Census Bloodbath: I Haven't The Foggiest

Note: This movie was only available to me in unsubtitled Spanish. While I'm not half bad at Spanish, I'm full bad when it is rapidly spoken by people from Spain, so take my review with a grain of salt. Also, the copy doesn't come with proper credits, making it hard to determine who played who.

Year:
1982
Director:
Silvio F. Balbuena
Cast:
Terpy Ibir, Carla Celis, Antonio Mayans
Run Time:
1 hour 19 minutes

Plot: Written in the Fog (aka Escrito en la niebla) kicks off with a literal bang when young boy Victor shoots his mother's lover, Tomás, with a shotgun and pins the crime on her. Many years later, the adult Victor (Terpy Ibir, who also wrote the movie) is running the restaurant Bar Julia. As his guilt over his crime bubbles over, he monologues nonstop to his now catatonic mother while she stares into space in her wheelchair. 

For some reason, various men bring women to the bar to get them jobs. Victor kidnaps one of them and hides her in his basement. He is then driven to murder anybody who tries to investigate this, as well as anybody who tries to flirt with him. Dude's got problems.

Analysis: You know what other slasher movie came out of Spain in 1982? Goddamn Pieces. It's probably not fair of me to compare Written in the Fog with one of the all-time trashterpieces of slasher cinema, but it hurts knowing what we could have had here if anybody put their mind to it.

Written in the Fog is no Pieces. It is unfortunately more in the Atrapados en el miedo camp, though very few films could be worse than that mess, thankfully. What we get here is about an hour of tedium where Victor goes about the business of managing a restaurant while hiding a woman in the basement. For a little bit of variety, in between repetitive scenes of him trying and failing to feed his captive, they throw in plenty of repetitive scenes of him ranting to his mother.

Other than the vague Psycho stink that hangs in the air, there's nothing remotely slashery about this part of the movie. I think more people die than we actually see die onscreen (it would be helpful to have been able to understand the dialogue, yes), but if they're dying offscreen, why even bother making it a slasher movie?

Once it finally remembers what it's here to do, though, Written in the Fog perks up a bit. The first body count kill (which takes place about 25 minutes before the "Fin" title card) is a shocking burst of violence, and each of the kills that follow swiftly on its heels feel the same way. And while the gore effects aren't top notch, there's plenty of dripping blood to go around.

Hell, they even throw in a non-kill gore moment for good measure, in a scene where Victor attacks a goofy but perceptive detective (I took to calling him Puáro) by bonking him on the head with a sharp hoe. It's all very lively and reasonably dynamic in a way that the rest of this movie isn't. It's not enough for me to recommend Written in the Fog - not nearly enough - but at least it has redeeming qualities. Random regional slashers don't always even have the courtesy to pack a few of those in. (Here's looking at you, Blood Lake.)

Killer: Victor

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: The Inspector being beaten around the head with a poker is startlingly savage and quite bloody.

Sign of the Times: We see Victor lugging around a beautiful old-fashioned crate of 1980s Pepsi bottles.

Scariest Moment: That opening sequence with Victor being an evil little kid is pretty startling.

Weirdest Moment: Late in the game, it is revealed that Victor has an open-top fishbowl shaped like a giant wine glass.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 5; not including the short-haired waitress, who we don't see die, but who vanishes and whose offscreen death I'm sure must be mentioned in dialogue that I missed.

1. Tomás is shot with a shotgun.
2. Blonde Waitress is slashed in the neck.
3. Basement Lady is poisoned (I think?).
4. Inspector has his head beaten with a poker.
5. Dark-Haired Waitress is hit in the head with a rock.

TL;DR: Written in the Fog is mostly boring, but when it puts its energy into actually being a slasher, it's watchable.

Rating: 4/10

Census Bloodbath: I Am In Spain, Both With And Without The S

Note: The copy I was able to find of this Spanish-language movie did have subtitles, but they were extremely literal translations that frequently misunderstood homophones such as "un hombre" and "un nombre," so they were practically useless. I do know enough Spanish to get by, but Mexican Spanish, not Spain Spanish. So take my review with a grain of salt, if you're curious about this movie. But you really shouldn't be. PS: Check out one of my favorite mistranslations in the "Champion Dialogue" section.

Year:
1985
Director:
Carlos Aured
Cast:
Adriana Vega, Sara Mora, José Luis Alexandre
Run Time:
1 hour 23 minutes

Plot: Atrapados en el miedo (also known by the far inferior English-language title Caught in Fear) follows two couples: the more established (and thus hornier) Antonio (José Luis Alexandre) and Ana (Sara Mora) alongside the newly-set-up José (Joaquín Navarro) and Laura (Adriana Vega), who is Ana's sister. They hang out for the weekend in an isolated manor home that just so happens to be quite close to the psychiatric hospital from which a killer known as el Loco (Luis Canovas) has just escaped.

Analysis: Atrapados en el miedo has absolutely glorious opening credits. And I'm not even trying to damn the movie with faint praise, though admittedly there isn't much more praise coming its way. The credits are meant to evoke dripping blood, I think, but they have this red-brown-black dripping aesthetic that makes them seem more like a lava lamp. Anyway, whatever is going on, the opening is jaunty and lively in a way that had me feeling a certain amount of goodwill toward the movie right away.

Reader, the movie eventually drained every last ounce of said goodwill. I haven't seen director Carlos Aured's Spanish giallo movie Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (aka The House of Psychotic Women) from 11 years earlier, but that enjoys a certain reputation that this movie completely fails to live up to.

I mean, sure, there are a few brutal moments scattered throughout. For instance, the unnamed lesbian who tries to seduce her friend in the opening scene gets her neck snapped for her troubles, and that foley gives a mean crunch. It's hard to deliver an impactful kill when you don't have the budget for gore, but that scene delivers. However, the exploitative angle of the opening scene (this isn't the first Spanish-language movie I've seen to start with some lesbian sex-murders, and it won't be the last) is instantly dropped in favor of spending time with couples who love talking about sex way more than actually doing it.

If the filmmakers intended on deriving terror from evoking the feeling of being a fifth wheel on a vacation with two of the most annoying couples in the world, then they accomplished their goal, one hundred percent. And we don't even get to see them die! Spoiler alert, I guess. That's right, not a single one of the four main characters I listed in the plot synopsis is dead by the end of the movie. We are forced to watch them laboriously make grocery lists, go to and from town, and trade boring stories, and they don't even have the decency to perish for our amusement!

The killer (whose face is kept unseen until one late scene where it just randomly isn't) kinda just wanders around the outside of the house, dicking around. He frightens the gals once or twice, and he has a habit of flexing his thumbs like he's just itching to strangle, which is a unique little gimmick. But he has no backstory, no personality, and really no M.O. because he only kills a few people on the outskirts of the narrative. Forget attempted murder, this whole movie is an attempted slasher.

There's just enough going on in the movie that it almost feels legit for the first act and a half, but eventually it becomes so tedious that when one of the characters goes into a fugue state out of fear, I was terribly envious of her ability to dissociate.

Killer: El Loco (Luis Canovas)

Final Girl: Laura (Adriana Vega) feat. everyone else

Best Kill: The killer is eventually defeated by being run over with the car. And run over again. And again. They're just doing donuts to repeatedly smush the guy. It's excellent.

Sign of the Times: I mean, it's not like this brand isn't still around, but something about the sign in the background telling us to "Beba Fanta" (aka "drink Fanta") really felt like a perfectly 1980's sight to behold.

Scariest Moment: The shadow of el Loco's head rises up the stairs toward where Laura and Ana are standing.

Weirdest Moment: There's a cuckoo clock jump scare.

Champion Dialogue: “The sailboat is completely virgin virgin."

Body Count: 4

1. Mónica is choked with a tree branch.
2. Lesbian has her neck snapped.
3. La Sobrina Marcela is strangled.
4. El Loco is done donuts upon.

TL;DR: Atrapados en el miedo isn't exactly as bad as a slasher can get, but it makes an absolute hash of the format nevertheless.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 845

Census Bloodbath: In Case of Emergency

Year: 1982

Director: Francisco Rodríguez Gordillo

Cast: Jack Taylor, Mirta Miller, Claudia Gravy

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

Plot: El cepo/The Icebox Murders follows Chantal (Mirta Miller of the previous year's Bloody Sex, bless her heart), a prostitute who is taken by her rich sugar daddy Dr. Beneau (Jack Taylor of Edge of the Axe and the same year's schlockterpiece Pieces) to an isolation mansion along with her friend Sylvie (Claudia Gravy). They discover he and his creepy assistant Jean (Juan Meseguer) are very protective of a mysterious icebox in the basement that may be linked to the recent disappearances of a slew of French women.

Analysis: A note: The single battered copy of this film that exists in the world has... a few flaws. The first act loses 2 seconds of footage every 20 seconds or so. And then there's a 20 minute period in the middle where there's no audio at all. After that it's relatively flawless, but there might be some nuances I have missed, shall we say.

That said, the movie has done an excellent job of making sure that every boring scene that occurs is repeated at least once, just so we don't miss anything. Instead of kill scenes, like most slasher movies come liberally stocked with, El cepo is content to watch Sylvie and Chantal wander around this giant house and be vaguely creeped out for 80% of the run time, a feeling that does not transfer through the screen to the viewer via osmosis, as it turns out.

It doesn't help that the film's inevitable Bluebeard twist is visible from space, so whenever the film thinks it's ratcheting up the tension, it's just reminding you that you're still farther from the reveal than you wish you were. Also the red herring at work here is one of the most bizarre in the business. We're not meant to recognize that the wealthy man who approaches Sylvie at the bar is also Jack Taylor, just because Dr. Beneau wears sunglasses that he refuses to take off, even when in the bedroom with his lover. You know, like normal, non-suspicious characters always do.

The slasher element, which begins anemic, proves it has nothing to offer once the few kills actually kick in. You'll notice in my body count below that two out of three victims are shot, but what is not mentioned there is that another victim who is believed dead until a third act twist was also shot. Unless you're in the third act of a Scream movie, there is no need to have a gun in your slasher, and centering multiple kill scenes around people clutching parts of their body then keeling over highlights the film's excruciating lack of personality.

Most of the atmosphere it succeeds in creating is glommed off of Psycho, down to the swinging lamp that lights a climactic moment. There's also one good original shot (pictured below), and while I have certainly committed the sin of bumping up my score of some Census Bloodbath entries because of one good shot, the inane goings-on of the rest of the film prevent that from proving to be much of a boon in this case. The best I can say about this unimaginative slasher entry is that it suffers from Good Poster Disease like so many of its illustrious contemporaries, where the film imagined by its promotional material is oodles more exciting than the way it actually turns out.

Killer: Dr. Beneau (Jack Taylor)

Final Girl: Chantal (Mirta Miller)

Best Kill: Sylvie (pictured above) is shot while standing in a herd of cardboard stand-ups of women with targets on their chests.

Sign of the Times: Chantal works out in a monochromatic peach tracksuit.

Scariest Moment: Jean screams at the women to take off their blouses while he photographs them on a boat.

Weirdest Moment: Although Jean is believed to be dead for half the film, he shows up in the end to save Chantal from the killer, at which point she promptly hitches a ride and drives away from him, leaving him running behind the car like Sweetums in The Muppet Movie.

Champion Dialogue: "I want you to give up your ridiculous profession."

Body Count: 3; not counting several mangled bodies discovered in a nightmare sequence on a train.

French Woman is strangled.

Sylvie is shot.

Dr. Beneau is shot.

TL;DR: El cepo is a boring, arid film that barely crosses the line into being a legit slasher.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 748

Census Bloodbath: Girl Offs Girl (Capsule Review)

Year: 1981

Director: Manuel Esteba

Cast: Ovidi Montllor, Mirta Miller, Diana Conca

Run Time: 1 hour 16 minutes

Plot: A lesbian couple bring along a third wheel on their vacation, but when their car breaks down they are forced to spend some nights at a large rural estate run by a weird mother and son. They have sex sometimes, are painted in the nude, and eventually get murdered.

Analysis: A note: Bloody Sex (AKA Sexo Sangriento) was only accessible to me in unsubtitled Spanish. While I have much greater facility with this particular language than some of the other recent foreign films I've covered, some of the nuance of the plot was still lost on me. Not that the plot is anything other than an excuse to string together softcore lesbian sex and erotically charged murder sequences. 

As we've gotten deep into the trenches of the 80's slasher, we've encountered a couple of these more pornographically-minded slashers before. Results vary (Killing of the Flesh is protracted and boring whereas Momentos de Prazer e Agonia is merely protracted), but the bottom line is that they have almost no chance of being satisfying slashers because they aren't going to bother spending money on good murder sequences when they know naked women are going to get people in the door anyway. They always have a shot at being good softcore porn, but unfortunately Bloody Sex fails to match the lurid promise of its title.

Frankly, there's not even that much sex. Not that I'm complaining per se but, like, commit to your thesis! The second a woman starting having a flashback to a sex scene she'd experienced earlier is when I began to worry about this movie not having enough meat on its bones. This is about 20 minutes in, mind you.

The horror setup here is a decent enough riff on the Psycho thing, with an excellent cavernous mansion providing as much atmosphere as you could ever ask for. However, there's absolutely no mystery involved. The kills take a hellishly long time to get started, and as soon as they do, the film hardly takes a breath before revealing exactly who is committing the murders. Plus, the only thing resembling tension is a handful of the cheapest fake scares from the horror movie playbook, so that's frustrating as hell.

The one truly kind thing I could say about the film is that it has a killer score. I'm well aware it's just library music that they pulled from other sources, but they chose well. The sinister synths swell and swoon on the soundtrack, making you almost feel like you're watching something atmospheric and moody, which is more work than any other department is putting into this thing.

Killer: Multiple members of the family, but mostly the Mom

Final Girl: One of the Lesbians

Best Kill: OK, I hesitate to say it is "good," but because it is interesting and not very common, the woman getting stabbed in the vagina is certainly something.

Sign of the Times: This was about the last year, down to the minute that anyone was interested in ripping off Psycho rather than Friday the 13th.

Scariest Moment: Bloody wounds have been painted onto one of the tasteful nudes.

Weirdest Moment: The film ends on a quote from Algernon Blackwood.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 6

1. Lesbian #1 is killed offscreen.
2. Random Older Man Who Might Be the Dad is stabbed.
3. Lesbian #2 is stabbed in the vagina.
4. Mom has a knife thrown into her chest.
5. Son is decapitated.
6. Scary Old Man is axed in the head.

TL;DR: Bloody Sex is a slow and plodding movie that is neither bloody nor sexy.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 615

Popcorn Kernels: La Movida

As our Almodóvar marathon draws ever nearer to its conclusion, let’s review three consecutive films from his early period, roughshod works born from La Movida: the progressive Spanish punk scene that formed in Madrid following the death of the dictatorial, conservative King Franco.

Labyrinth of Passion

Year: 1982

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Cecilia Roth, Imanol Arias, Helga Liné 

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A gay Tehrani prince and a nymphomaniac rock starlet fall in love within the hustle and bustle of Madrid, surrounded by interlocking stories of passion, sex, and rock ‘n roll.

Just two years after his messy but promising debut with Pepi, Luci, Bom, Pedro Almodóvar proved with Labyrinth of Passion that his early period of trial and error would be like no other. Although he wouldn’t achieve true greatness until 1987’s Law of Desire, all the ingredients that he would use throughout his career can be found in Labyrinth.

The absurd kinkiness delivered with a casual shrug that defines most of the director’s best works is at full bore here, with the farcical plot twisting around pharmaceutically-induced incest, a hilariously hard-up psychoanalyst, and a beachside flashback that in one fell swoop delivers upon two characters their nymphomania, daddy issues, and homosexuality, with the implication that a bunch of kids are about to have an orgy. It’s ribald. It’s excessive. It’s La Movida.

Although the plot is certainly more lucid and coherent than Pepi, Luci, Bom, Labyrinth takes frequent breaks from juggling its sixteen or so characters to indulge in a prolonged exploration of the fashion and music of Almodóvar’s Madrid (including two extended cameos of the director himself, alongside musical collaborator Fanny McNamara) Frankly, it’s not compelling filmmaking, but it’s a fascinating cultural document that helps you understand exactly where the man and his unique approach to cinema came from.

But even if it’s not on a whole one of his masterworks, Labyrinth of Passion shows an astonishing vertical leap in Almodóvar’s sense of style. Although his increased budget was still relatively small, he found much more freedom in creating a universe filled with bold colors and retro pop art designs. It’s a beautiful-looking movie, bursting fully formed from the visual imagination of an aesthetic genus.

And it’s damn funny. Almodóvar’s fast-talking, effortlessly cool characters deliver incredibly clever dialogue as if it were the easiest thing in the world. It’s a loving, hilarious portrait of a world burgeoning with life, and even though it’s still a bit slapdash and all-over-the-place, it’s a wonderful showcase of exactly what the young director was capable of.

Rating: 7/10

Dark Habits

Year: 1983

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Cristina Sánchez Pascual, Will More, Laura Cepeda 

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A heroin-addicted nightclub singer takes refuge in a convent, which is run by nuns who turn out to be just as sinful as she is.

Dark Habits contains the seeds of just about everything that would come to define Almodóvar’s alter work. Absurdly casual kink and blasphemy, loosely scripted melodrama with a pinch of ironic comedy and an enclosed world dominated by a group of diverse women.

It even features many key players who would come to define his key ensemble: Consummate cranky mother Chus Lampreave (as Sister Rat, who secretly writes porn in her spare time), 80’s muse Carmen Maura (as the bongo-playing Sister Damned, who cares for the convent’s pet tiger), The Flower of My Secret star Marisa Paredes (as the pious Sister Manure, who physically punishes herself every chance she gets and takes LSD to get hallucinations of the divine), the matronly Julieta Serrano (as the heroin-addicted lesbian Mother Superior), and All About My Mother heavy-hitter Cecilia Roth (as Mercedes, a drug-dealing former nun).

Unfortunately Dark Habits is mostly defined by those iconic Almodóvar qualities that it lacks. Aside from Serrano and Lampreave, the other ensemble actresses play very minor pars, and the crux of the plot lays on the shoulder of Cristina Sanchez, the wife of the producer. Although she played minor roles in Almodóvar’s two previous films (as “Bearded Lady” and “Eusebio’s girlfriend”), it’s obvious he didn’t find an inspiring figure in her as a lead, and the film’s emotional center is lopsided because of it.

Also, the technical quality here is extremely poor. Almodóvar was still building up his mastery of film aesthetic (which begins to rear its head a the party setpiece in the third act), but the kinks he had to work out include such major factors as sound and cinematography. There are entire scenes that are incomprehensibly muffled, and though he has fun with lighting during his chapel scenes, not even the most forgiving viewer would find the camerawork comparable to Bad Education, or even Law of Desire, which came a mere four years later.

It’s fine to spend time with these charming nuns, but the melodrama never coheres into a legible whole (entirely new plot developments are still unspooling five minutes from the end) and it’s a little too long for such a meandering hang-out movie. I love me some nuns gone wild, but an Almodóvar half a decade later could have made something much more moving and satisfying out of this very same premise.

Rating: 6/10

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Year: 1984

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Carmen Maura, Gonzalo Suárez, Luis Hostalot 

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

The lives of a downtrodden housewife, a dominatrix, an alcoholic writer, an impotent policeman, a lizard, and a  telekinetic little girl intertwine in a Madrid apartment complex.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? (aka ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?, which is not any easier to type) is the worst Almodóvar film I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen all but four at the time I’m writing this. It’s the only one I’ve considered giving a score that isn’t even marginally positive, but as I was flipping through my notes I realized something. This movie is freaking hilarious.

The big standout is Chus Lampreave (playing essentially the same role as her peak performance in The Flower of My Secret, in which she’s lucky enough to get to play off the incredible Rossy de Palma, who the Almodóvar ensemble acquired in 1987). Her batty old mother schtick never gets old, but she has some especially sharp moments here, and her relationship with a lizard she finds in a park might just be the emotional lynchpin of the entire film.

And although Carmen Maura is limited by her character being the center of the “tragi-“ half of this tragicomic film, she still brings a blustery detachment to some of the director’s kinkiest scenes yet that makes them even funnier. You can’t not giggle as she makes a quick buck by sitting next to an exhibitionist going at it with her prostitute neighbor, still clutching the groceries she walked in with, bored out of her mind. And out of all the casual kink of Almodóvar’s early work, nothing can beat the brutally businesslike transaction where she lets her son be adopted by a pedophile dentist because she can’t afford to get him a new crown. It’s dark as hell, but not a single character sees it that way, and that’s the perverse magic of this director, especially during his boundary-pushing Movida period.

So yes, it’s funny. It’s just not much of anything else. The final scenes are incredibly moving, but for the most part the story keeps you at arm’s length, all the while being incredibly confusing. The interlocking story combines autobiographical elements (Almodóvar’s time as a letter writer in his home village is reflected here), vintage kink, a family drama instinct that will eventually pupate into Volver, and a bunch of scattered odds and ends of characters who pretty much amount to nothing (including a telekinetic little girl who should’ve had more than three minutes of screen time), which all jostle for attention in a harried mush.

There are feints toward the cinematic artistry that Almodóvar would truly manifest in Law of Desire, like the lizard named Money who arrives in a time of chaos, metaphorically representing every character’s tangled motivation. But the limitations of the set make this a very static, almost neorealist movie, and that approach is too inherently lifeless to benefit from the director’s particular talents. It’s a noble mess, but a mess nonetheless, and not one that I would feel particularly keen to revisit.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1075

Popcorn Kernels: Queers For Fears

In which we catch up with two delightfully queer films I watched an embarrassingly long time ago.

To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar

Year: 1995

Director: Beeban Kidron

Cast: Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo 

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Three drag queens on a road trip break down in a small Southern town and befriend the local ladyfolk.

It is an absolute miracle that To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar got made in the first place. Obviously it owes its existence to that other drag queen road comedy with an overwhelming title The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but the fact that this movie got made in late 90’s America with this caliber of onscreen talent and that it didn't turn out to be an unholy mess is something that makes me ant to fall to my knees and weep in gratitude.

First and foremost, To Wong Foo doesn’t treat its drag queen protagonists with kid gloves. It takes the fact that they’re gay men who dress up like women for granted, and though it’s a bit of an indulgent fantasy in terms of how often they’re in drag during their daily lives, their personalities and conflicts aren’t defined by their proclivities: Patrick Swayze’s Vida is a bit too prim and controlling, but has a warm, gregarious nature as a shield against her cold upbringing. John Leguizamo’s standout character Chi-Chi just wants to be loved, but her fierce stubborn nature gets her in hot water. And Wesley Snipes’ Noxeema needs to learn to open her heart after sending so long closing it off from the world.

Its depiction of the inhabitants of a small Southern town as hopeless yokels who need to be save by urban sophisticates probably isn’t quite so tender and realistic, but really: who needed the representation more? And they’re treated with just enough respect and autonomy that it’s easy to ignore their more cartoonish nature. Regardless, To Wong Foo is a cartoonish comedy, dazzling audiences with gleeful, glitzy camp magic.

It’s uncompromising in its queerness, and that leads it down a road to letting comedy develop naturally from its characters. Is it the best comedy in the world? No, probably not. But a charming and character-driven rote comedy is nothing to thumb your nose at, especially when those characters are so far outside the usual sphere.

The best thing To Wong Foo has to offer is its cast, who justify every predictable beat in the plot and ground their tomfoolery in something real and true. That goes for the Southerners as well, though Leguizamo, Snipes, and Swayze are doing most of the heavy lifting. With or without its prematurely progressive values, To Wong Foo is a delightful romp, and I am supremely glad it got made.

Rating: 8/10

The Skin I Live In

Year: 2011

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet 

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: R

A respected doctor who’s developing a new synthetic skin keeps a mysterious woman captive in his mansion.

Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography has been aggressively, transgressively queer from square one. Hell, his debut film Pepi, Luci, Bom features a housewife casually getting peed on by a punk rock teenager. He’s not afraid to bring radical ideas into his filmmaking, and The Skin I Live In is the first time he has brought his unique sense of melodrama to the horror realm, or at least as close as any of his amorphous films have ever gotten to inhabiting a single genre.

The Skin I Live In is basically a decades-later progression of his earlier film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, in which Antonio Banderas also played a captor hopelessly in love with his victim. Where that film may have been even more transgressive by giving the characters a sweet ending, The Skin I Live In leans into the more terrifying aspects of the thing, doubling down on full-tilt body horror.

Although it’s tremendously effective at creating a sense of creeping unease, The Skin I Live In is probably Almodóvar’s least visually stimulating film to date. He still retains his effervescent attention to detail in his production design but the stark, sterile color palette mutes his personality a little too much. It’s a very cold film, which works for its storyline, but also makes it just a little less accessible. And accessibility has never really been the man’s strong suit.

It’s very European, frankly, which is has every right to be. But if you’re not ready to approach it with your brain turned on at full power, you’re probably not going to like it quite as much. However, that can hardly count as a criticism. The Skin I Live In will chill you to the bone if you let it, and I certainly have.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 810

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Year: 2016

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Cast: Adriana Ugarte, Emma Suárez, Rossy de Palma

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Over the course of the past year, we’ve had a lot of Pedro Almodóvar titles crop up on the pages of Popcorn Culture. Although the man has swiftly risen to prominence as one of my all-time favorite directors, all of these reviews have been mini-reviews, for a variety of reasons. First, I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve had to implement way more truncated reviews for non-current, non-special feature titles. Second, I’m much less experienced in discussing drama and comedy, so sometimes I have less to say and I’m unable to produce one of my typical, gargantuan reviews.

But guys. Things are different now. Pedro Almodóvar has a new movie in theaters as we speak. And I’m ready for it.

I’m so excited! I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

That film is Julieta, loosely adapted from the sort stores “Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence” by Canadian author Alice Munro. After a casual encounter with Beatriz (Michelle Jenner), an old friend of her daughter’s, Julieta (Emma Suárez) breaks up with her boyfriend Lorenzo (Darío Grandinetti of Talk to Her) and cancels her move to Portugal, electing to stay in Madrid and mull over the reasons why her daughter Antía (Jimena Solano as a baby, Priscilla Delgado as an adolescent, and Blanca Parés as a teenager) vanished from her life after her 18th birthday. She sits down and writes Antía a letter, explaining her story:

At 25, young teacher Julieta (Adriana Ugarte) meets the fisherman Xoan (Daniel Grao) on a train, an event that changes her life completely, giving her a baby and a lifetime of heartbreak.

I could keep going, but why spoil the antics of two ridiculously sexy Spaniards?

By his own admission, Julieta is Almodóvar’s most straightforward drama. It lacks the heightened stakes, dazzling queerness, and zany comedy (the Oscar-nominated Volver literally has fart jokes) that mark the bulk of his work, but it’s still unmistakably him. An entry in that favorite genre of his, “women’s drama,” it’s a story about loss, lust for life, and family secrets that cause schisms between generations, some of his most common subjects, at least in his more highbrow, post-80’s works. 

And there’s absolutely no way he could scrub every trace of comedy from Julieta. He couldn’t resist a slow motion shot of a purse flying into an old lady’s face (he has the sense of humor of a 12-year-old and I love him for that), and he gives one of his best comic roles to frequent muse Rossy de Palma (of Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Kika, and Flower of My Secret).

De Palma is on hand for a brief but unforgettable turn as the Mrs. Danvers-esque Marian, Xoan’s spinster housekeeper. She’s a deliciously mean, blunt woman who de Palma plays with beautiful restraint, channeling a series of razor-sharp lines like a medium of divine comedy. She can’t have been in the film for longer than ten minutes, but she leaves a meteoric impression. It’s the most Almodóvar has ever asked of her, and she nails it.

And it’s not like the rest of the cast it full of slouches, it’s just that everyone else is attuned to the drama side of things, which they admittedly pull off well. This entire movie is held together by the twin performances of Adriana Ugarte and Emma Suárez, two spectacularly gorgeous, inviting screen presences who both – as first-time Almodóvar ladies – immediately earn their way into his pantheon of female powerhouse actresses, to rub shoulders with the likes of Penélope Cruz, Cecelia Roth, and the inimitable Carmen Maura.

All while rocking incredible hair, through the ages.

Once again, Almodóvar has managed to capture the darkest patches of the human experience and contort them into beautiful, sunny cinema. While the story might seem simple, almost familiar (at its core, it’s an uncomplicated exploration of why people cut each other out of their lives, and that patterns that people follow across generations), he breathes life into it with his typical toolkit of bold color, elegant framing, and visual metaphor. Julieta is jam-packed with thoughts and ideas bursting around the edges of the frame, whether they’re more obvious metaphors like a lonely caribou traipsing through the snow or a broken clock tower (they make sense in context, but I don’t want to give the whole damn thing away) or subtle touches that might take two or three viewings to even register.

Julieta isn’t as transgressive as Almodóvar’s best work and it’s a bit too similar to his earlier Oscarbait to be more than a nice footnote on an illustrious career, but it’s like settling into a warm bath of cinematic style. You get whisked away into the story, feel the ups and downs, and you’re not emotionally gutted when the credits roll. It’s a supremely pleasant movie, and he might not be operating at his peak, but his lows still reach a dizzy, Himalayan height.

TL;DR: Julieta is a typically delightful film for Almodóvar.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 864

Sail The Spanish Sea

Year: 2015

Director: Jaume Balagueró

Cast: Manuela Velasco, Paco Manzanedo, Ismael Fritschi

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I've mentioned the Spanish found footage film [REC] on my blog more times than there are letters in this sentence. That's more than any other film, and for good reason. When my friend Cassidy and I sat down to watch the film for the first time several summers ago, it proved to be a singularly electrifying experience that chilled us to the core like no other movie before or since. When [REC] 2 proved to be almost as good, we became lifelong fans of the franchise. Unfortunately that fandom has since been challenged after the split of the series' two directors. 

The following (allegedly final) pair of films were directed by each man individually, leading to a disappointing, non-found footage, continuity-shattering comic followup from Paco Plaza in [REC] 3: Génesis and a two year gap while partner Jaume Balagueró attempted to gather up the pieces of the broken franchise. [REC] 4 (aka [REC] 4: Apocalipsis) has finally arrived and I can say without equivocation that they really should have stopped at two.

[REC] 4 is inherently better than its predecessor due to the return of franchise star Manuela Velasco, whose performance in these films has always been like grabbing a live wire in a thunderstorm, but everything around her (and occasionally within her) is botched, garbled, or otherwise mishandled. 

I guess that's the price we pay for hiring the Three Stooges to handle crew duties.

[REC] 4 takes place immediately after the events of [REC] 2 with a brief but game nod toward [REC] 3. Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) has been retrieved from the besieged Barcelona apartment building where she has survived two separate rage zombie outbreaks and taken to a quarantined aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. After such a long night, all she wants is a good nap or maybe some ice cream and a hug, but she and the other detainees soon realize that more trouble may be afoot.

Although Dr. Ricarte (Héctor Colomé) insists that everything is fine, Ángela - along with onboard IT guy/Ángela's biggest fan/magical movie hacker Nic (Ismael Fritschi), and quarantined military officers Guzmán (Paco Manzanedo) and Lucas (Críspulo Cabezas) - discovers that experiments being performed in a lab deep in the ship's belly have just gone terribly wrong. Before too long, the virus is set loose once more, and the ship's passengers are tossed into a fierce free-for-all of survival while the scientists race to find a cure.

However, Ángela faces a threat even more despicable than a teeming horde of frothing Danny Boyle zombies: terrifyingly bland and threadbare horror movie tropes. [REC] 4 has the audacity to not only pile itself with one cliché after another, but daringly waste them at every turn. When a devastating storm hits, it causes no more trouble than a light drizzle. When the power goes out, nobody gets snuck up behind. The rotating security cameras that could have provided a Paranormal Activity 2 or even Five Nights at Freddy's atmosphere are merely used for some Nancy Drew-level "zoom and enhance" sleuthing. And the captain for whom this is the last day before retirement vanishes without a trace, neither receiving retribution nor a decently weepy death.

If tedious, bungled clichés were blankets and horror was a pea, [REC] 4 would give a princess the best night's sleep of her whole damn life.

The film was clearly given a higher budget than its predecessors (explosions! a film score! non-handheld cinematography!), but if there ever was an argument against giving indie filmmakers a little more wiggle room, this would be the crown jewel of its supporters. [REC] 4 replaces fear with flash, and in the process loses its visceral spark. There are still some decent moments that hearken back to the original film like long narrow hallways, faraway screeches on the sound design, and whatnot, but when it's not being generic it's being unscary. And when it's not even being that, it's just plain confusing.

[REC] 3 already stabbed continuity in the back, but this film wraps it in a tarp and tosses it into the reservoir tied to a cinder block. Although the franchise's religious undertones had slowly been becoming overtones through the first three films, this one scraps the idea entirely in favor of a nonsensical biological/malevolent phenomenon. And the daggum worst of it is that it's hard to root for any single person because of loose plot threads that make separating Good and Evil characters a mind-bogglingly difficult Turing-esque struggle.

Toss in some CGI that looks like an unfortunate encounter on the Oregon Trail, an inflated run time that throws a brick into the franchise's breakneck pace, and a series of aborted catch phrases ("It's party time.") that attempt to manufacture some sort of halfhearted action-comedy out of the shambling wreckage and you've got yourself a recipe for disaster. 

It's like a mixed salad of bad ideas. And it's even worse than regular salad.

There is just so much to be disappointed in with [REC] 4. The characters are one-dimensional to no-dimensional and even Ángela is just plain stupid this time around. The geography of the ship and the number of zombies on board it are inconsistent and frequently baffling. And this supposed franchise finale is no less "final" than a trip to the grocery store.

There's some half-decent gory mayhem from time to time, but if the film wasn't attached to a big name, it would be forgotten in a second flat. I can't bear to dwell on the subject any more because of the enormously powerful pull [REC] has over my life, but if I were you I would run as fast as possible away from this film like it's a sputtering, rabid sous chef looking for a main course. 

TL;DR: [REC] 4 is a disappointing ending for one of the best horror film franchises on the planet.
Rating: 5/10
Should I Spend Money On This? Honestly, not at all. Save your money for DVDs of the first two so you can watch those again and again and pretend that nothing ever came after them.
Word Count: 1038
Reviews In This Series
[REC] (Balagueró & Plaza, 2007)
[REC] 4: Apocalipsis (Balagueró, 2015)

Soy Un Bombero

Year: 2007

Director: Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza

Cast: Manuela Velasco, Ferran Terraza, Pablo Rosso

Run Time: 1 hour 18 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Now that Halloween is over, prepare for a flux of reviews of all the horror movies I saw during the week but never got a chance to review. I'm a little bummed I was too busy to do a super cool October blog event, but it turns out homework holds higher priority than writing about movies. Which is ironic, considering that my homework is writing about movies... 

I suppose it's time for me to review my number one favorite horror film (and favorite film in general), don't you? But first, to properly understand where I'm coming from, let me take you on a journey in time.

One bright afternoon, a couple months before graduation, Cassidy and I wanted to watch a movie. This happened rather frequently back then. When she suggested we put on Quarantine (her favorite movie at the time), I remembered something I'd read about that film being a remake of a Spanish film called [REC] and that maybe we should watch that one. In the interest of watching a movie that neither of us had previously seen, she agreed.

When we emerged from our cocoon of purple couch fabric 80 minutes later still shaking with residual fear and rendered speechless for a good two minutes, we knew our lives had been changed forever. This was in broad daylight, mind you.

Since that fateful day, I've seen it at least once every three months, usually to inflict it on some poor unsuspecting soul who was trying to be my friend. Unfortunately for them, any friend of mine has to pass the [REC] test.

So what was it about this film that has so thrilled and captivated me so much so that on a short weekend trip to visit Cassidy in Portland we used several of our precious hours to screen it again? What is it that keeps me coming back? What is it that made it land the number one spot on my list of all-time scariest movies? Why was half my Spring Break video quotes from this movie? 

I've mentioned this film in scores of posts that all have been leading up to this one moment of unveiling.

We'll see if I can rein this in to under a million words.

Buena suerte.

First, the basics. [REC] is a found footage film that came out in the same year as George Romero's found footage effort Diary of the Dead and one year before the film that would bring the genre to the mainstream again, J. J. Abrams' Cloverfield. Having come out before the massive flux of no budget direct-to-DVD handicam crap, [REC] was still able to bring a fresh take on a genre that has been beaten relentlessly and robbed of all potential in the last five years or so.

Shot on location in Barcelona, this film is entirely in Spanish, but don't let that deter you. The foreign language actually has the effect of enhancing the terrifying feeling of winding up in a situation that is far beyond your control. And it gives you a chance to learn useful Spanish phrases like "F*ck you," and "I've been bitten!"

The plot centers around Ángela Vidal, a small time news anchor (played by real life small time news anchor Manuela Velasco) who's working with her unseen cameraman Pablo (played by real life cinematographer Pablo Rosso) on a puff piece for a show called Mientras Usted Duermen (While You're Asleep). Her assignment is to shadow a pair of firefighters, Álex (David Vert) and Manu (Ferran Terraza) on their nightly rounds. Ángela longs to do something more exciting than sit around a dark fire station all night.

She gets her wish.

Ten cuidado con lo que deseas.

When the fire station gets a call to help an old woman who was heard screaming in her apartment, the goresome foursome trot on out to help her. As it turns out, the woman isn't exactly chomping at the bit to have intruders in her apartment. No, she'd much rather be chomping on the policeman's face and the situation quickly grows dire as the health department seals the buildings exits, quarantining Ángela, Pablo, the firemen, the police, and the neighbors in a cramped apartment building with an ever increasing horde of zombies.

Not just any zombies. These are adrenaline-fueled, three-minute-mile, Danny Boyle rage virus zombies and they are pissed. Civilians are knocked left and right like bowling pins as their futile attempts to escape devolve into merely finding a way to survive the night.

Watching [REC] for the first time is like presenting someone with a homemade flan - exotic and flavorful, but not quite as pristine as the picture on the recipe made it seem - and then mercilessly slamming their head into the tray over and over again until they pass out.

[REC] doesn't waste a single precious second of its brief runtime. Each high octane scene is brutally shoved into the next until, before you know it, it's over and you need to launder your Fruit of the Looms.

A visual representation of the human heart while watching [REC].

[REC] works like a charm on every level, not the least of which is avoiding the many pitfalls of the found footage genre. Please allow Italics to represent an annoying whiny complainer badmouthing found footage.

It's too shaky! I can't see anything!

The beauty of [REC] is that the character holding the camera is, in fact, a professional camera man. So while, yes, there are those unavoidable jerky moments that come with holding a recording device and running for dear life, but Pablo knows his mierda. He's used to shooting news, he could capture footage in the middle of a hurricane and it would turn out OK.

It's just an excuse to get away with having no budget! People can't make fun of the bad effects if they can't see them!

This is actually a pretty fair criticism of the genre, even giants of the form like The Blair Witch Project, a film in which absolutely nothing happens for 90 minutes. But the money that [REC] saves through its unique filming methodology goes right back on the screen with resolutely unimpeachable practical effects. 

It's all too staged and unbelievable!

OK, even I can't suss out why [REC] works so well in this regard, but even though I'm well aware it's a fictional film (unlike many audiences who went to see Blair Witch for the first time), I've never doubted the reality of the situation and characters (in context).

Why the hell would they keep filming during all that?

Without a doubt the biggest weapon against the found footage genre. One which [REC] brushes off like a dust mite. At first, Pablo is filming as a news photgrapher, capturing the human rights violations in progress as the government refuses to let the wounded leave the building. But when the more life-threatening mishaps occur, the camera is the only available light source. The built-in torch and eventually the night vision (shudder) are absolutely essential for survival, hence the continued recording.

Suck on that, found footage haters!

And while films in the genre tend to be cheap amateur productions intended to kick start a career or two, every single aspect of the film was wrought by an accomplished hand.

Let's start with the acting, shall we?

[REC]  lives and dies on the performance of its lead actress and the previously unknown Manuela Velasco throws herself bodily into her work. Her Ángela is driven and capable and utterly utterly awesome. She puts on a bubbly facade for her anchor work but when push comes to shove she is determined to come out on top. The first to sacrifice her stylish leather jacket for use as a tourniquet, she leaps into the fray with a battle cry that rattles the rafters. She's an adorable chipmunk cheeked cutie pie by day, but her claws come out in a fight.

Velasco's Ángela isn't all tough edges though. She has taken many a beating. She is shaken and tired and she just wants to get the hell out of here. She allows herself to be vulnerable when she's alone with Pablo, but when tensions rise her stress manifests itself with fiery Spanish pasión. She has flaws, she's only human. But her intrinsic humanity is what gives her a fighting chance.

Also she's gorg.

And when I say every aspect of [REC] is fantastic, I'm not just gonna let that hang there unsupported. I really do mean every aspect.

Setting: The Barcelona apartment building where the bulk of the movie takes place is cramped and claustrophobic. Before anything even remotely sinister happens, the building itself creates a sense of menace with its low ceilings and the staircase that twists into infinity.

It's not any better covered in zombies.

Also the opaque plastic sheets that seal  the building off allow for some really creative and creepy use of silhouette.

Characters: With such a punchy run time, [REC] can't spend too much time bogging itself down with character development so the residents of the building have pretty bare bones personalities. But if we didn't care about them at all, we would have no emotional impact at their deaths and subsequent zombification.

Walking that incredibly thin tightrope, the film manages the inconceivable feat of satisfyingly fleshing out an entire cast of characters in under five minutes. Each of the neighbors has a distinct personality that veers as far away from stereotype as possible. There's Mari Carmen (Maria Lanau), an entitled 21st century mother and her sweet young daughter Jennifer (Claudia Silva). There's a hilarious squabbling old couple (María Teresa Ortega and Manuel Bronchud), a Japanese family (it's utterly bizarre to watch a foreign film in which one of the characters can't completely speak the languages themselves), and a xenophobic gay man named César (Carlos Lasarte) who manages to actually not be offensive.

These characters provide some small measure of realistic comic relief for the horrors that are to follow.

And although there are some moments of Idiot Horror Movie behavior, those can be forgiven by the strength of their scare sequences and for the most part these people act exactly as any of us would when locked in a cramped apartment with bloodthirsty zombies. Namely, freaking the hell out.

Plot: [REC] isn't keen to waste time. The first ten minutes slowly ease the audience in, but that's all we get before the film turns into a sledgehammer of screaming terror. The horror is enhanced by the fact that almost nothing is known about the nature of the disease except that fact that it spreads through saliva. The unknown is always infinitely scarier than easily comprehensible evil and the creepy Catholic overtones provide more atmosphere than explanation.

Cinematography: As I explained earlier, the found footage angle is far from a gimmick. It has the effect of putting you directly in Pablo's eyes and makes the danger even more formidable because you know they can't just cut away to a different scene. This is all there is and it is absolutely mind-numbingly teeth-wrenchingly terrifying. Also, there are somehow scores of iconic shots that are beautifully framed and captured. In a handheld found footage movie! Geez, the Spaniards know what's up.

Sound Design: Oh, the sound design. The reason you should never ever watch the English dub. As an amateur sound worker myself, I have learned to appreciate the value of a stellar mix and [REC] manages to wring scares through audio alone. Most films fail to be scary even with awesome music, but this film turns everything up to eleven without a single note. The echoing roars from unknown floors, the mysterious underwater-sounding effect when the camera is struck by something will keep you rocking in your seat. And when it goes silent, it's even worse.

Gore: It is to [REC]'s benefit that the filmmakers couldn't afford massive explosions of gore. I've found that the most profoundly affecting gore scenes are the simplest. If it's small and intimate and believable, the audience sitting with you can feel it. I've sat through over a hundred slasher films and the most nauseating gore scene I've ever seen is still that part from Black Swan where Natalie Portman has a hangnail.

It just goes to show that subtlety in gore is the way to go if you want to strike fear into the hearts of teenagers. Over the top gore is for when you want to have a good time and [REC] is about as far from a good time as you can get. Tiny moments like a doctor's examination or a single bite to the face are absolutely harrowing.

And anything even remotely similar to this.

Having studied [REC] for quite some time now, I think I've narrowed down what makes it such a down and dirty scream machine. There are four ruthlessly effective ways the film ramps up the tension and the variability between them is what keeps you on your toes.

1) One thing changes slightly.

Pan away from the hall, then pan back and bam. That corpse is no longer lying peacefully on the ground.

I got out of bed for this?

This tactic is what made the first Paranormal Activity such a rousing success because there's nothing popping out at you and brazenly announcing its arrival, just minute shifts that get under your skin.

2) Nothing happens but you think it will.

As a horror audience, we have been trained to expect a certain thing when a character lingers in front of a doorway. Or a corpse is laid in front of the camera. When that thing doesn't happen, all that anticipation and tension that is built up doesn't dissipate the way it would if the corpse suddenly lept at you. It has no place to go but deep down into your gut.

This is also a way of training the audience not to know what's going to happen. It's kinda scary when something yells "BOO!" every single time you expect it to. It's light years scarier if you don't know when it's going to happen.

3) Something happens when you think it won't.

OK, this one seems a little obvious but let me explain. A lot of modern horror is built like a musical piece. You don't know exactly what's going to happen, but scare scenes are generally telegraphed - a pair of feet slowly climbs up the stairs or a door creaks open - and you know for sure you will be scared sometime in the next 45 seconds.

[REC] doesn't give a flying f*ck what you think is going to happen. Right in the middle of something innocuous, it bangs the gong, sending you flying.

4) You know it's gonna happen and you can't escape.

This is where that audience conditioning comes in to kick you in the nuts. When somebody slowly spins around, you know of course that something terrible is going to happen. And being trapped with that dread of the inevitability of fright pins you down like a rat in a cage. It is the sneakiest and most blisteringly effective trick [REC] has up its sleeve.

I'm starting to scare myself now.

Remember every other review of modern horror that I've written where I denounce a film's use of jump scares? Things that peek out and go boo? It's crass and it's cheap and it's not real horror. Yet [REC] has jump scares galore, so why should I proclaim it to the Heavens?

Well you see, hypothetical questioner, jump scares aren't intrinsically a bad thing. Halloween had them and if that's not a horror masterwork then I don't know what is. The beauty of this film is that it effortlessly marries a modern jump scare sensibility with hardcore body horror, viral terror, and just plain creepy unnatural monsters that leave a lasting impression once the adrenaline high has worn off (approximately a week after viewing).

[REC] is the best of all worlds. It has appeal for both the modern viewer and the more traditional fan of atmospheric horror. It is a low budget found footage flick with masters behind the camera. It is exotic, but not too deeply rooted in its culture to render it incomprehensible across the pond (I'm looking at you, J-Horror).

And that is why [REC] is my favorite movie.

Thank you and good night!

TL;DR: Honestly, if I could marry [REC], I would.

Rating: 10/10

Word Count: 2773
Reviews In This Series
[REC] (Balagueró & Plaza, 2007)
[REC] 4: Apocalipsis (Balagueró, 2015)