Challenge Accepted

I was patrolling the blogosphere when I checked out the newest post on Freddy in Space, a blogger I definitely want to be friends with. Some girl on Twitter created this challenge, and I'm gonna follow in his footsteps and fill it out too! Ten questions at a time, now, this ain't a Tolstoy novel.

My only rule for myself was that I couldn't use the same movie twice, and I mostly managed to avoid using multiple movies from the same franchise. Here we go!

1. Scariest Kid Character: Santi (Junio Valverde)

Horror is full of kids that scare the living bajaysus out of us, but the one that most frequently sticks in my mind is the ghost Santi from Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone. Santi isn't necessarily an evil character - he's the ghost of an orphaned boy who was killed by the caretaker of a Spanish war shelter - but for the first half of the movie, before we learn his intentions, he is a truly terrifying specter. In life, Santi was shot in the head and drowned in a pool, so his ghost is doomed to spend eternity surrounded by a haze of water, blood swirling up out of his wound. It's... unreal. Del Toro's second tier visual effects masterpiece, right behind Backbone's sister film - Pan's Labyrinth.

2. Best Sex Scene Murder: Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971)

A classic is a classic. This is the scene that inspired many a Friday the 13th. Two randy teens sneak into an empty house and get it on in a stranger's bed, only to be speared mid-coitus, forever locked in an embrace of death. Or, you know, boning.

3. Creepiest Dead Body: Creepshow (1982)

After Upson Pratt's apartment is overrun by vermin, leading the villainous businessman to an untimely death, we get a skin-crawling close-up of cockroaches pouring out of his mouth, then bursting out of his skin. I just... I can't. Moving on.

4. A Horror Musical You Enjoy: Evil Dead the Musical

With slapstick comedy, gory zombie mayhem, and peppy musical numbers all rolled into one, Evil Dead The Musical is right up my alley. In fact, I don't think anything in the world is more up my alley than this show. I had the privilege of getting to see this show with some friends of mine in Las Vegas last October, and it was akin to a religious experience (much like when I went to see The Exorcist at the Geffen Playhouse with Cassidy). We sat in the VIP Splatter Zone and got covered in sickly red Kool Aid blood during one of the most fun nights of my life.

5. Funniest Horror Movie Character: Reg Morgan (Damon Herriman)

As the snivelly little brother of the Morgan Organic duo in Australia's 100 Bloody Acres, Damon Herriman creates a character that is simultaneously unwittingly dangerous and uncommonly adorable. Somebody buy me a DVD of this movie.

6. Favorite Woman in the World of Horror: Jamie Lee Curtis

I refuse to believe that anybody out there put any other actress as an answer to this question. Jamie Lee Curtis is the scream queen. The daughter of Psycho's Janet Leigh, she found her first movie role as the virginal Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's Halloween. She made mistakes (don't drop the knife, Jamie!), but she clawed, stabbed, and fought her way through the film and two more sequels. She found success in the horror genre and made her way through Prom Night, Terror Train, The Fog, Halloween II, and Halloween H20, becoming a massive star along the way, both within the genre and without.

7. A Horror You'd Be In: Scream franchise

Ask any of my friends, they'd say the same thing. With my knowledge of horror movie trivia, my keen awareness that my life is a slasher film, and my infinite supply of sarcasm, I'd be a perfect fit for this franchise. I could get in on the next sequel as Randy's counterpart, and I'd definitely live to see Scream 6. No promises beyond that though.

8. Favorite Alien-Related Horror Movie: The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter's film is scary for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which are some utterly grotesque practical effects. A team at an arctic facility discover an alien space ship buried in the ice, and soon realize that they're not alone. A shape-shifting alien creature has taken up with them, masquerading as various members of the crew as it slowly devours them one by one. Who is the Thing? Who isn't the Thing? A classic paranoia thriller that I'm sure is a metaphor for the Cold War or something smart like that.

9. Best Horror TV Series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 - 2003)

Possibly the gayest thing horror has to offer. Buffy is tough, she's spunky, she's fabulous. With a crew of wisecracking friends (God, I'm making this sound terrible), Buffy battles vampires, demons, and even the manifestation of Evil itself. Featuring one of TV's first lesbian couples and a bevy of strong female characters, Joss Whedon launched a new wave on onscreen feminism. Hush, The Body, and Once More With Feeling are three of the best hours television would ever see.

10. A Serial Killer You Hate: Jigsaw

The one subgenre I have absolutely no patience for is torture porn and Saw is responsible for the worst of it.

Word Count: 901
Reviews in This Series
Horror Lover Challenge Part 1 (August 16, 2013)
Horror Lover Challenge Part 2 (August 25, 2013)
Horror Lover Challenge Part 3 (August 28, 2013)

CinemaBeach: Crimson Tide

Twitch of the Death Nerve

Year: 1971

Director: Mario Bava

Cast: Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A girl with her dress half off is running through a wooded area, stealing glances behind her as she is relentlessly pursued by a psycho killer brandishing a large and exceedingly sharp knife. Is this some late Friday the 13th sequel? A forgotten slasher from the makers of Don’t Go In the Woods or Cheerleader Camp? Not by a long shot. It’s Mario Bava’s 1971 Italian masterpiece, Twitch of the Death Nerve.

A horror film by any other name would taste just as bitter, and it’s a good thing too – this movie holds the record for most release titles ever. It is also known as Bay of Blood, or in Italian Reazione a catena (Chain Reaction) and Ecologia del delitto (The Ecology of Crime), and at one point was dubiously repackaged as The Last House on the Left – Part 2 despite coming out a full year before Wes Craven’s grindhouse debut. TotDN is a vicious and beautiful giallo film from the genre’s most prominent director, so it’s no wonder it was constantly rebranded to try and reach as many audiences as possible.

The movie opens as many gialli of the time tended to – with a brutal murder perpetrated by a mysterious black-gloved killer. In this case the victim is the wheelchair-bound Countess Federica (Isa Miranda) who is hung from a noose holding her at a 45 degree angle above the floor, her wheels spinning frantically then slowly clicking to her stop, matching the beat of her heart.

Although it is already a particularly artistically sound and stylish murder sequence, there is nothing to distinguish it from the pack of its cinematic peers. Until. The unsuspecting black-gloved killer is stabbed in the gut by an unseen assailant as the score soars and the movie proper begins. Not since Janet Leigh’s untimely death in the first act of Psycho had the audience’s expectations for a film been so wildly subverted. The black-gloved killer, a staple of the genre, was dead. Everybody (and there are quite a few bodies on hand here) is a suspect.

The countess’ estate is now up for grabs, and soon her beautiful bayside property is swarmed with greedy friends and relatives. This film is credited for many aspects of the 80′s slasher movement, among them the idea of “the higher the body count, the better,” and the sheer mass of characters in this film is a credit to that theory. In the main cast alone we have the countess’ daughter and her husband, a crooked lawyer and his mistress, a bug collector and his wife who live on the property, and a local fisherman (who is unforgettably introduced in medias biting the head off an octopus). Not to mention the four teenagers who break into a house by the bay for some good old-fashioned party time.

The DNA of later films like Friday the 13th (and especially its sequel) is heavily apparent, especially in the teen scenes. A girl goes skinny dipping alone in the bay. The boys are killed immediately while the girls last longer, being stalked and ultimately killed. Two death scenes are directly lifted by the F13 franchise, namely an axe to the face, and a couple who gets shish kebabed mid-coitus. Also one of the suspects, the sadistic bug collector is vehemently anti-sex.

It’s no question that this film is an early ancestor of everything I hold dear, but it is miles above its progeny. Twitch of the Death Nerve is ethereally beautiful, starting with the exquisitely rendered death scenes. It is very clear that Bava wanted his film to be memorable not only for its brutality but for its artistry. Shocking, vicious, vibrantly colorful, and well-composed, the deaths last much longer in the memory than any of the machinations of the plot. This is also a benefit because the film suffers from the characteristically perplexing storylines of Italian cinema at the time, trading narrative coherence for sensory bombardment.However, blood and guts aren’t the only thing Bava does right visually. The film is full of overwhelmingly beautiful nature shots as we explore the entirety of the bayside property, and there were editing cuts so phenomenal that I gasped the first time I saw them.

Twitch of the Death Nerve is a splatter film with unnecessary nudity, paper-thin characters, and an incomprehensible plot. And Twitch of the Death Nerve is art. There is no horror film (and no film in general, even) that I would more readily bestow that title to.

TL;DR: Twitch of the Death Nerve is the grandaddy of all slasher films. It is bloody, brutal, and ethereally beautiful.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This DVD? If you can find it for cheap. Good luck. No joke, I spent $50 on a grade-A copy of this movie.

Word Count: 825