Census Bloodbath: The French Dispatch

Year: 1983

Director: Norbert Moutier

Cast: Robert Alaux, Françoise Deniel, Pierre Pattin

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ogroff AKA Mad Mutilator is a strange duck. It's the first 80's slasher entry from France, for one thing. If you can call it a slasher. If you can call it a movie. The thing about Ogroff is that it defies classification. Even though it is abjectly terrible, its pared-down approach seems to appeal to cult cinemaholics looking for a hypnotic (read: drug-fueled) experience. 

It's so pared down, in fact, that none of the characters have names, and are thus impossible to properly credit. My apologies to the alarming number of French people who read this script (presumably printed on a Post-It) and said "yes."

So. There's an axe-wielding cannibalistic killer wandering the forest off a highway in France. Presumably his name is Ogroff (director Norbert Moutier), but the only name that's actually spoken aloud in this movie is Leticia, and it's unclear if that's referring to the young boy that was just sharing the scene with the man speaking it, or the woman waiting by an unrelated car who never interacts with him. In fact, Leticia is one of the only words spoken in the film. More on that later.

Throughout the first act, Ogroff madly mutilates people with no names or character traits. The second act goes a bit Snow White, when a potential victim falls in love with him and they clean up his slovenly hut in the woods. The third act begins when she opens the trapdoor to the basement and a bunch of zombies emerge, triggering a zombie apocalypse that sends undead corpses shambling through the French countryside to wreak havoc.

Behold! The very face of terror!

As you might imagine, the experience of watching Ogroff is certainly a journey. Sure, it's a journey through a vast desert with vultures circling overhead, but there's certainly a lot to see. For the first two acts, I was toying with giving this film a flat out 1/10. It's a punishing slog, the kind of slasher that eschews plot or character in favor of delivering the murders, only the murders here are poorly conceived (they pretty much all deal with various extremities one might chop off with an axe) and terribly executed (most of the kills occur just out of frame so we only see the aftermath, which is much easier to do effects on). When the only draw of your movie is papier-mâché gore splashed with red tempera paint, most of it so poorly shot and edited that it's difficult to parse out what exactly is happening, it's hard to summon any sort of interest.

The movie at this point was playing out like Blödaren but with less interesting characters, which I literally didn't think was humanly possible. However, once the Z-grade slasher wanes and the Z-grade zombie film kicks into high gear, Ogroff at least has the good sense to become a weird bad movie, which I'll take over a mediocre movie any day. It slaps us across the face with rapid-fire images and ideas that are sort of aggressively madcap.

Oh yeah, there's also a Psycho homage, because we were apparently still stuck on that in 1983.

Ogroff wears its influences on its sleeve. Ogroff himself is clearly modeled on Leatherface (check his penchant for bone art and unearthly squealing) with a dash of Italian cannibal cinema. But, inexplicably, the filmmaker whose work Norbert Moutier seems to be pulling from the most is one Charles Chaplin. Ogroff is actually not dissimilar to Modern Times, as loathe as I am to say that. Most of the action is presented in a deliberate exaggerated pantomime, with only about seven lines of actual dialogue scattered throughout the entire thing.  

None of it is effective, certainly, but there are enough haphazard impulses flying out of the screen at any given moment that they at least make one curious about what the hell was going through these filmmakers' heads as they lovingly constructed Ogroff. I would trade all of this vague interest for never having seen Ogroff in the first place, but at least it's something.

Though I have nothing genuinely nice to say about Ogroff, I suppose I shall end as positively as I can get. Moutier has a penchant for showing the POV of victims as blood is dripped directly on the camera lens, which is kind of fun. And this is certainly the first movie I've ever seen where a living person has eaten the guts of a zombie, so that's at least unique. Yay?

Killer: Ogroff and then zombies

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: There's an excellent "axe in the face" gag that rises above the rest.

Sign of the Times: Well, this movie wouldn't have any sort of cult if it was made today.

Scariest Moment: A zombie hand reaches through the wall to grab the girl, in a scene so oddly similar to a moment from Day of the Dead two years later that it makes you wonder if George Romero happened across this movie in a dusty basement one day.

Weirdest Moment: Ogroff places the axe between his legs and masturbates it.

Champion Dialogue: "Walking does you good... What a stupid bitch!"

Body Count: 12; not including a couple dozen zombies who are variously shot, dismembered, impaled, etc.

1. Kid is axed in the chest.
2. Man #1 is decapitated.
3. Chess Guy #1 is axed in the face.
4. Chess Guy #2 is axed in the gut.
5. Chess Girl has her hand cut off... to death!
6. Pole Woman is hacked to pieces.
7. Trunk Lady is axed.
8. Man #2 is hanged, stabbed, shot, shot again, and has his head dragged off by a car, which is then smashed with a rock.
9. Chainsaw Guy is dismembered with his own saw.
10. Mushroom Lady is stabbed through the chest.
11. Ogroff is axed in the back by zombies.
12. Ogroff's Girlfriend is indistinctly killed by zombies and also by a priest who is either a vampire or a werewolf, depending on who you ask (I vote werewolf).

TL;DR: Ogroff is pure trash, but it's weird trash at least.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1026

Just Deserts

Year: 2018
Director: Coralie Fargeat
Cast: Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe
Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

The rape-revenge subgenre of horror is not a fun one. Usually the films are nasty bits of work like I Spit on Your Grave and The Last House on the Left that belong to one of two camps. The first are the kind that use violence as a catharsis to a horrifying act, and the second, much scuzzier, ask the audience to delight in both the rape and the revenge. The point is, whether they have good intentions or bad (very very bad), they're usually borderline unwatchable, and always directed by men.

Not so with Revenge, the debut feature of French director Coralie Fargeat. Fargeat, in addition to being a bright new talent, also happens to be a woman, and that has made all the difference. Switching the perspective of this well-worn and dubious genre makes Revenge a vital and necessary film even if it turned out to be terrible, but the icing on the cake is that it's absolutely not. Let's dive in, because I can't wait.

Pictured: Me, demanding that you rent Revenge today.

Like all rape-revenge movies, Revenge has a very simple plot. Jen (Matilda Lutz) is the American mistress of megarich stud/lapsed family man Richard (Kevin Janssens). They're having a dirty weekend at his Moroccan desert bachelor pad when his buddies Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède) show up a day early for a planned hunting trip. Following a night of debauchery, Stan attempts to coerce Jen into sex, then rapes her (thankfully offscreen, though no less harrowing). Instead of helping her out, Richard pushes Jen off a cliff and leaves her for dead so she can't tattle. Understandably, she wants revenge, and thus begins a cat and mouse chase as the hunters realize this week they have a different kind of game; and this time the game is fighting back...

Well, maybe after a few repairs.

If you know anything about modern French horror cinema, you know that they do not skimp on the gore. While Revenge carves its own space out between the French Extremist movement and whatever new path Fargeat is taking international cinema on, it stills provides plenty of that red red krovvy, to the point that those with weak stomachs should probably grab a Pepto-Bismol along with their popcorn.

There's enough blood in this movie to keep the Red Cross fully stocked for a month, and certain moments will even make hardened gorehounds' skin crawl. But it never quite crosses past that line from being fun to harrowingly bleak, like Inside does with wicked glee. Mind you, there is one stomach-churning sequence with a foot that feels completely gratuitous, but it leads to one of the best gore gags in the movie later on, so I ain't complaining there. For the most part it's never so brutal that you want to turn it off and forget it ever existed; it's just an energizing display of effects that fuel the action to even further heights.

Also taking off Kevin Janssens' shirt in any situation is always a good thing.

So yes, the gore is great, but with such a pared-down plot, Revenge needs just a touch more to feel like a complete cinematic experience. Luckily, Fargeat knows exactly what she's doing, injecting pure style into every frame of the film. The One Perfect Shot Twitter account probably crashed when trying to pick one for this movie (as a matter of fact, they picked three), because almost every frame is a painting, delicately using light and color to give its characters and the beautiful Moroccan desert every ounce of glamor it's possible to bestow.

Down to even editing and shot choice, nearly every aesthetic detail in Revenge is perfect. It fuels the horror when it needs to, especially in the case of its many extreme close-ups (I'm not kidding when I say you'll be absolutely terrified by a shot of an ant, and not in the way you might expect), but it also provides the fun. Revenge has a lot of dark content, but it presents it all with such elegance and swagger that you can't help but be swept up in Jen's journey and feel for her every step of the way.

The really interesting thing about the glamorous aspects of Revenge though, is the fact that, while it does objectify Jen in the first act, the way it does this is something I've never seen before in quite the same way. Fargeat alternates between extreme close-ups of Lutz's body and her face, in such a way to remind people that she has an identity and isn't just an ass. But not just that, the shots of her body are edited in such a way that they feel like a thing completely separate from Jen. They are alien pieces of flesh, used by others, but not truly belonging to her. In fact, the only time the camera swoops across her entire body as a whole is when she first begins to gain the upper hand and sets out to exact her revenge. Then and only then does the camera recognize her beauty and her totality. It's stunning, subtle work that deserves immediate and permanent recognition.

Plus, it's just freaking gorgeous, and we need more of that in these hard times.

Oh, also the accent windows in the production design are genius too.

Revenge is an extremely pure exercise in stylish horror, and I had a bloody good time watching it. It electrifies you from frame one, and while I wish in my heart of hearts that it went even more bonkers in the second act than the slightly-grounded-in-reality chase we get, it does everything it sets out to do with gusto and aplomb. Revenge is a startlingly good debut the likes of which I haven't seen since at least The Babadook, and I'm equally excited to see what Fargeat gives us next, in whatever genre she chooses to explore.

TL;DR: Revenge is a beautifully stylish film that improves the rape-revenge genre with a new perspective.
Rating: 9/10
Word Count: 1027

Labor Pains

Year: 2007

Director: Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury

Cast: Alysson Paradis, Béatrice Dalle, François-Régis Marchasson

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Because Sergio is awesome, he knew that a French horror film would be a great Christmas gift for Yours Truly, but he had no idea how serendipitous the decision to toss Inside into the package was. You see, the movie is set on Christmas Eve! What a world. So please, sit down, and enjoy my first horror-tinged offering for the holiday season.

Inside (aka À l'intérieur) is a late example of the French Extremism genre, a group of turn-of-the-century films that operate on the foundation of large scale gore and body trauma. However, like its sister films Martyrs and Haute tension, Inside is not without a solid emotional core and has high-caliber filmmaking at its disposal. It's like ever since the New Wave in the 1960's, France's filmmakers mutually decided that they should be better than everybody else at anything they ever did from then on.

Scissors = France. Wall = Hollywood.

It's true that the story and characters are shallow in relation to the deep pool of gore present in the film. It's true that the overlarge cast of players on hand to provide said gore trip up the pacing and believability, especially in the second act. It's true that the film opens on its worst moment - an off-putting CGI approximation of a fetus in a womb. But Inside is crafted with such skill that the flaws don't even register when it takes you on its thrill ride.

Inside is a film about - you guessed it - the insides of things. Its lead character, Sarah (Alysson Paradis), is nine months pregnant and many moments are viewed from her baby's perspective. Inside her womb. Her husband died in a car crash and she is struggling to suppress her grief. Inside her mind. When trouble is a foot, she locks herself away. Inside her bathroom. And when a mysterious woman (Béatrice Dalle) appears the night before the baby is due, she seems dead set on making sure that Sarah's insides become her outsides.

The plot is simple. Sarah wants to survive. The woman that has slipped into her home uninvited wants to stab the crap out of her and scoop out that baby if she can. Family members, coworkers, and policemen may come and go (mostly violently) from the house, but nothing will stop her from pursuing her bloodthirsty quest.

She also moonlights as an interior decorator.

One of the most important elements in Inside is its strong female presence. We can hem and we can haw about the societal construction of gender and that our biological sex doesn't define us. This is all valid and this is all true. But the fact remains that childbirth is the sole domain of the biologically female, and that intimate, inimitable blood link between a mother and her child is the taut rope that the rest of the film hangs on. Both protagonist and antagonist are connected with this link in one way or another and are prepared to fight for it by the skin of their teeth.

As their game of cat-and-mouse continues throughout the film, the fountain of blood and grue satisfies the gorehounds in the audience (and if you're not one, beware) but it also forges a vast web of powerful symbolism. Also it's frickin' awesome, but I'm pretending to be professional over here. There's waterfalls of blood in this film, coming from just about every implement and direction the comfortably macabre mind can imagine. There's probably more blood in Inside than is contained in the bodies of every person in France combined.

The gore is exquisitely crafted, the cinematography is dusky and pristine, and the score shifts effortlessly from lush, swelling romanticism to staccato aural assaults. The middle third has a tad too many characters shuffling in and out like a grim-faced Noises Off, and the characters exhibit universally lousy decision-making, but it's all in service of an exuberant non-stop thrill ride that frightens just as well as it shocks and titillates.

Some might say this hideout is like a womb of her own. Others might push that person down on the playground.

The film is fraught with tension and the interplay between the taut editing and moody cinematography dredge out every chill from your spine. But the overwhelming sense one gets from the film is just how woefully pretty it is. Even a shot of glass cracking is imbued with an otherworldly sheen that aesthetically pleases as much as it psychologically torments. 

And the costume design! Oh, the costume design! The madwoman is cloaked in a billowing black dress that calls to mind the Angel of Death, swooping and flowing with her every movement and counterbalancing her bold brutality with delicate, airy movement. It's the single most perfectly simple costume I've ever seen in a feature film.

And I've gone off on the dress again. Perhaps it's time to wrap this up. Inside is one of those indelibly French films that plucks at the audience's strings like a finely tuned harp. It's fresh, fearless, gleefully grim, and absolutely a blast. It's creepy, gooey, gorgeous, and just about everything that makes a horror fan squeal.

The tone is a bit bleak, the characters are a bit shallow, and the CGI fetus checks in from time to time to remind everyone exactly how weird it looks, but overall, Inside is an unforgettable piece of bloody good cinema with a ropy, dynamic pace and expertly crafted mayhem.

TL;DR: Inside is a little shallow, but provides a tense, dynamic, waterfall of gory good fun.

Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 945