UZUMAKI

2000/Director: Higuchinsky/Writers: Junji Ito (manga), Kengo Kaji (supervising screenwriter)

Cast: Eriko Hatsune, Fhi Fan, Hinako Saeki, Eun-Kyung Shin, Keiko Takahashi, Ren Osugi

I think I have mentioned in a few previous posts about my ambivalence towards more modern Japanese  horror films(and Asian in general, though I consider Japan to be yardstick by which the rest of Asian cultures is measured, for better or worse), or cinema in general. With rare exceptions I find most of it  all wanting and repetitive and I much prefer the Japanese cinema prior to about 1970. Uzumaki is for me one  of the exceptions. I had long put off watching this movie for one reason or another, but it was on my list of films to see before I died so I finally popped it in the DVD player and was morbidly pleased with the results, though it is a far from a perfect horror film. I got the BT from demonnoid.com and was surprised to the find the entire manga comic series by Junji Ito included. I included, free of charge, a few pages for readers to check out. To honest I had no ideas this was based on a comic book unit I opened the folder. But like the film I was pleased with the story and art which I glanced over. I tend to not like the goofy looking fairy like characters that adorn the majority of manga comics and I felt the pen and ink drawing sin Junji Ito’s story to look more like the b/w independent stuff coming out of the US from places like Fantagraphic books, which to me are better drawings.

The story takes place in the small Japanese city of Kurouzu which has come under the curse of evil spirals (or vortexs as they are called in the translation). It is not clear why the town is cursed but soon schoolgirl Kirie and her childhood boyfriend Shuichi are at the center of the escalating nightmare. Kirie finds Shuichi’s father absorbed in filming the spiral patterns on a snail’s back one day on the way home from school. Soon there is a suicide at the school when a boy leaps from the top of a very high spiral staircase, landing at the bottom with blood and brains splattered everywhere. Things get more and more out of control as Shuichi’s father loses his mind under the influence of the vortex curse, one night almost losing control when there are no more spiral patterned naturo fish rolls in his miso soup. That makes me pissed off too. He convinces Kirie’s father, a pottery maker, that the vortex is the highest form of art and asks him to design a vortex patterned plate. Soon Kirie’s father is pulled into the curse and distintigrates menatlly and physically. The home situations not the only concerns since at school students are turning into snails and having their hair grow out into elaborate spiral like designs the size of trees. The spiral (vortexes… it really bothers me how these films are translated at times. The term spiral is never once used though sometimes it is the better word to use. We do not say a “votex staircase”) motif appears all over the film, though not as frequently as in the comic book story. Eventually even the dark clouds in the sky assume a menacing spiral pattern.

Shuichi’s father eventually decides he wants to become a vortex himself. What better way to achieve this than to crawl into the washing machine and click it on. His mother winds up in the hospital in despair and she soon clips off all her hair as to eliminate any spiral designs. Soon she realizes her finger prints are spirals and…well… you can guess the rest right? She kills herself after a centipede tries to slither down her ear and soon her dead husband is calling to her from the other side, where there are perfect vortexes. Shuichi himself gets all tied in knots, literally, and in the last scenes we see the towns people all under the effects of the vortex curse, except for Kirie and we do not know what becoems of her. One memorable scene has her stalker admirer throwing himself under a moving car so she will always remember him and he gets all twisted around the wheel and rim. The film ends with unanswered questions but most movies like this do. The comic book seemed to go off into other directions, such as many of the town’s folk turning into dangerous zombie like creatures. While some people in the film appear “zombiefied” they never collect together and terrorize Kirie as they do in the manga story. The film is shot using a greenish hue and it looks eerie. The music score is good and the acting above average. There are no gratuitous school girl panty shots and no sex, which is actually a relief and gives this Japanese shocker a boost in the credibility department. So many newer Japanese horror films are of the Pinku Eiga style, which is simply softcore porn with a few mutilations thrown in to balance things out. Nothing like seeing a young naked Japanese school girl in one scene and then a disemboweled, blood drenched one in the next to push all the borderline personalities watching right over the edge. I thought the film was creepy and well made and the effects and photography are pretty good for this style of movie. Get the comic book if you can, if that is your bag, as I think it is actually a better story.

SAMPLES FROM JUNJI ITO’S MASTERFUL MANGA COMIC UZUMAKI

VIDEO TRAILER FOR UZUMAKI

THE MONSTER WALKS

1942/ Director: Frank R. Strayer/ Writer: Robert Ellis

Cast: Rex Lease, Vera Reynolds, Sheldon Lewis, Mischa Auer, Martha Mattox, Sidney Bracey, Willie Best  (as Sleep ‘n’ Eat)

There is not really much to say about this movie but I can give it a marginal recommendation if you enjoy bad movies or early cinema. I do, but I am aware that what I like is not everyone’s cup of tea.  It would have made it to my new Quikie category except for the fact that while watching the credits I noticed the name of Sleep ‘n Eat and recalled it from the days when I used to really read up on films. But we can go into that in part two of this post. This film was made in 1932 and has all the trademark characteristics of a film shot in those days: stiff, melodramatic acting, terrible sound quality and poor music score, static photography (a scene often being shot for minutes from one camera angel), and loads of stereotyped characters. The film is supposed to be a remake of a 1927 silent film called the Cat and the Canary and is basically a whodunit that takes place in an old mansion over the course of one night during a thunder storm. After family members gather for the reading of a will left by the estate’s owner, an eccentric scientist, tensions develop amongst some of the family and staff who feel cheated because the man’s daughter, Ruth Earlton (Vera Reynolds) has basically received the entire fortune. Most upset is the deceased man’s invalid brother  Robert Earlton (Sheldon Lewis) who is receives only the assurance that he can still live in the house and get care,  and his staff Mrs. Krugg and her sinister son Hans (Martha Maddox and Mischa Auer).

Ruth’s fiancé Dr. Ted Carver (with a classic film name of Rex Lease) has accompanied her and is somewhat suspicious when she later alarms everyone with hysterical screaming, claiming she saw a hairy arm trying to grab her in her bed. He claims that while is a hysterical female she is not prone to nightmares. And why not be suspicious of a hairy arm when in the basement there is kept the dead doctor’s experiment in evolution, an ape… a gorilla. Of course it is obvious the “ape” is nothing but a chimpanzee not much larger than the one that played Cheetah in the Tarzan movies. I had really hoped that this was going to be a man in a gorilla suit movie and was sorely disappointed to see a chimp play the monster. Later the ‘ape” strangles the wrong woman, Mrs. Krug, and it gives actor Mischa Auer a grand chance to overact as he mourns her death and his mistake, sense he is in fact the one controlling the ape’s deeds under the behest of brother Robert. Well there are not many surprises and the ape of course kills his tormentor, Hans,  at the end and all is settled nicely overall. Brother Robert dies and Ruth and Ted wind up all hugs and snuggles. I did not hate the film and usually like these types, but I cannot recommend it to everyone. You must have a taste for old movies and bad acting and dialog to appreciate a film like this. It is a bad movie but one I enjoyed for the most part.

Appearing in the film as Exodus, the chauffer, is black actor Willie Best, often billed as Sleep ‘n Eat. I remembered his name from the days when I actually had to read books and magazines to get film information. There is not a wealth of information on the net about him, but I thought I could do a little tribute to this guy, who really was talented but had a difficult, though relatively prolific, film career that ended in obscurity.

There was a time when black actors in Hollywood actually had names like G. Howe Black and Stephin Fectchit. Especially prior to the 1960’s it would hard to point to a black actor who ever had a significant role in any motion picture. Among the actors who possessed genuine talent but never had the chance to show was Willie Best, who was billed under one of the most denigrating of all names in movie history. As unbelievable as it may sound he was cast for many years simply as Sleep ‘n Eat. While a talented actor and comedian, as well as musician and song writer, Best is sadly remembered for his myriad portrayals as lazy, simple minded and cowardly porters, servants and janitors. The lazily drawled line “yussuh”, expressed with drooped mouth and half awake eyes, can be traced back to many of Best’s characters. They are not necessarily by any stretch the roles Best would have wanted to portray, but as he stoically confessed in a 1934 interview, “ I often think about these roles I have to play. Most of them are pretty broad. Sometimes I tell the director and he cuts out the real bad parts… But what’s an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out.”

He was praised by Bob Hope for his acting ability and comedic timing and played in  some Hope films… as a half witted butler of course. He also played in a few Shirley Temple films, doing the same thing. He was busted for drugs in the early 1950’s and his career all but skreeched to a halt. He found some work here and there in television and as the civil rights era dawned he found himself the target of disdain by many of his fellow blacks, who saw what he did as an embarrassment to blacks. He was considered to be no more than the character he portrayed in his films. He died alone and in obscurity in a a home for aging actors and now lies in an unmarked grave in Hollywood, far from his home and roots in Mississippi. The closing lines of the film above, The Monster Walks, are so horrible and racist I was stunned to hear them. The dialog centers on the dead doctor’s experiments in evolution and when Exodus (Best’s character) realizes that he may be descended from apes he says something like “Well I had an uncle who looked like that (the chimp) but he was a lot slower.” It was a terrible line and left me wondering what the reaction of the audience in 1932 might have been.   Sadly it was probably hysterical laughter. There is hardly anything on Willie Best on the net that I could find with a basic search. I think this guy deserves more than what he got out of his years of hard work in Hollywood.

WILLIE BEST’S UNMARKERD GRAVE AT

PIERCE BROTHERS VAHALLA MEMORIAL PARK, HOLLYWOOD

This post introduces a new category into the Uranium Café repertoire and that is The Uranium Café Quickie. That is basically what it is too. The post will be bare minium in some regards, though will still have images (though no original vidcaps) and necessary linkings. There will be minimal research and the film will be my gut opinion at the moment. I just want to do more posts and I am watching a lot of movies. My connection is poor and I simply cannot spend all my time uploading media or editing. The fact it is a quickie does not mean the movie will be one I cannot recommend. It simply means it is a post I am going to just slam out as fast as I can with few frills. And the very first quickie for the Uranium Café is a real winner called Girl’s Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers.

I watched this movie last night and wonder if I can really recommend it or not. It has been reviewed by Ghidorah over at Chainsaw Maintenance and he has some nice original vidcaps to go with his post. It is one of the new Japanese zombie movies that are being churned out and is heavy on cheesy, over the top gore and nudity and sex. Students at a high become infected by a “popular” virus (as the subtitles read, as if there they out shopping for viruses and this is the one every one is selecting) and after a psychotic doctor injects the students with an “experimental vaccine” they turn into murderous zombies. There is a cure or treatment in that the swimming pool water makes you immune to the effects of the vaccine (it is never explained why).  That is where the swimming team comes in. Since they all swam that day none of them turn into zombies later and of course have to stand up to the monsters. Later almost all of them are killed at oine time by an infected teachers. Some group of heroes. Aki is the new girl in school and unlike the students around her was brought up by the same psycho doctor infecting everyone to be a super assassin terrorist. But while browsing through fashion magazines in the training compound she decides she wants a normal life like other girls and escapes. Soon she is surrounded by zombiefied schoolmates and having hot lesbian sex with her new best friend, who happened to also be secretly trained by the psycho doctor and is a bad girl.

And this is a really bad movie but it may appeal to some readers out there who just want to kill some time and can enjoy a movie that basically has no redeeming value to it whatsoever. I enjoyed some parts but the acting is really bad and the gore is sort of fakey and very gratuitous. The girls are cute and you get to see a couple naked once in awhile, but it not enough to make the sex part of the film worthwhile. The lead actors try to be too serious as they often are in these new Japanese movies. You know the syndrome, all tortured and shook up inside. Who cares. They should act less and be naked more. And to be honest, there was very little of the swim team running around in those tight black swimsuits that seem to be the center of so many fetish type soft core photo shoots coming out of the land of the rising sun these days. The schoolgirl theme is cool but nothing much happens with it here. The gore will be too much for some people I think and like I said there is not enough sex or swimsuits to live up to that great title. See at your own risk.

MURDER SET PIECES

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2004/Director: Nick Palumbo/Screenplay: Nick Palumbo

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Cast: Sven Garrett, Tony Todd, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jade Risser

I was duped into this one by the so called rave reviews plastered on the DVD jacket, one comparing some of Palumbo’s shots “of visual brilliance” to “the best works of Dario Argento.” Well, that’s a load of crap. While I am not a big fan of Argento’s narrative style I do respect his technical ability with camera shots and movement. To say that even one frame of this movie comes anywhere near Argento’s best work is a blatant lie. I perused a few reviews before doing mine to maybe gain some sort of relevant insight in to the movie that I may be lacking and decided I was wasting my time. I am fully qualified to dismiss this movie as a load of garbage. Not because of the murders and gore and so called sickenly repulsive violence (which I did not find it to have but rather found the violence comic bookish in the way a Herschell Gordon Lewis film is) but because it is simply a poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed movie.

The basic story is about some Nazi guy who takes porno pictures of women around Las Vegas but has a tendency to practice zero self-control and murders most of them as well as most other people he encounters. He seems to get away all this with utter impunity. He drives around and picks up hookers and kills them, kills his porno models, his girl friend and some woman who may be his German ex-wife or current wife, we never know, a little girl who is a schoolmate friend of his girlfriend’s sister, a fortune teller who won’t tell him what the cards say and a disgruntled porno book store clerk played by Candyman Tony Todd and it goes on and on into sheer absurdity. He is never questioned by the police or rouses any suspicion except in his girlfriend’s little sister played by Jade Risser but no one will believe her because SHE’S A KID!

The whole move feels like it was shot in the 70’s. Some great movies came out of the 70’s, but some shlocky ones did too. This one patterned itself on those substandard 70’s movies that are sort of fun now in a bad movie way. But this movie is not trying to be a bad movie and we do not need the 70’s done over except in parody. The music score is weird too, with some really poor heavy metal stuff that was probably done by friends of the director. The rest of the movie score sounds like typical incidental music from a 70’s exploitation film, which is what this feels like. I like exploitation films from the 70’s, they are campy and fun. This film is not either. Look, the murders here are not that shocking or brutal or original. There is one scene where the guy lunges out at Jade from a hole in the closet and is suppose to scare you, I guess, but it was so ridiculous I replayed the scene like six times for a laugh. I am tired of DVDs that advertise themselves as the “sickest movie of all-time” and then deliver Z-Movie entertainment at best. Sure, there is a ton of off color blood everywhere, again the type that looks like the too red goop used by Herschell Gordon Lewis, but so what. I like blood and gore and that is basically what I buy a DVD like this for, but to just pour blood all over the walls and on top of some moonlighting porn star because the film maker cannot do anything to get the story across simply gets boring after a few scenes and that is what this movie was, boring.

I cannot believe the reviews that seem to see something more to this movie than poor film making. The victims never seem scared and all look like porn actresses, which is what I read Palumbo hired for this film. Original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen has a small role as a Nazi gun dealer. Sven Garrett, who plays the photographer killer, is not really too bad in some ways as a serial killing, misogynist Nazi, but it is simply too unbelievable and poorly made to get anything but a weak nod from me. And it only gets that because Tony Todd was great as the burned out porno clerk and Gunner Hansen made an okay suburban Nazi.

SEE NO EVIL

2006/Director: Gregory Dark/Screenplay: Dan Madigan

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Cast: Glenn Jacobs (Kane), Christina Vidal, Luke Pegler,  Samantha Noble, Michael J. Pagan , Rachael Taylor

This movie is directed by ex-porn auteur Gregory Dark who is best known in polite society as the genius behind the New Wave Hookers series. It stars as the imposing protagonist Glenn Jacobs (a.k.a. Kane) of WWF fame. The direction is not bad but it is simply annoying in a way. It looks like a heavy metal video, the type you see late at night on Headbanger’s Ball. That style of camera work is okay for a five minute Morbid Angel video but can really become distracting in a 90 minuteish movie. It has all those shaky faces things like in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and sometimes the camera will come in from three or four angles and the sound will develop in to a swooshing crescendo to simply show something like a fly on an ashtray. I begin to think the fly or whatever is central to the plot or is telegraphing an approaching scene but it is all simply technical excess.

The plot is simple: teenagers in a type of reform school are sent to renovate an entirely dilapidated old hotel that harbors in the secret passages the 6’8” religiously motivated psycho killer played convincingly by Kane. So then, guess what, he begins killing off the teenagers one at a time in brutal fashion and since most of them are unlikable you really do not care who gets it and how. The movie is pretty bleak and some of the deaths seem to take away from there being a possible good hero winning against the evil psycho element to the story. The cop character who lost a hand to Kane years before and so has a grudge is killed off way too soon and senselessly I felt. There are survivors at the end, but they are a pimpish thug and two bitchy teenage girls. It is really pointless anymore to try and understand these endings, since the thing called the movie leading up to the ending is usually more inexplicable. What is important here ultimately is the quality of the deaths and a couple of them are pretty good as Kane hooks people with chains and drags them then crushes their skulls with his bare hands and removes their eyeballs and saves them in mason jars. There is one rather unique death scene where one of the more likeable female delinquents falls through the roof of a glass atrium and dangles from a rope upside down and is devoured by street dogs. Kane is totally sexually frustrated because his puritanical mother never let him watch any of Gregory Dark’s earlier movies when he was boy locked up in a cage in the backyard.

Nothing will surprise fans of the splatter genre and if you like this style of in your face edgy photography (I do not in large doses) you will enjoy the ride. It is well made and the acting is okay, but I only give a mild recommendation because of the jittery, overblown camera work that could have been fantastic if it was just a little toned down.

THE BRAIN EATERS

1958/Director: Bruno VeSota/ Writer: Gordon Urquhart

Cast: Ed Nelson (also producer), Leonard Nimoy, Alan Frost, Joanna Lee, Jody Fair, David Hughes, Robert Ball, Greigh Phillips, Orville Sherman

This not a film to write home about in any sense of the word-however it is film to do a post on The Uranium Cafe about obviously- but at a mere sixty minutes and featuring an early performance by Leonard Nimoy (billed as Leonard Nemoy) it is not a total waste of time. It was produced by and starring B-movie and TV staple Ed Nelson and directed by character actor Bruno VeSota (the sexually frustrated fat guy in Attack of the Giant Leeches) and so based on The Puppet Master by Robert A. Heinlein that AIP was sued for outright plagiarism. Roger Corman arranged to have the matter settled out of court for $5000 and the promise that Heinlein receive no credit for “inspiring” Gordon Urqhart’s lifeless screenplay. But as I said, the film is not really that bad that it cannot be seen and enjoyed if there is nothing else on.

The story moves along at a tolerable pace and is aided by an often campy and unnecessary narration. For example in one scene we are told that the heroes are visiting the local telegraph station, but there is not need to inform us of this since we can see with own two eyes that they are doing this. But it adds for some laughs, though I assume the are unintended.

The basic story is that the residents of peaceful Riverdale Illinois have not only recently been plagued by violent murders and now must contend with the sudden appearance a huge alien craft that has either come from space or the bowels of the Earth. I am not clear on this. The mystery is compounded when a scientist believed long lost reappears from the craft after some fifty years. Some of the town’s folk have fallen prey to small parasitic organisms that look like little “tribbles” (as in the classic Star Trek episode) with pipe cleaners for antennae that attach to the base of their necks and control their thoughts and actions. Scientist Paul Kettering (Ed Nelsen) is hot on the mystery and even journeys into the alien craft seeking answers, which are not forthcoming. A lot of the action winds up being fist fights or gun battles between the infected and uninfected, or verbal sparring between everyone and the cantankerous Senator Powers (Cornelius Keefe, billed as Jack Hill and so it is not director Jack Hill in an early acting role as is often thought). On a return trip inside the ship Kettering finds another long lost scientist, Professor Cole under total control of the alien creatures and who is played by Leonard Nimoy, but you would not know if not for the voice. The story ends with high voltage wires frying the little brain eaters to death and the hero dying to save the girl.

The movie has potential with the material but does not do too much with it. What have been better is if the people under the control of the creatures were not so apparent. Some act like zombies practically. It would have had more tension had the cast and audience not known who was and was not infected, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing. I would also say a little more violence would have helped, as well as more frightening creatures. To the film’s credit it does not go over board with scientific explanations and long dialogs as is typical of a lot of films of the period. The movie takes itself too seriously and the laughs are unintentional, which can always make for a good time.

The movie poster is one of my favorite, but here is no scene in the entire film like it. There is no woman with vampire fangs and exposed brain, or hordes of people fleeing some terrible monster. In fact the monsters are little fuzz balls that a horde of fleeing people would squash. Can I recommend the film? Sure. It is required cult film viewing in fact, and as I said it is only about an hour in length, about the same time you would spend at the dentist’s getting a cleaning. Our next film seems to operate on a lower budget but in my opinion delivers more of the goods in the action and camp departments. So now that our brains have been eaten, let us see what it is like to have our flesh consumed in The Flesh Eaters.

THE FLESH EATERS

1964/Director: Jack Curtis/ Writer: Arnold Drake

Cast: Martin Kosleck, Byron Sanders, Barbara Wilkin, Rita Morley, Ray Tudor

All the action in The Flesh Eaters takes place on a small island off the Atlantic coast where five people must face a ravenous, microscopic organism that consumes human flesh in a matter of seconds. The budget for the film by director Jack Curtis is obviously very low and according to one story was subsidized by winnings his wife made on a TV game show. The characters are all comic bookishly two dimensional (and not surprisingly since the screen writer was comic book writer Arnold Drake): a mad Nazi Scientist, a drunken former screen queen, a down on his luck pilot, a zany beatnik and a good hearted gal with huge hooters she is not adverse to showing now and then.

The evil Nazi Peter Bartell, played by Martin Kosleck-who made a career of playing evil Nazis-is the man experimenting with refining the flesh eater experiment that was begun during the war. His experiments are interrupted when the plane being flown by studly looking Grant Murdoch (Byron Sanders, most famous for his role as Talbot Huddleston in the soap opera The Days of our Lives) has to land off the coast because of a violent storm. With him are his passengers, jaded former movie idol Laura Winters (Rita Morely) and her assistant Jane Letterman (Barbara Wilken). A rule in low budget sci-fi flicks is “lots of dialog over expensive effects” and this movie follows the rule from beginning to end, but the chat is actually not too bad. The acting is campy and hammy often enough but I get the sense the actors and crew knew this and had a little fun with what they were working with, and so The Flesh Eaters becomes a more watchable and enjoyable ride than The Brain Eaters.

The group is joined later by the most obnoxious character in the film, a beatnik named Omar who rants and raves about “love as the weapon” so often that we feel relieved when he has his entrails eaten from the inside out later with a microbe laced martini made by Professor Bartell. In one memorable scene hero Grant Murdoch must rescue lush Laura Winters who has walked out onto a jetty looking for her booze. He gets some of the flesh eaters (usually holes poked in the film) on his leg and they are removed by Bartell’s pocket knife. They need something to stop the bleeding and in no time sexy Jane Letterman removes her blouse and spends the rest of the scene in her white bra. I think my buddy Ghidorah over at How to Maintain your Chainsaw would appreciate this fine scene.

There are some actually gory death scenes in this film which were ahead of their time for 1964. I have mentioned the demise of Omar the beatnik, and a couple characters have similar explicit death scenes later. One thing that threw me for a loop was that at the end the surviving castaways must deal with a huge rubber monster after an attempt to electrify the microbes only cause them to grow and unify. In a very odd twist the thing that kills the beast (remember in old sci-fi flicks there is usually one special thing that does the beast in, never bullets of course, and it must be found and developed in the last twenty minutes of the film) is human blood delivered directly into the creature’s eye. Strange that a thing that consumes human flesh is killed by human blood.

The photography (by Curtis under the pseudonym Carson Davidson) is actually pretty good, and while the effects are pretty low budget they very effective for the time. The two women are pretty sexy and plump and the tension between super jock stud Grant Murdoch and evil genius Peter Bartell is stereotypical and amusing. This is a good bad movie and of the two reviewed here I recommend this one more highly. Not to missed by enthusiasts of midnight cinema.

JENIFER

2005/Director: Dario Argento/Screenplay: Steven Weber, Story by Bruce Jones

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Cast: Steven Weber, Carrie Anne Fleming, Brenda James, Harris Allan, Beau Starr, Laurie Brunetti, Kevin Crofton, Julia Arkos, Jasmine Chan

Some people simply worship Dario Argento. For years and years I just figured I was missing something or that I was not enough of a true film fanatic to see the brilliance in his work that his rabid sycophants did. Now I remember my reactions to films like Tenebre ( by the way, the second picture from the left in my banner is a scene from Tenebre I touched up in Photoshop) and Phenomenon and even his “magnum opus” Suspiria and do not feel I was so out of touch by feeling confused and bewildered. They were not really great movies at all in my opinion. Maybe not terrible movies, but Tenebre was so… so… terrible that I do not see what the big deal has always been about that movie. Okay there was a great axe murder scene with a spurting stump, but the rest of the film was so weird and Italian.

A pensive Dario Argento comtemplates taking a night

course in how to direct a sensible narrative.

Often supporters will admit his narrative technique lacks…well… narrative technique and that his story lines are illogical and incohesive and that his true skill lies in his camera work and atmospheric settings. I have even read some people compare his work to Mario Bava’s. There is no comparison and his technical skill and set designs are average at best even in his better work. The last thing I saw before Jenifer was something called Do You Like Hitchcock, and I figured it would have all these slick Hitchcockian references and gags but it had nothing of the sort really, not on any sophisticated level anyway. It was a goofy movie with a typical Argetno ending that was more like the ending to an EC comic book than a good horror/suspense movie. Well, now that I have expressed my general feeling about this “horror genius” let me give you my opinion of a short piece he did for the cable TV series called Masters of Horror (view my insightful comment on Takashi Miike’s ode to to incest and abortion Imprint elsewhere in the Café).

Poor Steven Weber comes home from working all day as actor and scriptwriter for horror megalomaniac Dario Argento and has to settle for cold cuts for dinner again.

Jenifer is a short made for TV film and to be honest, I did not completely dislike it, in the same way I did not dislike another shorter work Argento did in a double-feature called Two Evil Eyes with George Romero , where he did a graphic and psychotic version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat with Harvey Kietel in the lead role. Neither of the episodes were great pieces and hit and miss master Romero absolutely wasted one hour of my life with a Creepshow style “return from the dead and chase the girl ( played by the amply endowed Adrienne Barbeau ) around the house” story, but the shortness of the pieces made them endurable and somewhat enjoyable really. Honestly, I am not expecting Martin Scorcese or David Lean when I watch this stuff. Argento’s narration challenged approaches that undo his longer films were thankfully absent in these two shorter films (each about one hour long) and I found both of them decent little horror bits. Of course in Argento’s hands Jenifer has more than a few problems. Some of these can be excused if you realize the story is from a comic book story by Bruce Jones and illustrated by Bernie Wrightson ( I even found page samples below on the net). So we are not transposing Poe from paper to film here. Jones is a capable writer of suspense and horror comics that typically have a surprise twist at the end in the way older style horror comics did, such as the EC and Warren titles did, as well as the old Marvel and DC titles from the turn of the 70’s period.

Lovely Carrie Anne Fleming before Dario Aregento gave her a make over.

The general story is this: Police detective Frank Spivey (Steve Weber) rescues a girl from being murdered with a meat cleaver by an apparently homeless, deranged man. The man is shot and mutters the girl’s name with his last breath: Jenifer. As it turns out Jenifer is a mentally retarded and grotesquely deformed girl who happens to have a knock out body. For some reason Spivey allows the girl to live in his house where in no time she bites his wife in the face, rips the family cat to bits and is found sucking on its entrails in the bathroom, murders a carnival circus freak collector and chops him up and hides him the frig, then finally murders the innocent, little neighbor girl and does the same to her as the cat (I might add that no police ever appear to question anyone in the disappearance of the child… is this the same country that has the Amber alert?). During all this Spivey allows the slobbering freak to seduce him in bed and does not try to stop his wife and teenage son from leaving. To regain his balance and perspective on life he decides the best thing to do is to quit his career as a police detective and live in a run down , ratty cabin in the woods. Needing a career change he manages to beg a woman into giving him as job as a stock boy in a local grocery store. He lets Jenifer hang out at the cabin all day while he stacks pinto beans and toilet paper but she sneaks into town and sees him chatting with the woman and gets jealous and stalks her teenage son at an outdoor teenage party. Later Spivey finds her chomping on his guts in a tool shed. Needless to say he finally decides enough is enough (most guy’s would have decided that when he bit their wife’s face or ate the house cat and when they took a gander at her mutant face) and takes Jenifer out to kill her with an axe, but is shot by a hunter who rescues Jenifer and no not doubt the cycle starts all over.

Miss Fleming as Jenifer, a girl not concerned with the politics of vegetarianism.

The movie is a no brainer and to try and make anything more of out it is a lost cause. That a man like Spivey, no matter how unhappy, would throw away his family and career and cover up the murder of a child to protect a mentally retarded deformed girl who is “good” in bed is simply too unbelievable. Yes men can be slime, but most would not do this even to protect a Playboy Playmate! The violence is excessive and is simply exploitive gore. Every murder involves intestines and body organs and the scene of the nude little girl being gnawed on is simply bad taste. It the type of trick a no talent film maker would employ, the proverbial hammer on the head, trying to appear controversial because they are incapable of doing anything else. I put a photo of Argento in front of a fire place in this post that typifies the guy in my opinion. He is really trying to be this master of cinematic horror and wants us to be intrigued by his dark mind and black heart but ultimately his work is lacking and directionless and falls back over and over again on outdated shock and gore gimmicks to hold it together. You cannot say the same of Argento’s role model Mario Bava, though Bava did dabble amply in violence and even gore, but at his peak he was a brilliant film maker. While I admit Argento can be engaging and entertaining on one level I simply do not consider him to be in the same league as Bava.  Argento did do much to usher in the revival of the “giallo” style films in the 70’s and his use of color is sometimes interesting, but it is the continual lack of consistency that I find annoying with this guy’s work as a whole. All that being said, reviews on Deep Red, Suspria and Tenebre are coming one day.