"Yeah it was probably your mom howling out her anti-sex warning."
Today's Spooktober entry is in audio format. You can either subscribe to the Bad Movie Podcast on your favorite podcast software, or you can click the direct download link below to listen to Aaron and his friend Zach break down an awful 80's slasher flick. And if you're interested in giving up 90 minutes of your life to a hilariously bad movie (and of course you are!), you can either find it on YouTube here or if you have Amazon Prime, it's free to stream. Podcast Download Link
On face value, Videodrome seems like a dated film. It's a story about the proliferation of toxic mass media, which is now a timeless theme, but the technology is firmly rooted in 1983. This probably hurts the longevity of Videodrome, because anybody younger than 25 would watch it with bemused interest at the archaic video cassettes and players that drive the plot. Even I'll admit that it was little quaint and distracting. But it's ok for it to feel dated. Explorations on mass media is a theme that can be explored across generations, and not just in horror. Elements of this can be seen in films like Network, Natural Born Killers, Citizen Kane, and the true masterpiece: Robocop. In fact, I like to imagine that Channel 83, the network run by James Woods' TV executive Max Renn, is the station that provides us with the absurd nonsense on televisions in the Robocop universe. I think both Paul Verhoeven and David Cronenberg that this kind of sleazy, cheap, lowest common denominator television would eventually replace true visual art. Both directors had a fascination with violence and sex, but not in the ways that were becoming popular on television. They wanted violence to be shocking and disgusting. Hyper-real to keep the audience disgusted by it, while also making a comment about how what you'll see on the nightly news will always be worse.
(I know this isn't Videodrome, but it's too awesome not to show...)
Videodrome is the story of a television executive who is looking for a new, cheaply made, but shocking television show for his sleazy UHF station (this was channel 83 before there was cable TV). A technician at the station introduces him to a bizarre pirated satellite broadcast of a show called Videodrome, a vile "show" of women being tortured in sadistic and highly violent ways. Immediately Max is fascinated and desires to see more. I love the idea of television station pirating. When I was young, my dad owned a big metal satellite dish that would actually turn itself to catch new signals. If you fiddled with the settings and explored the different satellites at random, you could see all sorts of weird programs. Once we discovered the NBC News feed, which would allow us to watch Tom Brokaw get ready for the nightly news. There would be strange feeds from other countries that would make no sense. We could even get shows before they aired on network television. It felt a bit like hacking must feel: the ability to voyeuristically look in on things you were never meant to see. After Videodrome came out, pirating television signals was kind of a thing. Several notable incidents occurred around the country as pranksters would hijack over-the-air television broadcasts and transmit truly bizarre videos to a bewildered audience. This one aired during an episode of Dr. Who:
Maybe Videodrome unlocked something in the subversive consciousness, to upset the soft and boring nature of mass media and inject a subversive element. And that's exactly what Max is trying to do. He's tired of the same old sleaze (the show he is pitched at the beginning of the film is called Samurai Dreams, a period piece featuring a young geisha masturbating wordlessly with a gigantic dildo), he wants to get the rights to Videodrome and make a quick buck with it. He doesn't realize it right away, but Videodrome is arousing him sexually, because in his subconscious, violence is sex and sex is violence. This is where one of my all-time crushes, Debbie Harry enters as radio personality Nicki Brand. She entices Max into a sexual relationship, but is completely focused on violence rather than traditional physical pleasure. In fact, the first thing she asks to watch at his apartment is a porno, and is disappointed when Max says he doesn't have any. Once Nicki sees Videodrome, she becomes obsessed with it, wanting to become the show's next "contestant," essentially so that she can be whipped, beaten, and shocked to her heart's content. She proves her devotion to Max by burning herself with a cigarette. The next day she departs for Pittsburgh, which is where Max hears Videodrome is produced. During his quest to learn more about Videodrome, Max comes across a reclusive figure known as Mr. O'Blivion who will only converse via pre-recorded videotape. O'Blivion runs a strange homeless shelter known as Cathode Ray Mission where the homeless are sheltered and fed, but are seemingly made to watch televisions displaying everything from open heart surgery to goofy game shows. The cubicles where the homeless are stored look like livestock stalls, and they are herded into the mission like a line of cattle going into the slaughterhouse. Max learns that the Videodrome signal is severely damaging, and just by watching it, you give yourself a brain tumor that causes hallucinations. O'Blivion is revealed to have succumbed to one of these tumors, but O'Blivion explains to Max in a videotape that he was not destroyed by it, but was made pure by it. The tumor was not a malignant cancer, but a new organ that allows him clearer insight and the ability to transcend his physical form and become digital media. This seems particularly prescient, especially as he mentions that O'Blivion is (obviously) not his real name, but a name he created for himself in the digital realm (sort of like a Twitter handle or a screen name). He also holds a "conversation" via monologue, uninterested in having a back-and-forth exchange of ideas. Also pretty common these days. Another group, a corporation that is hilariously described by its CEO, Mr. Convex, as a manufacturer of "inexpensive eyeglasses for third world countries, and orbital targeting systems for NATO," approaches Max. Mr. Convex reveals that his company is the creator and originator of Videodrome, but is lacking a lot of specific details. The Convex wants Max's television station to publicly broadcast the Videodrome signal to the masses. But in order to do this, he wants Max to murder his fellow executives at the channel. Because why not? He inserts this idea into Max in a truly disgusting and perfectly Cronenbergian way:
This is where the narrative becomes looser. The CEO makes Max wear a weird VR helmet that will supposedly unlock and monitor his hallucinations. You're left to interpret what's literally happening and what's happening in his sleazy, violence-obsessed mind, but it might as well be one in the same. After watching another O'Blivion video, Max hallucinates (or maybe he doesn't) that Nicki is both on and has become the television. The screen bends and stretches like flesh, and he has a violent S&M encounter on the Videodrome set with the TV itself, while Nicki moans in pain and pleasure on the screen. It's really weird, really great, and the kind of special effects you'll never see again. Why spend the time and money and effort building a fleshy television set that pulses and breathes, when you can just pay a digital animator to make one over a weekend? Without spoiling the ending, Max is pulled in multiple directions by both O'Blivion and Convex, and goes on a bit of a murder spree. While we're not sure if Videodrome is real, or if Max is just insane, he's definitely killing people. He starts repeating a bizarre new refrain: "Long live the new flesh." He's ready to transcend his physical form and become part of the new digital reality.
Summary:
This is the kind of narrative you'd expect from Cronenberg. It's not straightforward, and some of the message might only be clear to him, but it's a film that will stick with you because of the visuals and overall theme. James Woods is excellent, and Debbie Harry is impossibly hot. Also it's a Cronenberg movie. Just look at this awesome shit: Of course you should see it!
Children abide. This is the constant refrain of the 3rd act of Night of the Hunter. Children will accept the rules that their parents and that society will put on them, both good and bad. It's a film about predators, prey, belief, innocence, and fear...but mostly it's a story about children.
The story of Night of the Hunter is simple enough. Robert Mitchum plays a serial killer preacher, with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles, traveling around rural West Virginia in 1930. The Great Depression has set in, society is falling apart, and people are escaping through either destructive vice or blind faith. While spending some time in jail for stealing a car, Mitchum's Harry Powell learns of $10,000 (nearly $150,000 today) that his cellmate robbed from a local bank, but is not told the exact location of the money. Beneficial for Powell, his cellmate is on death row for killing two people during the course of the robbery.
Upon his release from jail, Powell departs for his cellmate's hometown to find his widow and the money. Unknown to all of the characters however, the bank robber left the money with his young son, John, and daughter, Pearl, (he stuffed it in his daughter's baby doll) and swore them to secrecy.
Powell enters John and Pearl's lives, courts then marries their mother, and makes his moves to find the family's unknown riches. I don't want to say any more about the plot, because you should definitely see this, but there's still a lot to dissect.
First, let's all enjoy how the movie starts:
I love the disembodied space head imparting sound biblical wisdom to the disembodied heads of the space children. They're almost heavenly, which seems appropriate as the film transitions to some earth-bound children playing hide and seek and finding the body of a young girl in a cellar. The musical cue as Mitchum's Powell is introduced tells us everything we need to know about him. My wife said at the end of the movie that she was glad that it wasn't a story about us discovering that Powell is evil. The movie shows us right away that this guy is bad, but is pretending to be good, and is clearly insane. The conversations and relationships that people have with God in this movie are amazing, and is something that I've always found interesting in real life. For me, it's always been hard to differentiate between the earnest prayers of godly people and the meandering direct conversations with the divine that we hospitalize people for having. I think Charles Laughton is fascinated by this as well, because the film places the madman in a field of virtuous characters, and they all seem to be speaking the same language. I'd imagine that during the Great Depression, sleepy rural towns like the one in the film, would become more drastic with their faith. Or they would turn to vice. The clearest thinker in the film, an old man John calls Uncle Birdy who says he has no time for preachers, is rendered feckless by drink and cowardice. Children become lost in a fractured society, and numerous characters remark on the number of wandering, parentless children who travel up and down the river looking for food and protection. The adults don't sound like they pity these children, they just sound angry with their parents for not doing their jobs. There are a lot of opinions flying around. Mrs. Spoon, the wife of the town's candy shop owner speaks openly and brashly about what Willa, John and Pearl's now widowed mother, should or should not do. She gives a long and loud lesson at a picnic about how sex is a necessity of procreation, and that having sexual feelings is impure and improper (but only for women). Later in the film, though, she clucks her tongue when Powell tells her that Willa turned down his advances on their wedding night. In Mrs. Spoon's righteous world, women should give in to every advance their husband makes, but should derive no pleasure from the act at all.
(This sounds so unchanged from today's rural America. I chuckled out loud when Mr. Spoon called Mrs. Spoon, "mother" on multiple occasions. It might not have been as weird in 1955, but the way the film is crafted, the absurdity of it is not lost on Laughton.) In reality, Powell is the one who rebukes his new wife's advances, telling her that he will never have sex with her, because they do not want to procreate. He denies Willa coldly, and admonishes her for having sexual feelings. Powell definitely has a weird, understated thing with sex. At the beginning of the film, he hears God saying that He hates "perfume smellin' things, lacy things, things with curly hair" but still ends up at a strip show, where he angrily draws his knife. He thinks about killing the girl on stage, but reminds himself that there are too many other people around. "Can't kill the whole world," he sighs. Powell is unhinged, and has replaced sex with murder. He won't, or perhaps more accurately can't, have sex, so he uses his knife. He even shows it to young Pearl in one memorable scene, and becomes excited and agitated when she goes to touch it. Super creepy stuff. The bedroom scene between Powell and his new wife was one of the most striking shots I've seen in a long time:
The preacher is in his church, which is also his marital bedroom. He's raising his left hand to the sky (the hand with HATE written on it) as his wife reveals that she heard Powell violently trying to get the location of the $10,000 from the children. She's not angry, however; not even after Powell slaps her across the face. She sounds sleepy and blunted. Her only request is that he teach her The Way, how to be clean and pure with God just as Powell clearly is. Willa is changed after meeting Powell. She becomes obsessed with cleanliness, appearing unhinged and manic while discussing how clean she is or could be. After she is turned down and shamed on her wedding night, the next scene shows her as wide-eyed and frantic in her devotion to God and her husband's church. My wife and I both agreed, she was horny af and hated herself for it.
While adult sexuality is a big theme in Night of the Hunter, predatory sex against children is the more insidious and shadowy theme. The children in this film are almost glowingly cherubic or piteously disheveled, but always innocent. The one child in the film whose innocence is damaged first is John: his father the bank robber tells him to keep a secret from everybody, even other trusted adults. This secret is about the location of the hidden money, but c'mon...what's the most common secret that adults make vulnerable children keep? It's never explicitly stated that Powell is preying on the children sexually, but the genius of Laughton's direction puts it just under the surface. He knows that something as simple as a door closing and locking can be the most terrifying thing for a child. There's also a scene later in the film when Powell is manipulating a young teenage girl for information. She doesn't fear him, and seems to crave the attention. He buys her ice cream, and she hangs all over him, asking if she's beautiful. She's another wastrel, forgotten by a destitute society. The road is cruel to lost children, and she's found a reliable way to get positive attention and rewards. Again, it's never explicitly stated, but the subtext is chilling and oh so upsetting. In the 3rd act, the children escape from Powell by taking a small boat down a river. All the shots of the children along the river are framed with small woodland creatures. I didn't really understand it during the film, but I kind of get it now: they're all the little innocent things of nature, and they're all completely exposed to the cruelty of the bigger, stronger, and faster predators. Watch how scary this is: The children eventually find refuge with a kindly old woman, Mrs. Cooper, who takes them in and cares for them. She teaches them lessons and understands the trauma that they've gone through, even if she doesn't know the specifics. There's a scene where the children are inside Mrs. Cooper's house hiding from Powell who is sitting outside on a stump singing hymns. She sits with a shotgun at the ready to defend her young charges. A poignant moment unfolds before her: Mrs. Cooper is the first character in the film to understand the plight of children in a broken world. Their parents either ignored them or abandoned them. They asked them to keep secrets, or failed to protect them, blinded by their own desires and needs. Mrs. Cooper is the only shepherd they have now. The ending is beautifully bizarre in a way that I feel David Lynch would appreciate. In fact, you can tell that Lynch learned a lot from watching how Laughton handled such a dark and disturbing film with subtlety and by highlighting the absurdity and terror of everyday life. Watching Night of the Hunter has only increased my appreciation of something like Eraserhead or Twin Peaks. There's also a lot of silent film film influence here. Some scenes are framed like stage plays, where the whole set is flatly presented to the audience as a cross-section; almost like we're watching ants in an ant farm.
You can also see the impact that Weimar German films, particularly M, left on Laughton. M is another dark film, although more explicitly so, about a child murderer as a symptom of a fractured society.
And yes, the LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos are exactly what inspired this:
The most incredible thing: this was Laughton's first and only film as a director! He'd done a ton of acting work, dating back to the silent era, but this was his only time behind the camera.
I feel eventually I'm going to get to a film that won't keep me up late typing my thoughts out, but luckily today is not that day.
Summary:
The Night of the Hunter is one of the most quietly terrifying films I've ever seen. Robert Mitchum's ability to convey subtle insanity couched in disarming charm makes him a perfect predator. Laughton's direction and cinematography presents a surrealistic and absurd rural America where fear and trauma are a silent part of everyday life. I can't recommend it enough, and I feel like my understanding of film has changed in a strange and beautiful way.
Note: I know that Vertigo can't be considered a horror movie, but it's definitely a thriller with some frightening elements (plus it was playing at a local theater tonight).
Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock
"One final thing I have to do...and then I'll be free of the past."
There have probably been a million words written about Vertigo, so there's no point in rehashing what everybody already knows: it's a masterpiece, the use of color and light is genius, the camera work is beyond influential. I mean, it's impossible to watch something like this, and not be in awe: There are textbooks written about Hitchcock, and I'm never going to come up with something profound and new at 11:15 pm on a Tuesday night. But I'm going to try anyway. If you've never seen Vertigo, you should probably get on that. This review will assume that you've seen it, so if you want to skip right to the summary at the end, do so now. Hitchcock makes it obvious that history is what controls the present. Madeleine's regular fugue state ostensibly transforms her into one of her unknown ancestors (a great grandmother who went "mad" and killed herself at the same age that Medeleine is during the film). Scottie can't move past the trauma of seeing a fellow police officer die while trying to rescue him from a precarious rooftop ledge. It takes the tangible form of vertigo and an acute fear of heights, but this could be read as a more modern day understanding of a situation like this. Scottie clearly has PTSD. In 1958, just 13 years following the end of WWII, and five years since the end of the Korean War, PTSD was still not well understood or managed. A man in Scottie's situation would look for a tangible solution to a complicated problem. Instead of trying to cope with the horrible situation, Scottie tries to enact a fairly progressive exposure therapy plan, to gradually increase his elevation on a stepstool. But even this ends in a dizzy misery. I love the role of Midge in this early scene where we learn about Scottie's acrophobia and vertigo. Unlike other classic film noir, Scottie is visiting Midge at her bright and cheery office. Unlike something like the Maltese Falcon, where she'd come to see him in some dark Private Investigator's office. He's the vulnerable one in this scene, and she's the strong, funny, clever, and cool one. She's also confidently independent. At one point Scottie mentions that they were engaged for a brief time in college, which means that this would have been before Scottie went through his trauma. Going back to the past is comforting for him, but he can't escape the problem, and ends up collapsed in her arms. I really love the scene where Scottie and Madeleine end up at the Muir Woods and study the rings on one of the felled sequoias:
Its age spans from before the Battle of Hastings until 1930. Carlotta (who is really Judy pretending to be Madeleine in a dissociative state) gestures to some rings and points out where she was born and where she died. If you looked at Judy's metaphorical rings you'd also see where Madeleine and Carlotta were created and destroyed. If you studied Scottie's rings you'd see where the rooftop accident took place, like evidence of a forest fire. He'd suffer a second trauma a few scenes later after Madeleine climbs the mission bell tower to ostensibly jump to her death, fulfilling the prophecy. Scottie's returning trauma triggers his vertigo, and he's unable to save her. This shatters him, and he's left functionally catatonic at the end of the 2nd act. I love how Hitchcock plays with the audience and with Scottie in the 3rd act. He's tortured by flashbacks of women who look just like Madeleine, and who even go to the same places that she did. As the audience we're baffled by Kim Novak returning with a different hairstyle and makeup. Are we seeing things through Scottie's unreliable eyes, or is that just supposed to be an incredible facsimile?
She's introduced to Scottie and the audience as Judy, the farmgirl from Kansas who moved to San Francisco and is clearly struggling in the big city. She seems uncomfortable with Scottie's advances, but agrees to go to dinner with him. After he leaves so she can get ready for their date, she pens a letter for the audience revealing that she became Madeleine for Madeleine's husband who wanted her dead. Instead of giving the confession to Scottie, she tears it up and dresses for their date. This is the classic Hitchcock scenario: the tension isn't distilled from the mystery, it's from how the characters will react once they discover the truth. Once Scottie deduces the truth after Judy makes a mistake (wearing a necklace that belonged to Madeleine/Carlotta) his impulse is to bring her back to the scene of her death in order to change his history and save himself from the trauma of being unable to prevent her suicide. Now the tension shifts because the audience knows that Scottie has figured out the truth, but Judy is now unaware. The final twist in the film is just the best. Scottie confronts Judy, they embrace, and a dark figure looms out of the shadows. A panicked Judy jumps away from the figure, and plunges over the edge; the same window where Madeleine met her end. The shadowy figure steps into the light, and it's one of the mission nuns coming to see what all the noise was about. Scottie is left stunned in the window, unable to ever escape his past traumas. It's so dark and so bewildering. All that effort to overcome the past, to rehabilitate, to heal, and Scottie has to watch Madeleine die all over again. I read on wikipedia that there was an alternate ending filmed for European countries where the final scene is Scottie and his old flame Midge enjoying a cup of coffee together, listening to a radio broadcast that the police were closing in on Madeleine's husband/murderer. This sounds incredibly tacked on, and would ruin the devastating tone of the final shot. Sometimes a dark ending like this can feel unsatisfying or can make the film seem unresolved, but not here. We know exactly what will happen to Scottie, because it's all happened before. We've been a part of it. It's just another ring on his tree.
Summary:
Vertigo is not truly a horror movie, but it is a clinic in cinematography, developing tension, and using color. If you've never seen it, I can't recommend it enough, even in the month of October.
The following is part of the Spooktober Review series. As someone obsessed with horror films and the Halloween season, I spend most of the month of October watching horror movies and yapping about them to anyone who will listen. This year I made a goal to watch at least 31 films and do a write up about each one. I'm not exactly sure what form this will take (or even if I'll be able to keep it up the whole month), but it's either this or pay attention to politics and sports... And thanks a bunch for checking this out! It means a lot to me when people read the dumb things that I write. The reviews won't follow any particular format, as some movies may not deserve so many words... But, if you're pressed for time, I'll try to do a very brief summary at the end of every review so you can get a sense of whether or not it would be something you'd like to check out. Enjoy!
Bay of Blood (1971) Mario Bava
"All's well that ends well..."
Despite being a big fan of gore, bloody special effects, and nudity, I'm not super enamored with slasher movies. I respect the classics and I understand their appeal to both audiences and filmmakers. What better way to fill 90 minutes than with boobs and murder and blood? It's so easy to generate suspense when there's a seemingly unstoppable killer hacking his or her way through a cast of doe-eyed teenagers. The trope of people yelling advice to characters on screen always comes from slasher films, because they generate a visceral reaction from the audience. Well, the good ones do anyway.
Even the great films of the subgenre (Nightmare on Elm Street; Halloween; Friday the 13th) usually devolve into lazy tropes after the studios smell a way to make an easy buck off of a cheaply produced franchise. When the series departs from the algorithm (like with New Nightmare, Halloween 3, Chainsaw Massacre 2, or Friday the 13th Part 6) they're usually not well regarded initially and only benefit when their satirical or unorthodox elements gain some appreciation.
The lesser additions to the series are films I'll likely never watch. Some of them just seem completely lost to time now. Who is really going to sit down to watch Nightmare on Elm Street 5 in the year of our dark lord 2017? Who could possibly be interested in a detailed examination of the origins of Freddy? That's as stupid and pointless as wanting to see a whole movie about what Han Solo was like as a little boy.
Anyway, it's October, and I'm trying to get a broad cross-section of horror movies, so I've got to get some slashers in. And what better way than to follow Coldplay's immortal advice, and go back to the start?
Bay of Blood is certainly a slasher film, and I gather is considered seminal. I was a little skeptical going in because I'd never seen it, but I knew Italian horror movies could be a bit hit-or-miss. There's a lot of brilliance from Italy, but there's also a lot of boring dogshit.
When I'd do bad movie nights with my friends years ago, there'd usually be a collective groan in the living room when we first heard the weird stilted dubbed dialogue that comes with Italian horror. Since we were young idiots and didn't research directors or films, we'd end up with something like "Night of the Zombies." It sounds so promising, but it's really just 100 minutes of gross sex scenes and terrible actors reading incomprehensible scripts. If you were lucky, there'd be a bit of shocking gore every 20 minutes or so, but often not.
Luckily Bay of Blood falls firmly on the good side of Italian horror (also known as giallo). Yes, the dialogue is dubbed, but it's not nearly as distracting as the cheaper, shlockier giallo films. Plus the rest of the movie is fucking awesome!
While I hadn't seen any of his films, I knew the name Mario Bava. I knew that he was well known for making bloody, sex-filled grindhouse type films, but that was the extent of it. I knew what other giallo directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci were capable of, but without a particular frame of reference, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. I will say I assumed that things would be somewhat tamer than similar giallo films that came along later, but I'm a stupid baby. During the second kill of the film, I said an audible "dang" based on how gruesome it was. In 1971, this must have been pretty shocking:
You can tell how seminal these kills are, because you've seen them a hundred times in a hundred different movies. I assume a lot of people who have seen this movie in the past either saw it on crappy, cheaply printed film stock at a drive-in, or on VHS. I think that cruddy presentation probably would benefit the gory parts of the film by blurring the edges a little bit. I love living in 2017 and having access to all of these great weird movies lovingly restored in gorgeous 1080p, but the effects don't really hold up under the crystal clear HD. But I'm so glad the Blu Ray exists for everything that isn't a beheading, because it's a wonderfully shot film. So, as fun as they are, let's take just a minute to look beyond the gory murders. I think it's probably safe to say this: Mario Bava is a weirdo genius. There's a way to make Bay of Blood quickly, easily, and cheaply. The shock value of the murders would have been enough to sell tickets and make it a formative classic, but Bava is a real, honest-to-goodness filmmaker. And it shows in almost every scene. There's a fantastic scene at the beginning of the film, when two characters who have just been introduced to us are having a conversation. At that point, the audience has no idea the impact they will have on the story, and based on the jarring nature of the first two kills, we're not even sure if they'll survive through the scene. But Bava gives us an interesting clue. Watch this for 20 seconds or so: It seems like standard exposition; just a couple of characters establishing their place in the plot. But take a close look at the glass decorations on the table in front of the actress:
Bava is framing her as someone with several faces, some twisted and distorted. It's subtle, but can be seen as serious foreshadowing as the character develops throughout the story. There's a lot of cool cinema going on in Bay of Blood. Often after a murder scene, there's a jarring transition to something else. My absolute favorite comes after a couple are speared together while having sex (watch until 38:00): First of all, I love how orgasmic the death is. There's an intense, dramatic penetration, a lot of clutching, a shudder, and then stillness. Then the cut to the car. That might be the greatest transition in horror movie history, and really clues the audience in to the subtle farce of it all. Not only is it brutally violent, but it's also super funny! In 1971! I mean, holy shit the goofy smile on that car...
That got me to do a full guffaw. Here's another amazing transition (watch until 1:00:48): That might be one of the greatest decapitations ever, and the smash (literally) cut to children dropping a weird clay head on the ground is brilliant. Just as you start to process the bloody, spurting stump of neck staring directly at the camera, you're laughing at the absurdity of the following scene. It's some master level toying with the audience, and I love that shit. These are definitely some of the more memorable scenes, but the whole film is a delight to look at! Bava loves a kinetic camera and keeps the point of view moving and shifting, almost at all times. It gives you the sense that there's an unseen character in each scene, and we are looking through their eyes. Long panning shots, dramatic zooms, tracking shots that lead us into the scene, and a chase scene through the woods that was a clear influence on Sam Raimi make for some really interesting visuals. And the plot isn't half bad either. Based on IMDB, it looks like Bay of Blood had a whole bunch of writers, and I don't get the sense that they were all working on it at the same time, or had the same level of influence. There's a lot going on, and it takes until the end of the movie to unravel all of the various plot threads, but it really works. The mystery of who killed who and why takes a long time to resolve, and has some pretty badass twists along the way. But it's never pointlessly confounding, and Bava does a great job of keeping the story together despite how complicated it gets by the end. It's like a really good episode of Columbo, except there's no detective trying to solve the crime and people get their heads lopped off. In fact, it might be better to describe the story as downright Shakespearean, especially since the film winks and nods to this idea with one of the final lines of the film. I imagine that for some of these film reviews I'll have no problem breaking down the plot, but since I hope you'll give Bay of Blood a whirl, I'm not going to spoil what happens. I will say that the ending is just as jarring and hilarious and absurd as the rest of the film, and was described as the greatest ending of all time by noted genius Joe Dante. Trust me, it's amazing and totally worth the paltry 84 minute run time. If any of this review looked or sounded vaguely interesting to you, definitely check it out. The whole thing is on YouTube (and actually looks pretty good), so you've officially run out of excuses. And if you're feeling extra fancy, the lovingly remastered Blu Ray looks great and is not terribly expensive.
Summary:
Bay of Blood is a gory, interesting, beautiful, absurdist masterpiece of slasher horror, and should definitely be on your list if you're a fan of the genre. Easy recommend.
