Ireland - birthplace, perhaps, of western horror and alcoholism. When they got there "it was raining, or was about to rain, or had just rained" intones the wandering lassie narrator. Bram Stoker was from Ireland. And they got bogs, moors, and hellfire haired hotties predisposed to take a nip, and tannin in the peat to preserve the sunken shrouded shamanesses across the sodden centuries. Some speculate Stoker contracted a horrifying venereal disease while in a Victorian brothel and it perhaps left him equating sex and death with personifications of archetypal malice. For his follow-up to the hip downtown NYC vampire movie Nadja, director Michael Almereyda went for distance, to Ireland to make a loose unofficial translation of Jewel, updated, shorn of Victorian notions and phrenology but with wry references to horror movie classics, from Freund's Mummy and Ulmer's Black Cat to Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Luis Fulci's Manhattan Baby, but with a Days of Wine and Roses / Nights of Abel Ferrara patina.
Jared Harris and Alison Elliott star as two hard drinking, fun-loving, but not entirely bad parents in the NYC 90s named Jim and Nora: "They'd been thrown out of pubs all over the world" notes the wandering Irish girl narrator who looks on from aways off down the moor. "Good thing we're not alcoholics" Harris says. Nora's doctor notes her head problems aren't going to get better until she stops drinking altogether. He says they will when they're over at her ancestral homestead, which she fled, under a cloud, before meeting Jim. "You're going to Ireland to dry out?" The doctor replies, bewildered. But everyone there is either declining a drink with a nervous twitch, accepting one with a sidelong glance or lurching merrily from its effect, which may include super 8mm flashbacks of women old and young along the lines of their sorceress matriarchal line, a line that stretches down into the Iron Age peat moss, before even silver nitrate stock.
Jared Harris and Alison Elliott star as two hard drinking, fun-loving, but not entirely bad parents in the NYC 90s named Jim and Nora: "They'd been thrown out of pubs all over the world" notes the wandering Irish girl narrator who looks on from aways off down the moor. "Good thing we're not alcoholics" Harris says. Nora's doctor notes her head problems aren't going to get better until she stops drinking altogether. He says they will when they're over at her ancestral homestead, which she fled, under a cloud, before meeting Jim. "You're going to Ireland to dry out?" The doctor replies, bewildered. But everyone there is either declining a drink with a nervous twitch, accepting one with a sidelong glance or lurching merrily from its effect, which may include super 8mm flashbacks of women old and young along the lines of their sorceress matriarchal line, a line that stretches down into the Iron Age peat moss, before even silver nitrate stock.
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| From top: Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, The Eternal, Tomb, Eternal |
It was adapted once by Hammer in 1971 as Blood from the Mummy's Tomb. Super sexy in pale skin and black velvet choker Valerie Leon is the main and maybe only reason to see it; as the young woman lined up to be sacrificed and the one being sacrificed to, visiting all the exhuming archeologists one by one to kill them for...? I forget. Leon gets to play three types as she moves from archeologist daughter to homicidal swinging mod to ruthless Egyptian queen. But then by the time the ritual is complete the movie's over and a cheap ending involving the bad guy's Egyptian relic collection and walls unceremoniously tumbling down (and bouncing as they all seem made from prop dept. styrofoam). I'll see anything with a pale brunette in a black choker, of course. It is my only weankess. But either way, The Eternal is the Irish mummy movie to beat and sadly last Almereyda's last horror feature--he's been making mostly arty documentaries since.
1996 had already seen one trippy European bog mummy film, this with a male (but punked out) shaman with some still active 'flybane' mushrooms in his pocket and his reincarnation a rabid nymphomaniacal communist with one spoon in her lover's brain (See Szamanka AKA Shamaness: See The Ancient She-Shaman and Her Shrooming Exhumer). But the frothing in the mouth Panic Theater stylizations of Zulawski are hard to sink into as a genre horror film and the rote 'innocent girl possessed by an executed, entombed or defiled soul for its methodic revenge' thing of Hammer a hard rut to get out of. Almereyda mixes the two just right, enough druggie acumen to make it decent company next to Jarmusch and Ferrara, and enough wry nods to the classic horrors to make it in the rarefied company of genre updates with some grasp on the past. I don't have to read a Wiki to know Almereyda is a true blue classic horror film lover, for The Eternal pulses with the deathly rhythms of Ulmer; it swims in the murk of the moody Browning; and glides amidst the spiderweb shadows of Freund. Even the deadpan macabre wit of Whale flows like an ocean of tea time. If you know these names, Almeyreda's Eternal is the film for you, Johnny-O. Ignore the bad RT and imdb scores. What do they know about the ancient gems?
Here's what happened: 1998 Michael Almeyreda, having had a minor critical hit in 1994 with Nadja (see my post earlier in the month), a black and white downtown NYC vampire film with lots of Portishead and cigarettes, took the winnings and bet it all on a color Irish mummy film with lots of Cat Power and whiskey. It didn't find the art house crowd it might have if he kept the black and white. Instead it went for the easy money and wound up in the cut-out bin looking more or less like everything else therein--at least from the cover. I mean look at that thing (above)! It looks like some direct-to-video Japanese softcore ghost story or hack exorcist rip with a Waken walk-on ala The Prophecy IV instead of a druggie downtown-stylized old dark house ode to pre-code Universal and 70s Euro horrors. Well, I fixed it up, a real nice cover:
Here's the record collection, the wee lass, and Harris:
Here's the record collection, the wee lass, and Harris:
Story involves hard-drinking couple staggering around NYC, taking the Cyclone in flashy Christopher Doyle style color wash slow mo set gorgeously to Cat Power's "Rockets." They're going to Ireland to dry out and visit the ancestral homestead, which husband Jared Harris (the late Lane from Mad Men) hasn't seen; she hasn't been back since she left unexpectedly shortly after her mom died and she was... well, I shan't spoil it. Debits for the ginger, their son. But he keeps his ugly haircut to the rear most of the time, which is just another thing Almereyda gets right -- these parents are cool, in the old school tradition, in that they don't freak out and/or treat their kid like some precious egg in a relay race. They're partiers, and they love to horse around with the kid, but the kid doesn't stop them from getting sloshed at the pub. And Harris is no Dustin Hoffman "pacifist" pussy and he does a great Christopher Walken impression. First thing he does to prove his mettle when the Straw Doggie skulking townie ex-boyfriend shows up is punch him, picking a fight by the juke box more or less unprovoked. It's a great scene not least because they've stopped in there 'for a quick one' after swearing off drinking, and soon its hours later - they're tanked - and the son is falling asleep at the bar from stone boredom. Yikes! Call child services except, god bless it, this is Ireland. They just get ejected from the pub and our narrator girl notes "They'd been kicked out of bars all over the world" notes the narrator, with some veiled admiration.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME. What counts in the meantime is the groovy scenery and how Walken's residing uncle patriarch has a great homicidal record collection (well not great, they make fun of the Irish Tom Jones, Joe Dolan but dance funkily to "She was a Good-Lookin' Woman") Meanwhile the girl with the disaffected expression who occasionally interjects some plot points "your mother was a witch as well," and has a kind of worldly calm. It's all right there - in the beginning she's a bit like the girl in Don't Look Now and for awhile she's like the girl in Who Saw Her Die (1972).
One of the unique subtexts at work here is an undercurrent of pro-drunken anger - as still sick and suffering alcoholic Nora regularly has drinks taken out of her hands by Jim who says "none for us, we're quitting" and makes a big show of enjoying life without it. That kind of balderdash makes me want to retch. And I should know. The way the drinks pass her wide eyes by, or the way she works hard to seem deadpan when getting offered some Scotch down in the basement once Jim's upstairs with the kid, it's the kind of stuff only drunks like myself would feel keenly. How nice that there's whole films and wings of Irish literature just for us! No matter how adept his Walken impression, or grace around the dance floor, Jim's refusing drinks on Nora's behalf stings like a slap, especially when he turns out to be sneaking sips on the side from a flask. Only Eugene O'Neill really ever wrote scenes that captured the way the alcoholic mind hears every offered drink, every vulnerable liquor bottle, as a siren call, and every 'no thanks' on our hero or heroine's behalf like a gut punch they're not allowed to wince from. And only Hawks and Huston ever understood it well enough to capture it; only Hawks and Huston understood how cigarettes and drinks are the currency of cool loyalty, how they buy the world into focus, and out of it. Of course, Almereyda doesn't have time to stretch out and show Nora's detox, no mariachi band playing the Death Song to steady her nerves like in Rio Bravo; or to be denied a desperately needed drink just for 'singing lousy' in Key Largo. No time; the sub-plot just dries out. Plus, "Why be serious? that's for people in sad countries like Poland or Africa" notes the girl narrator. And anyway, the mummy catches on fire and bursts through the window and gets zapped by electric current just like James Arness in Hawks' original The Thing and add the cigarettes (Harris is constantly lighting them and sticking them in his wife's mouth; the young girl does the same for the old woman, keeping one for herself-- a wee lass smokin'! Save your sermons, o nanny statesmen --this is Ireland!) and drinks (and drink awareness) and that's Hawks enough. We don't need resolution. We need another round.
Other wry references: Jim offhandedly quotes Six Million Dollar Man while building a fire; crazy old bat Lois Smith's hair makes her resemble the crazy old Baroness Graps in Mario Bava's Kill Baby Kill (1966), which Eternal resembles for its inter-generational war of the matriarchal sorceresses plot, and the transmigration of souls motif which also ties in with Nadja and its influences like Daughters of Darkness-ness with the dreamy beachside ending.
There's other evidence of Almereyda's artistry and laid back genius with subliminal nodding, as in the way he evokes the idea of a pharaoh's crypt by lighting the cavernous marble foyer with the kind of candle light that evokes a big archeological dig; or how Almereyda uses super 8mm movie footage to nod to home movies for the flashbacks to the ancient druid's romantic tragedy (she let her love for a no-good man weaken her magick power) and the death of Nora's mother, (Sinead Dolan). It could have been a corny touch but Almereyda has been exploring the use of different media within film structures for awhile, as in Hamlet's pretentious conscience-of-the-king-catching video art pieces and overwhelmed Blockbuster trips; the Fisher Price Pixelvision in Nadja, and the old lady (Lois Smith), the dead mom of Nora; the undead mummy shamaness; and the girl narrator provide a multi-generational matriarchal chain around which the little ginger, the local lads, and Jim are the only men and always seem a hare's breath away from being killed in a Barleycorn sacrifice. "It was the Iron Age, you had to a do lot of nasty things to get by," Walken says in reference to Nora's question about whether the bog mummy is good or evil. "She was ferociously herself." Jim meanwhile jokes around when it turns out the mattress is stuffed with dead snakes and potato-shaped stones: "The ancient druids used Mr. Potato Head as part of their rituals" he tells his owl-eyed ginger. But is the ginger really his? Straw Dogs skulking in the windows with their deux ex machina timely shots may have wild scenarios ala 'Her Majesty's Coachmen' in Lady Eve. Then again, do they? HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME. These shards of Jimmy Dolan albums aren't going to just telekinetically slice into townsfolk's necks themselves! And as for sobriety... Fuck sobriety, no one comes to Ireland to dry out and besides good Scotch funciton as snake bite remedy. This is the dawning of the Iron Age of Aquarius, sweet ladies, goodnight. St. Patrick or no, we always keep serpents handy!
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| Goodnight, ladies, goodnight sweet ladies... |