Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns

Supposedly, watching this film drives its audience into fits of insanity and death, so, of course, collectors want it. The fictional film La Fin Absolue du Monde predates mockumentaries like Fury of the Demon and Antrum that supposedly documented similarly deadly movies. Yet, what will really interest horror fans is the chance to see John Carpenter direct Udo Kier. “John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns,” an episode of the Mick Garris-created anthology series Masters of Horror, is not hugely Lovecraftian, but it is probably his best work of the 21^st Century thus far, so nobody will object to it screening during the Lovecraftian horror series at Anthology Film Archives.

Kirby Sweetman would prefer to concentrate on programming his struggling repertory cinema, but to pay the bills, he often works as a cinema sleuth, tracking down rare prints for clients. Hans Backovic’s “La Fin Absolue de Monde (The Absolute End of the World)” is the rarest of the rare. Honestly, Sweetman did not believe it still existed, but Bellinger, his mysterious new client, assures him it does. Supposedly, it only screened once at Sitges, resulting in bloody, stomach-churning riots. Bellinger went to see Vincent Price introduce Dr. Phibes instead, which sounds like a great choice, but he has regretted it ever since.

To pay off his debts, Sweetman starts following the film’s trail, starting with the only critic who filed a review. Since then, he has obsessively re-written his review, filling thousands and thousands of pages. Ominously, Sweetman also starts showing symptoms of the madness associated with the film, after listening to tapes of the critic’s interview with Backovic. Much to his alarm, the circular Ringu-like flashes of light he sees, referred  to as “cigarette burns” by those in-the-know, usually herald a descent into madness.

Even though “Cigarette Burns” was produced for television, it has a dark elegance that feels very much like classic Carpenter. It was also scored by his son, Cody Carpenter, who collaborated on the Firestarter and David Gordon Greene Halloween trilogy soundtracks, so “Cigarette Burns” also sounds very Carpenter-esque.

Holy Beasts: Ode to Jean-Louis Jorge

Jean-Louis Jorge did the nearly impossible. He made avant-garde filmmaking fun and sexy. Sadly, the Dominican filmmaker’s output was cut short when he was mysteriously murdered in 2000. Years later, his meta-muse is planning to direct his unfinished masterwork, the vampire romp, La Palace. Arguably, it would be just as a much a Jorge film as the last three or four Raul Ruiz films were that of the Chilean auteur. Unfortunately, getting it finished will be a dicey business in Israel Cardenas & Laura Amelia Guzman’s Holy Beasts, which releases tomorrow on Film Movement Plus.

Vera had a complicated relationship with Jorge. That in turn, led to complicated relationships with those in their circle. Nevertheless, she has convinced their old crony Victor to produce the long-deferred La Palace, with her as director. Her first choice for cinematographer joined Jorge in the great wrap party in the sky, so she settles for Martin, an old classmate the late director had a falling-out with. Of course, she recruits her friend Henry to serve as choreographer. He is portrayed by Udo Kier, who played the famous vampire in the Andy Warhol-produced Blood for Dracula (an association that suits the film just fine).

Is the vampirism of Jorge’s screenplay bleeding into real life? Maybe so, but nobody seems to notice or care very much. Vera is so driven to complete the film, she only allows herself to be distracted by Yony, the dancer she assumes must be her grandson, based on highly circumstantial evidence.

Holy Beasts is a little bit crazy, a little bit pretentious, and a whole lot messy. Jorge most likely wouldn’t have made this film exactly, but he would have probably enjoyed it, particularly the bizarre dance numbers, which often resemble a cross between a Broadway chorus line and a Calvin Klein commercial.

Bacurau, Not Submitted by Brazil

The Northeast of Brazil is hardscrabble country, with a history of armed insurrection. If a wealthy group of “Most Dangerous Game” style hunters were scouting territory, they would probably skip this unruly equatorial region. Of course, the entire notion of people hunting people is a shopworn cliché that keeps getting recycled over and over, even though John Woo’s Hard Target set the standard in the early 1990s. This time, co-director-screenwriters Kleber Mendonca Filho & Juliano Dornelles try to repurpose the gimmick to score political and ideological points in Bacurau, which opens this Friday in New York.

Theresa has returned to Bacurau for her grandmother’s funeral, but decides to stays a few days to reconnect with an old flame, Pacote (“the Package”), a former reputed hired gun, with a whole YouTube highlight reel of hits attributed to him. Frankly, he isn’t even the local the invading gringos should be worried about.

Led by the mysterious German known as Michael, the gringo hunters (and their Sao Paulo accomplices) have successful blocked all GPS and removed the town from Google maps. The idea is to slowly pick off the locals one by one. However, as the descendants of rebels in the Zapatista tradition, the residents of Bacurau have survival skills in their DNA.

Bacurau is an unholy merger of art cinema and exploitation movies that fails to satisfy either audience. The film is slow to get started, but at least the leisurely funeral scenes help establish the local characters. However, once the gringos show up, the film down-shifts into a wannabe sleazy retro-thriller, but the outsiders are so dramatically outclassed, there is never any suspense regarding the outcome. Instead, viewers will just be watching their cellphones, waiting for the obvious inevitable conclusion to finally wrap itself up.

FrightFest ’18: Puppet Master—The Littlest Reich

They are vicious, homicidal National Socialist puppets, but at least they are not as annoying as the moralizing sock-puppets from Avenue Q. The killer puppets of Charles Band’s bread and butter franchise haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, they are now terrorizing full-size people in two separate cinematic worlds: Band’s continuing Puppet Master universe and the new licensed reboot (highly likely to generate sequels of its own). Everyone starts with a clean slate, but the little monsters and their nasty creator are just as evil as they ever were, maybe even more so, in Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund’s Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (trailer here), which screens during this year’s FrightFest in the UK.

In 1989, there was a notorious incident at the mansion of former Hitler confidant Andre Toulon, a master of mad science and the occult. Since then, his hand-crafted mail order puppets have become morbid collector’s items. Indie comic book artist Edgar Easton is considering auctioning off the puppet that once belonged to his brother—his late brother, who died under mysterious circumstances.

He had been deeply depressed by his recent divorce, especially since he was forced to move back in with his parents. However, his sudden romance with Ashley Summers, the little sister of a former classmate has drastically improved his outlook. She is such a good sport, she is oddly game to accompany him to the convention marking the 30^th anniversary of the Toulon Murders. Rather awkwardly, Easton’s obnoxious comic shop boss Markowitz invites himself along too, but he will be surprisingly handy to have around when things get crazy. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to collect so many Toulon puppets in one place.

At times, Littlest Reich is deliriously gory, seriously challenging the gleeful levels of mayhem in Band’s own films. Yet, S. Craig (Brawl in Cellblock 99) Zahler’s screenplay is surprisingly strong when it comes to characterization. Easton, Summers, and Markowitz are all quite sharp and funny. We actually root for them to live. Thomas Lennon and Jenny Pellicer have terrific bantering chemistry as Easton and Summers, while Nelson Franklin scores big laughs as Markowitz, before commandingly assuming the film’s heroic mantle.

Barbara Crampton also shows her under-appreciated comedic chops as Officer Carol Doreski, one of the original responding cops, who now gives lurid tours at the old Toulon house. Of course, Udo Kier does his thing as Toulon. Matthias Hues adds further cult weirdness playing a himbo hook-up, whose body is commandeered by the Toulon puppets.

As you probably figured out, Littlest Reich is not the subtlest film to come along. For instance, it literally ends with “To Be Continued” blazoned across the screen in big block letters (but there is also a short but amusing stinger at the very end). After the first rebooting, we’re already eager for more Puppet Mastery from Laguna, Wiklund, and Zahler. It is a fun film to watch on your own, but it should be an absolute blast at a festival setting. Highly recommended for fans of horror-comedies, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich screens twice tomorrow (8/24) as part of this year’s FrightFest UK—and finishes its New York run tonight (8/23) at the Village East.

Slamdance ’18: Instant Dreams

The Polaroid camera was the original “selfie” device, but it was better. It used physical chemical film, so each shot meant something. Polaroid film was killed by the digital revolution, but it rose from the dead because people were not ready to let go. Instant photo-chemical film gets its due in Willem Baptist’s quasi-experimental docu-essay, Instant Dreams (trailer here), which screened during the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Chris Bonanos wrote the book on Polaroid. It is called Instant: The Story of Polaroid. He will provide some traditional documentary background and context, including the creation story. Bonanos is also a Polaroid user, which meant he was a film hoarder, as well. Stephen Herchen is the chief technology officer of the Impossible Project, who led an effort to reverse engineer Polaroid’s one-minute development project. Stefanie Schneider is one the artists who specialized in Polaroid photography (there were more than you maybe realized, such as Elsa Dorfman). Ayana JJ is a Japanese musician and artist, who would appreciate the immediacy old school Polaroid, but must make do with Polaroid-like pictures produced on a printer featuring the voice of Werner Herzog.

That is not the only weird cameo in Instant. Udo Kier makes an uncredited appearance in one of Schneider’s shoots. That is enough to forgive some of the film’s slow patches. However, what will really wins viewer hearts and minds is its unabashed analog love. Let’s be honest: digital sucks. Willem’s experts make that point pretty clearly.

In fact, there are some rather provocative ideas in the film, like the contention Polaroid was demonstrably ahead of its time, at least in a cultural sense. It is also rather mind-blowing to see a promotional film from the 1970s, in which company founder Edwin Land pulls a thin black iPhone-looking wallet out of his pocket, claiming someday every will have a camera that size, at their finger-tips.

There is nostalgia in Instant Dreams, as well as an appreciation for Schumpeterian creative destruction. Baptist has a keen eye for visuals (especially the Tokyo nightscapes) and a cool cerebral aesthetic. (Weirdly, some of the most banal looking sequences capture Schneider’s photo-shoots, which include brief nudity.) Regardless, it is a thoughtful, good-looking film that should have many more stops on the festival circuit following its screenings at this year’s Slamdance.

Brawl in Cell Block 99: Vince Vaughn Goes Up the River

Evidently, most convicts sent to the big house fantasize about doing time in Austria’s luxurious looking Justice Center Leoben, but not Bradley “Don’t Call Him Brad” Thomas. He is determined to be transferred to the maximum-security, pre-war Red Leaf hell-prison, as soon as possible. He has his reasons in S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 (trailer here), which releases today on DVD.

Thomas was an ex-boxer trying to make and honest and peaceful living, but the recession forced him to return to work as runner for his drug lord pal Gil. He could tell something was wrong with their new Latin American connection, but he does his duty, accompanying two jittery thugs on a multi-million-dollar run. When things go sideways, Thomas wastes his cartel companions to save the drastically out-gunned cops. Of course, he is still sentenced to serious time, but at least it is a medium security facility.

On his second day, Thomas gets a visit from the mysterious “Placid Man” pretending to be his mega-pregnant wife Lauren’s OBGYN. In reality, he is a representative of the cartel, who holds him responsible for the loss of their shipment. They have kidnapped Lauren and will do awful things to her unborn baby unless he murders Christopher Bridge in Red Leaf’s hardcore Cell Block 99. To get there, he will have to be transferred twice, once from the more livable Franklin and then again into the subterranean dungeon. That will require a lot of bad behavior, but Thomas has the skills and the fortitude.

Brawl is one of the grittiest prison movies in years that deliberately evokes a 1970s vibe with its tunes and muscle cars. It doesn’t give you much faith in rehabilitation or the criminal justice system in general. Warden Tuggs and the Red Leaf guards definitely count as bad guys, but they are not even the worst of the worst. Regardless, just about everyone at Red Leaf deserves whatever comes their way, except for Thomas and maybe the inmate across the hall, who looks like Julian Richings.

About the last time Vince Vaughn had a stretch of serious dramas going was the late 1990s, when he appeared in the Malaysian prison drama, Return to Paradise. It was a good move for him to step away from wise-guy comedy and return to the prison setting, because Brawl is without question his best work in years. He is quietly intense, but his visceral physicality says plenty.

Don Johnson adds some southern fried villainy as the sadistic warden. He has probably reached the point of type-casting, but to his credit, Tuggs is less cliched and more realistic than his racist plantation owner in Django Unchained or the Joe Arpaio caricature in Machete (but sadly, he is nowhere near as flamboyant as good old Jim Bob Luke in Cold in July). Jennifer Carpenter also adds a bit depth and dimension as Lauren Thomas, which is impressive considering she mostly serves as the hostage-victim. For extra bonus points, Udo Kier brings his eccentric movie magic as the Placid Man.

Both Brawl and Zahler’s previous film Bone Tomahawk clocked in over two hours, which is ridiculous in both cases. Seriously, he has a good handle on genre elements, but he needs to work with a more assertive editor. Brawl is particularly slow out of the gates, but it pays off with more interest than Tomahawk. Recommended for fans of prison movies and 1970s throwbacks, Brawl in Cell Block 99 is now available on DVD and BluRay.

Tribeca ’16: Seances

Of all the inter-acty programs at this year’s Tribeca, you have to get behind this one, because it directly and necessarily led to the creation of Guy Maddin’s incomparable cinema fantasia The Forbidden Room. Originally, this was the interactive tribute to and resurrection of lost silent films Maddin had in mind, but a condition of his funding required the production of a conventional feature film as well. This is probably the only time Maddin’s Forbidden Room and the word “conventional” will ever appear in the same paragraph. Regardless, Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, and the National Film Board of Canada allow viewers the chance to invoke the spirits of some of the weirdest silent ever lost in Seances (trailer here), which concludes it viewing period today at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

Twelver viewers at a time enter the Seances booth, where they choose the elements of their film on the spiritualist’s table and then sit back to enjoy the show. After it concludes, the unique algorithm that produced the fifteen minute-ish short is deleted, so it can never be replayed. Much like Forbidden Room, Seances introduces an eccentric set of characters in the framing device that soon melts into some sort of flashback sequence, which is interrupted in turn by a Maddinesque flight of fancy, before repacking itself like a Russian doll.

After watched three in row at Tribeca, certain elements started to reappear, but scenes never repeated themselves. There are an awful lot of trippy, ghost films for participating viewers to draw from, featuring Maddin regulars like Geraldine Chaplin (who truly provides an apostolic link to the silent era), Mathieu Almaric, Maria de Medeiros, Charlotte Rampling, and the great Udo Kier. (In fact, the Seances producer seemed rather receptive to our suggestion for a special Udo Kier button, allowing each audience to vote yes or no whether they wanted some tasty Udo nuttiness in their film.)

Seances is wildly cool, but the VR-oriented Tribeca Festival Hub might not be the most sympathetic place to showcase it. There is just too great a disparity between the be-a-shark-in-the-ocean, be-a-lion-on-the-Serengeti VR programs and Seances, which offers patrons the chance to make their own unique Guy Maddin movie, especially if you are not already familiar with his work.

Be that as it may, Seances a characteristically visionary work from Maddin. Sly and surreal, it presents silent cinema like you have never seen it before. For instance, the assembled films all have sound. They also have macabre humor and an exceptional degree of artistry, most definitely including the work of cinematographers Stephanie Weber-Biron and Benjamin Kasulke. It always looks like a Maddin film, which means you might think it poured directly out of his subconscious. Highly recommended for multiple viewings, Seances is on view at the Festival Hub until 11:00 pm tonight (4/17), as a Storyscapes selection at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Wim Wenders at the IFC Center: A Trick of the Light

Moving picture technology has always moved at an accelerated rate, even during its infancy. Max Skladanowsky is a perfect example. His Bioscope was the state of the art in flickering images, until the Lumière Brothers introduced something better—a few weeks later. Wim Wenders and his students from the Munich Academy for Television and Film tell the Skladanowsky family’s story with the sort of hand-cranked technology the Skladanowskys would have used in the hybrid documentary A Trick of the Light, which kicks off its first legit U.S. theatrical engagement this Friday at the IFC Center as part of the ongoing Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road retrospective.

When Wenders and his student-crew interview the ninety-one year old Gertrude Skladanowsky, they are talking to motion picture history, but it was her older sister Lucie who really witnessed the Bioscope’s short reign first hand. She was raised by her father Max and his two brothers, Eugen and Emil, whom she adored. Their vaudevillian family is scuffling, but they have high hopes Max’s tinkering will lead to something. When he finally gives Berlin’s leading impresarios a sneak peak, they are impressed enough to book the Skladanowsky Brothers for a grand premiere at their Wintergarten Theater.

The better part of the stylized, herky-jerky dramatic recreations are devoted to the various acts they film and the stressful circumstances surrounding their big night. Yet, the tone is always bitter sweet, since we know from the start their Bioscope will soon be rendered obsolete by the Lumières. Still, it seems they remained rather enterprising to judge Gertrude’s reminiscences. Far from a conventional talking head interview, her sequences are “haunted” by the rebellious ghost of Lucie, played by the same young actress, but they cannot upstage the nonagenarian’s sense of humor and history.

In terms of its visuals and atmosphere, Trick is probably Wenders’ most Guy Maddinesque film, especially considering Udo Kier appears Max Skladanowsky, somewhat playing against his usual creepy type (it would go particularly well with The Forbidden Room, which screens at the upcoming NYFF). He actually anchors the dramatic section rather effectively with his tragic Teutonic dignity and uncharacteristic reserve. In contrast, Otto Kuhnle does plenty of shameless mugging as Uncle Emil, but it is not wholly inappropriate given the context—Mack Sennett surely would have approved.

The passion for cinema shared by Wenders, his collaborators, and his subjects comes through in each frame. There is a sense of wonder in Trick that is quite appealing—even playful. While not silent itself, it still makes the Silent Era much more accessible. The use of old school cameras might be a bit of a gimmick, but it certainly gives the film the right look and feel. Warmly recommended for fans of Wenders and silent movies, A Trick of the Light screens for a week at the IFC Center, starting this Friday (9/18).

AFF ’15: The Editor

Obviously, editors are important to horror movies. They get to do all the cutting. Of course, these days, it is mostly done digitally, but for 1970s Italian giallo movies, it was all about sharp cutting implements. Unfortunately, journeyman editor Rey Ciso has somewhat lost his touch since a mysterious accident left him with four wooden fingers. In accordance with giallo genre conventions, Ciso will find himself tipped as the logical suspect when a psycho stalker starts knocking off cast-members of his latest film in Astron-6’s spoof, The Editor (trailer here), directed by Adam Brooks & Matthew Kennedy, which screens during this year’s Atlanta Film Festival.

After his freak accident, Ciso either spent time in a private clinic or a looney bin. He and his doctor apparently have very different memories of that time, but that does not necessarily mean Ciso is wrong. Regardless, his new student-intern Bella worships the editor. His past her prime actress wife, not so much. She seems somewhat obsessed the up-and-coming star, Claudio Calvetti. Inconveniently, he is also very dead, along with his frequently naked co-star, Veronica.

Since the killer hacks off the same four fingers from his victim that Ciso has lost, the violent but incompetent Det. Peter Porfiry naturally settles on him as the prime suspect. To make matter worse, the killer has taken an unhealthy interest in Ciso, sending him tapes of his work. At least good Father Clarke believes in his innocence, not that a sexually confused materialist like Porfiry takes much stock in what priests have to say.

The Editor might be a comedic send-up, but it outdoes Cattet & Forzani’s Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears with its loving attention to giallo production details. It looks and sounds terrific, incorporating the sinister Goblin-esque soundtrack, over-the-top bloodletting, and plenty of gratuitous nudity. The way Ciso and Porfiry never change their hideously 1970s outfits is also a nice touch. Clearly, co-writers Brooks, Kennedy, and Conor Sweeney understand what makes giallos tick, right down to the bafflingly incomprehensible finale.

Brooks also serves himself well as Ciso, the cracked up everyman. He is sort of like a straight-man for the gags, except he constantly gets to freak out. Kennedy’s Porfiry also gorges on plenty of scenery, looking like an appropriately low rent Donald Sutherland. Tristan Risk (a.k.a. burlesque performer Little Miss Risk) and Sheila E. Campbell duly vamp it up like good sports as the ill-fated Veronica and Porfiry’s ex-wife Margarit, respectively. Laurence R. Harvey scores some of the biggest laughs as Father Clarke, while the appearances of Udo Kier and Crime Wave’s John Paizs need no explanation.

In terms of tone and substance, The Editor is maybe seventy percent giallo and thirty percent Troma, so it is certainly not for the overly sensitive or easily offended. However, it makes you want to go back and re-watch classics of the genre, which attests to its legitimacy and the cleverness of its satire. Shamelessly lurid, The Editor is quite enthusiastically recommended for giallo fans when it screens this Saturday (3/21) at the 2015 Atlanta Film Festival.

Sundance ’15: The Forbidden Room

It is like Guy Maddin put his collection of vintage silent and early talky prints through a blender and then screened the puree, except none of these films ever existed before. Unlike his Séances project inspired by lost films, these odd (odd is indeed the right term) film fragments are entirely the product of Maddin, his co-writers: co-director Evan Johnson, poet John Ashbery, and co-conspirators Robert Kotyk and Kim Morgan. Yet, as is often true with Maddin’s work, they feel like they must be real on some alternate plane of existence. Prepare for a trip when Maddin’s The Forbidden Room screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

It is a tall order to summarize Room and it would be impossible to do the many plot strands justice. Just so you know you you’re in the right film (not that you couldn’t tell immediately), Room starts with a lesson on how to take a bath. It then segues into a submarine disaster film, which is interrupted by a woodsman, who has come to tell the suffocating crew his tale, as if he were the Ancient Mariner. Like Thomas Pynchon on speed, Room thus proceeds on tangents to tangents, as each flashback and incidental anecdote begets more of the same.

Eventually, we will meet Mathieu Amalric playing a collector who lives in a swanky elevator and the train psychiatrist working on the Berlin-Bogota Express. In one story arc, a man meets his doppelganger, while Udo Keir continually pops up as different characters in various sub-films, because he’s Udo Keir.

Trying to track the film from point A to point B is a losing proposition. It could almost play in a continual loop as an installation piece, except viewers would miss the realization of the moment Maddin opens up the final “Russian doll” (to use an apt term from the press notes) and begins to re-pack them again.

The real point of Room is the mind-blowing artistry of it all. Each constituent film begins with its own credits sequences, which are graphically striking and perfectly representative of their respective eras and genres. Likewise the work of cinematographers Stephanie Weber-Biron and Ben Kasulke is never less than stunning, flawlessly evoking the look of noir black-and-white as well as that early nitrate color. It really is like walking through a cinematic dreamscape.

Granted, Room will baffle less adventurous viewers, even though it has an excess of narrative coming out of its ears. This is truly Guy Maddin raised to the power of Guy Maddin. Without question, it is the work of a genuine auteur who has no close comparison. Highly recommended for fans of the unusual and the aesthetically daring, The Forbidden Room screens again tonight (10/29) and Saturday (1/31) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.