The Grim Cellar

1962, UK, Directed by Sidney Hayers

Black & White, Running Time: 84 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Optimum, Video: Anamorphic 1.78:1, Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

A couple of years after returning from an academic expedition to Jamaica Norman and Tansy Taylor seem to be doing fairly well in life, with a nice village home and a well regarded teaching position at the school for Norman with promises of promotion. He’s a little surprised when, after an evening playing cards with a posse of local (pseudo-)friends, he finds that his wife has kept back a memento from their trip - a large spider in some sort of containing device. She brushes the discovery off but with his curiosity piqued he goes searching around the house the following day and uncovers all manner of strange paraphernalia, from skulls to small charms. Upon confronting Tansy when she returns home she admits to him that she’s been practising witchcraft, something which he initially finds difficult to digest, firstly because Tansy has always seemed too rational and ‘intelligent’ from his point of view to become involved in anything remotely superstitious, and secondly because he himself cannot accept that there’s anything truthful or worthwhile in pursuing the so-called black arts. He consequently burns everything in her presence to put an end to her obsession and move on, but from the minute he does things begin going wrong in his life - a female student at school accuses him of sexual interference, he’s nearly knocked down by a truck, another student threatens him with a gun, he’s involved in a car crash, etc. The contrast between what life was like during his wife’s illicit practice of black magic and how things turn out after the burning of her tools is perhaps too staggering to be coincidental, but Norman will take some convincing such is his narrow-minded attitude and limited understanding of unconventional possibilities.

Night of the Eagle (or Burn, Witch, Burn to quote its US title, actually a line from the film) makes the most of apparently limited resources, being a primarily dialogue driven assessment of one couple’s deteriorating social and mental status after they have become almost irreversibly embroiled in witchcraft. In fact Tansy seems at first to have established a comfortable control over their lives until Norman becomes aware of her tampering with what he considers to be meaningless spells, and it’s only after he has interfered with her activities by burning whatever she’s been using that control is lost. Of course she never had a long-term grasp over the supernatural anyway as there are other people in the plot who have less savoury intentions that involve similar means. What unfolds is a story coherently believable due to consistently well written and executed dialogue, unveiling situations of mounting drama between the marital couple or between Norman and the other characters that mill around the school. Supernatural manifestations are kept to a relative minimum and when they do occur it’s suggested that the mind has played a part in most of the incidences, i.e. affirming to Norman in particular that what’s happening is not the result of witchcraft but rather the superficially convenient interpretation of naturally occurring events as something under the control of humans. Of course it’s the perfect plot device to turn around the comfortably formulated scientific comprehensions of a non-believer and the film wouldn’t have worked so well had it been any other way, and lead man Peter Wyngarde does a fine job of portraying the stubborn professor. Whilst much of the film is firmly rooted in the social situations brought about by the mystical premise it still finds room for a touch of the gothic too with a pretty nifty graveyard sequence, plus there are a couple of genuinely chilling moments along the story’s route, for example when Norman realises that his wife may be possessed and the clue that brings about this realisation. On a technical level Night of the Eagle is close to remarkable in a number of ways, not least as far as the beautiful black and white photography is concerned. The ‘eagle’ effect that gives the title its justification is also competently achieved for the period, and edited acutely too (shots are limited to brief glimpses, perhaps a tool to limit the possibility of spotting flaws with the special effect or possibly to enhance its nervous impact on the audience). A sombre, well regarded, and professionally constructed entry in 60s British horror.

Optimum’s disc is worth picking up for the movie and transfer only, considering there’s nothing else in way of bonus material to recommend it, perhaps aside from the possibility that it‘s not at the time of writing available anywhere else on DVD I believe. Aspect ratio is marginally off at 1.78:1 but what’s inside the frame is extremely attractive; well balanced contrast, high level of detail, pretty solid blacks, etc. If you’re not concerned about extras though (and the absence is a shame) the disc is well priced and still worthy of a position on your shelf right in between Night of the Demon and Night of the Living Dead.

1932, Germany/France, Directed by Carl Dreyer

Black & White, Running Time: 73 minutes

DVD, Region 1, Criterion, Video: Pillarboxed 1.19:1, Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

For a few years my acknowledgement of Vampyr as a possible classic grew through reading various articles, though the film itself evaded me until a trip to Holland where I stumbled across an art house cinema projecting the movie for a late’ish showing. The dialogue, or what little of it there is, was in German (it was also shot in French and English in 1931 as alternate takes) and it was subtitled for the screening in Dutch (obviously) but it was just a blessing to finally see something I’d only previously read about, perusing the strange stills that accompanied such texts and formulating an idea in my mind regarding what the film might be like. You can’t imagine what Vampyr is like until you actually see it, and I’ve since found my lack of comprehension over the actual plot was only marginally due to my limited understanding of German - the narrative structure is surreal and deliberately disjointed to say the least and even viewing it with English subtitles keeps you guessing about what’s really going on in the film. The story introduces Allan Gray, a man who’s become obsessed with his studies in and fears of the occult as he wanders across the country. Coming across an isolated inn he takes a room for the night but is immediately struck by the uncanny nature of the location, something which unnerves him to the point of disturbed slumber. Around this point onwards we’re not quite sure what is real and what’s not as Gray receives a visitation in the night by a man who predicts doom for himself and an unnamed woman, probably his daughter given the events later on. Gray follows disembodied shadows to a house where lives the physical manifestation of the man who gave him the prophetic message and Gray learns of cursed creatures that rise from graves to take blood from living bodies: vampyres (to quote the book from which he reads). After the prophesised death of the old man one of his daughters is found in the woodland with holes in her neck, though still living but now damned and fully aware of it - Gray is being sucked into the very nightmarish world of his ongoing obsession with the supernatural.

It’s tempting to systematically go though a scene-by-scene description of Vampyr, such is the visually poetic and alluringly indistinct nature of the images that flash before our eyes. Things occur in an apparently logical order that refuses to make 100% sense, thus it reminds me of David Lynch’s work in some respects - if he’d been making films in the thirties they might have looked and felt like this. We’re drawn into the same nightmare, or one similar, to Gray’s and it’s precisely whether it’s a nightmare or not that keeps us in a land of uncertainty. Perhaps what we witness is only in the mind of Gray, or at least the personal responses to the surroundings produced by it, or maybe we’re even in the mind of the daughter who seems to be needing someone to rescue her from a family that’s crumbling at the feet of the devilish curse, or it could be a glimpse into some ethereal dimension that prevents conventional rationalisation. That’s the beauty of Vampyr: ambiguity, mystique, otherworldliness, an uncomfortable sense of foreboding dread. The compositions are quite unusual, not just for this era but for any: often characters are captured merely in the corner of the frame, the rest being used by background information that wouldn’t normally be deemed relevant enough to offer so much space to. The wallpapers attract much more camera attention than we might expect and you can’t help but think there’s something there we should be noticing. Maybe these compositional techniques are there to throw the viewer off guard, maybe they’re there to redirect the eye to other things, or perhaps Dreyer simply had a distinctive eye for visuals. Another aspect that sincerely contributes to this film’s creeping effect is the sound design, comprising of music which sounds like it was played in some dark, damp underground chamber, constructing a perturbing environment which is simultaneously alien to the viewer and familiar in the sense that we’ve probably experienced something similar to the sinister progression of nearly incoherent occurrences in our own nightmares on occasions. There are quite a few reviews of this movie online now but I’ve tried not to read too much of them (aside from responses to the new transfers prior to buying) because it’s too easy to either unconsciously or otherwise adopt the opinions of others, particularly if they’re well founded and perceptive, and once of the primary attractions with Vampyr - as well as other films of this kind - is the food provided for subjective response and interpretation. The film functions supremely as both an unusual cinematic technical achievement that begs to be deconstructed shot by shot for analysis, and as the mysterious world of shadows that sucks you into its ethereal fog to be succumbed by terror and disorientation. In comparison to what studios like Universal, Paramount and RKO were doing with the genre at the time Vampyr is completely unique, inspired and creatively astute, therefore it must be considered simply the best horror movie to crawl out of the first couple of decades following cinema’s transition to talkies.

Image put the film out on DVD in the US after a restoration took place in the late nineties - the picture was blurred and indistinct but it was the best way to see it in the home for a few years. After a long wait Criterion and Eureka (US and UK respectively) have both put supremely commendable efforts into unleashing a new definitive version of Vampyr upon us lucky movie collectors, but there are differences between them. On the plus side for Criterion there is a marginally sharper image (and I do mean marginally - I was looking hard for differences between screen captures and they’re barely noticeable), they’ve produced optional new intertitles in English matching the font and style of the original German cards, though the latter is still present with English subtitles if one so wishes. There’s also a 35 minute spoken essay that’s well put together with contextually relevant stills and clips making it more of a documentary and certainly more interesting that what we’d get elsewhere, i.e. pages of text as one extra and a stills section as another. Finally the packaging simply kicks Eureka’s butt it has to be said, with a fold-out digipack containing the discs and a booklet of essays as well as a 220 page book featuring the printed screenplay alongside the Carmilla story that partly influenced Dreyer in writing the film (it was actually based on different elements of a book featuring several short stories). The Eureka, however, has an additional commentary featuring director Guillermo del Toro, a second audio track containing unrestored sound (e.g. hiss, crackles, everything that signifies an old film - something for purists and not entirely unwelcome) though the ‘clean’ soundtrack is still present. Common to both sets is a superb commentary by film historian Tony Rayns, something which I really enjoyed listening to and again I did so after I’d written most of this review so that I wasn’t too influenced by his opinions. His perspective is informed, articulately expressed, and an indispensable companion despite moments of unavoidable speculation. On both sets too is a half hour documentary rescued from the sixties where Dreyer discusses all of his films (his last movie was Gertrud in 1964 - he wasn’t a prolific man following Vampyr); Dreyer is revealed to be a man very intense about his art. People used to modern DVD featurettes may find this surprisingly academic in tone. Neither set has a consistently stellar image on the main feature it must be noted, this being due to original negatives no longer existing and elements that have worn badly over the years, however, efforts to present the movie as well as possible have clearly been made - just be aware the picture quality is rough, though this doesn‘t necessarily detract from uncanny material such as this. To summarise, both companies have put a great deal of work into these sets and while Criterion has a slight edge on the picture, Eureka wins out with bonus audio options, whereas extras have some variations where the superior is difficult to choose. Criterion easily wins out on packaging so the choice is ours, either way this could well be the most important release of a vintage horror film for home viewing we’ve ever seen.

2004, US, Directed by Frank Oz

Colour, Running Time: 89 minutes

DVD, Region 2 (Sweden), Dreamworks, Video: Anamorphic 1.85:1, Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

There was a time when I believed certain actors could be relied upon to bring their prestigious names to projects that were worth devoting a couple of hours of hard-earned attention to, the association being that such a talented thespian might also be able to distinguish between the great and the shite. For example, Nicole Kidman’s résumé included the gripping Dead Calm, the masterpiece that is Eyes Wide Shut, the pretty chilling The Others, as well as offering a brilliant performance in Birthday Girl - she’s a naturally good looking woman with a solid grasp on what constitutes becoming a character. So why then choose toss like Bewitched and The Stepford Wives to devote several months of her life to? Similarly Christopher Walken has given us Sleepy Hollow, The Dead Zone, True Romance and Batman Returns, amongst smelly brown stuff that gets irritatingly stuck to the bottom of your shoe like Click, America’s Sweethearts, Country Bears and, well, The Stepford Wives. Actually I may be generalising and perhaps the good outweighs the bad (I haven’t seen every film ever made) but I get kind of frustrated watching smart, able people waste their time looking stupid to create something that wastes my time (I can look stupid by myself, thanks). Then again maybe Kidman’s not so smart: apparently she took this role on account of Oz’s history bringing Miss Piggy to life, and Kidman’s a big fan of Miss Piggy. Stellar script? Social value? Philosophical message? Forget it - Miss Piggy kicked ass so I’m in!

The Stepford Wives was of course originally made in 1974-5, based on a book by Ira Levin. If I remember correctly it was a fairly decent and straight adaptation of the story that focuses on a town where all of the female dwellers act with strangely perfect behavioural patterns, going out of their way to please husbands in a manner that was at odds with the feminist revolution that was ruining marriages and hierarchical stability everywhere at the time. It turns out that the men in the town had been replacing their wives with incredibly sophisticated robots who didn’t complain, didn’t nag, did the housework religiously, and made love like Greek goddesses. The plot had some resonance at the time because it sort of tapped into all the women’s rights malarkey that was being pushed by angry females across the western world. Nowadays it’s not so relevant because women have great jobs, they drive 4×4 vehicles and, given scientific advances, sometimes don’t even need a man around to produce offspring - amazing, really. A remake therefore is quite pointless standing on the merit of its own premise, so the producers here have opted to take a comedic approach to the material, the only real problem with this being that virtually nothing here will elicit a smile, least of all ‘laughter’, something which a viewer might expect with anything that presents itself as comedy. Matthew Broderick is Kidman’s completely inadequate male companion, someone who can’t earn as much as she, or can’t do anything as well as she so he gradually gets sucked into the town’s ploy to use robotically modified women as a means of re-establishing the masculinity that was only ever demonstrated by other men anyway. He’s such a wet rag that he’s quite believable in this respect, but he and Kidman (who clearly scrubs up pretty well) fail to produce any electricity whatsoever between themselves and therefore one stares at the screen blankly whenever they’re having one of their domestic disputes or ascertaining that they really do love each other. Attempts to bring forward a potential moral to the story at the beginning (Kidman’s character is introduced ruining the life of a decent man in her efforts to liberate women) are lost or forgotten about as the story progresses, and the denouement confuses the message if there even ever was one. Bette Midler and Glenn Close also appear in major roles making this what could be defined as an ‘all-star cast’ - why does Hollywood bother? Frank Oz himself may have been the defining voice behind the omnipotent Yoda, as well as Fozzie flipping Bear but when it comes to live-action directing there are probably other better options out there, however he can’t be fully blamed for a screenplay and overall production intentions as lame as what’s on display here.

Dreamworks and Paramount reportedly contributed a total of 90 million dollars to this - 90 million dollars?? This at least results in a glossy movie from a technical standpoint, though I‘m guessing most of that went on the main cast‘s wages and catering bill. Review was conducted following the viewing of the Swedish DVD, featuring an expectedly clean and sharp image with high quality sound (in English - Swedish subtitles were removable), but there are better ways you can spend your time, hence I consider the period I’ve spent writing about this turd to be an act of altruism in my attempts to divert people’s attention to more pleasurable pastimes, like wiping one’s bum.

1987, Italy, Directed by Michele Soavi

Colour, Running Time: 90 minutes

DVD, Region 1, Blue Underground, Video: Anamorphic 1.85:1, Audio: Dolby Digital EX

Originating from a background where he was surrounded by creativity it’s perhaps no accident that Soavi wound up in constructing images himself of some kind - early on as a painter but after developing an interest in cinema he moved on to acting and, later still, assistant directing. It was for many of cinema’s veterans that he learnt most of his behind-the-camera skills, people like Dario Argento, Aristide Massaccesi, Lamberto Bava, and even Terry Gilliam. His own directorial debut came together, therefore, quite late in his career. Owning it on Avatar’s video cassette for a few years I once thought Stagefright (sometimes known as Aquarius or Deliria) was a fairly average slasher, but at the time I was a lot less informed and less educated in the darker genres than I am nowadays. Viewing it now is a different matter. It outlines a simple scenario but one that’s nonetheless powerful in many respects: a theatre director who’s obsessed with extracting the best performances from his actors is selfish in the extreme, displaying little or no concern for the welfare of the people if the production is suffering. Alicia, one of his leading ladies, damages her leg in rehearsal and she heads out the back door to seek some medical advice at the first place she and her friend come across - a psychiatric hospital. While obtaining a personal touch from one of the doctors there the two girls don’t realise that one of the inmates has overcome a guard in his escape, only to hitch an unexpected lift back to the theatre with them. Going back to the car in the storm Alicia’s friend is butchered by the lunatic before he apparently disappears. The body is found (pickaxe nicely implanted through her gaping mouth) and the police show up to investigate and subsequently keep watch. Spotting an opportunity for some media attention the director decides to rename the killer in his play after the lunatic who’s responsible for the real-life murder, and persuading his actors that it will be beneficial to their career he gets one of the girls to lock the door and hide the key. Of course the killer hasn’t disappeared but rather hidden himself inside the place and the only person who knows where the key is quickly becomes the second victim: now they’re all trapped in there and the killer has free pickings of the bunch while a rain storm rages on outside.

The premise itself is exciting - a group of people locked in an inescapable building with a stealthy and insane murderer, and it’s largely on that that the success of the film rests. The opening of the film made up my main memory from the video days and it’s surely one of the corniest openings in cinema history and not a good advertisement for what’s to come or what Soavi is really capable of. Having been cut in the UK (by the original distributor I believe) the film in its uncensored form is also much more violent than I was previously aware of, some of the attacks almost inducing a wince in more mature viewers. The movie doesn’t follow all of the conventions of giallo but there’s enough there to consider classifying the film as such, although we don’t delve too much into the history of the killer or why his mind is so irreversibly twisted, the explanation of which usually comprises a giallo’s final act. It might be more accurate to describe the result as a slasher movie, though the two sub-genres have always been close cousins in reality anyway - one a more psychodynamic, stylistic precursor to the other. Soavi does go unnecessarily overboard during the film’s final ten minutes or so, including a pretty silly final shot, otherwise aside from that and the embarrassing opening there’s a lot of material here that would highlight Soavi as the new talent to watch in Italian splatter at the time. He later compounded this auspicious promise with The Church, The Sect, and Dellamorte Dellamore, but would subsequently all but recede from the eyes of the fans. Utilising his acting abilities briefly, he also makes an appearance as one of the police officers in Stagefright; Soavi was a recognisable face in Italian genre movies. The score itself really picks up the pace of some of the chase sequences, however Demons fans might notice a remarkable similarity to the second instalment of Lamberto’s franchise - that’s because composer Simon Boswell was the primary driving force behind both soundtracks. The Stagefright score is not a direct rip-off from Demons 2 but the style is unmistakably the work of the same man. Boswell has since proved himself to be a highly prolific and talented artist, later enhancing many films through his music compositions, for example Shallow Grave and Dust Devil. John Morghen fans will be pleased to know he appears in Stagefright as an amusing stereotype gay - plus he’s brutally murdered yet again, as in just about any of his genre appearances - City of the Living Dead’s drill through the brain anyone? For a thrill trip through homicidal violence and cat/mouse chase sequences this film should provide a good evening’s worth of mayhem.

In the UK the first home video release came from Avatar and was superseded ten years or so afterwards by an uncut tape from Redemption. I believe Vipco may have got their dirty hands on distribution rights some time later too. Released on DVD by Anchor Bay in the US several years ago this Blue Underground is basically a direct port of the disc, offering a very average picture that lacks real depth and detail. Colours are a little wayward and overall the presentation could and should have been improved for this (admittedly cheap) re-release, so I’m a little disappointed by BU’s laziness. The Dolby EX track has some bite but keeps most of the activity down the front - there’s less to complain about here than with the image although I‘d really like to hear an Italian language track at some point, if possible. There was an EC disc (presented open-matte with a theatrical matte viewing option available) released just prior to the first AB outing - it’s probably very difficult to get a hold of nowadays anyway so the BU is currently the easiest disc to get hold of.

1979, Italy, Directed by Lucio Fulci

Colour, Running Time: 92 minutes

DVD, Region 1, Media Blasters, Video: Anamorphic 2.35:1, Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

Better known under the morbidly good title of Zombie Flesh Eaters here in the UK, Fulci’s most commercial outing was originally considered as an unofficial sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (entitled Zombi in Europe) following a worldwide financial return that would have highlighted Lira signs in the eyes of any self-respecting Italian producer (in this case Fabrizio De Angelis along with Ugo Tucci) - I’ve read that Zombi 2 has since made anything in the region of thirty million dollars. Rather than following on from Romero’s revered film, however, this story lays the foundations for the dead returning to life, initiating the apocalyptic setting that would take full grip in Romero’s movie. Briefly, a boat turns up floating unmanned around Manhattan island attracting the attention of local authorities. After an officer is attacked by a rather putrescent-looking man on board it is closed off and news reporter Peter West becomes interested, eventually crossing paths with Ann, the daughter of a scientist who has links with the vessel. Peter and Ann hire a couple of holidaymakers with a boat and head off to the island of Matul (spelling varies depending on source) to track down her father and find out what the hell’s happening. What they won’t realise until they get there is that the old man is experimenting to find out why voodoo can make dead men walk, and the island is infested with the living dead - relentless putrescent corpses that seem to have a hunger for human meat.

Whilst this could have been simply a derivative attempt to make a few quid on the back of someone else’s ideas it morphed into something a whole lot more. The writers decided to weave in the reasons for the reawakening of cadavers, something which Romero persistently avoided, and in choosing voodoo as the cause actually took this particular sub-genre back to its mythological or historical roots. This really is a completely different monster to Romero’s outings - the settings jump from New York (I actually recognised one particular location from my own visit there) to the Caribbean, the undead creatures have an appearance that’s comparatively horrific (amazing make-up job), and the atmosphere as a whole is something fairly unique to Fulci’s genre output. The pacing is thoroughly well executed (although some people have disagreed with that point), beginning quite slowly and accumulating events of a increasingly sadistic nature as it builds towards an incredibly tense climax where the remaining heroes are trapped in a church that’s surrounded by homicidal rotting corpses. While the heroes initially volunteer their presence in this adventure, almost like taking their canoes for a row in calmer waters, they gradually find themselves being whisked uncontrollably along towards an inevitable fate. As suggested the creature attacks are brutally violent and never before has the gore, courtesy of master Giannetto de Rossi, looked more repulsive than it does on this remastered disc. It caused quite a stir here in England when the BBFC removed a portion of the nastier footage for its X certified cinema release, only for the film to find itself placed on the banned list when the video came along (Vipco famously released its ‘Strong Uncut Version’ just prior to the ban and the tape became a real collector’s item for a long time). It may not shock crowds accustomed to the likes of Hostel but it’s no doubt visceral material - Fulci and de Rossi pulled no punches. The undead monsters here are very slow movers but they seem none the less potent for it, attacking in increasing numbers to a point where survivors are virtually overwhelmed with nowhere left to run. Mood is fleshed out by Fabio Frizzi’s cool score too, a man who graced many an Italian genre film including several other Fulci projects. Ian McCulloch and Tisa Farrow (Mia’s sister of course) seem to be having a good time here while the film’s success launched Fulci into genre notoriety, especially as he went on to direct a number of other great nasties for De Angelis like House By The Cemetery, New York Ripper and indeed The Beyond.

Zombi 2 has an intricate history on home video. Following Vipco’s eventually barred attempt to permit the masses access to the uncut beauty it remained unavailable for years in Britain until a couple of heavily censored editions appeared on VHS. After several good Laserdisc releases around the world a sliced DVD materialised from Stonevision but it was Anchor Bay in the US who released an uncut DVD (under the title Zombie) which seemed like a blessing ten years ago but now looks contextually messy. It was then announced that Media Blasters were putting out the definitive version of the movie on disc (under their Shriek Show banner) and following a long wrangle with Blue Underground eventually a deal was reached where they both released the film - MB with a second disc of extras and BU without, but both with effectively the same transfer. And what a transfer! Grain has been minimised, colours are bold (possibly too bold - I found turning down the colour setting a couple of notches gave a more natural appearance), detail is very good, and contrast excellent. We were spoiled for sound options: both Italian and English versions in original mono, stereo, and 5.1 choices for each language. I think in this case the English track works better due to the location and the fact that a couple of principal English-speaking actors dub their own voices. The 5.1 tracks aren’t too artificial as they keep much of the audio localised across the front three speakers, hence they’re relatively respectful to their source (there’s only so much you can do with these old soundtracks anyway). On the MB set there’s a 98 minute documentary that warrants some commendation for its creators, having tracked down just about any living entity who had been involved with the project. The movie itself was just a job to many of the participants and that comes across here, but the documentary effort has to be acknowledged. There’s also a commentary track (Ian McCullouch) ported over from the old Anchor Bay disc, plus some trailers and other bits. Simply, if you want the extras go for the Shriek Show, if you don’t then go for the Blue Underground (note that the SS retains the original Italian title). I’ve read that the latter is progressive while the former is not but I noticed no incidents of combing whatsoever even watching it on a 75” screen so nothing to worry about. Packaged in a lovingly designed cover and slipcase this DVD set was a godsend and the crowning achievement in the Media Blasters cannon.