She's the only cool, good person and she's been driven half-mad from fear and  trying to convince the glass-eyed normals around her that vampires are real. There's a fine line, as we learn in our undergraduate feminist lit courses, between being driven crazy by no one listening to you and no one listening to you because you're crazy. At a certain point, even that fine line is gone. 

Sights of the aunt wafting around closed-off bedroom clutching a giant cross to her chest, her hair long gray hair and grey dress taffeta trails flowing behind her like ghostly afterburn, her huge eyes wide, stricken with having to behold too much horror-- it all gives her a kind of wild/wise woman sex appeal one-off archetype: the good undead Christian spirit who wields the cross instead of fears it. I've always wondered why being entombed alive seems to automatically turn people into monsters once they escape  (ala Corman's Poe films, Lewton's Isle of the Dead, etc.), so I'm glad Maria stays nice, if still a a little rattled and unworldly. We need more of these vampire fighting eccentric aunts with long hair and big crosses and huge eyes, countering each vamp machination from behind her secret passages.

In the end it's all about real estate -- and, take it from me in the 90s: after a long night of decadence and potent potables, a conveniently located crypt you can reach before dawn is worth any price.  

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Though he gets star billing and positioning as "The" vampire," Spanish actor German Robles only shows up about 1/3 of the time, but what an entrance he makes, arriving in an ominous black carriage that rolls through the mist-shrouded villa gates with ominous fanfare. Dressed to the nines in prime Lugosian formal finery, he's like a brooding and sublime mix of Christopher Lee and George Chakiris. After the ineffectual tio being the only other man to counterbalance Salazar's light-footed ineffectual doctor, it's nice to have someone with some swagger. While the doc runs high and lo, hands waving in a perpetual tizzy, struggling to believe his own eyes as he vacillates between Van Helsing savvy, skepticism-masked denial, and Lou Costello st-st-stuttering, Roble's poised charismatic Duval majestically arrives in full award ceremony regalia, replete with badass hypnotic pendant, manages to loom over everyone else even while looking up from the ground floor. Would that we spent more of the film's running time with him and Eloisa, perhaps in some kind of Addams Family-style Morticia/Gomez macabre courting ritual, or back in the shadows with the good aunt. But you can't have everything. And the score is pretty epic, booming and hissing like some Mexican Max Steiner (it would be recycled frequently in the films to come); the idea of the good vs. evil aunt thing is relatively original, and there's misty, gnarled tree and spider web atmosphere coursing through, in and around the hacienda in the best Halloween perennial sort of way. Fans of the Spanish language version of the 1931 Dracula may rightly wish Robles had been old enough back then to take the role away from the miscasted Carlos Villarías. Now that would be a classic. But this is definitely worth your time anyway. Maybe I've been too hard on it. Truth is we have to love it because its success launched the Mexican horror mini-boom of late-50s-60s; many of which showed up on US TV thanks to K. Gordon Murray and his Florida dubbing team (whose voices one grows quite fond of as the films accrue). And dig the short diegetic time period - it's over in the course of two nights and a day ... and it's the good old lady does the stakin' - and you got to like that.  Es verdad! 

You can find this on Blu-ray, usually paired with El Vampiro's goofy sequel....

THE VAMPIRE'S COFFIN
("El ataúd del Vampiro")
(1958) Dir. Fernando Mendez

One issue with having Salazar as a producer and a star: who's going to tell him to stop hamming? Or that his romantic co-star Amelia from the previous film shouldn't be playing a professional dancer as she seems pregnant and it's a marked deviation from her goody-two-shoes from last film. Both actors seem determined to unveil their weak areas but Salazar is especially insufferable. Determined to wreak every last drop of comic tic-indulgence from his nervous l-l-l-line readings, he tries to convince his now hospitalized novia that everything from the last film was entirely her imagination. Why he deliberately endangers her life by not even giving her a cross and some wolf bane or something, even after his idiot fellow intern (?) steals Duval's coffin to run some scientific tests (he finds out that, among other things, that when a vampire is staked you can see his skull in a mirror rather than nothing.... that's science!). 

What the idiot intern doesn't bank on of course is that the thug he hired to help steal the coffin (Yerye Beirut, i.e. the Mexican Marc Lawrence) sneaks in later to pull out Lavud's stake in order to get at his jeweled hypno-necklace. Big mistake, Yerye! Unless of course you like being a Renfield/ henchman to a vampire who wastes no time launching a reign of terror at the hospital Marta is staying at, appearing and disappearing, putting the bite on a small kid just like the last film(irregardless of the giant cross above her bed) and angling to make Marta his bride - as fate suddenly decrees. Why he should fall in love with her of all people, remains a mystery, outside of script convenience. Wasn't he all up in her evil aunt? Make up your mind, Duval!  Fans of Halloween 2, and I hear there are some, might note the obvious similarity in plot points - heroine in hospital cuz the last film's trauma, now has her justified fears smugly disregarded by overconfident staff, the killer wiping out the whole hospital in an effort to get to her -- and it makes a good comparison in quality as well as, while both sequels are fine in their own right, they're rather inferior to their antecedents. 


Furthering the disconnect, Abel Salazar dyed his hair blacker and lost some weight for this film, making him seem younger than he was in the first film (just as he's now an intern instead of a psychiatrist), and if you can get past his senseless gaslighting of Marta you're bound to despise him for trying to rat out his vamp-stealing fellow intern to the head of the hospital  (say what you will about Abbot and Costello, they weren't narcs). Eventually, he realizes he'll come off like a tattletale, even to the hospital director, so he takes full blame ("I stole a corpse last night,") then ups the ante ("it was a vampire.") Jesus Marta and Joseph! What is a stressed Mexico City hospital director supposed to do with that information, aside from firing you and/or locking you up, tonto? With the count using his hypno-necklace to get her under his will on one side, and the overacting hysteria of Salazar's amorous doctor trying to overprotect/gaslight Marta, one wonders if this competing 'control' of the 'feminine agency' is a backlash from last film's relative matriarchal strengths. A jumpy gaslighting narc convincing you it's all in your mind, or a sophisticated urbane necrophile who has to anesthetize you before busting a move--what a choice of suitors for a young lady! Hell you're better off with Claude Rains in Notorious. At least she gets a big comfortable king-size bed.

Further rubbing in the patriarchal revisionist agenda, the coolest, strongest character from the first film, the cross-wielding, wild-haired wild woman archetype Maria (Alicia Montoya) gets the short shrift. She follows the coffin to the hospital and starts running high and low and carrying on about the danger, only to be prevented from visiting Maria by Salazar, still in full denial - and then after bravely stalking Yerye to the wax museum, meets her fate, unheralded and forgotten, in the iron maiden before the movie is halfway over and no one ever wonders where she is or if she's OK --she's just totally forgotten about. Does the doctor's 'treatment' include pretending she doesn't even have an aunt? Seriously between him and Charles Boyer in Gaslight, you're better off with - 

But all that aside, once again the cool Halloween horror atmosphere is in abundance thanks to a weird interiority dream space where hospital, theater, outdoor cafe, wax museum, all seem linked as if on a giant soundstage, all of it connected by weird ladder systems and twisty stairs leading up to the light rigging rafters. When Duval whisks Marta away from her dance troupe, and up to the rafters, he only has to cross a few ladders to come down into his wax museum hideout. The almost empty all-night indoor/outdoor (?) cafe where one of the dancers goes to relax between rehearsals has a weird expressionist Edward Hopper glow, with the welcomely ominous deep black shadows offset only by high-contrast diegetic electric light sources; streetlamps, stage lights, hospital nighttime track lighting, all of it barely holding back the dark thanks to the Stanley Cortez-esque work of cinematographer Victor Herrera. Compare that to the comparably banal 'every corner of every room must be visible 'somehow the old castle is all lit up with no visible light source'-style look of Hammer and Corman (and even post-code Universal) and you realize how precious that inky black is. It must be savored and celebrated. It helps fill in the empty spots in the sorriest looking wax museum you'll ever see. It just seems like damaged mannequin storage space. The bit where Yerye lurks and poses like a waxwork to evade discovery evokes Marc Lawrence in Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum or Bronson in House of Wax. They even bring out the old guillotine demo gag and the one where the killer stands next to his uglier wax image, you have to take their word for it they look alike. They missed the opportunity to replace the figures with real actors holding very still, a trick very well implemented in the original 1935 Mystery of the Wax Museum, and in Tourist Trap. Mostly they're all mannequins whose heads were melted and reshaped or just given a head made in papier mache by a blind five year-old. In case you can't tell, that means I love them. 

Performances other than Salazar's are all pretty choice, too. Nobles is back, as Lee/Chakris-hybrid charismatic as ever and Adrianne Welter is a much more animated Marta this time, except onstage, where she's shockingly half-assed as the lead dancer. She's strong, too -- she even shoves Duval at one point and he goes spinning into the opposite wall. Those same thunderous library music cues from the last film may repeat endlessly, but I love that, in the big climax, though I've been hard on him, Salazar gets to demonstrate his athletic side. That he can full-on fight with a giant bat without getting tangled in its visible strings indicates some nimble dexterity to balance out his hamming, never missing a chance to show off his fencing or bannister leaping, and I love the weird final ending ("Those stairs lead to the roof," says the incredulous police chief after Salazar and Marta try to walk up into the sunlight ala the end of 1931 Dracula.) When they take the front door, it's still night out, and the diner across the street still has its noirish ambient Hopper's Nighthawks kinda vibe. You can see them cooling off with a drink at the outdoor cafe before going home. It's a pretty good, meta way to end things, with the flippant attitude of Salazar finally making contextual sense. Well, like they always say, you don't come to Mexico for the meta resonance or lush production valies, you come for the oomph, the imagination, the shock to the senses. In Mexico, the power of myth is right there, in full form- alive like a fire that's never gone out. It may not give much of a flicker at times, but it never has to be re-lit. 


Famous Monsters of Mexico II: CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN, BLACK PIT OF DR. M

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October may not be the time when you look to our neighbor Mexico, but, mi hombre raro cinéfilo maybe you should start. They got crazy masked wrestlers fighting vampire women, la Lorna, a vengeful ghost who drowned her babies and then wails in grief and kills people; a middle aged female insane asylum patient with the strength of ten men; a dueling pair of sisters one an evil vampire, the other a beuena fuerte flaca con a cruz grande who ends up being the one who stakes the male vampire, not the hero, and frequent scenes where a monster breaks into a woman's boudoir while she's sleeping and rather than fainting she reaches into her nightable drawer, grabs her gun, and fires at them, scaring them off and sometimes wounding them -then going back to bed like it ain't no thang. And etc. Strong matriarchal through line, is what I'm getting at. Oodles of atmosphere, no frills, and if you love the 1931 Dracula, but have you've seen so many times you can do a one man show of it without even needing a script, (Bela is finally artist of the month on TCM!) and wish they stayed at the castle instead of going to London, then viola! And if you love Mario Bava, double viola!

Even when these mid-60s Mexican horrors were good, they were a blast. But when they were bad, sublime. I collated a YouTube playlist, Mexico De Macabre, so there you are/  

CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN
(La maldición de la Llorona)
(1963) Dir. Rafael Baeldon

Film adaptations of the "la Lorna" legend often bog down in costume soapiness or colonialist regret, but this 1963 definitive version says 'no one wants to see or shoot that shit," and just jumps, into the obsidian abyss of pure atmospheric horror, elements of Black Sunday and Dracula fused in with a nod to the legendary Crying Woman just the first in a while matriarchal lineage of brujas malvadas, whose eyes go jet black under the full moon, when they kill random people, for kicks. The the first time we see Selma (Rita Macedo), she's all in black, wreathed in fog, holding the leashes for three Great Danes, as Barbara Steele did in a nod to Black Sunday (above) is silently crying/laughing/orgasming while her servant kills most of the passengers in a passing stage coach, before siccing her the Great Danes on a fat guy in a huge hat, and rolling over the young girl passenger with the coach wheels. And now tonight at midnight, her newly arrived nieced Amelia (Rosita Arenas), to fulfill her destiny, pulling the spear out of the desiccated body of their great great great abuela, the original la Lorona, at the stroke of midnight --which is in a few hours! Amelia feels the destiny in her blood. She can't resist "In our world," Selma tells her, "nothing begins or ends." To prove it, Amelia almost strangles a passing coachman before a streak of eyes swirls down through the fog and her own eyes go jet black.

But one thing wasn't in the cards: Amelia brought her new husband, Haime (producer Abel Salazar), who is never without a giant erect cigar in his mouth, hinting perhaps at their luna de miel interrumpia. Seriously, that cigar, and his perfectly pressed clothes, is kind of ridiuclous but it works on that lievel Instead of a nice honeymoon, Amelia is realizing her destiny is to pull a spear out of her great great-great abuela's chained, desiccated corpse (above) at the stroke of midnight--which is in a few hours! She can't fight destino. And in this case, destino means her eyes going jet black whenever the moon is full (and not obscured by clouds), flashing back to a solarized tour of their lineages evil via clips from El Mundo des vampiresla Momia Azteca, and the next two films in this post: El Hombre y la Monstruo; and almost strangling a passing wagoner as he rolls through the fog and gnarled trees on the road past the hacienda. Seriously, does anyone ever make it past that place? You'd think the local policia might hear the dogs growling and the evil aunt flying around, and the deformed clubfooted servant (she rescued him from the gallows, so he's very loyal) and finally they knock on the door, and are immediately torn to shreds by the dogs, which for some reason the cops with their guns out, are too slow to shoot. They froze! They're dead. End of. the cops. 

This Lorona everything I love about classic horror: big atmospheric soundstage forests full of dry ice fog and twisted branches, a lineage of powerful, evil women villains; and a short 'all in a night' time tick-tockable (1) time span; haunted mirrors, voodoo dollas (right), a clever use of overlay (the la Lorona ghost appears over her corpse like she's merging in and out of her shell); a soundtrack of almost constant ethereal howling, whispering wind and weird slide whistle/theremin as if the wind sliding up a long twisty drain pipe; spider webs; big rubber bats; an evil knife-throwing servant pretending to have a club foot, so he always looks like he's walking upstairs, and who has to squint to keep his scars on, and nary a trace of realism, daylight, last second patriarchal wrap-up morality, religion, lite opera, or any of the other stuff US censors would have demanded. Horror movies should all start at sunset and end at dawn, if ya ask me! And this one doesn't even take that long - it's practically real-time with crosscuts from the dysfunctional boys upstairs with their insanity, deformities, and tobacco addictions, and hilarious fighting, crosscutting with the three super powerful witches down in the basement, about to take over the world. In the northern devil movies, matriarchal lineages of witches are generally destroyed by one brave hombre with a cross and a smug patriarchal attitude by the end, while the devil women are all either devouring mothers (Shelly Winters) or sexy 'recruiters' (ala Linda Christian). With Curse of the Crying Woman there are neither. The male gaze isn't indulged or challenged, or even exploited, but totally ignored. 

                                                                             
 
There's a big thing going on with eyes -- Selma's eyes turn jet black in moonlight; a failed attempt by the make-up artist to seem inky, but she just looks like she's wearing black eye patches or closed eyes with lids painted black. It's not convincing but is unnerving. She seems truly unhinged. Ask a Latina to play amok evil and you get a force of nature out of reach of most other actresses, great as they may be. It's just a whole different level of emotion. You can totally see the way the original La Lorna could kill her kids in an jealous rage, and then lament their loss so loudly she's heard clear around the world. The results are far grimmer than anything we'd get in North America or Europe--and we never quite recover from the blunt force shock of that opener. Even the flaws are creepy. The matte colored black eyes, the soundstage insolation clearly visible behind the rickety stairs to the top of the tower, the wagging tales of the dogs in the rapid cuts of dog mouths slobbering on glass panes, screaming gendarmes, and happy dogs out for treats, all snapped together in a howl of quick cuts--the results manage to magically becomes an unnerving Dionysian sparagmos and humane endearment distancing. 

As Selma, Rita Macedo avoids extremes without ever straying from her unrepentant evil stance, which is hard to do. Neither young nor old, stridently witchy, wanton or feigning innocence, she has a look that's snobby rather than sinister. It's like she saw how restrained Gloria Holden was in Dracula's Daughter--her closest relative in classic horror,and got so disgusted she vowed not to make the smallest feint towards censor-placating regret or longing to be good instead of evil and to love some smug patriarchal shrink, eager to give up her power in favor of a 'traditional' role as a housewife. And yet, she's very low-key haughty mixed with soapy sanctimonious faux emotion, a habit facing downwards and away from her scene partner, that Mexican soap opera cheating out which was once probably her doing 'demure' at the advance of a landowner or his son and now it just seems stuck-up/haughty, saying, almost boasting she rescued her deformed servant from being hanged for murder, or multiple murders that he did do, with the same bourgeois disregard as she might say, "my dear, the party was filled with the most common kinds of people" in a 'normal' movie. We can scarcely believe her evil as we're so used to the extremes of denial/deception or evil overacting, when someone gives us full evil while staying demure and aloof is so fresh it takes a few beats to react. The whole movie is kind of like that, which is why we're still getting over that opening shock during the rest of the movie, and getting over the rest of the movie never, but hey, we can go back and try again, and visit all the other Mexican horror films seen in the solarized tour of la Lorna's cursed lineage via a history of Cinematographica ABAS' other/earlier films:  El Mundo des vampiresla Momia Azteca, El Hombre y la Monstruo and..

THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M
"Misterios de ultratumba"
(1959) Dir. Fernando Méndez

A movie both quiet and bombastic, a score rife with pounding timpani, a very large and empty expressionist dance/cafe, and a lush hacienda insane asylum --what could go wrong? Dr. Aldama lays dying in one of the rooms, while the tactless Dr. Mazali (Rafael Bertrand), the owner/director demands he follow up on their mutual promise that the first to die will arrange a means by which the other may experience death without dying. While a priest and colleague look on aghast, Mazali makes sure the last words he hears are Aldama's declaring his soul not rest in peace until this agreement is fulfilled. A pretty difficult thing to ask a dying man, especially as tactlessly and urgently as Masali does. But hey - a graveyard shovel shot later, his colleague’s spirit speaks through a medium during a seance to give him the date and time at which "a door will close in front of you, opening the way to the beyond".

There's no pit to be found unless you mean symbolically, or consider a grave a pit, or that big well/fountain in the center of the lush atmospheric garden sanitarium, the standing soundstage hacienda here it's at its most invitingly fecund and ultra-spooky under evocative high-contrast Stanley Cortez-style black-and-white cinematography of Victor Herrera. 

Aldama's ghost's first stop: Patricia (Mapita Cortés) the daughter he abandoned, now a beautiful modern dancer at the cavernous, underpopulated dream cafe--- a perfect example of liminal space), telling her of a box she shall inherit hidden in the sanitarium, sending her towards destiny in an elaborate chain of coincidence that will fulfill his colleagues the macabre request and lead her to love with some handsome young doctor caught in the wheels of destiny. First, Dr. Mazali must contend with as seriously deranged a female mental patient as you've never seen before or since, a justifiably embittered acid-scarred orderly, and his own gnawing love for the comely dancer daughter of the man he wouldn't let die in peace. Pobrecito!

Everything is all part of a long circular inevitable chain of events involving seances, a dropped locket, a secret key, dreams, coincidence, falling glass, a lost locket, a strange murder, malpractice , a monogrammed dagger, a music box that calms an insane gypsy schizophrenic with the strength of ten men, soul transference, unrequited desperate woo-pitching, frenzied violin self-identification, and the tall, caped figure of Dr. Aldamaa appearing at every step to kick Rube Goldberg the can of coincidence down the grim EC comics-esque twist trap.  Kind of sucks people had to die and an innocent orderly by disfigured by acid thrown in his face, all just to fulfill a macabre promise, but that's the medical profession for ya, and hey! We get to watch a middle-aged woman terrify a whole room full of orderlies and doctors, sending them all running out of the room. As with la Lorona, a strong matriarchal through line is off-a the chain. In Mexican horror, young women may start out innocent, yes, but once they age enough they become forces to be respected and feared. Good luck finding broads like la Lorona and this crazy gypsy in a yankee movie. 

What a movie...

Take back one kadam due to the overuse of Gustavo César Carrión bombastic score (that big timapanii roll and thunderous Da-da DA!! (Zarathustra-esque timapani roll). Da...da-DA! (Zarathustra-esque timapani roll) is great the first 20 times, but after that....) Another kadam taken due to a bland daylight pastorale scenes of Masali walking to a nearby church with Patricia, and her budding love for the age-appropriate new intern (the old triangle..), But soon enough all of them, and everyone else, are swallowed up by that screaming, dark, hushed mood, expressionistic lighting and ultimately satisfying, frenzied climax --you can almost visualize it as a final splash page panel in an old EC comic, the other doctors saying "gasp!' and 'choke!' as the full measure of ironic horror is unveiled.  Best of all is that high-contrast black-and-white cinematography, which wraps it all up in so many inky shadows and twisty fecund corridors, It's so clear that Mendez and Herrera have seen and loved the early Freund-shot Universal horrors as well as the Tourneur-Lewtons, honoring them in their devotion to thick Halloween-ready atmos. And remember: "science and art are equal!" 

See also:
For More Mexi-Monster Madness

Mexico De Macabre, (YouTube list)

1. Tick-Tockability is an all too rarely used horror trick of slowing time down and having the film occur in a single night or short period of time, where a five minute scene crosscut from three perspectives takes 15 minutes instead of 5, etc. First used by Carpenter in Halloween, though Griffith might have invented it back in the day, like he did damn near most everything else. 

King Devil says Go for It: DR. SATAN (1966), DR. SATAN VS. BLACK MAGIC (1968)

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 (FamousMonsters Medical Mephistopheles of Mexico III)

Viva la Dr. Satan, discipulo numero uno di Rey Diablo!

A lot of classic Mexican horror emulates the classics of other nations, movies, TV, and comics. Ther original contribution is mainly lucha libre movies, their main monster is la Lorna, of course, and....well, Dr. Satan. Wait, who? 

Thanks to our draconian censors, the master villain antihero has no real equal in the US. Other countries get enigmatic good bad guys like Diabolik (Italy), Satanik (Turkey), and, of course Fantomas, and Irma Vep (France). On the good guy side may be an equally intelligent police chief, or the cops may be klutzy comic relief, outwitted at every turn. The free world was in that sweet spot between Thunderball and Charlie Manson. Our censors insisted the bad guys be totally bad, the good always win - lest kids grow up believing crime is 'cool.'

Down in Mexico, well, you had to have a completely accepting attitude towards the devil to stay 'balanced'. You can work to expel him, exorcise him, but hating and fearing him just made him stronger. You go to the local bruja and get a charm of protection, make a prayer to the blessed virgin, and you send the devil on his way with a few pesos for his trouble. He's just one of the figures revolving tower clock neither more powerful or less than any other--it's all about the bout, the match, and for that to be engaging, the sides have to be even. To love lucha libre is to understand this, the match may be fixed, the 'narrative' set, but the emotions are still engaged. For our collective unconscious, there is no faking it, as long as you commit. And it's ultimately our collective unconscious that all this for. And deep down in there, a man for his time, cometh the inimitable.....

DR. SATAN
(1966) Dir. Miguel Montoya 

Wreathed in a nice haze of Satan summoning smoke and artifacts from the slightly blurry print, Mexican pelicula/telenovela leading man Joaquin Cordero is at the peak smolder as Dr. Arrozamena (aka Dr. Satán - accent on TAN), and that means peak smolder, period. Crazy arched (painted?) eyebrows on a face that's a blend of Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson: eyes that don't even need the light shining in them to glow with cunning, connivance and chaos; a masterly demeanor; a smile that's never more than a slight curve; a low measured lion king hypnotist. hypnotist of a voice--f you get an instant mancrush on Dr. Satan, you're not alone. The film refrains from scenery chewing, pushing his egomania too far, or hamming, cackling over torture devices, and dying in a burning lair. Our Arrozamena is a team player, asking permission from 'King Devil' every time he needs to harvest a soul. The devil doth appear in a huge cloud of evil smoke, on a hill with a leafless tree (above), barely speaking except to grant his request with a surly "so be it!" before disappearing again in a puff of smoke. Arrozamena's traps their souls in little box, so their bodies may be raised by his secret formula, as zombie henchmen. 

It's hard to place Dr. Satan in the context of his time or place. Are we supposed to root for him, or against him? Casual summarizers lump him in the 'mad scientist' and 'sorcerer' camps, but they just don't get it. He's neither, he's just himself--totally unique. And the quest for global domination only enters his mind when his new lady friend suggests it. His measured calm is almost hilariously deadpan and the film blessed by simplicity, a small but capable cast, good editing and freedom of cliche. It's short, it hums with a unique score of thumping timpanii and what sounds like the Forbidden Planet score forced through a flanger and slowed to an industrial screech. Hell yes. 

everybody's clockin' Rodriguez (top: Interpol /bottom: Satan Inc.

And most of the rest of the cast are women, good and bad, all professional, capable, and not objectified. Say, whaaa? Notably there's the intense Gina Romand, so sublimely evil as Frankenstein's Daughter in Santo meets Frankensteins Daughter), is dynamite as an agent sent by the leader of a shadowy international crime ring to check in on the doctor, their man in Mexico, to let him know a box of counterfeit money is coming in, and also he needs to kill Rodriquez, an agent  INTEPRPOL has been shadowing. He suggests in that low measured rumble, never moving his head or taking his eyes off of her, he takes her out and show her the town, they can knock off Rodriguez on the way. Her blonde 'changed her mind halfway up a beehive' hair endearingly out of control, her eyes and voice on maximum smolder. These are actors very good at that close talking seduction stuff; they're like a pair of cats in a staring contest who stop looking at each other only to silently clock a clueless nearby squirrel, i.e. their target, his back to them at the bar. Keeping their conversation golf tournament quiet, except in the most innocuous and slick cocktail bar manner, he calmly rolls a cigarette but is really loading up his discreet blowgun with a posion pellet, looking for all the world like he's just rolling a spitball, or some other cocktail bar napkin futzign spitball dugout, nailing him 

But there's another cool couple, the INTERPOL agents, Nora (Alma Delias Fuentes) and Mateos (José Gálvez) they're at another table at the bar, never even noticing when the dart hits the back of his neck. Neither side knowing who each other are yet, but they are, it's genius, two wild cool and capable couples begin to wind their way towards each other, inexorably. 

So that makes three capable women characters, when you factor in the connect, which is Arrozamena's secretary, taping his diabolical conversations, making a clay impression of the key to his secret lab,  and make tapes for INTERPOL. He seems to be a good and balanced boss, never being grabby or overbearing."I've always treated you with the respect due an employee," he declares at the climax, almost hurt at the reveal, probably the closest he comes to a dismayed register. And we believe it. Even his zombies seem to like him when he gives them their salt tablets once the jig is up - as if to say, thanks boys, for your fine work, we'll see each other soon, if King Devil allows. 

I mean you could say on the one hand here is a Jess Franco/fumetti neri-style horror/master thief caper, cheap and disposable, but on the other hand Franco never dealt in absolute archetypal iconography (he's astonishingly irreligious, a true Sadean). Dr, Arrozamena does though; he doesn't have to sacrifice people or a chant or anything-- he just gives a few unholy hand gestures and viola.. 

Putting it over the top into perfect Erich heavy rotation, the "music" score at times wanders close to the Ed Wood library score rotation, and times like the Beebe's Forbidden Planet tonalities dredged through a flanger and a wet sponge--and I hope you don't have to be told that's a very good thing. At time it's almost on the level of the fusion of slowed-down strings and Mancini stings in Hellish Spiders --my other big 'find' of 2024. But you'll hear about that in the next installment. 

You'd think it would be the opposite but the usual sexism we get in films from Europe and North America is totally absent in these peliculas fantasticas. I know and love at least three movies where, when the monster breaks in on them in the dead of night, the endangered lady whips a gun out of her night table and start blasting. Most times in these scenes the woman needs a man to rescue him because killing is unladylike and if unless she's a Russian spy, if she does kill a person has to cry and moan and act traumatized. But not these flacas fuertes --just the gun scares them off but she still shoots after them, blat blat blat. in the back, or after they're already backing away, and more than one shot, often. The bullets may have little effect because there targets are spider aliens, or vampires, or zombies. It doesn't matter - it's the capability, the fury and quick action, that makes Mexican women, if I can sweeping generalization, so frickin' badass. 

DR. SATAN VS. BLACK MAGIC 
(Dr. Satán y la magia negra)
(1968) Dir. Rogelio A. González

When one is at their top of their game like our Dr. Satan was before he got nabbed at the end of the last film, well, there's nowhere to go but down, quite literally in his case. When we last saw the doctor he had disappeared, if that makes sense. This is filmed only two years later, but it's in color, with a kind of 'owning' it cheap Batman TV show mise en scene, and our Cordero just doesn't quite look the same, a little bloated and ragged from taking a long nap on a comfy rock in his own wing of hell (or is it just his man cave, quite literally, in his case). Now it's time for King Devil to ask -him for favors. Sleeping on his spacetious slab, he first lazily tries to weasel out of it. Arrozamena, what happened to you, man? 

What's even weirder is that King Devil needs him to go up there to the land of the living and kill an evil Asian vampire named Yei Lin (Noé Murayama) with a criminal outfit and genius connivances to rival the doctor himself and planning to steal a formula that can turn any metal into gold, thus working even better than Arrozamena's counterfeiting in the last film. If Yei Lin gets a hold of that process, it's implied, he will out-devil the King Devil, so our Dr. S better work. That's a bit confusing- you would think any evil is good even as far as the King Devil is concerned. Think again. King Devil wants that formula for himself. Say whaaa!? Is hell short of funds? I mean, it's great if that's the reason. Hail, King Devil!

For this mission, Arrozamena magically gets his lair back up on the surface and takes as his zombie slaves a pair of cute women who he finds via a want-ad, then hypnotizing them into his power. Though they seem zombified, they're just as capable as the men if not more so, able to sneak around and spy on the other side with ease, and easily survive knives thrown into their backs. They wear complimentary comic book colors, will make any weird film fan think they may have wandered into a Jess Franco spy movie (it's better) and the nights glow deep blue or olive green over flat shades of light blue (no checkered socks), and everything kind of beams with that flat TV lighting, comic strip framing. It's so chill it almost seems like it could be the pilot to a Dr. Satan TV show and man, what a wonderful world it would be with such a series in it.  

Naturally it's not at the level of the first film, suffering from a kind of flat TV budget, but there's a lot to love especially if, like me as a small child watching Speed Racer, you've always rooted for the bad guys, hoping they'd win just this once. Here they do, more or less. Once again we kind of like all the characters on both sides, even if they kill each other a lot; the arch enemies are each loyal to their women, not pervy etc. We root for Satan just because he's the home team but Yei Lin, is cool, nice to his girlfriend crime partner (though she shoots a cop in the back before sitting down to finish her tea) but stern with his henchmen (he blames them when the formula they stole doesn't work). Our doctor would never do that. He's such a good boss even if he programmed normal girls into becoming automaton zombie killers, it's not in a pervy way, and when it's time for the old salt tablet farewell, they seem legitimately sad to be breaking up the team or at least as sad as a zombie can be. "Maybe we will meet again, if King Devil allows it," says Arrozamena. Even when the girls use crosses to subdue the vampire, they hold them inverted, yet it still works. And thus doth evil conquer evil in the name of evil. For some of us weary sinner cineaste's souls, grown so tired of bland heroism and knee-jerk Christian backtracking always bringing everything to a fiery halt just when it's getting good, just so the heteronormative couple can escape to propigate their irritating lack of evil.

I'm also a sucker for when the good guys are just slightly less bad guys, and I hate the years of censorship programming that made movies like these so unique and forbidden for American audiences. It wasn't until 1994, year of Pulp Fiction and Last Seduction, that the old moralistic bad faith resolutions finally blew up, never to be seen again. No more needing to drive off a cliff to atone for thy crimes, Thelma! But with Dr. Satan we learn Mexico was 28 years ahead of us. Viva el' Diablo Rey! 

Waxing Gibbous: Luigi Cozzi's BLOOD ON MELIE'S MOON (2016)

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Once the psychic fell out of her seance chair, and threw up green ectoplasm that turned into a book after white-masked magician zapped her through her crystal ball, and she knocked over a small framed picture of HP Lovecraft on her way to the floor as a fireball came through a door in space to destroy the Earth, and a space oracle named Sylvia narrated a short history of mirror/film magic, from Aristotle up to a 19th century magician from another dimension zapping psychics across time--and dimensions--only then I knew things were going to be OK. 

I was home, the Cozzi of Starcrash and Hercules hadn't let unlimited access open source CGI stock footage, license-free music, endless time, and and Final Cut HD video color-style change his insane ways. 

"Here," says the psychic passing the book to her client, played by the actress who played Olga in the original Suspiria, "I believe this is for you." 

Yes, Luigi Cozzi's DIY HD video labor of love, Blood on Melies' Moon, is meant for me. I'm even quoted on the back of the Blu-ray. To paraphrase Maria Montez in Cobra Woman, his people are my people. 

But until that book, man I'd been holding my breath. He hadn't made a film in 30 years.  People change after 30 years. Anything might have come along and ruined his artistic voice in 30 years. He may have learned how to write realistic dialogue, or read Story by Robert McKee, or raised children who "wanna be in the pitcher" as WC Field's kid says in The Bank Dick. A crabby new wife might have tried to fix his 'flaws' and so push him into the hack vortex that has claimed so very many others. 

I knew from the trailer that Melies is a kind of meta-fiction Cozzi capstone, depicting him going about his working day at Profundo Rosso, talking to his wife in bed, hobbling around to visit friends, the stuff legends do when they have nothing but time and Final Cut to make one last statement.  And what if he lacked screen charisma? Not every director is convincing when playing themselves. You may lose half your loyal fanbase if they've seen you in close-up and you don't know your angles. They no longer see themselves in you, they just see you--you stole their spot. You made it awkward, like ruining a platonic friendship by hooking up one dfunk night - no matter what kind of 'just this once' talk,. 

Part of why fans like me love Luigi is his total lack of self-awareness, it's so endearing and honest, never self-important, never laboring to seem better than he is, never trying to elevate his material and his genre into bourgeois respectability. He attacks a film the way my brother and I used to attack sandcastles with rubber monsters, HO scale army men, and UFO shovels. We grew out of that rich imagination, but not Cozzi. Watching his films, our inner child--patiently sleeping--wakes up like a sad dog when his owner comes home from the war. You forgot he was even still down there in your subconscious menagerie, but he was just sleeping until his best weird friend came over. Watching Cozzi movies, I can feel my inner dig wagging his tale excitedly, in that machine gun style rapidity that signals total joy. 

BLOOD ON MELIES' MOON 
(2016) Written/produced/directed by Luigi Cozzi

Looking sharp for any century in his natty red bowtie, Cozzi starts out the post-credits main body of the film walking down the busy overlaid streets of Rome, opening his store Profundo Rosso, and wobbling through his day in a kind exaggerated portrayal of himself, short and mystified, muttering to himself looking at old movie stills, as if he's trying to discreetly introduce us to the world of vintage European sci-fi films while doddering through his day. Neck forever craning back, as if in the front row of the cinema of life, agog at the magic of movies even as his neck hurts There's a cringe beat when he surprises his wife at home by walking into their kitchen in a tacky red mascot costume, no doubt meant to convey his childlike whimsy. We agree with his wife, it's tacky. He's starting out a real square--he even refuses the call to adventure by ushering an agitated guy babbling about mirror dimensions out of the store, not even listening to what he's saying--just another weirdo. Later, behind the register, he's so distracted by a phone call to his wife he lets the girl with the book from the seance sneak downstairs to the Argento Museum of Horrors (1) to be murdered by the waxwork/mannequin killer from the Blood and Black Lace exhibit, everything already so drenched in tin can horror he doesn't even hear her screams, or the blaring non-diegetic royalty-free rock music. He only sees, cleaning up before closing, that she wrote a cryptic note on the telltale mirror from Argento's seminal Deep Red, and now he has to wash it off and grumble about kids today. Then later she calls out to him in his dreams from beyond mortality's dimensional border.  Wake up, Luigi! Your particiapation is demanded by the weird interdimensional drama to come.

Even with all that, it's going to take some big 4 AM staring into bathroom mirror, wondering  about which Cozzi is the real one, and being attacked by a dream werewolf, to jolt him into the mystery, especially when the other girl from the seance shows up looking for her slaughtered and interdimensionally-sucked in sister, and mentioning that book. Bro. It's all connected; and now they're working together to solve the mystery - each going a different direction! Finally!. 

For Cozzi that means bopping from one friend's book-filled apartment to another, also stopping by make-up and effects studios, soundstages, film schools, and scientific institutions. Everyone knows him or knows his work, and doesn't genuflect but gives his legendary status its due. Lamberto Bava makes Cozzi and his wife dinner and then shows him how to use the internet; Maria Cristina  Mastrangeli (that foxy bassist who dies too early in Paganini Horror), is a make-up artist (she dies too soon here too). There's a photo of a young Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone chillin' like villains on the wall of the Italian Film Institute along with a dozen other signifiers of past legends in Italian cinema, Cozzi walks past it all in a slow-mo hobbit strut, some of the faces I didn't quite know or get, which is fine. As a film person, it's refreshing actually.

ooh ooh! I know the answer
The vibe of all his hustling around, actually, reminded me of visiting a buddy in a foreign land and having him show you the sights while taking you from friend to friend, dealer to dealer, to help you find drugs (since you didn't want to bring any thru customs), Each person you drop in on is so cool you wish you spoke Italian to understand what they're saying while you look around at their cool book and art collection and can only manage to say "Cosi fantastika, eh? Ciao!" And you're off again. 

Eventually you're so high from classic Italian sci-fi/horror's fumi collaterali you forget all about the drugs. When a giant steampunk spaceship comes out of a book and takes you on a shortcut from Rome to Paris--normally a two-hour flight--that involves leaving the Earth and traveling all the way around the galaxy, looking at UFOs from classic science fiction out of the porthole, you wonder if you took the kind of drugs so good you forgot you took them. In fact maybe you forgot the last 30-40 years of life, and are back to being a wild-eyed ten year old, frothing at the mouth with excitement over space ships and stop motion monsters, the wonkier the b. 

And maybe I sound like a Cozzi apologist (Cozzipologist?) but the man himself maintains a dry deadpan veneer that stops his Shrooms 101 pontification and DIY home movie travelogue-in' from ever getting "silly." or self-indulgent, or becoming a midlife dadsploitation 'vanity' project.  And it's hard not to smile, just as it's hard for him not to smile, when he gives himself several of those Spielbergian slow "awestruck" dolly zooms, looking up at some amazing sight behind the camera. You never get the impression he's quite able to visualize anything other than a glowing green screen, rather than whatever effect Adobe can muster from its PD bin; he keeps a straight face (most of the time), avoids looking into the camera (some of the time), and never gets campy or self-conscious at the absurdity of it all (aside from that bit with the furry red mascot suit). 

And as the film trudges along, he becomes way more believable as himself, modulating his performance to compliment the energy of each of his scene partners, which is what many of us do naturally in life, leaving them to set the tone of each interaction, counter-mirroring their extreme temporal shifts, overplaying when they underplay (his cool wife is sublimely low-key and kinda steals the show by not stealing anything); underplaying when they overplay (Philippe Beun-Garbe, who has a habit of looking at Cozzi like a cobra trying to hypnotize a hamster) and allowing conversations to kind of peter out before he says something like "OK - so I guess I'm going this way, arrivederci." 

This is not to say any stretch of Blood on Melies Moon is at any time un-janky. Watching anything shot on video, even HD video, for more than an hour or so can sometimes be an ordeal, especially if it plods through a linear story's polite bourgeois beats like PBS Mystery, or if gets all tawdry with endless showers and sax-spurred satin sheet rustling. Cozzi has too much imagination for either of those dull extremes. Convention and exploitation have no purchase within the Cozzi ouevre. There's no pandering in a Cozzi film, he rarely even shows a completed kiss before looking away, like any normal person in real life, especially a child (or senior) for whom such things are quite gross.
 
And that's because Cozzi is making the kind of movie Cozzi would love to see but no one else ever makes. He assumes you've seen a lot of other movies, like Quentin Tarantino, he's like the antithesis of banality - rather than follow the heard over its familiar courses like the rest, he takes stock and realizes which tracks aren't being run, which ways aren't being followed, there's no real focus group shit involved with that kind of thing, unless you're a hack whose film knowledge begins with last week's edition of Variety. That's because you're making movies for yourself, the movies no one makes and you know because you've seen all theirs, and they're all not that.  

With Cozzi, for example, he never lets a moment just lay around. Even if he's just standing outside the store monitoring the autograph line for Dario Argento's book signing, he's overlaying deep rich color fields under planetary smash-ups; marching Italian war veterans; skies full of stars, fireworks, close-ups of fans in weird masks and Freddy gloves; camera men looking at the monitor in their van, dlowing out to the seance lady's TV. Macabre Italian movie posters from the 20s-80s, short clips from his or Argento's oeuvre; famous landmarks awash in Cozzilla colors; his wife's home movie shots of standing in front of the Mexican pyramids; gothic buttresses and looming gargoyles; outdoor dance classes; cemeteries; twisting piazzas wreathed in deep reds and greens; solarized shots of Italian Film Institute exteriors; a fake blood slicked onto glass; a quantum theorist in her (real) lab, talking the plurality of worlds; a big empty dark soundstage with weird giant alien puppets standing around, waiting for some holiday parade yet to come; the Roman night sky blazing deep red, blue, or dark green; all the weird sights of his Profundo Rosso and its downstairs attraction, The Argento Museum of Horrors. Every cool, creepy, strange or mystical free attraction his zero sum budget can buy, all as stops in a long journey towards early film education and interdimensional doorway closing. Meta-Mecha-Mental. 

And just to keep things edgy, that evil masked magician is always sticking his neck out of passing mirrors, slashing up anyone who might be even remotely involved with that book (shades of Argento's Inferno -in that  he never thinks to just take the actual book). The attacks are never scary per se; the blood looks fake abstract; but the throat opening up make-up shots are first rate and the blood is more realistic when it's not spattered on white walls or glass. And the sudden heavy metal makes it seem like a tribute to Argento, especially in one beautifully lit and composed scene in the shiny white make-up department, evoking of course Tenebrae.


In sum: never before has a film about science fiction film history, told as a science fiction movie starring the director as himself been able to pull off the difficult hat trick of not lapsing into trite self-congratulation within the first two minutes, irritating meta smirkiness after ten, excruciating neorealism after twenty, and switched to something else by thirty. Sure I miss the classic Cozzi signature analog effect collection, But surprisingly, even with CGI that magic is not completely lost. I don't know how he did it, but Cozzi has even snuck in that same ingenious amateur analog tactile outsider DIY purity to green screen CGI, open source effects, FCP color styling, and royalty-free stock footage. 

Above all, he overcomes the risks of directing himself as himself by his keen love of dead pan wit. That kind of thing can't be taught. You either get it or you don't. You can count the actors who can do it on one hand: Charlie Sheen and Richard Crenna in Hot Shots Part Deux, Sterling Hayden in Dr. Strangelove, Richard Burton and James Coburn in Candy. If you think of any others, do let me know... 

Perhaps Cozzi's secret for skirting around all the 'feels,' the folksy pastorale "movies are the wings of your dreams, grandson!" cringe, is the way he avoids any kind of situations ever getting real, or heartfelt, scary or tragic-- indeed, Cozzi avoids any kind of sustained emotion of the sort that critics love about his bigger budgeted peers, like Benecio del Toro and Tim Burton. In fact, if he finds an emotion, he runs from it even faster than we would; he does this by always dialing outwards, enlarging the scope the more dramatic transpersonal intimacy becomes, going galactic when most go the opposite. In space no one can hear you cry, so Cozzi learns how rocket above exosphere at the slightest lip tremor. By the end of Melies there's been at least six brutal murders, severed heads talking on the phone, etc, but somehow all that's forgotten; the ladies looking for  their slain sister melt away in the distance once the aperture dilates to astral scope, to the Silver Age Marvel comic's Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko-verses: Gods and monsters riding giant surfboards, Dr. Strange and Galactus standing on flat-topped asteroids floating through the quantum realm while debating the foolish strivings of the humans trapped in the space/time continuum. 


CLOSING FAST

Sure, some things have changed in the 30 years he's been away: analog special effects like the Lite-Brite disco ceiling star fields, solder-patched lady Telos, and erector set hydras--and sure I miss the thunderous major key scores he scored from people Nino Rota and John Barry--all replaced here by major key, royalty-free (presumably) tracks ranging manically from blaxploitation to electronica to French rap to old school 80s synths, to mainstream Goldsmith-style sweep.. Sure I miss those colorful crazy costumes, all the glitter, leather, huge Ghost of Xmas present robe/coats and gold Versace armor. And sure I miss the old-school cape-twirling super-villainy of films past, but you got to love an ending where everyone still living goes home fulfilled, to whatever dimension they started with. 

And most of all, you got to love that after 30 years, Cozzi hasn't changed, grown up or mellowed out or 'matured' one bit. He's far from an old grandpa spinning yarns for a dewey-eyed grandson about how "movies are our magical dreams." we get in something like Hugo.  Movies are magic for Cozzi, too, but presumes you already know that, so there's no need to spark the self-satisfied glow of the dewey-eyed bourgeois Academy, reminding them once again how they've spent their lives lifting up the proles with the wings of dream.  Cozzi is beyond class, beyond awards and humble-sheathed grandiosity -- he is the grandson and the grandfather, or rather the cool uncle. He's the complete unit, all ages of creeds and classes, merged into one unhinged maniac. His reach for the stars is more the symbiotic relationship between eye and screen, all the unions and signatures edited out. His message isn't magic of fantasy for the downtrodden but that when you look at the image and the image looks at you. It sees the same you as you see when it's not you, that comforting dip into the dark anonymity has hatched like an egg and there you are, awake and asleep at the same time, rolling in the dream rather than being the dreamer. You can see it in every little smile that comes over Cozzi's face as he does his little dreadlocked dance around the store to royalty free Italian rap at the end. He's no longer grumbling to some invisible version of himself that even he barely notices. He's gone 'full circle' like Siddhartha, Dorothy Gale, or Michelle Yeoh, he's justified the madness of the artist off in the weeds, he's the Father McKenzie who doesn't need more than one or two people to hear his sermon, so f--k off, Paul! We'll put our faces by any old door we want. 

That man in the mirror, the mad magician on whose blank mask we all project the world... and vice vera That thing out there, Morbius, it's me!


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