Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever

 

On a recommendation, from my mom of all people, I put aside the negative hype and decided to check out Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, the sequel to Eli Roth's masterful debut, helmed but disavowed by indie-horror darling Ti West (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers). While I've only recently been compelled to investigate what precisely went wrong with the production, from the word go West seemed an odd choice to turn out a sequel to Cabin Fever. Cabin Fever played as a particularly well-done homage to the grindhouse films of old, mixing in humor at appropriate intervals and featuring a fairly strong cast, the best being Soiled Sinema posterboy Giuseppe Andrews as the horndog, party hearty Officer Winston. Evil Dead setting, Cronenbergian body horror, soundtrack featuring re-recordings of David Hess' songs from Last House on the Left, all served up with Roth's expert touch; Tarantino with far more subtlety and less obnoxious dialogue wouldn't be far off. Ti West on the other hand couldn't be further from the fanboy former Gorezone-subscriber. At his best (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers), West works with the kind of restraint that drives most teenage death metal fans up the wall, using a slow, slow burn effect that unnerves subtly. He still manages to pay homage to influences (note the aesthetic in the eighties-set House of the Devil), but stylistically, there couldn't be someone further from Eli Roth. Contrast their beginnings- Roth wrote Cabin Fever while working on Howard Stern's Private Parts, whereas West began his career under the guiding hand of subtle-horror stalwart Larry Fesserden. What the producers saw in a film like Trigger Man that made them think West would be a perfect fit for a Cabin Fever sequel is beyond me, but what makes it on-screen (West shot the majority of the film but left during the editing process when asked to do re-shoots) is surprisingly good, goofy, GORY fun that proves that West can do big, dumb horror with the best of 'em. This could have been one of the best gonzo eighties-style horror flicks in years, right up there with the original and Piranha 3D in terms of pure horror geek nirvana, but unfortunately the director bailing definitely shows up on-screen, with tacky flash animation book-ending the action and a rushed denouement and tacked-on "sting in the tail" that effectively undercuts all of the goodwill that has accumulated throughout. That said, the footage directed by West looks great, it features another stellar comedic turn from Giuseppe Andrews, and has wall-to-wall honest-to-goodness PROSTHETIC gore to spare.

 

As the film opens, Paul, the sole survivor of the original film, a bloated, unrecognizable mess from the water-born pathogens that killed his friends, escapes from the forest only to be mowed down by a school bus. Deputy Winston in first on the scene, dismissing the remains as those of a moose, but in time through a series of incidents (including West mentor Fesserden going to goop in a diner) realizes what is really going on- a local bottled water company has packaged the pathogen and shipped it out, the first stop being the local high school, which is gearing up for prom. John (Deadgirl's Noah Segan) is our protagonist, hopelessly in love with the pretty, smart girl with the douchey boyfriend, Cassie (Alexi Wasser) and best buds with some fat comic relief, Alex (Rusty Kelley), who manages to be a lot less annoying that most characters of his ilk. The plot sets up some decent rivalries, red herrings, and makes room for some fun cameos (Mike Borchardt is always a welcome sight, especially in something with a budget over $20), but then midway through the prom, which should be the centerpiece of the film, everything speeds up and feels incredibly rushed. The shadowy disease control agents from the first film show up, put the town and school under lockdown, and it effectively feels as if we've teleported from act one to act three. 

 

That said, what keeps the film from completely derailing is the marvelous effects work and absolute pandering to its demographic. Nary a five-minute stretch goes by without vomit, soggy, distended organs sloughing off, bountiful, bouncing breasts, liberated fingernails, table-saw amputation (definite nod to Evil Dead 2, and thus, a nod to the first Cabin Fever), heads being smashed open a la Irreversible, more vomit (only bloodier), and one of the most cringe-worthy shots of penis-discomfort this side of Antichrist (seriously, if you've ever had gonorrhea, the scene in question will be particularly impossible not to squint through)(which isn't to say that I'VE suffered through gonorrhea, female readers, and if I ever had had it, antibiotics cleared it up, so fuck off). It is gloriously offensive, well-lit, and whenever Officer Winston appears for breaks from the main action, uproarious. I hope that if the proposed further sequels ever get off the ground that they manage to snag Andrews- not only is he the perfect, skeezy mascot for an imperfect, skeezy series, but the payout would enable him to make about fifteen more of his own films. Whether rhapsodizing about pussy, nodding to the first film over a plate of pancakes or sending a clueless Judah Friedlander out to meet his doom via disease control firing squad, Andrews exudes a Southern slimeball charm that betrays his Florida birthplace and adds just the right amount of continuity to tie Spring Fever in with the original (also keep an eye out for the giant bunny Paul sees in the hospital in CF, here acting as the mascot for the high school). In fact, the whole cast is pretty able, the aforementioned Rusty Kelley surprisingly likable as a porcine pussyhound and Noah Segan proving his versatility in playing a goody-two-shoes character who is a complete 180 degree turn from his sociopathic sex fiend in Deadgirl and coming across just as likable. The supporting cast plays it pretty broad, but it works, creating an eighties John Waters vibe (no surprise as long-time Waters editor Janice Hampton took over the reins upon West's exit) that makes it all the more charming.

 

But alas, all is not well, and saving the worst for last, no review of Spring Fever should pass without mentioning the abysmally animated opening and closing scene, which are about as well-animated as an e-card and serve no purpose aside from making a decent-budgeted flick look considerably tackier than it really is. West apparently wanted to open and end the film this way (perhaps a tribute to Creepshow 2?), but these eyesores definitely reflect some post-production half-assery. Even worse is the "sting in the tail" just prior to the ending animation, featuring an infected stripper high school girl passing on the disease, which is horrendously shot and acted and has none of the manic drive of the West-shot footage. This five minute scene seriously felt longer than the film that preceded it, especially when the ending, as in the ACTUAL ending, with the major players meeting their makers, is so rushed and nigh-incomprehensible that we aren't granted the knowledge of what actually happens to our male lead (whereas the female leads "rescue" makes no sense whatsoever given the priorities of her "rescuers"). The suggestion is there, but alas, this isn't the Ti West of House of the Devil, and not right for this type of loud-and-proud TRASH in ALL CAPS. As it stands, Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever still manages to be an excellent time-waster, and proves that West is a pretty versatile guy, capable of yuks and yucks but opting for a more "high brow" approach, which is great- he's one of the better young horror directors out there today. One can only hope that series producer Lauren Moews will find another energetic up-and-comer for the proposed third and fourth installment; perhaps one who won't feel sullied by having made something completely unlike his other work?

-Jon-Christian Yates

The Great Magician

 

Dutch Renaissance man Frans Zwartjes has had a less than ideal life; his father died when he was 9 years old, his mother was an ex-nun turned mental health worker, and he (voluntarily) lived in a mental institution for a weighty and artistically influential period of time. Luckily for Zwartjes, he did not mind seeing mental invalids relieve themselves in public before his very weary, sparkling starstruck eyes, but, instead, found an atypical sort of solace in it. In fact, such seemingly flustering scenarios would inspire his exceedingly grotesque short films that, even to this day, have no contemporaries in regard to their genuinely odiousness and narcotizing proto-death-rock aesthetic. Unlike the modern trend of firmly embracing the cult of victimhood, Zwartjes became an eclectic, highly productive, and profoundly expressionistic artist with a keen talent for playing and building string instruments (especially the violin), painting human portraits whose warped human physiques make those created by Egon Schiele seem like that of the Adonis-like figures concocted by Arno Breker by comparison, and directing some of the most aberrant yet strangely pulchritudinous short films ever made. In the documentary De grote Tovenaar (2006) aka The Great Magician directed by Ruud Monster, Frans Zwartjes, the creator of some of the most audacious surrealistic cinematic works ever created, is ironically revealed to be a modest man who tells the story of his life and audacious art at a vocal pitch that is not much louder than a humble and saintly whisper. Had someone not known anything about Zwartjes nor his art, one could easily mistake the subversive artiste for a Calvinist pastor and not a man committed to total depravity. Of course, had Zwartjes’ Dutch Calvinist ancestors seen his art, he would have surely been burnt at the stake. Modernly, Zwartjes is considered an anti-Christ among estrogen-deprived feminists, indubitably a notable honor of sorts, as they find his cinematic depictions of those members of the fairer sex involved in erotic ‘water sports’ to be most reprehensible.

I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that Frans Zwartjes is organically following in a grand and incomparable legacy of morbid and grueling Dutch art. Following in the tradition of demonological works painted by early Dutch Renaissance painters Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel (Brueghel) the Elder, the short films of Frans Zwartjes are stark religious works for the mostly materialistic post-WWII era. As he explains in The Great Magician, Zwartjes has devoured many highly inspirational esoteric religious texts, including the Sanskrit Rig Veda and Vedanta,  related works of Indian mystical literature, and texts written by German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart. Combined with his very personal experience with seemingly possessed mental patients, Zwartjes films reflect the penetrating spirit of a deeply religious (if pessimistic) man whose post-Christian and post-traditional sentiments bleed deeply (both literally and figuratively) through his uncompromising art. Oddly enough, Zwartjes also credits traditional opera for giving him the emotional development and confidence he needed as an artist. As a man who is known for creating films that are exaggeratedly visceral and portrays the body in a state of endless, cadaver-like decay, it is somewhat queer that Frans Zwartjes has also cites something so common and ordinary as the nude and natural human body as one of his greatest influences. As he explains quite vividly and unabashedly in The Great Magician, Mr. Zwartjes would often frequent nude beaches and gaze at the stripped bodies of both men and women of all ages for artistic encouragement, henceforth, developing an especially keen partialness for mother nature's most rosy flesh flower; the female vagina. In fact, it is quite apparent in the documentary that Zwartjes is most jubilant when he discusses in fanatical detail his distinct love for the mystique behind the naturally fragrant female meat-curtain. Of course, like his cinematic portrayal of every other body part, Zwartjes’ various onscreen scenes of the penis flytrap are comparable to a cold, wet axe-wound on a mobile cadaver lurking menacingly in a dark, uncharted subterranean netherworld. Needless to say, the ‘Great Magician’ of The Great Magician is a renegade regal neo-Gothic artist who sees the world through a unique personal lens that have accredited him with ability to be an unintentional and unofficial prophetic apocalyptic priest of sorts.  Like all religious works, the films of Frans Zwartjes strike fear and bewilderment into the uninitiated, but bring consolation to the enlightened proselyte.

If any filmmaker can capture what modern man looks like on the inside, it is indubitably Frans Zwartjes. As expressed so sharply in his films, the soulless man of contemporary times is a grotesque, Zombie-like being who obsesses over every and any perversion, so long as it does not have any practical utilitarian purpose and actually result in the reproduction of progeny. In the eyes of Zwartjes, the modern man is also a preposterous pig who incessantly consumes without even the slightest inkling of self-control. In Zwartjes’ short Visual Training (1969), a debauched and decaying man and a couple ghoulish gals find themselves preparing a woman’s voluptuous (if disgusting) buttocks with ungodly seasonings and ingredients, as if she is the main course in a cannibalistic buffet. These seemingly pernicious and ill-disposed individuals in the film later stare into the camera in a most menacing way, thus throwing the voyeuristic viewer out of their comfort zone in a strangely alluring way. If all of the characters in Frans Zwartjes’ films have anything have in common, it is their irrevocable loss of soul and ever ambient presence of tragedy, as if these individuals have accepted their everlasting interment in Hades and have met a similar fate to Dorian Gray.  During the conclusion of The Great Magician, Frans Zwartjes mentions how orgone-obsessed psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich once described artists as suffering from an, “Emotional plague.” Zwartjes goes on to humbly acknowledge that he noticed this same internal affliction in the mental patients he worked with during his early adult years, thus expressing his quaint solidarity with the mentally and metaphysically challenged.

 Despite the aura of aesthetic perfection that permeates quite consistently throughout all of his work, Zwartjes nonchalantly confesses in The Great Magician that many of his films were made with comfortable ease and through accidental artistic success.  For example, Zwartjes claims that his first color film Living (1971) was shot with a mere two rolls of film and that not a second of the footage went unused.  To edit Living, Zwartjes simply developed and attached both rolls of film and fidgeted with the speed of various scenes.  Like all of his films, Living features Zwartjes' signature discordant editing style that is bound to bring emotional disharmony and transcendental discombobulation to the soul of even the most stoic and seasoned of cinephiles.  As a film professor, Frans Zwartjes expects nothing short of authenticity and artistic ingenuity from his novice film students.  Unlike most American film schools, Zwartjes feels that learning the technical 'trade school' aspects of filmmaking is not enough and that one must have something truly exceptional to communicate.  As he explains in The Great Magician, Zwartjes' idiosyncratic brand of filmmaking is fundamentally intuitive, script-less, and uniquely uncontrived; a personal quasi-dilletante style of unteachable cinematic creation that he recommends aspiring filmmakers to stay clear of as it naturally repels prospective financiers.  In short, Frans Zwartjes is a perfectly pigheaded auteur whose abominable will-to-create has empowered him to be one of the greatest filmmakers of his time and one of the most splendidly morose and malcontent movie mavericks to have ever lived.  Indeed, Frans Zwartjes, like the original cinemagician Georges Méliès (who was himself of 1/2 Dutch ancestry), is a great black magician of celluloid whose mastery of craft will never be upstaged nor plenteously plagiarized.  The Great Magician is a good as documentaries get in dissecting an individual auteur film director and his works, but one most acknowledge that Frans Zwartjes' honest, unpretentious attitude and lack of ambiguity (as is usually typical of artists of all stripes) are largely responsible for the clarity and comprehensiveness of this fine filmmaker portrait.  On top of featuring candid interviews with Zwartjes, The Great Magician also features lengthy excerpts from all of the auteur filmmaker's films, which give further lucidity to his personal story.  For staunch patrons of cultivated cinema and/or the films of Frans Zwartjes, The Great Magician is a must-see affair, as it is a documentary work that somewhat objectively attempts to deconstruct a filmmaker whose personal and artistic integrity and spirituality still manage to triumph over the confinement of mere academic analysis, thus, the cinemagician still remains elusive despite his story being more than sufficiently told.

-Ty E

Forrest Gump

 

Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump is without a doubt the single most confounding studio blockbuster I've ever seen more times than I would ever dare to count . A child of the nineties, I couldn't wait for the video release to see all kinds of neat special effects that I hardly understood as they didn't involve ripping half of Tom Hanks' face off to reveal a pissed off robot or Lieutenant Dan instantly respawning his legs and running from dinosaurs, but despite the disappointment, watched and re-watched the flick whenever it aired on television because, well, it was an EVENT, just like Schindler's List, one that lazy teacher's would assign essays on for extra credit. It was also one of those staple videos that seemingly every family video library, even those whose only other titles are fitness tapes and Czech tranny porn (both dad masturbation fodder, but only one of which would be hidden in a generic tape cover labeled "Christmas '89"). It was one of those ubiquitous nineties blockbusters that was pervasive in a way that only nineties blockbusters were, spawning a restaurant, endless parodies, catchphrases (how many times have you heard "Run, Forrest, Run!" in YOUR formative years?), and "watercooler discussion." A movie that somehow managed to be something for everyone, while underneath the schmaltz and "humor" and Zelig-like effects work, actually offers a black hole of ideological emptiness. The kind of movie where a mentally retarded manchild from the South stumbles blindly through history with unwavering patriotic stupidity, interacting with characters like black retarded manchild Bubba, crippled Vietnam Vet Lieutenant Dan, and junk-addled child molestation victim-cum-AIDS whore Jenny to prove some ultimately muddy, bewildering message about America. Something that nods to the supposed multi-cultural inclusiveness of the place, while at the same time bowing to time-honored Christian Right notions of finding virtue in ignorance vs. being some goddamn pinko thinking person, and successfully tarring-and-feathering the baby boomer generation as a wanton cesspool of carnality that one can only breeze past if he can "Run, Forrest, Run."

By now the story should be familiar, but I'll rehash it for all five of you who haven't spent a childhood parked in front of this mess. An obnoxious, drawling Hollywood caricature of a mentally challenged person sits at a bus stop, rambling to random passerby the highly improbably details of his life. A more honest film would be just this deluded 'tard telling his ridiculous stories to people who would in turn turn up the volume of their headphones or high tail it to the next bus stop and little else, but in Hollywood, even the most impatient of his audience stand-ins are humbled by stories in which a leg-braced Gump teaches Elvis Presley how to shake his hips, inspires John Lennon's "Imagine", prompts the Watergate investigation, and basically directly or indirectly inspires all of the "major events" of the latter half of the twentieth century. What drives Gump to succeed despite a laughable appearance and a speaking style that takes the worst of Gomer Pyle and pushes it to the edges of the dreaded "full retard"? The love of a good woman, of course, or in this case, a drug addicted, STUDENT PROTESTING (*gasp*), molestation-victim who will die, of course, for having used drugs, protested, and had sex with characters aside from the drawling retarded guy, or maybe because she finally gives in and has sex with the retarded guy, which some members of the target audience might find a bit icky?

Aside from Jenny, the other female relationship driving Forrest's life is Mama, delivered by Sally Field in likewise drawling hyuk hyuk mode, delivering the kind of quaint, meaningless nuggets of wisdom like "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get" that seem to go over so resoundingly with American audiences and lobotomy patients the world over. When Mama dies (not of AIDS, but of old age, though she does fuck a school administrator to get Forrest into a regular school when he's a kid, so maybe the slut was asking for it), the saccharine-to-the-point of diabetes Alan Silvestri score kicks in, underscoring that this is a big moment, one of those moments "we can all relate to." Earlier in the film, while heroically serving in Vietnam (and getting shot in the "butt-tocks", President Nixon, hyuck hyuck), Forrest first encounters death via his African-American analogue, Bubba. At this point I could go on and on about the unlikelihood of this friendship, of these two being on the field to begin with, but the entire movie thumbs it's nose at actual history or common sense to offer some strange high school history book, "feel good" version of events, while all the while functioning as a horror movie for anyone who doesn't toe the extremely moderate but slightly right of center ideal audience the studio computers no doubt told Zemeckis and co. to tailor the turd to. Seriously, just like any eighties slasher movie, if you're black, you're dead, if you have sex outside of marriage (even if it's symbolic childhood marriage to a dense dunce), dead, if you turn your back on God and actually want to die after a devastating war injury, you will be subjected to your fair share of humiliation and torture until you learn to have faith in Christ, our father, or, excuse me, Gump, the secular Jesus for the nineties.

In other words, this reads like something John Milius would write if instead of being upfront (and badass) about his macho militarism he tried to sneak it in the backdoor, gussying a fatalistic, fascist view of the world with every overplayed song from the baby boomer years, "cute" antics, and lots of that "feel good" crap someone like Milius would have no patience for. But just for a second, imagine a John Milius Forrest Gump... where instead of merely punching that sexist student protester dude (because being a possessive stalker of a woman with significant childhood trauma is okay, but disagreeing with a fairly awful war...tsk tsk), Gump crushes his sternum and douses him in flames, where upon finding Bubba bleeding Gump severs his head and holds it up at Valhalla before finishing off Lt. Dan, no longer a man. Where after decimating the Vietnamese countryside in Ramboesque feats, Gump returns, helps the Watergate burglars get away, and then spends the rest of the film RE-writing history, a sort of right-wing Inglourious Basterds. It would be an uncomfortable, queasily violent film for most, but done with verve and HONEST about it's intentions. Is Forrest Gump really the right-wing parable arriving in a big, rainbow colored Trojan horse may of it's detractors make it out to be? I think it is a lot more confused and audience-pandering than intentionally political, and after perusing the novel on which the film is ostensibly based, deduce that a lot of the thematic strangeness of the movie comes from both softening the edges of Forrest Gump to the point he is akin to jarheaded Jesus via Rain Man (the character is a bit more similarly retarded in the book and actually curses and is about 240 pounds, for starters) and leaving out some of his more outlandish adventures (NASA, life with cannibals, a pet monkey) so as to ensure Oscar nominations and maximum boomer relatability. This isn't a parable, dammit, this IS America.

As of yet, I've said little about the acting, and there isn't much to say. Suitably loud caricatures amped up to the nth degree so as to compete with the Zelig-esque special effects (and the magical erasure of Gary Sinise' legs). Speaking of Sinise, I quite enjoyed his turn as director/actor in Of Mice and Men, but with Gump, he sold his soul to the Hollywood Beast and can now be seen weekly performing at an Indian Casino near you with the "Lieutenant Dan Band." Robin Wright Penn is suitably worn looking as an AIDS carrier but does little but look glum, worried, or bitter throughout, even when she's 'sposed to be young and an object of infatuation. Oh yeah, she almost commits suicide to "Free Bird." Sweet home Alabama, y'all. Sally Field is deserving of a ball peen hammer to the face. Tom Hanks performance has been so often parodied and is such a part of our pop cultural lexicon that I think it is often difficult to remember just how annoying it truly is. I don't have a kneejerk reaction to the vanilla megacelebrity status of Hanks. He is capable of reliable performances from time to time, and unlike someone, like, say, Julia Roberts, the sole pleasure I derive from his flicks tends not to be imagining him hanging from a meathook in my basement. Forrest Gump is one hell of a blemish, though (one the masses the masses awarded over $677 million bucks to, a fact that doesn't make me want to re-evaluate the film, but humanity as a whole). When watching a superior Hanks flick, like Joe Vs. The Volcano, I always have to try to keep Gump out of my head in a manner akin to breathing slowly and trying to convince vomit not to escape my esophagus.

So gather the family, children up front, and let the history wash over 'em. Learn to toe the line, and make great waves simply by shutting off your brain and running toward success without taking detours to smoke "wacky weed" or question the government. Try not to think too hard about Forrest's suitability in raising the Sixth Sense kid he gets saddled with a few years after his sole sexual experience with Jenny, who marries Forrest then promptly dies for maximum pathos. As Forrest replies to the military recruiter who asks him "Have you given any thought to your future, son?"

"Thought?"

-Jon-Christian

Island of Lost Souls

Admittedly, I have always been somewhat disappointed by old school Hollywood monster films. Whether it be Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi or Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) directed by Jack Arnold, I have been consistently letdown by the seemingly overblown reputation of early Hollywood horror flicks, especially when comparing them to the great phantasmagorical cinematic works of German expressionism. One thing that stands out glaringly regarding Hollywood monster movies is the atrociously recherché and inorganic nature of these mostly one-dimensional works, but I guess American audiences were fairly easy to convince during (and after) that era. The other day I took a somewhat hesitant chance on the early biopunk flick Island of Lost Souls (1933) directed by Erle C. Kenton, the first cinematic adaptation of H.G. Well’s novel The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). I can veraciously admit that Island of Lost Souls is the only early American monster flick that not only exceeded my expectations, but also resonated in my mind a number of days thereafter. Although obviously shot mostly on the restricting confines of a studio set, Island of Lost Souls manages to conjure up the eerie atmosphere of a genuine isolated island microcosm that mentally-feeble man-made monsters call home. Dr. Moreau (played royally by a charmingly sinister Charles Laughton) is the undisputed and self-appointed dictator of this island as he satanically created its inhabitants by somehow hybridizing man and animal via vivisection.  Of course, things change when a critical quasi-humanist named Edward Parker (played by Richard Arlen) finds himself stranded on Moreau's own morbid maniac version of Gilligan's Island.  Island of Lost Souls is thematically reminiscent of German horror writer Hanns Heinz Ewers' short story Mamoloi, a colonial weird tale featuring an exotic Haitian lady who sacrifices herself for her foreign Aryan lover, as the film features a forbid love affair between the film's protagonist Edward Parker and an exotic panther-woman. Naturally, being a vintage Hollywood production, Island of Lost Souls is full of wooden acting and absurdly contrived melodrama, but like most horror films, one can look past these somewhat irritating, consequential flaws.

In our modern and increasingly globalized and homogenized world, one does not always know what to expect when traveling to various parts of the world. With somewhat hostile Turks inhabiting large pockets (many times virtual ‘no go zones’ for indigenous Teutons) of Berlin, Germany and the nearly complete third-worldization of American cities with hostile and mostly unassimilable immigrants from every underdeveloped nation in the world, one would think that a shadow-hand is consciously speeding up a worldwide civil war and virtual cultural apocalypse of sorts. In Island of Doctor Moreau, a science fiction scenario of master versus untermensch is suspensefully played out in a closed-off and mostly uncharted cosmos of the dysgenically damned.  One could even argue that the film is an (unintentional) metaphor for the bloody and genocidal history (slave revolution of 1804) of Haiti when it was still part of the French colony Saint-Domingue. During Island of Lost Souls, the exceedingly pompous and obscenely self-confidant Dr. Moreau even has the gall to state, "Do you know what it means to feel like God?" (an infamous quote that UK censors found to be most contemptible) in regard to his self-righteous campaign to subvert nature and create subservient hideous beings that are neither men nor animals, but poor creatures who suffer the unideal fate of being somewhere schizophrenically in between. Inevitably, Dr. Moreau’s Mephistophelian display of cruelty and pathological narcissism, as well as his incontested sense of entitlement, leads to his most unpleasant downfall at the peculiar man-pawls of his creations/ex-slaves as he arrogantly never considers that his total control over his army of mongrel mammals will one day wane when these half-thinking monstrosities finally realize that freedom and, even destruction of ‘society’ as it stands, can become a reality.  Island of Lost Souls is essentially the fictional horror film equivalent of Harvard-educated eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard's prophetic work The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man (1922).  Stoddard predicted that, like the manimals in Island of Lost Souls, former Western colonies throughout the world would be overthrown and conquered in bloody revolts led by newly confident indigenous populations who were cognizant of the white man's curtailing power in the world. Personally, I found Island of Lost Souls symbolic of what one can expect for the future of the Occidental world, only the conclusion of the film is notably less frightening than the very potential dystopian destiny that might occur as a result of never-ending mass revolts spreading like rabid locusts in formerly civilized lands. 

One aspect of Island of Lost Souls that I found especially captivating is the strikingly realistic appearances of the various manimals, as many of the actors that played these miserable creatures are authentically deformed, apish, and carrying the grand misfortune of owning exaggeratedly sloped foreheads that were quite typical of prehistoric man.  I am sure that pioneering Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso would have approved of the casting for Island of Lost Souls. I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that today, one can visit any major American city and see certain human-beings that looks as artlessly atavistic, mongrelized, and grotesque as the tragic monster-men of Island of Lost Souls. In fact, American horror author H.P. Lovecraft experienced a similar real-life personal horror scenario during his brief migration to New York City during the early 20th century. Lovecraft described new immigrants to NYC as, “The organic things -Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid- inhabiting that awful cesspool could not by any stretch of the imagination be call’d human.” In fact, such ‘horrifying’ privy encounters would influence the iconic sub-humanoid monsters Lovecraft would dream up for his Weird Tales and lead to his (somewhat arguable) reputation as America’s greatest writer of horror literature. One could only imagine Lovecraft’s reaction were he to visit the increasingly degenerate city today. Like all great science fiction works, Island of Lost Souls is a film that manages to combine a pessimistic premonition of the future with fantasy elements that somewhat cryptically manage to chill one’s soul. 

-Ty E

Hour of the Wolf

While suffering a minor yet artistically fruitful nervous breakdown in 1965, Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman managed to churn out a most distinguished script that would eventually evolve into two very different (albeit equally personal) films: Persona (1966) and Hour of the Wolf (1968). Both of these extremely intimate works would prove to be among Bergman’s greatest work, but only one would be from a genre the director had yet to work within: the very rarely artistically serious horror film. Of course, Hour of the Wolf is not your typical horror flick and it is certainly the sort of horror film one would expect Ingmar Bergman to bring to the mostly schlocky, cheap shock genre. Instead of dealing with real anthropomorphic hellions lurking amongst the shadows, Hour of the Wolf protagonist Johan Borg (played by Max von Sydow) – a psychologically unstable artist with a dubious and incessantly pestering past – falls prey to the tragic instability of his own mind and the Jungian archetypes that inhabit it. On top of suffering insomnia, most especially during the vargtimmen (‘the hour of the wolf’), Johan is constantly approached by taunting and peculiar beings he believes to be demons. The wholly devoted support of Johan’s beautiful, pregnant wife Alma (Liv Ullmann) seems to be only in vain as even she – a noble woman who stays up and comforts him during the vicious vargtimmen – cannot bring an inkling of solace to his petrified soul. Johan and Alma call a small cottage on a quaint secluded island with an ancient castle their home. This island setting, a virtual microcosm of monotonous metaphysical madness, only adds to Johan’s caustic claustrophobia and unflinching feeling of impending doom. Essentially, Hour of the Wolf is a fresh and new take on the gothic horror story that is full of bold Bergmanian phantasmagorical imagery and typically stark Nordic isolationism and self-imposed alienation. 

 Ingmar Bergman has made no lie about the fact that Hour of the Wolf is one of his most personal and autobiographical works. Knowing this unsurprising fact (as all of Bergman’s films are to some extent autobiographical) makes the film all the more macabre and authentically confounding. Of course, anyone that knows anything about Bergman’s life knows that he was not the easiest man to like (as expressed most vividly by his own children), but one must certainly respect the Scandinavian filmmaker’s brutal honesty, especially in regard to using the idiosyncrasy of his own internal pain as a proper and constructive outlet to the push the envelope of filmmaking. In Hour of the Wolf, through the character of Johan, Bergman attempts to come to terms with alienation from one’s lover, an irretractable past, homoerotic demons (resulting in the most deplorable of crimes), and the personal validity of one’s art among critical spectators. Unsurprisingly, a couple years before he passed away in 2007, Bergman openly admitted that he could not even watch his own films as he found them intolerably disheartening. In Hour of the Wolf, the cinema spectator can easily see why the Swedish filmmaker found his art to be so emotionally repellant, but, of course, just like any other horror flick, most viewers have the advantage of not fully identifying with the reality of these distinct psychological horrors. Hour of the Wolf is a film about a man on the verge of total, but somewhat unpredictable, self-annihilation; and therein lies the true terror of the film. Johan is a man that has an impossible time dealing with himself, let alone his fellow human beings; a thought that, to a degree, scares even the most fully committed of renegade recluses. In fact, one could easily make the argument that Johan makes the aggressively misanthropic, wolf-like protagonist Harry Haller (also played by Max von Sydow in the 1974 film adaptation) from Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf (1927) seem like a dandy puppy with too much free time on his hands. The ‘hour of the wolf’ featured in Hour of the Wolf is when Johan is at his most lycanthropic and vehemently anti-social; the time where he feels most susceptible to turbulently transcending his flimsy humanity. The real ‘monster’ of Hour of the Wolf is undoubtedly Johan, but he is a strangely sympathetic monster nonetheless and even monsters have emotions.

 

 As per usual, Swedish cinematographer and longtime Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist produced some of the greatest scenes ever committed to celluloid for Hour of the Wolf. If any cameraman can be said to have refined and perfected the art of ‘Gothic’ filmmaking, it is most certainly Nykvist; a man who only minutely worked within the genre. In my humble opinion, Hour of the Wolf also features the most brilliant Gothic castle scenes ever featured in a film before and after it. Like many classic horror stories and films, Hour of the Wolf features nefarious aristocrats whose cold, astringent souls are only rivaled by the brutality of stone that holds together their empty, dark dungeons. In Hour of the Wolf, Bergman manages to combine a realistic psychological portrayal of perniciousness bluebloods who are guided by their conspiring idle hands with mythical elements one has come to expect from classic horror films, which is further consummately complimented by Nykvist’s bold, naturalistic (yet strangely somehow supernatural as is the case in Hour of the Wolf) filmmaking. Possibly Nykvist’s greatest achievement with Hour of the Wolf was his ability to make scenes set during daytime seem almost as apocalyptically foreboding as those shot during the dead of night, especially during a scene where a small boy is consumed by an oceanic tomb in what is easily one of the most eerie and memorable scenes in all of cinema history.

Ingmar Bergman described ‘the hour of the wolf’ as follows, "the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are more real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The Hour of the Wolf is also the hour when most children are born." It is also indubitably true that Bergman’s marvelous melancholy masterpiece Hour of the Wolf was painfully begotten during this seemingly untimely hour. Just as German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche stayed wide awake in state of indefinite internal despondency while in an opium trance during ‘the hour of the wolf’ as he codified his timeless philosophies, Bergman channeled his extremely personal anvil chorus into one of the most adept and ominously sublime horror films (and films in general) that could not have been more ideal for classic black-and-white film stock. Antonin Artaud once said something along the lines that, "no one creates except to get out of hell."  If Hour of the Wolf is not an expression of personal perdition than I do not know what is.  Not only is Hour of the Wolf one of the greatest horror films ever made, but it also one of the most gallant and uncompromising artistic expressions from an artist on the infernal internal demons that possess one – and what one must possess – to create great works.

-Ty E

Tokyo Elegy

In the year 1999, South African avant-garde filmmaker Ian Kerkhof officially changed his name to Aryan Kaganof. During that same year he directed Tokyo Elegy (1999) aka Shabondama Elegy; a work that was produced by the Japanese porn producers Stance and filmed in the Land of the Rising Sun. Unsurprisingly, Tokyo Elegy features graphic anal sex and cum-drenched yellow faces. Still, these details are more than a little bit misleading as Tokyo Elegy is a work that totally transcends the formless formulas and penis platitudes of mere Jap jack-off material. In the film, a morally unstable white man named Jack (played by Thom Hoffman who was featured in Kaganof’s previous work Wasted and later in Paul Verhoeven's Black Book) caps a couple chauvinistic Japanese cops (who arrogantly believe Japanese tea is the most supreme) and then subsequently begins a heavy and steamy love affair with a thoroughly degraded porn model named Keiko (Mai Hoshino). When not forcing Keiko to recite satirical bible quotes while sodomizing her, Jack basks in the warmth of Cocteau’s kick and unconsciously finds other methods to cease his miserable life of incessant hedonistic nihilism. Kaganof modeled the character of Jack on real-life criminal author Jack Henry Abbott; the born doomed spawn of an Irish-American soldier and a Chinese prostitute who killed himself in 2002 while serving a prison sentence for manslaughter which he received just six weeks after he was released from prison for a previous sentence. Despite his lack of dialogue, Thom Hoffman does an astute job portraying the undeniably haunted and tragic character Jack; an unconsciously suicidal man who anti-ascetically partakes in heavy drug use and wild interracial sexscapades as a way to relieve his unspoken, undying pain. Of course, Jack knows, whether he admits it to himself or not, that dying is the only true way for him to reach the eternal bliss of nirvana. 

As one can expect from a film directed by the always experimenting Aryan South African auteur, Tokyo Elegy has a form all of its own. Naturally, the film features a nonlinear storyline that is as erratic as the anti-heroes debauched sex-drive. Everyone knows that one of the most appealing aspects of cinema is that one gets to experience voyeurism from the passive safety of a movie theater chair or their couch. In Tokyo Elegy, virtual sex is brought to a whole new level as Kaganof employed digital cameras that thrust with the motion of Jack's pulsating Johnson into Keiko’s pink pinko arsehole. Indeed, Tokyo Elegy seems to come closer to real sex than a big dollar date with a webcam scam virtual hooker. To be honest, I would be lying if I did not admit that Kaganof sometimes brings the graphic sex featured in Tokyo Elegy to levels that border on irksome. It also does not help that Keiko is a victim of sexual abuse. I can genuinely say that I was particularly perturbed by a scene in the film where a middle-aged Jap tortures Keiko with his sushi-sized member.  Keiko's internal suffering is further accentuated by her off-screen narration of penetrating prose taken from Tricia Warden's Attack God Inside (a novel released through Henry Rollin's 2.13.61 publishing company). Although somewhat disturbing, Tokyo Elegy is ultimately more humorous than it is unnerving, thus making for a film that is more sweet than bitter and never failing to deliver.  The emotional tone of Tokyo Elegy is further counterbalanced by a normally revolting but uncommonly complimentary soundtrack featuring Japanese jazz and mediocre country-rock music. Ultimately, Tokyo Elegy is a film that defies all categories as it features more sex than your typical degenerate French erotic arthouse film, more art and less sex than the recent works of Bruce LaBruce (Otto; or Up with Dead People, L.A. Zombie), and more humor (albeit somewhat cryptic) than your typical Hollywood comedy. Whereas many independent and arthouse filmmakers seem quite disingenuous and desperate in their attempts to create artistic and groundbreaking works, it is most apparent that Aryan Kaganof’s unclassifiable and diverse technique of direction is instinctive and totally organic. In short, I doubt Kaganof could successfully direct your typical bromidic Hollywood production (whether it be and action or drama flick), even if he tried. 

After watching about 10 minutes of Tokyo Elegy, the viewer finds out that the libertine anti-hero is destined for a fancy unmarked Japanese grave. That being said, it is not a film one watches to see the unfolding of a typical linear story, but a pseudo-Cinéma vérité work of random flashbacks that act as an unpredictable sensory overload for the unsuspecting viewer. Tokyo Elegy is also one of few ‘pornographic’ films that has the potential to make the pleasure-seeking viewer feel guilty (unless they are genuinely a sadist of sorts), as the candid and tormenting psychodramas featured during and between moments of hardcore miscegenation sometimes seem like genuine stock footage from behind doors of a psyche ward. Despite being filmed in my least favorite format (digital video), I was impressed by Kaganof ability to fully utilize the schlocky recording system to his advantage by assembling a realist work that rightfully distances the viewer from the unrealistic lavish production of a big-budget Hollywood feature.  Essentially, Tokyo Elegy is a deconstructed film noir (or 'anti-film noir") flick that breaks every convention (both aesthetic and thematic) of the classic style, and for that reason alone (among many others), it is a work that will most likely only appeal to adventurous cinephiles and those that love studying various film theories.  Of course, I am sure everyone can find a segment or two of Tokyo Elegy that they find enjoyable, most especially the scenes featuring Keiko in the nude being used as the white devil Jack's oriental plaything.  Naturally, Tokyo Elegy has inspired me further delve into Aryan Kaganof's unparalleled and mostly unpredictable filmography. 

-Ty E