Vampyr

23 May 2022 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , ,

Before I start, a quick update and apology. I haven’t been particularly active on this blog for the last few weeks because we’ve been in full election mode here in Australia. I’m extremely pleased to say the very conservative previous office holders have been ousted (mostly by very angry women) and replaced by a more moderate bunch who (I sincerely hope) will make some real changes to improve the lot of ordinary Australians, address our very real concerns around climate change and start to bring funding back to the sorely depleted arts sector.

Consequently, I’ve a veritable backlog of movies to review and hopefully, I’ll get through it soon ❤️

Vampyr (1932)

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Screenplay by Christian Hul and Carl Theodor Dreyer (loosely based on stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu).

Released a decade after F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), this vampire tale was Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s follow up to the incredible The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). It was also Dreyer’s first talking picture, though it still relied heavily on title cards and only used minimal dialogue. This was primarily because of the multinational cast and crew but I think this works very much in the film’s favour, especially compared to the extended theatrical silences in Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931).

Very loosely based on Le Fanu’s book of five stories, “In a Glass Darkly”, the film concerns Allan Grey, an aimless young man with a strong interest in the occult, who wanders into a village where a vampire has several people in its thrall – including the beautiful daughter of the local lord. What ensues is like a surreal nightmare, enhanced by the soft focus filming of Rudolph Maté. Throughout, the framing is quite superb but it particularly stands out in scenes with Léone, the lord’s gravely ill daughter (played beautifully by the tragic Sybille Schmitz) and Allan’s dream of his own burial.

By modern standards, Vampyr isn’t really horrifying but certainly full of atmosphere. Nevertheless, this 90 year old film still holds up, managing to simultaneously entertain and make me feel uncomfortable, like a dream I can’t quite wake from.

Vampyr is available to watch on YouTube and with a run time of merely 74 minutes, well worth the time investment.

Blood of Dracula’s Castle

15 Apr 2022 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

Blood of Dracula’s Castle 1969

Directed by Al Adamson. Written by Rex Carlton.

One of my favourite film podcasts, The Evolution of Horror is about to embark on their 8th season in coming weeks, and this time they’re focusing on vampires. As a lifelong fan of this subgenre, it got me thinking about vampire films I HAVEN’T seen. And that led me to Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969) and what a wild ride it was!

Directed by Al Adamson, this definitely falls into the “so bad, it’s almost good” category, making it one of his better efforts. Adamson was a classic director of exploitation films, mostly pitched at the drive-in cinema market, which was hugely popular in the US and Australia in the 60s and 70s. As a child of that era, I was genuinely surprised I hadn’t seen this one before. It did have something of a difficult start, being filmed in 1966 and not released until 1969 and there’s an extended version, released separately as Dracula’s Castle.

The story (quite a convoluted beast) finds Dracula and his wife (played with delicious wit by veterans Alexander D’Arcy and Paula Raymond) living the high life under the alias Count and Countess Townsend in a Gothic castle, complete with an inarticulate beast-like servant, gruff and ghoulish butler (played with much tongue-in-cheek by the great John Carradine) and a dungeon inhabited by chained young women, whose blood is slowly drained to sustain the vampires. And it’s all set in the wilds of… California!

But the Count and Countess are only tenants, and the property is inherited by a hip young photographer and his bikini-model fiance who not only want a tour of the property but want to move in! There’s also a more interesting sub-plot involving a psychopathic killer (and friend of the Count & Countess) which gets kind of left behind.

Despite its multitude of flaws, I really quite enjoyed this very camp romp, probably the only things missing were Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Blood of Dracula’s Castle is a fun excursion into 60s Californian Gothic – but certainly no masterpiece! It’s currently available to stream for free on Tubi in Australia though the resolution is sadly, quite poor.

Last Night in Soho

21 Nov 2021 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Last Night in Soho (2021)
Directed by Edgar Wright. Screenplay by Krysty Wilson-Cairns & Edgar Wright.

I’m going to fess up at the start that I’m a big fan of Edgar Wright’s work all the way back to Spaced (1999-2001). While I really like Scott Pilgrim Versus the World (2010), Hot Fuzz (2007) and Shaun of the Dead (2004) from the Cornetto Trilogy remain two of my mainstay “comfort” films and Baby Driver (2017) is also a firm favourite. I think World’s End (2013) remains the only disappointment for me, but I’m well overdue to rewatch it!

A lot of people don’t like his “smash cut” style using very quick image clips, accompanied by foley sound &/or music, finding it annoying or distracting. Admittedly, it does take a certain amount of concentration, but in many ways it overtook the classical montage as an effective means of enhancing story and moving the audience down particular narrative pathways without taking loads of in-film time.

In Last Night in Soho however, I think Wright and his team have moved beyond the smash cut into something far more complicated and cinematic. There’s a film technique called the Texas (or Cowboy) Switch, (another trick Wright has used in previous films) and in first act this is pushed to the limit with quite astonishing results. The sound and visual design are stunning throughout but scenes in the first act are aurally and visually superb, beautifully choreographed, performed and shot.

The cast are uniformly excellent, and include 60s icons Rita Tushingham, Terrence Stamp and the late Diana Rigg in her last film role. Younger talent include Anya Taylor-Joy as the drop-dead gorgeous Sandie, Matt Smith as the deliciously lecherous Jack and Michael Ajao as John, but for me it’s Thomasin McKenzie who provides the glue that holds the film together. Her portrayal of fashion design student Ellie is heartbreakingly vulnerable and feisty in equal measure.

As with most of my reviews, I’m not going to give any spoilers but Last Night in Soho explores some quite serious horror themes, undiluted by humour as in Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz but (as usual in Wright’s films) underpinned by a killer soundtrack. It is by no means a perfect film (I found the second act struggled to maintain momentum) but this is the work of a mature filmmaker. Here, Wright has moved way beyond the quirky smash cut and quick one-liner and made a really interesting horror movie, tinged with pathos and mystery.

Like all of Wright’s films, it’s cleverly made, has a great script and pays homage to both London and the 1960s – and it’s well worth seeing!

Beyond the Door

28 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , ,

Well, it’s October and in the run-up to Halloween I’ve been watching a lot of horror movies, albeit fairly obscure titles. I love cheesy horror films and it’s been a welcome distraction from the near constant pain in my hands and fingers. So the next few blog posts will all be reviews of some of the best worst movies I’ve been watching lately.

Beyond the Door Poster

Beyond the Door (1974)

Directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto Piazzoli.

This Italian/US made supernatural chiller leans heavily on Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973). So much so, the original cut was subject to a lawsuit from Warner Bros against the producers for copyright violation, which was settled some years later.

It stars Richard Johnson, Gabriele Lavia and most notably, Juliet Mills who was looking for more adult, dramatic roles to take her away from the Mary Poppins image cultivated by her popular starring role in Nanny and the Professor (1970-71). Mills plays Jessica, wife of Lavia’s Robert and mother to two particularly obnoxious children. Johnson plays Dimitri, Jessica’s former lover who sold his soul to the Devil in order to survive an otherwise fatal car crash. Jessica finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, and of course, from here all kinds of shenanigans ensue.

The look and feel of this film is really very good, with exteriors shot in southern California and interiors in Rome. Make-up artist Otello Sisi does an excellent job, as do special effects artists Donn Davison and Wally Gentleman, who famously made the spaceship models for Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Unfortunately, the writing really lets this down, and the actors do the best they can with a story that doesn’t really have that much to say and a script that hasn’t aged well.

Worth watching and quite a lot of fun- but not a patch on the films that influenced it. Beyond the Door is available to watch on YouTube via the excellent channel New Castle After Dark.

The Lighthouse

13 Feb 2020 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse (2019)

The Lighthouse (2019)

Written by Robert & Max Eggars. Directed by Robert Eggars.

As anyone who comes here regularly would know, I watch a lot of movies. Sometimes they are perfectly fine while up on the screen but don’t stay with me, and within hours I need to refer to notes made in the cinema to jog my memory into writing a review. Not so with Robert Eggars’ latest film – I found it truly memorable and cannot stop thinking about it!

The Lighthouse is many things, which makes it difficult to adequately describe without giving away massive plot spoilers – which I have no intention of doing. Suffice it to say, I found this seemingly simple story of two men alone in a lighthouse a riveting cinematic experience that becomes increasingly complex and deep. From the opening scene, this is a film that demands your full attention and becomes (at times) uncomfortably intense.

Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star in this two-hander and both are excellent. I’ve come to expect this of Dafoe, who never disappoints, but Pattinson is extraordinary here and has become an actor of depth and serious value. There is surprisingly little dialogue between them but that is delivered with intent and tension. For a relatively quiet film, it’s very loud, with superb diagetic sound and a score that weaves through this isolated and desolate world.

For film nerds (like me), the movie was shot on 35 mm black and white film stock, using vintage Baltar lenses, which required much stronger lighting for the interior scenes, creating deeper contrasts and also forcing the almost square 1.19:1 (or Movietone) aspect ratio. This makes so much of the film ultra close up and at times, downright claustrophobic despite being so isolated. There are many seemingly small things like this that combine together to make this film a cinephile’s delight – the haunting sound design, the very specific dialects used by the actors, the atmospheric score by Mark Korven, the brilliant cinematography by Jarin Blaschke, and the superb editing by Louise Ford. All combine together to make a truly memorable cinematic experience.

Narratively, the story was drawn initially from an unfinished work by Edgar Allen Poe and a real-life incident from an early 19th century Welsh lighthouse. But at its heart, I think this has more in common with Greek tragedy – particularly Proteus, the prophetic sea god and Prometheus, the trickster who stole fire from the gods and was punished so horribly. Set in the late 19th century, this is a period piece that doesn’t exclude modern viewers. There are strong themes of the performative nature of work and masculinity, which are relatable audience entry points and become so very obvious as the layers of social norms are stripped away from the characters and their true natures revealed. And above all, the lighthouse – which almost becomes a character itself, in all its intense and claustrophobic isolation.

At times, The Lighthouse is a hard watch and if you’re not a fan of being challenged by a piece of cinema, I cannot recommend it to you. However, if you like horror that is cerebral as well as visceral, you’ve come to the right place. If there is a fault, it is a little over-long with a running time of 109 minutes, but I wonder now if that was intentional. Like Eggars’ previous feature, The Witch (2015) there are questions posed that are never answered. The existential horror at the core of this drama is arguably something that exists in all of us and here, Robert Eggars in concert with his excellent cast and crew, gradually peel away the artifice of societal expectations to reveal that dark heart.

The Lighthouse is currently in (relatively) wide release across Australia and I’d like to thank Monster Fest for the opportunity to see and review it.

Suspiria (1977) & Suspiria (2018)

08 Aug 2019 1 Comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Movie Review, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

I have to confess, the original Suspiria (1977) has always been one of my favourite horror films and Dario Argento a director I generally enjoy, despite the unevenness of his oeuvre. So when the remake was announced, I was a little concerned that anyone should mess with one of the movies that ushered me into adulthood.

On the plus side, Luca Guadagnino has made some good films, such as The Protagonists (1999) and Call Me by Your Name (2017). He’s a regular collaborator with Tilda Swinton and I’d read enough to know that he wasn’t going to try to do a shot-for-shot remake. I decided finally to watch both in the same day, starting with the original.

I can’t remember where I saw Suspiria when it finally arrived in Australia – it might have been at a film festival – but I know it was in a cinema. I do remember being awed by both its astonishingly bright colour palette and the really wonderful score by prog-rock band, Goblin. Jessica Harper stars as the virginal Suzy Bannion, who arrives as the new American student at a dance academy in Freiburg, all to the background of the Munich hostage crisis. There was also an absence of men, which was unusual for most horror films of the era, let alone giallo – a traditional domain of the leering, usually psychotic, sex-crazed maniac! Instead, male characters are sidelined and the screen is dominated by women of all ages, body types and dispositions ranging from the ridiculously innocent to the truly evil. Harper is sublime as the ingénue whose dewy eyed innocence is so lovingly captured in Argento’s frame.

While many aspects of this film haven’t aged particularly well (even back in the day it could be read as camp) it has an undeniable atmosphere, a creepiness that builds throughout to a climax that is ridiculous, gory and oddly satisfying all at once. Every time I’ve watched this over the years, I always think of it as a drug-fuelled, psychedelic Alice in Wonderland horror for the late 1970s.

Guadagnino’s Suspiria is unsurprisingly, a completely different beast. To start with, the academy has been transferred to Berlin, though in the same time period. Interiors are muted and drab and exteriors are predominantly in rain or snow, which gives a bleak coldness to the film. There are sub-plots involving Baader-Meinhof terrorism and Germany coming to terms with its Nazi history which I found muddied the central theme of the dance academy as a home for an ancient coven.

Dakota Johnson takes the central role of Susie and while I like her as an actress, I found it difficult to connect with her in the role of the innocent ingénue (Mia Goth as Sara seemed to fit this role with far more ease and believability). Nevertheless, there is a sincerity that Johnson brings to Susie, applying herself to the bizarre tasks required for the sake of the dance. And dance is a major theme in this version.

Where Argento used it only as a mechanism to provide a house full of women, Guadagnino milks it relentlessly, particularly as a means of controlling and manipulating the bodies and minds of the young dancers. Head of the academy, Madame Blanc is played with equal parts relish and menace by the always wonderful Tilda Swinton. It also made me realise she is undoubtedly one of the most graceful women on the planet and it’s worth watching just for her. She also plays a prominent male role (albeit under a lot of make-up) which works up to a point.

Thom Yorke provides a good musical score as expected and Jessica Harper makes a welcome appearance in a small role, but where this film fell down for me was in attempting to make something much deeper than the material allowed.

Throughout, I felt Guadagnino was trying to dig down deep into the psychological underpinnings of horror but in an altogether far too knowing manner. The result was for me, a ham-fisted and overly long mess – and turning what should have been an emotional and (literally) gut-wrenching ending into a pastiche of 21st Century nihilist cinema with added red.

Worth watching if only for Swinton and it has some good moments – but for me, ultimately a disappointment.

Suspiria (1977) is available to watch in Australia on Tubi and Suspiria (2018) is currently on Amazon Prime