A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)

Posted on May 23, 2015 at 5:39 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

Virgin Among the Living Dead

There is a subtly remarkable moment which occurs late in Jess Franco’s A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973). Christina (Christina von Blanc, A Bell from Hell) has been navigating her way through and around a mansion belonging to her dead father and inhabited by relatives who are possibly ghosts, vampires, lunatics, or all of the above. Suddenly she encounters her father (Paul Muller, Vampyros Lesbos), a hangman’s noose about his neck, sitting in a dark room with a wooden chalice before him (the Holy Grail?). Like Hamlet’s father, he claims he was murdered, and issues a warning before the “Queen of the Night” (Anne Libert, Dracula’s Daughter) places a hand on his chest and together they slip slowly back into pitch darkness. Then Christina is in daylight, walking through the forested grounds of the mansion in the same blue nightshirt while Bruno Nicolai’s crystalline score sparkles about her, and her father appears again, suspended now from his noose, floating down the path ahead of her as he whispers, “Christina…” Clearly, this strange and hypnotic film was very personal to the director. The plot is tissue-thin (Christina returns to her family home for the reading of her father’s will), the dialogue nonsensical. More important are the images: absurd, erotic, beautiful, morbid. With its Gothic fantasy lyricism it calls to mind Jaromil Jires’ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil (1973), and most especially the films of Jean Rollin (Shiver of the Vampires, Requiem for a Vampire, etc.). It also feels that Franco, one of the most prolific exploitation directors of the 60’s and 70’s, has cleared a space for himself to make a picture that bows to no one else, that is summoned entirely from his subconscious, that relies more upon images, music, sounds and mood. Production company Eurociné set upon it with knives. Franco wished to call the film Night of the Shooting Stars, but it became Christina, Princess of Eroticism and A Virgin Among the Living Dead. There wasn’t enough sex, so a non sequitur scene in a park, directed by someone else and featuring an orgy with a mask-clad, topless Alice Arno (La comtesse perverse) was awkwardly wedged into the film. When Dawn of the Dead brought zombies back into fashion, Eurociné even convinced Jean Rollin, fresh off Zombie Lake (1981), to shoot some zombie footage for Franco’s aged movie – as if making Zombie Lake weren’t humiliating enough. But discard the cynical additions, as Redemption has done for their Blu-Ray release of Franco’s cut of Virgin, and you will still find that unique, mournful picture which the director originally intended. It is one of his best.

Christina (Christina von Blanc) innocently explores a haunted mansion.

Christina (Christina von Blanc) innocently explores a haunted mansion.

Christina von Blanc is radiant as the innocent Christina Benton, oblivious to the off-kilter mannerisms of the relatives that stalk the gloomy mansion of her father. “Uncle Howard” (Howard Vernon, The Diabolical Dr. Z) plays his piano and quotes the Bible for no apparent reason. Carmenze (Britt Nichols, Tombs of the Blind Dead) seduces anything that moves. Herminia, the young widow of Christina’s father, dies upon Christina’s arrival and is immediately given a mass, propped up in a chair while Uncle Howard sings Latin hymns at the piano, a cigarette in his mouth, Carmenze painting her toenails. Aunt Abigail (Rosa Palomar, Lovers of Devil’s Island) and the gibbering idiot manservant Basilio (Franco himself) are later seen with Herminia’s severed hand, carefully removing her valuable rings.  “Tomorrow we will pluck out all her gold teeth!” Carmenze is seen cutting the flesh of a willing blind girl (Linda Hastreiter) and ravenously licking the bloody wounds. Meanwhile, in a dark room, the Queen of the Night sits at a desk sketching crosses in blood. Amidst all the death, decay, and greed, Christina smiles, eats breakfast, skinny dips in a lake draped with lilypads. Whenever the horror of her world confronts her directly – which often seems to be the reality, the inevitability of death – she wakes up in bed, as if everything around her might be a passing nightmare. After her skinny dip, a young stranger warns her that the mansion she’s occupying is abandoned, forbidden, haunted by ghosts. There is also the possibility, as she wakes up raving under the care of a doctor and nurse, that everything has been summoned from her fevered mind in the moments before her death.

The lake to which Christina is drawn.

The lake to which Christina is drawn.

The mournful atmosphere is all-pervasive, leading to a very Rollin-esque finale in which Christina’s family, standing on the lawn still as statues, attend her symbolic, ritualistic death. But Franco applies a winking humor as well, notably in the rote reading-of-the-will scene, which cuts again and again to Franco’s Basilio nodding off. (When the notary is finished, Basilio stirs and politely applauds.) Then there are the moments of I-don’t-know-what, such as when a nude Christina awakens to find a large black dildo in her room, standing upright on a barren floor. She kneels before it and slowly reaches out, then suddenly smashes it to pieces. Cut to the blind girl, who cowers in a corner and says, “What have you done? Poor soul. You shouldn’t have destroyed the great phallus. Misery is now upon us. Our time has come.” But despite the periodic flashes of eroticism, potent or offbeat, the film is more concerned with death, which gives it an eerie, oddly powerful frisson. In the audio commentary track for Redemption’s Blu-Ray, Video Watchdog‘s Tim Lucas sees a connection to the recent death of Franco’s muse, Soledad Miranda; indeed, the film feels like a elegiac meditation. It’s present in Nicolai’s haunting (and creative) score, and in the final lines – “Your mind will no longer discern the truth. You will create your own nightmares. The Queen of Darkness is here…” – as Christina slips beneath the lilypads.

Virgin Among the Living Dead

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She Killed in Ecstasy (1970)

Posted on May 17, 2015 at 6:02 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

She Killed in Ecstasy

Midway through She Killed in Ecstasy (1970), a naked lesbian love scene is interrupted when a blonde wig-wearing Soledad Miranda (Vampyros Lesbos) grabs a zebra-striped blow-up pillow and uses it to fatally smother her partner. The pillow is fully inflated and looks like it should be floating in a pool somewhere. The idea that a woman could be smothered with such a thing is dubious, and director Jess Franco doesn’t convince us in the, er, execution. But it quickly becomes clear why the pillow/flotation-device is the weapon of choice: through the black stripes on the plastic he can zoom into the face of the victim struggling for air. The pillow matches the 70’s pop art decor of everything else in She Killed in Ecstasy, and it serves as another inspiration for Franco’s improvisational, shoestring method. If there was ever an opportunity for Franco to shoot through, under, or around something, he’d do it with enthusiasm. Never mind that shots are frequently out of focus, or that the drifting camera sometimes seems a little uncertain of where to go next. Those are byproducts of his approach, more concerned with style than coherence. He was also well aware that his films were exploitation, not art, and the audience would want extreme sex and violence; he might as well have fun with it, and give them something to remember. The opening shots of the film are shelves and shelves of fetuses in jars, as though we’ve wandered into the Mütter Museum, matched, with perfect incongruity, to a soundtrack of groovy lounge music by Manfred Hübler and Siegfried Schwab (Vampyros Lesbos). These things don’t go together, and neither do the words “She Killed in Ecstasy.” Later, Fred Williams (Count Dracula) will anguish at the sight of his destroyed laboratory, plunging into a suicidal depression, and the soundtrack is undeterred; the dance party must go on. So yes, she kills in ecstasy – and vengeful rage – but she does it in style.

Soledad Miranda as Mrs. Johnson, dressing casual for a visit to her husband's lab.

Soledad Miranda as Mrs. Johnson, dressing casual for a visit to her husband’s lab.

Severin Films has restored the rare, uncut version of She Killed in Ecstasy along with its companion film, Vampyros Lesbos, and both are visually ravishing in high definition. Although the lesser of the two films, She Killed has received a limited edition deluxe treatment including an interview with the late Franco and a handful of Franco and Miranda experts, along with a soundtrack CD by Hübler and Schwab (spanning the films Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy, and The Devil Came from Akasava). Spanish actress Soledad Miranda, still dubbed in German for another German production, is the real raison d’être. She’s given more to do here, playing the grieving wife of Williams’ Dr. Johnson, who kills himself after being disbarred for his experiments with fetuses, “alter[ing] the human organism with the aid of hormones.” Keeping her husband’s corpse tucked in bed, Miranda sets out to seduce and murder members of the Medical Council, including a doctor played by Franco. She not only slits the throat of her first victim (Howard Vernon, The Diabolical Dr. Z), but castrates him. Those next on her hit list speculate that Dr. Johnson is committing the crimes, knowing nothing of his wife, and leaving themselves easy prey for her sexual advances. And because this is a 70’s exploitation film, Franco is sure to give the sexual pairings some variety: one man prefers to be dominated; one of Miranda’s victims is another woman; Franco is simply tied to a chair and tortured to death. If this weren’t enough, Mrs. Johnson even makes love to her husband’s corpse.

Outside Dr. Johnson’s puzzlebox-like coastal home.

It’s all Soledad Miranda’s show really, and the actress, hungry for meatier roles after a 60’s career of simplistic Spanish films produced under the regime of that other Franco, gives it her all. She’s downright feral during the murders, her widescreen-ready eyes going manic; and when she’s stalking her prey or mulling over her schemes, she strides across Spanish beaches in a black dress and a cape of purple crochet. She opens her lips, revealing a mouthful of cigarette smoke. She keeps a knife in her garter. She calls her victims “pigs.” And when her revenge plot has been concluded, she buckles her husband’s corpse into a passenger seat and drives off a cliff – “We will be reunited in death,” she proclaims. Tragically, reality would echo fiction: in August of 1970 Miranda would be fatally injured in a car accident with her husband at the wheel. Wrapping up work on Franco’s The Devil Came from Akasava, she was on her way to meet with the director to sign a contract for more films. Franco was devastated by her death, and in many ways her absence would haunt his films in the years to come. With Severin’s new Blu-Rays of Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy, it’s easier than ever to appreciate her charisma, talent, and unflagging commitment to Franco’s pop art, B-movie fever dreams.

She Killed in Ecstasy

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Around the World in 24 Hours of Film

Posted on May 9, 2015 at 5:28 am by Jeff Kuykendall

ATW logo

Check for the latest updates on my journey at the bottom of this post.

Here’s the idea for Around the World in 24 Hours of Film. Like Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, on this day Saturday May the 9th in the year of our Lord 2015, I will be circumnavigating the globe with cinema as my transportation. The origin for this nonsense is an attempt to do a similar thing on Halloween of last year – a 24-hour marathon of horror films – failing a few hours short of the finish line. Seeing as I have to be up in the wee hours of Sunday morning anyway (for personal reasons), now seems the perfect time to make a second attempt: to find motivation to stay up late enough for the aforementioned personal reasons, and to boast that I achieved a complete 24 hour film marathon which no one asked me to do in the first place.

After discussions with my wife, we worked out a series of rules for this game:

1) I must begin, as did Phileas Fogg, in the United Kingdom (he began his journey in London), marking my start time.

2) I must proceed around the world country by country, returning to the U.K. in 24 hours. For each country I cross, I must watch one film. Boarding a jet to skip over countries is considered cheating. Crossing bodies of water must be done in a reasonable fashion to mimic what theoretically might have been a likely route accessible to Mr. Fogg.

3) Each film must be a production or at least a co-production of that country.

4) Each film must be set in that country.

5) I can’t watch two films from the same decade in a row.

6) I am permitted one short film, as an emergency express ticket.

7) The films must be of the sort that I would review on Midnight Only. (Note: Typically I don’t review films more recent than the 80’s.)

8) Random trainspotting rule: I must make note each time I see a train in a film. (My wife’s rule.)

9) Victory can be declared if my last film is from the U.K. (completing the journey), and I am watching it exactly 24 hours after my journey began. (It doesn’t matter if watching that film extends my marathon by an hour or two.)

10) If I can complete the journey much earlier than 24 hours, I should make the most of it by altering my route to take in more countries.

Even a cursory glimpse at a map will reveal potential challenges, particularly with my requirement of not covering a film made in recent decades. I am subject to the availability of films and whether or not a country has a film industry to support my requirements. In mapping out potential routes, I found it was much like playing the board game Ticket to Ride: certain routes were much more challenging to complete than others. I also have to take into account the length of the film. Watching a three-hour film is a slower means of transport than a 90-minute film, so if the shorter method is available, I should book it. But I realized the game ought to work, and if I can prove it, then others might be able to attempt something similar, or modify the rules to suit them: try this with only horror films, for example, or only documentaries, or science fiction films.

It’s a foolish endeavor, but my pride is on the line, so here I embark.

Black Jack

4:40am

Country: United Kingdom

Film: Black Jack (1979)

Principal Transport: Wagons for a Traveling Fair

Trains Spotted: 0

It’s my first film and ought to be the easiest, and already I run into trouble: I’d been planning Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938), until I glanced at the back of my DVD and realized that it doesn’t take place in the U.K. So instead I am taking Black Jack (1979), Ken Loach’s beautiful, naturalistic film set in 18th century Yorkshire. As charming as the film is, essential to its enjoyment is to watch it with the subtitles turned on – the accents are thick and Loach’s commitment to period realism extends not just to natural lighting but occasionally mumbled lines. Still, with that cared for the film is easy to love. The meandering plot follows Tolly, a young draper’s apprentice taken from his home by a murderer named Black Jack, and Belle, a girl whose recovery from a fever has damaged her mind. Multiple blackmail plots ensue; Black Jack learns there’s more ways to make a living than robbing and killing; and Tolly and Belle grow closer, in a relationship which inspired Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012). My full review is here.

M. Hulot's Holiday

6:30am

Country: France

Film: M. Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

Principal Transport: Jalopy

Trains Spotted: 1

The rules for this game are already proving to be tricky, or perhaps it’s just that it’s early and my mind isn’t exactly sharp right now. (Coffee is now brewing.) I started watching Jacques Tati’s Trafic (1972) – thinking I would hit the highways as I cross France – when I realized I’d be watching two films from the 70’s in a row. Strictly against the rules. So I leaped out and found a different Tati film from an earlier decade, M. Hulot’s Holiday (1953), the quintessential French comedy, and one which opens with Monsieur Hulot’s sputtering jalopy, cars zipping by him. He’s brought to a halt by a dog sleeping in the road, and when he honks his horn, the dog only wags his tail. These are ominous signs for the start of my journey. Sure enough, I am fifty minutes into the film when I realize that I have no toilet paper in the house. None. A costly setback – albeit one unworthy of Tati’s slapstick comedy – I must run to the store. Looking ahead, I intend to journey eastward. Adjacent countries in that direction include Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Originally I was planning a route that would take me through Germany and Poland, but now that M. Hulot has diverted me to the south of France on his holiday, I think I can make a trip through Italy work…

Twitch of the Death Nerve

8:30am

Country: Italy

Film: Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Bay of Blood, 1971)

Principal Transport: A convertible full of doomed teenagers

Trains Spotted: 0

From one waterfront holiday to another. With its bloody killings, Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) charts a direct course from giallo to the slasher subgenre that would emerge late in the decade. (This wasn’t my first choice – or my second, or third – but the others were Italian Gothics that took place in other countries. Damn Rule #4!) Bava takes what is really a standard-issue giallo plot and enlivens it with humorous transitions (a man biting into an octopus being one of the most jarring), bizarre point-of-view shots, and complex staging for each murder (such as in the strangling of a woman in a wheelchair, or a footchase that ends with a woman’s throat being slashed). It’s schlockier and more crassly exploitative than his earlier horror films like Kill, Baby, Kill (1966), but it’s certainly entertaining: a man opens a door and gets a machete to the face; a couple making love are killed in a double impaling. In the opening sequence, a woman is murdered, and then her murderer is murdered: it’s that kind of movie. Former Bond girl Claudine Auger (Thunderball) plays one of the many schemers.

Now that the coffee’s kicked in, I’m thinking ahead. Rather than going south through the Mediterranean for my next film, I’ll be cutting across into Austria.

Hands of Orlac

10:20am

Country: Austria

Film: The Hands of Orlac (1924)

Principal Transport: Train (which crashes into another train)

Trains Spotted: 2 (crashing into each other)

After concert pianist Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) is critically injured in a train accident, his hands are surgically replaced by those of a recently-executed murderer. This is the worst possible circumstance for both Paul and his wife Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina), who has an overtly erotic attachment to his “beautiful, tender hands.” Upon learning the details of the transplant, and witnessing hallucinations of the smiling killer, Paul declares, “These hands will never be allowed to touch another person!” Without the ability to perform (in both senses of the word), he descends into debt and madness, convincing himself that he is possessed by the spirit of the killer – especially once his hateful father is found dead by the same knife that the executed killer used. The Hands of Orlac (1924), from the director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, was remade a decade later by Karl Freund (The Mummy) as the superb Mad Love (1935) with Peter Lorre. The original is more of a straightforward psychological thriller, its horror elements coming in the form of director Robert Wiene’s use of German Expressionist techniques to portray Orlac’s unraveling. But really it’s all Veidt’s show, dominating the film as a more overtly tormented victim of manipulation than the puppet sleepwalker he played in Caligari.

From here I will head toward the Czech Republic – and, because film is a time machine – Czechoslovakia.

Alice

12:25pm

Country: Czechoslovakia

Film: Alice (1988)

Principal Transport: A writing-desk drawer

Trains Spotted: None. Not even a model train, because that wouldn’t involve animal skulls, glass eyes, or sawdust.

But what about those budding young taxidermists? Can’t they have an Alice in Wonderland too? Thankfully we have Czech filmmaker and stop-motion animator Jan Švankmajer to deliver a Wonderland populated by skull-headed animals that bleed sawdust to every brutal injury that Alice dishes out. Here we have flying beds with wings and claws, horse carriages pulled by chickens in red velvet hats, an antique doll that traps Alice inside its body as she stares out through its eye-holes, scuttling cockroaches, a crawling piece of raw meat, and more jars of mysterious preserved things than you can see in a season’s worth of American Horror Story. Alice (1988) provides an interior Wonderland, one contained within four walls of peeling paint, with shelves upon shelves of old and abandoned curiosities, everything musty with neglect. The Caterpillar is a sock decorated with glass eyes and dentures; the White Rabbit has teeth that clack together menacingly. Instead of a rabbit-hole, Alice travels through the drawer of a desk, and as she explores this infinite cabinet of curiosities, she’s almost persuaded to become another stuffed exhibit piece; she even samples a bit of sawdust.

Ilya Muromets

2:25pm

Country: Soviet Union

Film: Ilya Muromets (1956)

Principal Transport: Horseback

Trains Spotted: 0

(Wait, did I just skip the Ukraine? Not exactly. Ilya Muromets was a Soviet film, inclusive of Ukraine, and takes place around Kiev during the time of the Kievan state.)

Ilya Muromets (1956) is another fine slice of Russian folklore from director Aleksandr Ptushko (Ruslan and Ludmila), and, par for the course, features incredible special effects and optical tricks, a seamless blend of location shooting and matte paintings, fine period costumes and grand sets. The title character is a warrior with super strength who rises from his paralytic ennui to defend Kievan Rus from the Mongol horde. He receives his legendary sword from a giant, captures a creature called Nightingale which can blow winds strong enough to bend tree trunks, and battles the three-headed, fire-breathing dragon, Gorynych. Frequently Ilya Muromets plays like a live action Disney animated film – there’s even a scene in which woodland animals help Ilya’s lover work a loom and accompany her as she sings. But it’s also a full-color war epic that was the Soviet Union’s first widescreen film.

Mothra vs Godzilla

4:20pm

Country: Japan

Film: Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)

Principal Transport: Japanese freighter

Trains Spotted: Possibly one stationary train glimpsed in the background of a city landscape (uncertain), but otherwise surprisingly train-free for a Godzilla film. I’m gonna go nuts the next time I see a train – mark my words.

I really wanted to go through China next, but I had a dilemma which brought my journey to a temporary halt. I couldn’t find a suitable Chinese film that wasn’t actually from Hong Kong (which I can’t reach directly from Russia). Reluctantly, I decided to skip China altogether and depart Vladivostok through the Sea of Japan, just in time to encounter a green monster egg floating in the water. Japanese fisherman bring it ashore, initiating a battle for control of the egg with the natives of a nearby island both devastated and transformed by atomic radiation. The natives, including a pair of miniature twin girls, worship Mothra, who sleeps in a cave. They warn that the egg will hatch, releasing larvae that will wreak havoc. When Godzilla emerges from the sea, the monster free-for-all begins. Alas, due to the evacuations and wreckage, my passage across the Pacific to the United States is thwarted, and I’m diverted southward on the only boat available. I’m bound for the Philippines next.

Raw Force

6:40pm

Country: Philippines

Film: Raw Force (1982)

Principal Transport: Cruise Ship

Trains Spotted: 0

If I’m going to be accused of cheating at any point during this trip, this is probably the film to single out. For one thing, Raw Force (1982) is really just an American film shot on the cheap in the Philippines, but since the IMDB credits it as a Philippine co-production, I’m squeaking it past Rule #3. The film also stops short of saying it takes place in the Philippines (really, it seems to be hoping we’ll think it’s Hong Kong without outright saying it), so Rule #4 might be dubious as well. But no one has ever really looked that closely at Raw Force, so let’s give it a pass. This is cheap exploitation, the definition of psychotronic. It’s the sort of film that Dirk Diggler would make with his friends in a misguided attempt to go mainstream. Some cruise ship passengers in the South China Sea are waylaid by thugs and find themselves on Warriors’ Island, home to cannibal monks who create blue-skinned zombies in headbands. Serving them is a German with a Hitler mustache who travels to the mainland to kidnap call girls. The central cast is so thrilled to show off their martial arts skills that you can sense them fighting the urge to smile at the camera after every kick. Although it’s clear the filmmakers weren’t taking this seriously – a sleazy party scene with MAD Magazine-style dialogue attempts a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls quality, and falls far short – what they managed to create was a distillation of every grindhouse movie ever made. (Oh, and the Hitler guy gets eaten by piranhas; I should have mentioned that.)

Monsieur Hulot seems like a very long time ago, huh? AND I COULD REALLY USE SOME TRAINS, IT’S BEEN A WHILE.

Susana

8:30pm

Country: Mexico

Film: Susana (1951)

Principal Transport: Horseback

Trains Spotted: Nothing but Mexican desert.

Departing the Philippines, I’ve finally made the long voyage across the Pacific and docked in Acapulco. From there, I make my way inland to a small village near Mexico City, the setting of Luis Buñuel’s Susana (1951), one of the more offbeat melodramas produced during his Mexican period. If you’re new to Buñuel, it’s probably not the place to start, since in Mexico the famed surrealist tried his hand at mainstream filmmaking while allowing his obsessions and irony to bleed through. On the surface, Susana is a straightforward, albeit wildly sensationalistic portrait of a seductress and her destructive effect on the family that takes her in. But Buñuel opens with Susana in a rat-infested prison during a thunderstorm, pleading for God to set her free: and miraculously the bars come loose, and she crawls out into the mud. A peaceful family sheltered from the storm is confronted with Susana’s face against the window like an apparition in a horror movie. At first she seems like a victim of a tragic upbringing, but it’s not long before she’s shimmying the blouse off her shoulders and strutting amongst the caballeros in the street – and before father and son – bringing doom along with her. In a barn, an egg breaks over her supple legs, and fetishist Buñuel captures the yolk running down them. So Susana can play as a tragedy about the dangers of temptation, as well as a mischievous send-up of moralizing movies, fully on the side of sin. It’s really the latter, giggling like a devil at the hypocrisy of the self-righteous.

Up next: the U.S., and a real chance for trains!

Easy Rider

10:18pm

Country: U.S.

Film: Easy Rider (1969)

Principal Transport: Chopper

Trains Spotted: 1! I’ll take it!

Good lord, I am getting seriously tired, having been up since about 4:30 this morning. I’m drinking coffee, and it’s not helping much. But I’m rolling through America now, kicking off with a drug score in Mexico, cashed at Los Angeles, and now I’m traveling cross country to Louisiana. From there I’ll start the route back to Europe, but in the meantime I have good company with Captain America (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), as well as Jack Nicholson doing a mean Matthew McConaughey impression (prescient!).

Tombs of the Blind Dead

12:00am

Country: Spain

Film: Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)

Principal Transport: Train!

Trains Spotted: 3

I almost chose a Paul Naschy film for my Spanish entry, but you know what? I wanted a damn train – even if it leads to ruins haunted by the Blind Dead. So now I am picking movies just because they have trains in them – it’s come to this. But Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) is still an ideal midnight movie. The first in Amando de Ossorio’s “Blind Dead” series, it establishes the concept with simplicity. A sect of Templar Knights sold their soul to the Devil, and after being executed, their eyes pecked out, they now rise from the grave every night, haunting the ruins of an old town and monastery. They’re blind, but make a sound and they’ll corner you – or chase you down on horseback. I feel the “blind” concept is underutilized in the series, which frequently falls back into the zombie subgenre; but what I really like about this first film is the fairy tale aspect: the railway cuts close to the cursed monastery, and the engineer refuses to stop his train on that stretch of tracks. Early in the film, a young woman jumps free, and stranded in that nightmare realm, finds herself prey to the skeletal Templar Knights. The horrific finale brings the concept full circle, and it’s that simplicity of storytelling which I find appealing – like a tale told by a campfire. Plus, how often do you get to see zombies riding horses? The film even answers the question: What happens if you steal one of their undead horses? (Answer: You still lose.) Demerits for needless padding in the middle of the film, and an even more unnecessary rape scene.

How am I doing so far? Well, I just started Jean Rollin’s Requiem for Vampire and then realized, a few minutes into the opening car chase, that it’s another 70’s film and Rule # blah blah blah. I blearily swapped it out for a different Rollin film from the 80’s. I’m on the home stretch, bearing for England.

Night of the Hunted

1:55am

Country: France

Film: Night of the Hunted (1980)

Principal Transport: Running through the streets madly with no memory of anything, clad only in a nightgown, which is also kind of how I feel right now.

Trains Spotted: 13? The climax takes place in a rail yard (which I completely forgot about, so it took me by surprise). Unfair; I can’t count this quickly at 3:20 in the morning. Not to mention the multiple camera angles and shifting train placements make an accurate count almost impossible. Someone’s messing with me. I am no longer excited about trains.

With my energy flagging, I can’t do much but point you to my prior review of the film. This is a typical Jean Rollin picture in many ways – slow-moving, at intervals exploitative (sex scenes, violence) and lyrical (the finale, which is one-of-a-kind). A mixed bag, but a must for Rollin fans.

Almost….there….

Tower of Evil

3:37am

Country: United Kingdom

Film: Tower of Evil (1972)

Principal Transport: A fishing vessel called the Sea Ghost

Trains Spotted: Zilch

This film is also known as Horror on Snape Island, which is an awesome title and a great Harry Potter tie-in. It’s also the sort of film that would typically air on cable at 3:37 in the morning, so. A group of attractive young people – and Robin Askwith – land on the titular island, explore an abandoned lighthouse, and are subsequently slaughtered, leaving only one survivor who must be hypnotized to recall the fractured events leading up to the killings. Meanwhile, archaeologists and treasure hunters take an interest in Snape Island as the possible burial site of a wealthy Phoenician chieftain. A cast of characters fit for a Scooby Doo episode descend on the island, and are hunted by a killer as they explore the lighthouse and its secret caves below. This is goofy but straight-faced, and pure exploitation from a period in British cinema when sex and violence were prerequisites with the lightened censorship – and it’s about all my brain can handle at this hour to stay cognizant. Includes dialogue like, “You drive me crazy like that. For Christ’s sake, I’m a man!”

So there you have it, Around the World in 24 Hours with Midnight Only. Thanks to those of you who followed along throughout the day and helped tug me across the finish line. If I would do anything differently, it would be to verify that all the films I might need were readily available. It’s become more clear to me than ever that Netflix and Amazon Instant have very limited selection for foreign films, though increasingly we seem to be dependent on online streaming sources for all our movie-watching needs. (It was physical media – my own library – that saved the day more often than not.) But let’s face it; I will not be doing this again anytime soon. I hear birds chirping out the window as I type this. For now and a while, I’m retiring my inner CinePhileas Fogg.

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