FrightFest '24 ~ day 5

The Dead Thing

Director: Elric Kane.

With: Blu Hunt, Ben Smith-Petersen, John Karna, Katherine Hughes.

USA 2024. 94 mins.

 

It’s true that many didn’t think this gelled and just bored, but from the languid pace I found an interesting ghost story about the modern malaise of urban hook-up culture. Blu Hunt gives an assured turn as a woman who turns to fleeting sexual encounters to alleviate her dislocation and depression, leading to lust-motivated hauntings. Putting all-encompassing desire at the forefront of motivation gives this its quirk and the atmosphere is of a dreamy urban ambience.

 

 

A Desert

Director: Joshua Erkman.

With: David Yow. Kai Lennox, Sarah Lind, Zacary Ray Sherman.

USA 2024. 100 mins.

 

A solid, sunbaked thriller. A photographer goes on a road trip, bearing a mid-life crisis, and discovers – like so many horrors – that Some People Just Want To Fuck You Up. Even if that’s predictable, there are full-blooded performances, grittiness, beautiful cinematography, and enough inventiveness to make this memorable. A film that will surely earn itself cult status.

 

Ladybug

Director Tim Cruz.

With: Anthony Del Negro, Zachary Roozen, Scout Taylor-Compton, Charlene Tilton.

USA 2024. 107 mins.

 

Second supernatural lover of this Frightfest day. A lead character that does exposition for himself (“Home sweet home!”) and a narrative that takes a little too long to where it’s going, which is nothing objectionable but nothing original. Its best gag is the potential porn potential of the handyman. ‘Goosebumps’ for gay hipster art lovers.

 

Cold Wallet

Director: Cutter Hodierne.

With: Raul Castillo, Josh Brener, Melonie Diaz, Tony Cavalero.

USA 2024. 84 mins.

 

A zeitgeisty small time crime thriller. When their crypto-currency dreams die, a home invasion heist tale kicks in when three Redditors decide to force the CEO to reimburse everyone. Big house, sudden small-time crooks, manipulative CEO. It doesn’t necessarily say a much about people driven to desperate measures, but it does keep in mind the scheming that takes advantage of the needy and hopeful. A minor, unsurprising but solidly made thriller.

 

The Substance

Director: Coralie Fargeat.

With: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia.

USA/France/UK 2024. 140 mins.

 

Broad of satire, unconvincing of detail, full of glorious excess, ‘The Substance’ is an EC Comic horror full of crowd-pleasing absurdity – an extended ‘Creepshow’ tale. If I went in perhaps expecting Cronenberg-lite, in fact the callbacks were to ‘Society’, ‘Basket Case’ and even ‘TerrorVision’, the early films of Stuart Gordon; those grungy, silly, outrageousness, flabbergasting films that were the Eighties output of Empire Pictures and Troma. Surely Cannes can’t be as familiar of this output as the FrightFest audience and had never quite seen something like ‘The Substance’, therefore giving it awards.

 

Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley look gorgeous and give it their all, and there is much amusement in the battle between youth and aging here, even if it never addresses the subjects of narcissism. The film’s call for kindness to yourself across the ages is a sincerely felt one, although the audience was baying with laughter at the inter-generational fight made flesh. Also, despite how much the film insists, they never feel like the same person, as “one”. It is as brilliant as it is stupid. The opening vignette that establishes Elizabeth Sparkle’s (Moore) waning fame is excellent, the constant unsubtlety less so (we get it: Dennis Quaid is gross). Internal logic and answering questions are not really in its interest (how could “Sue” (Qualley) possibly function as a huge star on magazine covers without history? Does she get an audition, accepted and film a show in a week? She taps a hollow wall and finds an empty room behind? Wait, who is behind “The Substance”, what is their agenda and what do they gain?).

 

But the comic book look, the art design, the practical effects are where ‘The Substance’ excels, pushing itself right to the end into a “fuck it” splatterfest until using out-there gore to return us to the beginning with an astute ending whose unsubtlety works. The FrightFest audience rightly treated the whole thing as a comedy with a little grit, stupidity and feminine anger, and for that it is a giddy body horror that wins by taking the lead of the body horror that came before.

 

____

 

And so, another very enjoyable FrightFest is over. I stayed in the main scree where there was lots of head trauma, sex-obsessed ghosts,

 

Favourite picks:

 ·         Stange Darling

• Dead Mail

·         Invader

 

Although the narrative shuffling of ‘Strange Darling’ would usually put me off just as gimmick, the style, the flare, the flirting and interaction of the leads, and intense sound-design all made it a total winner for me.

 

I gave ‘Dead Mail’ a chief place for being a most authentic period piece, for making its excesses prosaic and steeped in the ordinary, for making ordinary working people of the post office pro-active detectives.

 

‘Invader’, because stripped-down brutality accentuating ordinary life is the true stuff of horror for me. And uncompromising home invasion hits a nerve.

 

But it is ‘The Last Ashes’ and ‘A Desert’ that stick in my mind notable as runner-uppers.

 

If ‘The Substance’ was the Frightfest winner, I sadly couldn’t fully invest because it cared not for any subtlety or layers, however much I enjoyed its flare and outrageousness (I had similar issues with Fargeat’s ‘Revenge’). Although I thought  Tsigaridis’‘Two Witches’ showed promise, his ‘Traumatika’ fulfilled none of it. ‘Survive’ seemed to be the one to laugh at (without malice) but enjoyed. And in the enjoyable stakes, ‘The Invisible Raptor’ was far more solid and consistently funny than expected, and I had been waiting a long time to see ‘The Last Trip of the Demeter’, and thoroughly pleasing if unremarkable it was too.

 

The Hitcher’ proved it has always been a winner, and the screening of its new print at FrightFest was a great way to introduce it to a new converts.

 

I heard good things about ‘Protein’, ‘Derelict’ and ‘Charlotte’, so I will be looking out for them.

 

I barely ate the last two days and survived on snacks. By Day 5, I am just a film watching machine and can’t believe it’s coming to an end. I made fine new FrightFest pals and caught up and bumped in old ones between films. Ian Rattray caught me leaving ‘Member’s Only’ early for the night train and stopped for a chat. The most annoying audience was the cast, crew and friends of ‘Members Only’ (what I saw of it) and ‘Traumatika’ that cheered, laughed and clapped frequently at everything; the latter group seemed to laughing be *at* their own film, which was confusing. Seeing ‘Bookworm’ and ‘The Substance’ with a receptive FrightFace audience was thoroughly the best way to see them.

DRIVE

.
Nicolas Winding Refn
2011, USA

The turning point of Refn’s appropriation of Walter Hill and Michael Mann aesthetics, “Drive”, is surely the one scene that I initially felt to be the most problematic. The elevator scene seemed to me to encapsulate Andrew Tracey’s [Reverseshot] main objection to “Drive”: namely, it’s silliness. It is indeed the same silliness I felt afflicts some of the work of Michael Mann, whose male angst and posturing I find so unintentionally amusing (less damaging in “Manhunter”, but fatally marring “Heat”, for example). This glossy emotional gesticulating feels very much like the moody soft-pop-rock that Mann so favours on his soundtracks: appealing, easy, but ultimately shallow. Refn, too, uses an electronic soundtrack, a wonderful, retro-feeling Chris Martinez score. There’s also a silly but endearing song about heroes. However, one should not be misled that Refn is coopting Mann’s taste: throughout his career, Refn has utilised excellent, distinctive soundtracks and song choices (less self-satisfied than Tarantino; less soppy than Mann).

That pinnacle moment, the elevator scene, is where the soundtrack takes over and the movements of the characters fall into slow-motion to emphasise its poignancy. The driver and his love interest have just got into an elevator with a man who the driver knows to be a hoodlum sent to kill them. Now, at first the silliness seems to be in the way that the driver stops to steal a deep, long kiss in slow-motion rather than just deal with the hoodlum whilst he has the element of surprise. It is such a moment that critics in love with gestures rather than realism or character pragmatism really take to and buy into the sign-posted poignancy. If you are to read “Drive” for its gestures, then will probably be the great romantic moment, and certainly this is how Matt Bochenski [*littlewhitelies] reads it, without ambiguity or irony. He says, “Driver kisses her before turning on the other man. It’s a moment of exquisite and contradictory emotions – love, atonement, vengeance and rage – coalescing and combusting with startling ferocity.” Similarly, James Hansen [*Out 1 Film Journal] reads the driver as heroic. But this now brings to the controversy of “Drive”.

There is the amusing tale of the woman trying to sue the film distributor for leading her to believe she was going to see another “The Fast and The Furious” film. Well, entertaining as that is, one can see a certain point: when I first saw the trailer for “Drive”, I was as disinterested as I ordinarily am with any trailer going through its tedious litany of clichés; but then I saw it was directed by Refn, and I was interested, certain that it was being misrepresented, mispackaged. Which it was. Because the car chases are probably not what you are going to remember about “Drive”. One might even wish there had been more footage of his stunt driver work, and his heist work. But no: what likely to remember is the violence, because when “Drive” lets loose, it is extremely crunchy and violent. I see this again as further evidence of how the influence of ‘extreme cinema’ of the preceding decade has trickled upwards into more mainstream titles. Many of its detractors have turned aggressively against “Drive” in response to the shocking violence.

But it seems to me that the driver is not heroic, although he is an anti-hero. He is not simply romantically detached or mostly alienated from the world around him, in the old school manner of stoic, mostly silent troubled men of action who, nevertheless, live by a code. He is - as apparently Ryan Gosling also feels - psychotic. We know this as soon as he responds relentlessly, consummately during the motel attack. He has preternatural abilities with violence when under assault. This then is why he is detached and sits at home playing with car parts, but then he gets somewhat gets involved with the girl next door and her son. He seems to be eying romance and the domestic with longing, but he knows what he is. He is, after all, a getaway driver for unpleasant people. He knows: and so when he kisses her in the elevator, even though this seems a ridiculous thing to do when under threat in close confines, he does so because he knows that when he does indeed attack the hoodlum, any chance he has with her will be gone because there shall be no disguising that truth about him (and perhaps if she does accept what he is, perhaps she isn’t his idyll after all). And indeed, the head-stomping is horrifying, and it is not abbreviated; it is excessive in a way that goes beyond self-preservation. It is psychotic. And she stands there and watches and she sees what he is and what he is capable of. And for this reason, I came to change my mind and believe that the elevator scene was the pinnacle of the film, and that it did indeed work after all. We may revel in the driver’s ability to best the bad guys with violence that matches if not supersedes theirs, in the manner that we revel in power and revenge fantasies, but it is also psychotic and surely does not meet the criteria of heroism. It is, like much of Refn’s oeuvre, another portrait of an incredibly, horrifying violent man trying to hold things together. We see evidence of this from his first feature “Pusher” right through “Bronson” and “Valhalla Rising”. And he is very good at painting these portraits, however similar thematically, through varying shades of different genres. Here, the stripped down romantically inclines thriller gives his violent man tale a pretty and soft veneer with a shattering centre. Some may see the driver as Steve McQueen cool, but that surely is not the truth of it. (And all this and the accomplished retro-feel, one can only imagine what Refn might have done, or could still do with Brett Easton Ellis' "American Psycho".)

Refn sees “Drive” in terms of a fairy-tale, which implies that those metaphysical and symbolic gestures are actually treated in earnest. Refn directs both stylishly and bluntly so that the effect is disorienting, as if the sleek gloss of ’Eighties Hollywood never went out of fashion, but interrupted by the shock of recent extreme cinema. It is like Scorsese, Mann, Walter Hill, Gasper Noe, Takashi Miike are all being shaken in a cocktail glass of blood and grue. The characters are indeed mostly ciphers and that is mostly the point. Carey Mulligan, for example, is just a pretty porcelain face and little else, and perhaps her vapidity – unconvincing as she is as a single mother – is what attracts her to the driver. (And she, too, is a mostly wordess character flirting with violence, as her attraction for the driver and her just-out-of-jail husband hints; what does she see in them?). And “Drive” may well also feature “Ron Perlman, giving perhaps his first bad performance” [*A. Tracey] But its silliness is more to do with the fact that Refn’s film has everything to do with cinematic reality, gently nodding at archetypes so hard in order to make them totems and symbolic, not only clichés. It’s more in tune with the real world than Tarantino or your average Hollywood actioner, but only by a matter of degrees. It is the style, the mood, Ryan Gosling, the everso-slightly dreamy momentum and indulgences that make “Drive” transcend its pretensions and clichés. It is like a New Wave synthesiser being smashed up with a punk guitar. It’s a bloody marshmellow, a beguiling bone-based cake that allows a fan to give in to cinematic artifice and the pleasures of a typical genre piece told with just a touch of dazzle and insight. In that way, “Drive” is probably both less and more than it seems and as engrossing and dazzling piece of artifice as you are likely to see in the post-noir era.

The Warriors

THE WARRIORS

Walter Hill, 1979, USA

The first thing that you find when starting in on Walter’s Hill’s ‘ultimate’ version of "The Warriors" is that it is far from the incendiary, brutally realistic depiction of gang violence that its original riot-causing reputation might lead you to believe. The (online) sources tell a tale of extra security paid for by the film company to supervise theatre screenings, of outbreaks of gang violence at the cinema. Genuine gangs liked it, but apparently couldn’t stand sitting next to rivals to watch it. But this is hardly gritty, terrifying realism; it is probably not even as provocative as "A Clockwork Orange". What it is is far closer to "Sin City", "Creepshow" and "The Hulk" (Ang Lee) than "Romper Stomper", or "Gomorrah". The film freezes and becomes artwork; the artwork pulls back to reveal comic-book panels of scenes; there are wipes and titles that say "Meanwhile" that carry the narrative along. It is conceived as a comic-book come to life, and it is set in the near future. Sol Yurick’s source novel is apparently truly interested in exploring the desperate environment that creates gangs, but Hill moved onto something more fantastic when the studio would not consent to an all black and Hispanic cast. It is this, he believes, that induced him to make "The Warriors" futuristic which, like "A Clockwork Orange", makes more sense of all the crazy dressing up. The superficial details are not sci-fi, so it feels more like a variant New York reality.

It has considerable cult cool, generated by a hip soundtrack that is both sinister synths (much like John Carpenter, courtesy of Barry De Vorzon) and funky soul cuts. It is hip from the variety and outrageousness of the gang costumes and tribal identities, courtesy of great work by costume designers Mary Ann Winston and Bobbie Mannix. It is hip from the smooth, unfussy direction and broody atmosphere, from the constant threat of trial-by-violence. Much of "The Warriors" longevity comes, like all good cult films, from its successful creation of an alternate reality with details that speak far beyond the immediate action. All those gangs, costumes and their history can be imagined and expanded upon by the audience. This is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, you can try out Rockstar Games’ 2005 tie-in beat-em-up role-player for "The Warriors", which is full of expanded character backstories - and a far more brutal, amoral and provocative experience than the original film. The gangland is the seemingly barren and endlessly nocturnal city, overwritten with graffiti and alleviated only by blocks of coloured neon reflections stretching down shiny asphalt. It is both flamboyant and noir-ish. Even when the sun comes up, it’s still possible to imagine as a place where shadows house silent gangs ready to take you down. Somewhere else in the city, where the police are presumably less brutal and loathsome, you might envision John Carpenter’s "Assault on Precinct 13" taking place.

Hill almost starts with what ought to be the grand finale, with all the gangs gathering in one place for a gigantic meeting of rivals. This pays great dividends: once The Warriors have been framed for the murder of Cyrus - (Roger Hill) a warlord who is trying to bring all the gangs together to run the city like some big funky "Can you dig it?!" kingpin (the common enemy: police & authority) - we can look forward with curiosity as to which oddball gang they will run into next. There is a similar trick, or possible influence, in Richard’s Price’s novel "The Wanderers" (1974), where on page two there is a list of gangs, all of which have defining characteristics (Wongs, Pharaohs, Del-Bombers, etc.) and all promising some nasty encounters. It is a novel that William Burroughs called "A deeply moving account of confused and spiritually underprivileged youth"*; and although "The Warriors" is not that film nor "Rebel Without A Cause", it doesn’t forget to shade its colourful characters with a little desperation and deprivation. The most celebrated touch is when the encounter between the beat-up Warriors and tagalong gang girl Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) and a group of bright white preppies becomes a silent bid for dignity.

In enemy territory and with the whole city out for their blood, The Warriors try to make their way back to the beaches of Coney Island. This owes everything to the Greek tale of Anabasis, just as so many of the character names allude to all things classical and mythical. The structure is stripped down but carefully paced: after the opening show-piece, it’s the best part of an hour before the first real gang-on-gang punch-out occurs. Aside from confrontational Ajax (James Remar) and bare-chest outfits, The Warriors aren’t macho poseurs or pit-fighting lunkheads: rather, there is plenty of barely repressed anxiety and vulnerability on display, quietly played out between them, which evokes their need of gang identity for survival in a harsh urban wasteland. And then, come the end, Swan (Michael Beck) looks out across his home with unconcealed disdain. Walter Hill even sidesteps a showdown with The Rogues, even though they have raced to Coney Island especially to take down The Warriors. Rather, he allows the drama to round itself off without unnecessary grandstanding. It is a fine demonstration of how satisfying closure can be dramatically achieved without recourse to the standard punch-up felt needed to resolve so many action films.

Sleek, sparse and atmospheric, "The Warriors" has been adopted by the hip-hop community and outwards, and has generated its own long-term cult. An action film that manages to circumnavigate much of the obvious genre pitfalls, but at the same time still offers skinheads, post-Russ Meyer Siren-like lesbian crews, martial arts clans and baseball bat baddies. Moody, smart enough and thoroughly enjoyable.

* This William Burroughs quote taken from the back cover of: Richard Price, "The Wanderers" (Bloomsbury Classic Reads; 2004 edition).

A Bite of Laymon

RICHARD LAYMON: “BITE”

When I was about, oh, fourteen, I made a shift from science-fiction to horror literature. I was on holiday somewhere by the English coast, and in the creaky rotating wire rack in the beach-balls-and-postcards shop, there was a book with the most surprisingly graphic cover: A decapitated head at the bottom of a flight of stairs, a shadowy figure with an axe at the top. At least, I am sure that is what that particular edition of Richard Laymon’s “Night Show” showed – I remember the head the most. No one stopped me buying such an obviously repellent book. It was certainly as nasty as I wanted. I read a few of his books but wasn’t a grand fan. But a year ago, on the long dark search for good, bloody hell, just some decent horror writing, I started reading Laymon again. And now I am a fan.

What I always liked about Laymon (1947-01) is that he is a writer who seems to know his limitations and just gets on with all the mayhem and ugliness. This, I want to stress, is rare. The writing is stripped down and straight-forward, the dialogue believable and full of hooks. He'll start right in the middle of the horror, but then spend ages drawing out the suspense of one scenario. Or he'll kill of the characters you think you're rooting for and move on to other hapless victims. Laymon is nihilistic, cynical, brutal and uncompromising and happily beats genre motifs down into his own preferred ugliness. And then you find there is often more happening than you suspected. For example, you will read "The Woods Are Dark", but it is only when you reach the end that you discover you were reading H.P. Lovecraft homage all along, rather than just a "The Hills Have Eyes" variation. And he shocks too.

"Bite" seems like it will be an average vampire novel, and we start right in. Cat knocks on Sam's door; they haven't seen each other in a long, long time, but he still pines for her. She needs his help to kill a vampire who is feeding off of her at night, she says. Sam says, well, okay. Is Elliot a vampire? He sure behaves weirdly and brutally, and he comes donned with a cape and metal fangs. But... is he really a vampire? They kill him and set off to dispose of the body, and that's when the couple's troubles really begin.

Every minor dilemma gets a couple of chapters at least: Laymon draws out the problems and twists of disposing of this body on a skeletal narrative, but it drags you in. And then suddenly "Double Indemnity" gets mentioned, and you realise that you are reading Laymon's version of film noir. Cat is a severely victimised woman with all the credentials of a prime femme fatale, but is she? Are we being lulled into believing her incredible history of abuse? We are stuck with Sam's perspective, and suddenly we can't trust anyone or anything. Bad luck - or is it? - has them meeting up with bully biker Snow White (or is he a biker?), who proves to be their true nemesis. Do we believe Snow White's hostage Peggy when she says he is torturing and threatening her young brother? Is there a boy at all? Sam and Cat are taking on the American road, but we know it's filled with dangerous eccentrics and victims-in-waiting. Sometimes this couple are smart; sometimes they are dumb. They negotiate every plan of action. Suddenly the novel's immediate opening proves a false lead: Laymon isn't interested in fast and furious horrors, but in the drawing out of an improbable scenario, keeping it the right side of plausible and turning the screws and throwing in a number of surprises. "Duel" and "Detour" come to mind. If Hitchcock liked monster horror, and made a vampire the McGuffin... Vampire noir, anyone?