The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  Wright gives a great lead performance that requires her not only to scream and puts her through the horror-film paces, but also requires she spend a lot of her on-screen time reading. Someone sitting quietly and reading is hardly the most cinematic of actions, but Wright makes even those scenes effective and compelling. Stephanie Hodge also shines in a supporting role as Virginia's co-worker at the bookstore, and Cook makes for a seriously creepy villain even when he's hidden away behind a mask. This is especially impressive given his double duty on the production as supervisor of the film's visual effects. There are some very memorable smaller roles as well, helping to give the film a unique and humorous tone without tipping too much into comedic territory.

  The film has an interesting mix of late-'80s locations and '40s/'50s style, with several sequences taking place in the books as Virginia reads them. These scenes are among the film's best, and Takács seizes the opportunity to give them a vintage feel by judiciously employing some period cars, clothes, and music. The constrained spaces in which these scenes take place also give them a nice claustrophobic feel that lends to their nightmarish tone. They are especially interesting in contrast to the exterior daylight scenes that show off Los Angeles in the late '80s, making the intrusion of the fictional monster into that world even more effective.

  Scream Factory's Blu-ray of I, Madman is a huge upgrade from the old MGM DVD, not just because of the higher-resolution presentation but because it presents the film in its correct widescreen aspect ratio instead of the DVD's full-frame "pan and scan" picture. In fact, this is probably the first time the film has ever been seen in widescreen on home video, making it an automatic must-buy for fans. There are also a number of special features, including an 11-minute compilation of behind-the-scenes footage from Cook's camcorder showing the shooting of some of the film's in-camera effects. Cook also narrates a 6-minute stills gallery that includes stills from the film, publicity photos, and pictures of Cook and his effects team working behind the scenes. A theatrical trailer (looking surprisingly pristine) and home video trailer (in full-frame) are also included.

  The two main attractions for special features, however, are a 30+ minute "making of" featurette entitled "Ripped from the Pages: The Making of I, Madman" and a feature-length commentary with Takács and Cook moderated by Rob Galluzzo of the horror site Icons of Fright. Takács and Cook are clearly excited to talk about the film and its production, and offer a fun, informative stream of discussion. "Ripped from the Pages" includes interviews with a number of people involved in the production including Takács, Cook, Rohner, Hodge, and screenwriter David Chaskin. Like the commentary, it's fun and fairly comprehensive, although the lack of any input from or appearance by Wright is conspicuous. Scream Factory does good work, but they are known to produce some of these special features on tight schedules, so it's possible the Near Dark star was just unavailable when they were being put together. Still, it's disappointing not to hear from the film's lead at all, especially since Wright has been making convention appearances and is likely willing to talk about her work on the film, which everyone else here seems to remember quite fondly.

  (EDIT: Following this review's initial publication, Red Shirt's Michael Felsher reached out and informed us that Wright was indeed approached to participate in the special features, and that the actress politely declined.)

  Despite this unfortunate omission in the special features, I, Madman is definitely worth picking up for fans of the film and of '80s horror in general. It's gory, imaginative, and fun, and the new HD widescreen transfer looks great. Stay tuned for whatever they've got coming up, because chances are good one of your old favorites might be in line for a similar release in the near future!

  I Sell the Dead (2008)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 26 July 2009

  Back in the 1960s, a small independent film production house called Hammer created a hugely popular formula—heaving bosoms, strangely familiar castles, foggy nights– that evolved into an instantly identifiable style that exerted a huge influence on the horror genre. Ever since Hammer disappeared in the 1970s, there have been throwbacks and homages to the classic Hammer style, the most well known probably being Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. It’s been a while since a really good Hammer homage came along, though, and Glenn McQuaid’s I Sell the Dead is a refreshing hit of Hammer in the modern landscape of horror.

  Dominic Monaghan plays Arthur Blake, waiting for his turn at the guillotine following the beheading of his partner Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden). While he waits out his last few hours, he is visited by Father Blake (Ron Perlman), a kindly priest whose motives may not be entirely holy. Father Blake takes down the stories of Arthur’s career in grave-robbing, from his first job as a young boy to last job before the pair was arrested after a trail of body parts led the police directly to their respective doors. At first, the stories are the standard-issue misery, but soon they take a turn for the supernatural– as it turns out, there’s a reason that grave-robbing used to be called “the resurrection trade.”

  Father Blake keeps the whiskey flowing as Arthur spins tales of run-ins with vampires, zombies, cruel doctors, and even more cruel competition. The money is better trading in the undead than the regular dead, but as Arthur explains, it’s also a lot more dangerous. The film is basically a series of adventures following Arthur and Willie as they get involved in increasingly bizarre supernatural hijinks, and with a series of increasingly colorful characters, the most notable of which are the evil Morgan clan, a team of ruthless undead traffickers with whom no one interferes. Well, no one but Arthur and Willie, anyway, with typically disastrous results.

  McQuaid keeps the pace quick and the tone pitch-perfect, placing his characters in mortal danger that is often as comical as it is gruesome. It’s very funny, and the cast is great. Larry Fessenden in particular is great in his first major starring role. The film takes place almost exclusively at night, in fog-shrouded moors, moonlit graveyards, and dirty taverns, and the sets are all convincingly dingy. The film also makes use of some comic-book art transitions that transform its characters into even more literal cartoon versions of themselves, and horror fans will have fun spotting references not just to Hammer, but to other classic horror films.

  Most of the time references like that just make you want to watch the other films being referenced, but that’s definitely not the case with I Sell the Dead. It’s a fast, fun, and very funny tribute to a classic style that’s refreshingly free of irony and pretension. It’s pure entertainment, a capital-M Movie, and a convincing argument for the virtues of the classic Hammer style.

  I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 27 September 2010

  To say the very least, the concept of a remake of 1978′s notorious “rape/revenge” shocker I Spit on Your Grave is problematic. The original remains powerfully divisive, with violent detractors seeming to have the majority vote. However, as with any cult classic, the film also has its rabid fans. So the question is: who is the remake for? Anyone who loathes the original film is not likely to have a different opinion of this new take on the same story, and fans of the original are probably not too happy about the fact that remake exists at all. Whatever the intentions of the filmmakers of the original film, the 2010 model of I Spit on Your Grave is clearly meant to be a “more accessible” take on the “Rape/Revenge” formula. Which raises another serious question: Does anyone really need or want that?

  As in the original, Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) is a writer taking time out of the city to visit a cabin in the woods and work on her new book. She stops to get gas and meets Johnny (Jeff Branson), Andy (Rodney Eastman) and Stanley (Daniel Franzese). There is no question as soon as these men appear on the screen that they are violent, menacing characters. Soon enough, these backwoods monsters decide they’re going to force a local disabled boy, Matthew (Chad Lindberg) to have sex with Jennifer and take this “city bitch” down a peg. What follows is a very nasty series of
scenes of the men menacing, assaulting, and finally raping Jennifer before she jumps into a creek and disappears, presumably drowned.

  Except, of course, anyone familiar with the original film even by reputation will know that Jennifer will be back to exact revenge on her attackers. In the original film, Jennifer used her sexuality against the men by seducing and killing them. This aspect of the original film is completely absent in the remake: Jennifer traps, tortures, and kills mercilessly in a series of tortures much more elaborate than those in the 1978 film. For good measure, this version also adds a fifth man to the ranks of Jennifer’s attackers, presumably to give the audience a little more revenge for their money. What this basically does is split one of the original characters into two, so one remains the cruel, hateful redneck and the other gets to have a family. This mostly serves to simply flatten both characters to single dimensions so the audience won’t be too put off when Jennifer kills them.

  At a purely caveman level, I Spit on Your Grave is bluntly effective. At the preview screening, people were cheering on Jennifer’s gruesome vengeance. There’s no question that the “revenge” part of the film works on that lizard-brain level. Bad men (acted capably so the audience truly hates them) get bad things done to them in a frenzy of pure dramatic catharsis. For anyone who spends much time thinking about what they watch, though, I Spit on Your Grave is likely to cause seriously mixed feelings. While it is brutal and unpleasant, the lengthy scenes of Jennifer being attacked by the rednecks were clearly calculated to be difficult but not too difficult– if it was played out at the level of, say, Irreversible, it would be too horrifying and would dull the “fun” of the rest of the film. Similarly, the revenge sequences are violent, but not appreciably more so than, say, Hostel.

  This reluctance to push the boundaries of depictions of violence is what ultimately makes I Spit on Your Grave, as a remake, feel dishonest. Given the original film’s reputation, it would follow that a remake would bring a comparable level of horror to modern audiences that the original did for its contemporary audience. Instead, the original is given the Platinum Dunes treatment: everything looks gray and extra dirty, but the film is clearly made at a high level of technical competence and there’s the distinct sense that the story has been market-tested so it’s mean and brutal but not too mean and brutal to put off the intended audience. On that level, at least, I Spit on Your Grave certainly succeeds. Anyone seriously troubled by the concept of either rape or revenge as entertainment, though, should steer well clear– and keep their fingers crossed that it doesn’t signal the coming of the “popcorn rape/revenge” film.

  iCrime (2010)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 26 September 2011

  Breaking Glass Pictures has been releasing quite a varied slate of films this year, from straightforward low-budget slashers (like Exit 33) to surreal dark comedy (Asylum Seekers) and even interesting genre imports (Strigoi, The Hide). Even after all that, a film as perplexing as iCrime is a surprise, since it seems to exist entirely outside the genres Breaking Glass has come to be known for. In fact, it’s really tough to brand iCrime with any genre tag, but not in a good way.

  Carrie (Sara Fletcher) moves from Wisconsin to Los Angeles to live with her cousin Stefy (Kelly Noonan), a low-level celebrity of some sort. Carrie wants to break into acting, but in the meantime she makes money as a photographer’s assistant and sells information to a sub-TMZ gossip site called The Echo Report run by the mysterious Evelyn Echo (Katherine Randolph). Echo seems to have some sort of dirt on Carrie that she uses to keep Carrie in her employ, but after a photo shoot with an obnoxious “lonelygirl15″ knockoff named Jordan Rivers (Leah McKendrick), Carrie volunteers to work for Echo in unmasking Jordan as a fake.

  Meanwhile, Stefy’s sleazy ex-boyfriend Parker (Griff Furst) has tracked down Carrie to get her to pay him back for his stash of sex tapes she destroyed. And while Carrie’s investigation into Jordan Rivers makes headway once she has the assistance of fellow snark-blogger Raychel93 (Christie Burson) and potential love interest/grocery store employee Zeffer (Travis Brorsen), things take a turn for the worse when hooded figures kidnap Jordan and threaten to kill her live on the internet if their demands are not met. Is the kidnapping another twist in the “Jordan Rivers” story, or is the girl in real danger? It’s up to Carrie to get to the bottom of the case, in which nothing is at it seems.

  Confused? You should be. iCrime piles on characters, twists, fakeouts and betrayals so fast that it’s extremely difficult to keep track of everything that’s going on. Even worse, you probably won’t want to. Imagine if Veronica Mars was a really hateful, unpleasant character who looks down on everyone and makes no secret of her contempt, and you have a ballpark idea of what it’s like following Carrie around in her adventures. As the story drags on, she becomes more and more abrasive and makes increasingly bad decisions and seems to miss incredibly obvious facts, so it’s tough to care what happens to her.

  Debut feature writer/director Bears Fonté loads iCrime with various stylistic tricks including split screens and on-screen text showing what characters are saying in text conversations, but most of the split screen effects are unnecessary (maybe they’re supposed to be like browser tabs?) and the montages of “internet video” responses to Carrie and Jordan’s videos are just embarrassing. The tone of the film is all over the place, and with a running time of over 100 minutes it definitely has a few characters and subplots too many. Whether Fonté meant for the film to be a satire on internet and celebrity culture or a straightforward thriller is tough to call, and the final product is an exercise in frustration.

  L’Immortelle (1963)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 11 April 2014

  Alain Robbe-Grillet may be best known to many cinephiles as the screenwriter of Alain Resnais’s classic Last Year at Marienbad, although this is at least partially due to the fact that Robbe-Grillet’s films as director have largely been unavailable outside of Europe aside from occasional repertory screenings. Kino Classics and Redemption Films recently licensed six of Robbe-Grillet’s films for their first-ever U.S. releases on DVD and Blu-ray, finally giving North American audiences a legitimate way to see his work on home video. The most recent release in this series is Robbe-Grillet’s debut feature as director, L’Immortelle.

  A French college Professor (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze) moves to Turkey for a job, and while out looking for the village that will become his new home he meets a young Woman (Françoise Brion) who speaks French and offers him a ride home. He invites her to a dinner party he is throwing for his new colleagues, and the two enter into a tentative flirtation that becomes a strangely clandestine relationship. The Woman presents constant surprises to the Professor, such as her ability to speak fluent Greek and her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the village and surrounding area. He marvels at the architecture, and she douses his enthusiasm by explaining that everything is new and in the process of being rebuilt. He admires a building that from afar appears to be an ornate mosque, which she reveals is actually a new maritime museum. Their meetings abruptly end one day when the Woman does not appear for their scheduled meeting in a graveyard (also false, she later explains) and disappears for several days. The Professor attempts to find her, and meets a series of people they encountered together, but he does not speak the language. Further, no one seems to keen on helping him anyway. When she finally reappears, a series of events leads the Professor back to where he started, although this time he is alone. He continues his search, although it is no longer certain the Woman ever existed, or if she was the same person he imagined her to be.

  This outline may make L’Immortelle seem much more straightforward than it actually is, but rest assured it is very much of the same sensibility as Last Year at Marienbad. Robbe-Grillet explains in a lengthy interview included on the disc that he was trying to make L’Immortelle before Marienbad was produced, and the films do share a similar tone and look. Shot in bright black & white, many of the camera movements
(long tracking shots) and locations (particularly a beautiful mosque) seem at least somewhat indebted to Alain Resnais’s style. Additionally, the unnamed characters involved in a sort of loosely-defined romantic triangle and their circular dialogue and events strongly recall that film, as do a recurring motif of seemingly frozen people standing around in busy street markets and the film’s opening montage of wordless imagery that hints at what is to come. Despite these similarities, Robbe-Grillet was clearly starting to stake out his own style and obsessions here, shooting much of the film in bright exteriors that nonetheless underline the sense of confusion and dread of its main characters, as well as hinting at the S&M trappings that would become more and more pronounced throughout his career. Further, the conclusion of L’Immortelle lends itself to somewhat more concrete explanations for the film’s structure than Marienbad.

  It is not hard to imagine that had Robbe-Grillet been able to make L’Immortelle before Marienbad, it may have been much more well known and influential than it is. It is certainly an interesting companion piece to that better-known film, and hopefully with this re-release it will find its own place among the classics of surreal cinema. And hopefully with this series of releases of his films, Robbe-Grillet will take his rightful place among fans of strange, intelligent cinema as well.

  The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

  Originally published on Film Monthly 12 September 2011