Eyes of Fire

While still in my preteen years, I experienced a life-changing experience when I received a fairly large cardboard box full of horror VHS tapes. Including in the box were such films as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1989), From a Whisper to a Scream aka The Offspring (1987), Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (1981), The Evil Dead Series, and various other films that I have long forgotten. Naturally, many of these films left a deep impression on my relatively pure soul at the time; the forgotten mystical American pioneer horror flick Eyes of Fire (1983) – directed by unknown auteur Avery Crounse – being one of the most memorable and ultimately rewarding. If you ever wondered what a Gothic horror film would be like had it been set in the woods of 1750s American instead of an abandoned Victorian mansion, Eyes of Fire may very possibly be the only film to offer such a delightful yet equally deranged experience. Although it must have been a horrifying experience for European Christians to blindly immigrate to the untamed Americas and fall prey to mostly hostile and heretical mongoloid savages, few films have dared to dive deep into the metaphysical horror associated with such true-to-life (but never mentioned) experience. Not only does Eyes of Fire feature beastly brown men but it also includes nefarious nude spirits lurking amongst ancient trees and engaged in an unnamed wild hunt. While watching the film as a youngster, I couldn’t figure out whether I loved Eyes of Fire or loathed it, but I certainly found myself magnetized to it as I couldn’t help but insert my Vestron VHS copy of the flick into my VCR in a somewhat religious manner. Although I could not articulate it during my middle school days, I now know that I was awed to the state of virtual hypnosis by the genuinely ominous atmosphere and mystical nature of Eyes of Fire. Hell, I found Eyes of Fire to be so creepy that I derived nil sexual interest from the full-frontal nudity quite a rare find for me during those virginal days without cable television) featured in the film. Like the lucid weird horror tales of H.P. Lovecraft, eroticism is totally trampled and nonexistent (despite the rampant nudity and occasional sex scenes featured within) in the wild wooded world contained within Eyes of Fire. Cheap sex is usually a given in the realm of modern horror cinema, so it is no small feat when a film from the genre has the ability to enamor the viewer without relying on the novelty of botched silicone jobs and tortuously dull torture porn.

Until a couple months ago, I hadn’t watched Eyes of Fire for well over a decade and I really had no interest in re-watching the film as many of the works that I enjoyed in my childhood bring little more than nostalgia for me nowadays. Like old girlfriends, I generally find it hopelessly redundant to revisit films that flabbergasted me in the past for such emotions can never be captured once the naive wonder of youth has faded with time. Admittedly, Eyes of Fire proved to be an exception to my mostly full-proof rule. Like Wes Craven’s Buñuel-esque surrealist horror masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Eyes of Fire still manages to hold most of the same cinematic prowess over me as it did when I was a relatively naïve youngster. In fact, I find Eyes of Fire to be a much grander voyeuristic pleasure nowadays than when I first saw the film as a child as it seems much more coherent. After all, it has been nearly a decade since my pre-Fellini-addict days. Like a Fellini flick, Avery Crounse's supernatural American pioneer flick is full of magic but unlike the eccentric character-driven films of everyone’s favorite 1/2 Roman circus magician auteur, Eyes of Fire is of a quasi-pagan nature where the undeniable majesty of the wilderness has infinite power over the various pseudo-Christs and crosses carved out of timber featured throughout the film. In Eyes of Fire, entire families are lost in the abyss of seemingly shallow streams and children are turned into aesthetically pleasing tree bark. Throughout the film, European Christian settlers also fall prey to the ferocity of bastardized Christian prayers, sober Shawnee Injuns, and the arcane chasm of the wilderness itself. If the film has any message, it is that, depending on the worshiper, any religion has the ability to bring prosperity or pestilence and everything in between. In Eyes of Fire, a charlatan Christian reverend (stereotypically named Will Smythe) thinks that it is a blessing that he randomly finds a demonic Indian child that he can baptize, but, instead, he only sparks hell-on-earth for his followers and the wilderness that surrounds them. Maybe if real-life spiritually-intoxicated Christian missionaries took the time to watch Eyes of Fire, they would think twice about baptizing exceedingly dirty third world savages with their precious holy water. As one soon learns early on in Eyes of Fire, only a somewhat insane feisty fire-crotch named Leah with a knack for white magic has the ability to save these cursed Christians and break the black magic spell, thus, one could argue that the film is of a somewhat pro-Pagan nature.

Eyes of Fire may not be a neglected masterpiece of cinema history but it is surely one of the best kept secrets of the most redundant American horror genre. Like most great horror films, Eyes of Fire is big on atmosphere and features a disparate netherworld worthy of being compared to the most distinctive of real nightmares. Also, unlike most films (and that includes Hollywood) in general, Eyes of Fire is pure Americana, but, thankfully, not in the romantic sense. In fact, Eyes of Fire features the kind of atmosphere you would expect from Mr. David “weird Americana” Lynch, minus absurd humor (although, I do suspect that many viewers will find a scene featuring nude entities taking sips from the mammilla of a cow to be somewhat unintentionally humorous) and peculiar sex fetishes (unless you happen to be an individual who finds the great outdoor to be sexually alluring). Eyes of Fire is one of those rare horror films that will be in most cases enjoyable to even those individuals who tend to find all-things-horror nothing short of repellant. Of course, due to its age and the relatively low-budget that it was shot on, Eyes of Fire sometimes has a certain cheesy charm that will satisfy those many individuals that are addicted 1980s horror films.  If Mother Nature ever contracted a vicious venereal disease it would most likely resemble the ferocious forests featured in Eyes of Fire.  If any film has the ability to tap into spiritual chaos in Christian and Neo-Pagans alike, it is indubitably Eyes of Fire.  As for the title "Eyes of Fire" itself, I sincerely doubt I am diving head-first into the pool of absurdity when I state that the film is a pyromaniac's wet dream.  Indeed, the films features literal eyes of fire but it also features a fireworks show of some of the most aesthetically delectable pyrotechnics ever committed to the highly flammable medium of celluloid.

-Ty E

Navel and A-Bomb

As someone who likes to indulge in the literary works of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, I was somewhat disappointed by Paul Schrader’s bio-pic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985). Although the film is a piece of cinematic art in it's own right, I feel that it fails to capture the true essence of Yukio Mishima. When it comes to the authentic Mishima in visual form, I believe that Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe did the best job portraying the tragic master of pen and sword with his relatively small set of photographs featured in his book Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses (1961–1962). Although many people believe that Mishima was a perverted megalomaniac, the candid carnal snapshots featured in the book Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Rose reveal that he was quite the multifaceted character who could be humorous and humble while still maintaining his militant and melodramatic persona. Before his legendary photo shoot with Mishima, Eikoh Hosoe directed the atomic 1960 Japanese arthouse short film Navel and A-Bomb (Heso to genbaku); a work that manages to meld eccentric homoeroticism and nuclear doom and gloom in a distinctly exquisite manner. Hosoe was given the first name “Toshihio” at birth but later changed it to “Eikoh” to symbolize the new post-samurai Japan that he was living in. Had I never had the blessed opportunity to devour Hosoe's delightfully deranged and thoroughly decadent artistic works, I would think his name change was purely the act of a pretentious Jap art fag on the rag. At the very least, Navel and A-Bomb is a stark yet erotic expression of an artist whose internal suffering is only matched by the atomic explosion featured in the film. Unlike Yukio Mishima, Hosoe was able to accept that Japan would no longer be the land of Samurais but, instead, an economic and technological powerhouse with a western capitalist taint that can never be undone. That being said, I think it is only fitting that Hosoe captured the most iconic photographs of Yukio Mishima; the last famous Japanese figure to commit Seppuku.

For many viewers, Navel and A-Bomb will be a brief yet undesirable exercise in cinematic torture (a metaphorical "ordeal by roses", if you will), but, for the already initiated, the film acts as a therapeutic mini-vacation through the ashy beaches of the Land of the Rising Sun. Indeed, Navel and A-Bomb features plenty of bare belly buttons of all ages and sizes and an exploding atomic bomb, but they are used in a symbolic nature that reflects the zeitgeist of post-World War II Japan. Upon turning an invisible knob over a dejected younger’s x-marked navel, an atomic bomb explodes in a blazing blind fury that brings near darkness to the relatively tiny island country. While the grown men featured in Navel and A-Bomb move around absurdly with a combination of playful pantomimes and seemingly possessed hysterics, the young boys remain fairly immobile; barely even able to crawl and stand on the beach that their elders seem quite comfortable with. Like European children of the same era, these post-WWII Japanese youths are lost in their homeland and remain detached from their own ancient culture. One only has to watch modern Japanese cinema to realize that there is a serious spiritual and psychological crisis that is weighing down on the westernized citizens of Japan and the country's economical prosperity is merely a poor and wholly materialistic substitute that can never fill the irreparable void of organic kultur.  Navel and A-Bomb also features one of the most excruciating performances from a live (or barely alive) chicken that it makes the furious dancing fowl scene at the conclusion of Werner Herozg's Stroszek (1977) seem like a concert encore from Rock-a-Doodle.  When it comes to Japanese cinema, I wouldn't exactly call myself a diehard fanatic, thus, for me, Navel and A-Bomb is nothing short of a hidden cinematic gem. 

-Ty E

Enchanted Forest

I am not one who enjoys watching poor VHS transfers of films, even if it might satisfy some sort of nostalgic urge. In fact, I purged my fairly large VHS collection a decade or so ago but sometimes I have no choice but to watch a film that has been neglected an appropriate DVD release. I recently viewed a poor (and probably tenth generation) VHS transfer of the Völksch Nationalist Socialist film Enchanted Forest aka Ewiger Wald (1936) directed by Hanns Springer and Rolf von Sonjevski-Jamrowski; a work that churned out an odd mix of mystical awe and a sense of cinematic tragedy upon my fairly cold and mostly impenetrable soul. I have to admit that I was noticeably enthralled by the film due to it's pagan spiritualism but was also discouraged by the realization that the film will most likely never receive anything resembling a proper and respectful release that it undoubtedly deserves. Despite having to endure the poor quality of the copy of the Enchanted Forest I viewed, I can’t think of another film like it that made me romanticize over the lives of my ancient Germanic ancestors. Sure, it must have sucked to live in a time when death was a very probable possibility in everyday life and food was scarce but people during those times were totally at the humbling helm of the organic and they did not have to endure the abstractness of our modern technocratic world. As a child, I had a deep respect for nature, wild animals, the wilderness, and I truly believed that these things were a gift bestowed upon on the world by an all mighty god.  In fact, nothing felt more comforting to me than allowing myself to be swallowed deeply in the pines of local forests that I would frequent in a religious manner. Of course, I still enjoy the outdoors but naturally (or unnaturally), it is virtually impossible for one to live realistically among the leaves and by sleeping under the stars in our deranged day in age. It just so happened that I was reading a book on neo-paganism (Summoning The Gods by Collin Cleary) around the time I first saw Enchanted Forest. One of Cleary’s major points with his book is that, unlike their ancient ancestors, contemporary Westerners have completely lost contact with the very land that they once held sacred. I found it quite interesting that Enchanted Forest, a film and product of somewhat recent technology, was able to duplicate my long dormant love for nature. I certainly did not feel a touch of nature in James Cameron’s epic digital blue turd Avatar (2009); a wholly (but unintentionally) risible pseudo-environmentalist romp into ultra-Hollywood alien-savage-worshiping purgatory. Say what you will about the Third Reich, but at least their state commissioned filmmakers had no difficulty assembling films that depicted absolute beauty in it's most organically magical yet orthodox form. 

The Nazis themselves proclaimed blood and soil as their ideology and quasi-religion but also led the world in technological advancement and I see Enchanted Forest itself as one of truest expressions of their brief anachronistic empire of healthy blood and monolithic industrial progress. If I wanted to illustrate to an illiterate what the spiritual essence of National Socialist Germany was, I would show them Enchanted Forest. Sure, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) exquisitely documented the aesthetic properties and cheerful folk of Nazi Germany yet the film fails to dream up (not that it really intended to) the true Nazi spirit of ancestor worship. In our modern materialistic world, humans look at all things (both living and not) as objects to be manipulated or utilized to their advantage as opposed to appreciating and humbly respecting the "being" (as German philosopher Martin Heidegger would say) of a particular thing. The Nazis may not have respected certain groups of people but they surely respected their land and their Völk simply for "being." One of the reasons the National Socialists despised the Judaics so much is due to their deracinated anti-nature-nature and their collective cosmopolitan homelessness, thus it should be no surprise that the Nazis originally (early on during World War II) paid for Jews to immigrate to Palestine to establish Israel (their first homeland in thousands of years). Naturally, Hollywood films have always lacked a certain authenticity in regard to portraying different cultures, nations, and peoples as they lack respect in regard to rootedness and anything of an organic nature, and for this reason, their films have always suffered from a sickening artificiality, hence why they tend to produce so many deplorable neo-vaudevillian comedies (a subject they know oh so well) full of infantile sexuality and repellant scat humor. Despite having unlimited funds and state-of-the-art technology, most of the filmmakers working in Hollywood lack the instincts to produce a film so close to nature as Enchanted Forest because the work permeates emotions that are totally alien to the culture-blind boys of Tinseltown.  Believe it or not, money can't buy everything, especially when it comes to something that is passed down through blood.

It would probably baffle a lot of Hollywood green activists actors and Americans in general, to know that National Socialist Germany was arguably the first country to endorse environmentalist policies but this will be no surprise to anyone that has seen Enchanted Forest as the film treats the majestic allure of nature in a most elegant and enriching manner. Of course, the film will be of interest to any serious lover of uncultivated beauty despite whatever political persuasion they may hold. After all, man may have lost faith in god due to technology but few can deny the irreplaceable creations of Mother Nature and her supreme omnipotence and wholly plentiful pulchritude. Enchanted Forest begins in pagan Europe and concludes in Christianized Europe, and as the times change, war only becomes more sophisticated and deadly beneath the alien cross of Christ. The irony of technology is that man has only managed to speed up the death of his fellow man with his“advancement.” For me, the greatest message (whether it was the filmmaker’s intention or not) of Enchanted Forest is that the farther away man falls from nature, the closer he is to his own miserable demise.  Man, most specifically Faustian man, has proven to be the only living organism that has had the gall to wage war against nature, but, of course, he is no match for his all-power enemy and will inevitably fail. As German philosopher Oswald Spengler explained in his 1931 work Man and Technics, technology has only sped up the death of the Occident and given his enemies weapons to use against him, thus, it is only a matter of time before the ultimate showdown begins.  On a lighter note, I would be lying if I did not admit that Enchanted Forest gave me nostalgia for a time that I have never experienced but hopelessly yearn for in a most instinctive manner.  I am sure that there are others that will also feel an atavistic awakening while watching the film.  Enchanted Forest is like a painting by Fidus come to life, only more masculine and domineering and without super-skinny-proto-hippie-nudists.  By the conclusion of Enchanted Forest, you may not be worshiping the black sun but you will have taken a virtual mini-epic journey through the ages of Europe on land, water, and forgotten battlefields where one's ancestors use to earn their livelihood from.  That being said, maybe it is time for me to learn the secrets of the runes. 

-Ty E

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

  

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a film about an uprising of those a few rungs down the evolutionary ladder against humans that succeeds in showing up the human race two-fold; both in terms of arguments as to why the human race deserves to be blotted off the face of the earth by its closest cousins, and in a broader sense, as the likely next step in evolution- the computer- finally succeeding in leaving human “actors” behind in the dust. Here we are presented with a riveting revolutionary parable chock full of emotion and nuance, but only when the flesh-and-blood humans are off-screen (or getting beaten to a pulp by pixelated primates). Recall when “The Phantom Menace” and that Final Fantasy film that had all but nothing to do with any of the games came out and there were all these debates about whether a CGI “performance” could overtake human acting and if this was the death of cinema as we know it and how in no time we might very well be plugged into the Matrix or sending a dude back in time to fuck our mom and save her from Conan and shit? And how you likely looked at Jar Jar Binks shucking and jiving and shining Anakin's shoes and thought “never gonna happen”? Well, think again.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes concerns the usually semi-kinda-interesting-for-a-pretty-fella James Franco as a drying patch of paint/scientist attempting to cure Alzheimer's. You know he's serious and willing to commit all the necessary reckless scientific gobbledygook that will make it a Planet of the Apes because his dad, phoned in by John Lithgow, suffers from the affliction, and furthermore, hasn't John Lithgow always looked kind of like an orangutan? So with that in mind, Franco works for a pharmaceutical company and has to test his cure on apes, but conveniently smack dab in the middle of a presentation one of his computer-generated chimps bursts through the windows of the boardroom and gets blown away by security guards and lo-and-behold she was pregnant so Franco, with all the conviction and personality of a paper plate, takes home the baby and in almost no-time realizes the brain serum from the pregnant mother was passed genetically to his new housemate, who in short time totally makes Nim Chimpsky and Koko and those gorillas from Congo totally look like the lice-chowing simps they are... To allude to past pictures in the franchise Lithgow's doddering dad names the little guy Caesar (played by computer pixels arranged around a motion-captured performance by that “give me my preciousss” guy from Lord of the Rings). In short time, Caesar is communicating through sign-language, walking semi-upright, kicking ass in IQ-tests, and becoming more and more aware at the humiliating position he is placed in by society- not quite a man, not quite a monkey (an ape, to be exact).

So Franco goes all 'renegade' and decides to sneak some of the forbidden Alzheimer's medicine from the lab and take it home to test on dad and the same guy who was having trouble playing chopsticks at the beginning of the film is grimacing and mincing his way through an intense piano workout and around this time an over-the-top asshole neighbor attacks Caesar, who just wants friends aside from the dull pair he's stuck with, with a baseball bat and so Franco takes him to the zoo to get patched up and he meets his love interest, a chick so bland I think they hired her so that Franco would seem to be giving an acting performance in comparison but all her presence succeeds in doing is to grind the film to halt whenever a pixel-primate ain't on screen. So as Caesar grows, both in size and intelligence, he starts to understand his position in the world, at one point asking Franco with a fierce look of indignation whether he is a pet or his son. In explaining to Caesar his origins, what with the medical testing and the death of his mom, he plants the seed of revolutionary consciousness. Soon, the Alzheimer's cure backfires, Lithgow starts wandering around in a daze and trying to drive that one asshole neighbor's car, over-the-top asshole neighbor proceeds to start pummeling the old guy, and Caesar springs to action, beating his ass and chomping on his fingers. This indiscretion gets Caesar taken away and locked up in a primate prison, where abusive (and horrendously acted) human guards and the feeling of having been betrayed by his human father, who is unable to spring his charge from the facility, work together to cement the fate of our budding Chimp Guevara.

Some more plot occurs, all of which eventually leads to an evolved-ape escape/revolt which climaxes on the Golden Gate Bridge and will have the blood pumping and heart racing as the computer-animated apes are indeed more animated and lively and sympathetic than any of the human cast members. Caesar, for example, is a sight to behold. The animation is done well to the point my suspension of disbelief was nearly total, and I didn't for a second pause to consider in many scenes that the human actors might be acting to an empty space. Rather, the human actors seemed to be digitally drawn in, either lifeless and bland or cartoonish and broad, whereas the facial expression Caesar begins to wear about a half-hour is fraught with complexity, somewhere between a hurt child and an indignant teenager, or “father, why art thou forsaken me?” and “die, honky.” Caesar and his companions, be it the kindly circus orangutan (you won't confuse 'im for Lithgow cuz this fucker can “act”), the perpetually pissed-off gorilla, or the bad-ass Bonobo Koba, who ain't got no use for no damned dirty humans, make this film. I've always been one to side with flesh-and-blood, honest-to-Gawd human emotion over something created by engineers using computer programs, but in this case, I think it's really been proven that just like a machine can totally whoop ass at chess, it can also whoop ass at making chimps seem capable of whooping ass at chess. Let's see a chimp handler make THAT happen without making everyone stay on set for like three hours extra. Shit, let's see 'em make James Franco convincingly win a game of chess...ha!

One particular moment of the film warrants mention above all others, though it is something of a spoiler (that you and your 11-year old nephew already know all about). At one point, having already “educated” his fellow apes at the primate prison, Caesar leads his least favorite guard into the 'playpen' area, refusing to return to his cage. Wielding a cattle prod and looking like a cross between Jeremy Renner and DJ Qualls (and apparently acted by some kid from the Harry Potter flicks? I wouldn't know...), the guard lands some blows, which Caesar does his best to dodge, a wry, enraged glint in his green eyes. As the tides of battle turn once Caesar intercepts a would-be chilling blow and grips his arm, Caesar, up to this point communicating solely through sign, let's loose with a full-throttled, vocal “NO!” that, despite the latent predictability of much of this flick (it's a prequel to Planet of the Apes, after all, so we kinda know the eventual outcome and pretty big swaths of what must happen to bring us to The Statue of Liberty resembling that which pees in its own mouth for Youtube hits), still managed to elicit gasps and a cheer or two from the audience. So convincing is Caesar that somehow this obvious plot development manages to come as a rousing surprise, and from that point on the film is one big “fuck you” to “the man” (or, in this case, just “man”), catharsis on the scale of The Battle of Algiers, only supplanting documentary realism with chimps on horses and Algerians with apes (I think part of the reason Rise works the way it does, for a misanthrope like myself anyways, is that intelligent chimps will always make for more likable protagonists than any know-nothing human beings), or computer generated simulacra thereof. (Oh yeah, Andy Serkis is underneath Caeser's pixels and maybe some other nominally “human” “actors” are involved, but give 'em a few months and I'm sure they'll figure out how to get guys like him out of the equation entirely so the studios can reap pure profit and credit and the machines can slowly but surely start plugging us into “The Matrix”)(Remember The Matrix? Wonder how many weeks until we are sitting before a Matrix reboot?) All in all, you can do a lot worse, and probably not a whole lot better as far as summer fare goes. You'll walk out of the theater, your head swimming with images of apes spearing humans and raising the red flag of rectal-digging resistance while in actuality the computers and their number-crunching studio executive human analogues wage the REAL revolution right underneath our noses. 

-Jon-Christian