Author Archives: Richard Cook

Lost and Found Horror

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The Blair Witch Project (1999) is the most likely starting point for the “found footage” sub-genre of horror. If you want to nit-pick, the first film to use the found footage concept was the Italian sleazefest Cannibal Holocaust (1980). But the film never pretended that the found footage (filmed by a “lost” documentary crew) was real in our world. Instead, the documentary footage was contained within a narrative that was clearly fictional. The Blair Witch Project, on the other hand, never stopped pretending. Even the marketing campaign (which included a fake documentary on the “legend” of the Blair Witch) passed the film off as real footage of the filmmakers’ last days.

Since Blair Witch there’s been a steady trickle of these films. They are not a new genre so much as a hybrid genre that steals ideas from older horror movies, and combines them with the conceit that the film depicts real events, or at least that the film was produced by individuals who are actually present within the story (usually amateur filmmakers). This means poor lighting, shaky camera-work, and unknown actors who can pass as normal people. But the films still contain the tropes that moviegoers expect from mainstream horror. After The Blair Witch Project (killer in the woods genre) came [REC] and its inferior American remake Quarantine (pseudo-zombie genre), Diary of the Dead (zombie apocalypse genre), Cloverfield (giant monster genre), Apollo 18 (alien genre), and Paranormal Activity (haunted house genre).

But how real is found footage? If I were being stalked by a ghost/slasher/zombie/serial killer/tropical cannibal, the last thing I would do is record my demise for posterity. No offense to my tiny audience, but I don’t give a flying fuck about entertaining you in my final moments. And who in their right mind would waste time  recording the ghost or giant monster that’s trying to kill them (as well as the touching romantic sub-plot during the lulls in the violence)? The common defense of the genre is that we live in the Youtube and cellphone camera age, and the genre simply reflects the fact that we are saturated with amateur video. But amateur footage of protests, crimes, terrorist attacks, etc. tends to be brief, incompetently filmed, and rarely has anything resembling likable characters or a plot. In other words, actual amateur video bares no resemblance to the professionally crafted narratives that lurk underneath the “found footage” concept. And there’s the little fact that it’s impossible to record video of ghosts, zombies, or giant monsters because those creatures don’t exist.

And yet audiences eat this shit up, and I’m right there with them. My favorite set of films in the genre is the Paranormal Activity franchise. The first Paranormal Activity is not particularly innovative. It’s cut from the exact same cloth as a thousand other haunted house movies, and it’s at least as campy as anything starring Vincent Price. But I found it scarier and far more entertaining than The Haunting, Amityville Horror, The Others, or any other haunted house movie that exists in a fictional universe. Paranormal Activity 3 is the perfect example of the genre. The entire premise is ridiculous: a demon is terrorizing a family in 1988, and the dad just happens to be an audio/video expert who rigs his house with video cameras and always walks around with a massive camcorder. The film is unabashedly cheesy, and even includes the old ghost-under-the-sheet gag. But it’s great! The simple plot sucks you in and the old-fashioned scares still work. The viewer quickly forgives the implausibility of a man walking around with a camcorder all the time, because how else would there even be a movie?

It’s not the phony realism that matters, but how that realism connects the audience with a familiar narrative. To put it another way, found footage works not because we belong to the Youtube generation, but because we belong to the Real World generation (youngsters can replace Real World with Survivor or Real Housewives of Who Cares or whatever reality TV series floats your boat). So-called reality TV is quite fake. Real people are encouraged to behave in unnatural ways for the sake of our entertainment. They are less inhibited, more reckless, and generally stupider when in front of the camera. Then a team of professional editors and writers crafts an artificial narrative from countless hours of random shit caught on tape. Through this process reality TV creates the ultimate illusion – that normal people are actually interesting to watch. Normal people can have exciting singing careers, or scheme to win a million dollars, or have lives filled with catfights, hot tub sex, and soap opera drama.

The found footage genre works in much the same way. The pretense that the film is real isn’t so much about fooling people but in bringing the audience further into familiar narratives that they love. The shaky camera and unknown actors create an illusion of reality. Scary and exciting things don’t just happen to movie stars. They can happen to normal people, just like you or me! But this illusion of reality is plastered over a conventional genre film. So the scares are structured in a narrative format that we instantly recognized and appreciate. In movies and in “real life,” a ghost wouldn’t reveal itself right away, but would instead spends several days doing little things to build up the suspense. It would be a disappointment if the “real” haunted house experience lacked the requisite tension and cheap thrills. After all, what’s the point of being haunted by a demon if he doesn’t even do it right?

The Hours of Skyrim

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Hour 0: Picked up my copy of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The game is a sword-and-sorcery fantasy set in the nation of Skyrim. Like most American role-playing games, Elder Scrolls allows you to customize the playable character. In fact, it gives you an incredible number of options when designing your digital avatar, including race, gender, and every minute detail of your face. I’m going to take my time and make sure that my avatar reflects the heroic Inner Me.

Hour 1: Fuck it. After spending an ungodly amount of time adjusting the size of my digital eyebrows, I’m forced to acknowledge that Inner Me looks like an asshole. I’ll just go with the default character design.

Hour 2: Killed a dragon. That was awesome. Also killed a merchant by accident. That was not quite as awesome, but fun nonetheless. I then spent several hours just wandering around and killing stuff. It’s the American Way.

Hour 5: This game is big and beautiful. There are rugged mountains, lush valleys, and vast forests containing the occasional cave or village. And there are countless non-playable characters (NPCs) to interact with. In general, the population of Skyrim is heavily armed, suspicious of outsiders, and hostile to the central government. So Skyrim is basically West Virginia without the strip clubs.

Hour 10: The main quest is rather dull. Even the stunt-casting of Maximilian Von Sydow can’t hide the fact that this is a third-rate rip off of Tolkien. Fortunately, the game has no shortage of side quests. Every person I talk to seems to need my help with something. And I can join up with the various factions (warriors, mages, thieves, and assassins), each of which has their own storyline unrelated to the main quest.

Hour 20: Between all the caves, ruins, crypts, cities, factions, and random dragon attacks, I’m starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. I have a backlog of about 50 quests I haven’t had time to get to. I’ve completely forgotten what the main quest was about. I vaguely recall some “good vs. evil – fate of the world” bullshit.

Hour 40: I’ve come to the conclusion that mages and warriors are boring. All the cool kids are thieves. Plus, you save so much money by simply taking things instead of buying them.

Hour 60: I decide to get married. In Skyrim, marriage consists of putting on an amulet that indicates you’re single, then asking the first person you meet to marry you. The marriage has no emotional significance, since the spouse has only three standard lines of dialogue. On the plus side, she does bake you a pie every day. But there’s no divorce option, so the only way to end a marriage is murder.

Hour 70: I’ve completed all the warrior quests, the entire main quest, and over one hundred side quests. I’ve lost track of the number of dungeons I’ve explored. I’ve “divorced” my wife, earned a title of nobility in six different regions, and purchased homes in three towns. I’m barely halfway done with this insane game.

Hour 90: The Dark Brotherhood (assassin) storyline more than make up for the tedious main quest. It’s so wonderfully vicious. I kill a bard just for being bad at his job. I murder an innocent woman on her wedding day. I assassinate the emperor and then kill the guy who hired me to assassinate the emperor. What does it say about me that I enjoying snuffing out lives more than saving the world? Perhaps it says I’m a bad person, but I prefer to think of myself as a free spirit who won’t be bound by society’s arbitrary rules.

Hour 1o0: Sweet Jesus, I’ve been playing this game for weeks and I still have 20 more quests to finish. I’m going to finish this last set of quests for the Thieves Guild and then I’m done …

Hour 120: Okay, I finished all the faction quests, city quests, the civil war quest, and the main quest. I’ve purchased every home, and acquired a title of nobility in every region.  So now I’m going to explore the last few crypts, and then I’m done…

Hour ???: I’ve gotta hand it to Bethesda Games, they make good crack. But I’m burned out. The only way to keep feeding this addiction would be a second playthrough, and … no. I can’t do that shit. I’m done. I’m over it. I’ve had my moment of clarity and I’m moving on with my life. Unless Bethesda provides some downloadable content. Then maybe just one more taste.

Tech Messiah

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Tron Legacy
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Starring…
Jeff Bridges
Garrett Hedlund
Olivia Wilde

I have a confession to make. I’ve never watched the original Tron from beginning to end. Sure, like everyone else I’ve seen bits and pieces on TV. I saw the part with the frisbee and the light cycles. And I remember it had David Warner, one of those great British actors who always appear in the shittiest movies. But I could never sit through the entire thing. It was boring, the special effects looked dated, and I just don’t care that much about the “infinite possibilities” of cyberspace. So why did I watch Tron Legacy? Because it was on Netflix streaming and I had nothing better to do. Spoilers below…

Tron was about a programmer named Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who accidentally transported himself into a computer-generated universe. Once there, he was forced to compete in gladiatorial games for the amusement of a race of sentient programs (a.k.a. humans in silly costumes). He eventually teamed up with the local Spartacus, the titular Tron, and together they overthrew the despotic government.

Tron Legacy picks things up just a few years later. Flynn’s divides his time between raising his son, Sam, and building a better world in his computer. To help him manage the latter task, Flynn creates a virtual doppelganger of himself named Clu (Jeff Bridges with digitally younger face). Everything seems to be going well until the digital universe spontaneously creates a new race of sentient programs, the isomorphic algorithms (ISOs). Flynn sees them as a miracle, but Clu considers them an aberration that will ruin his utopia. So Clu seizes control of the digital universe, kills nearly all the ISOs, and leaves Flynn stranded as a fugitive unable to return to his son.

 

Jeff Bridges as Clu

Flashforward several years. Sam (Garrett Hedlund) is a computer genius like his father, but he’s spoiled and directionless. While he inherited ownership of his father’s company, Encom, Sam would rather ride his cool Ducati than run a business. So he leaves it’s management to boring suits who rip off consumers with overpriced products. Of course Sam has major daddy issues, which leads him to investigate what happened to his father. One thing leads to another, and Sam is transported to the digital universe where he’s quickly arrested and forced to compete in the gladiatorial games (with updated special effects!). Sam is eventually rescued by Quorra (Olivia Wilde), the last surviving ISO who was raised by Flynn. Father and son are reunited again, there is much awkward bonding, and they team up to defeat Clu and escape the virtual universe.

Along the way, Flynn essentially gives Quorra to his son because she has some techno-fairy magical nonsense that will revolutionize everything and Sam has to bring her into the real world. Quorra is presumably content with being a tool that the Flynn boys will use to save mankind. I say “presumably” because the filmmakers care little about her motivations (beyond trite shit like wanting to see a sunrise). When Sam returns to the real world, he takes over management of Encom and vows to change the company. So were left with the warm feeling that Sam will use his billions of dollars and techno-magical girlfriend to fix our planet.

 

As popcorn entertainment, Tron Legacy is about average. The special effects are mostly well done, the soundtrack by Daft Punk is great, and attractive women in skin-tight outfits is never a bad thing. On the other hand, the film treats women as mere appendages to men, most of the characters are dull, the plot drags in the middle, and the visual design is lazy. Apparently the inside of a computer looks just like a modern city, but with superfluous running lights everywhere.

To the extent that Tron Legacy moves beyond popcorn and deals with actual ideas, it embraces one core idea above all others: social progress through technological progress. And no other character embodies this idea better than Quorra. She isn’t important as a person. She’s the embodiment for every technological innovation that will usher in the next golden age. She’s a personal computer, a smartphone, the Internet, an iPad, and a cappuccino machine all wrapped up in the body of Olivia Wilde. She will usher in a revolution! But what kind of revolution will it be?

It’s clearly not a Marxist or anarchist revolution. Hardly surprising, given that Disney isn’t in the habit of producing films that advocate the dissolution of mega-corporations like Disney. It isn’t a populist revolution, as the common folk hardly factor into the film. The closest thing to Joe Schmoe is the race of sentient programs in the digital universe, and they’re a decadent, slavish lot. It isn’t a New Agey, “back-to-nature” revolution either. Sam doesn’t give away his fortune or move to a commune. He starts and ends the movie as a billionaire.

But he’s the good kind of billionaire. Good billionaires don’t care about silly things like profitability or market share. They use their wealth (which they undoubtedly earned through hard work and intellect) to fix our world’s problems. And they occasionally beat up criminals too.

So the revolution that Quorra brings is not a revolution of wealth distribution or weath creation, but a “revolution” of wealth investment. The problem with the rich people at the beginning of the film isn’t that they’re rich, but that they only care about becoming slightly richer. Rich people should care about saving the world, preferably by inventing some new technology that fixes all our problems (including the problems created by the last new technology). The rest of us can just sit back and enjoy our gadgets, comfortable in the knowledge that our benevolent overlords and their techno-magic girlfriends have everything well in hand.

Deep Red

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This is the second part of my discussion of Italian giallo films. The first part can be found here.
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Deep Red a.k.a. Profondo Rosso (1975)
Directed by Dario Argento

Movie reviews usually begin with a summary of the plot. Which is a problem in this case, because the plot of Deep Red makes no fucking sense. It begins in Rome at a conference sponsored by the European Congress on Parapsychology. It may sound far-fetched, but it’s every bit as scientific as phrenology or evolutionary psychology. The marquee attraction is a German psychic named Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril) who entertains the crowd by reading their minds. But someone in the crowd is a murderer, and Helga stupidly announces this to the audience even though she fails to identify the killer. And so the killer tracks Helga home and chops her but good with a cleaver.

 

 

The first person to discover the body is English pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings). Marcus decides to solve the murder all on his own because he apparently has nothing better to do, and pianists are naturally gifted as criminal investigators (and since this is a giallo, the police are worse than useless). Marcus is helped by a reporter, Gianna (Daria Nicolodi), but is warned to drop the matter by his friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia). Marcus enlists the aid of a parapsychologist, Dr. Giordani (Glauco Mauri), and uncovers a clue to the killer’s identity by reading a book on urban legends. The book conveniently (and implausibly) identifies a house once owned by the killer, which leads to several more fortuitous discoveries, eventually revealing that the killer is none other than Carlo’s crazy-ass mother, Martha (Clara Calamai). Back when Carlo was a little boy, Martha murdered her husband when he threatened to send her to an asylum. Martha tries to cover her tracks, first by killing Helga, then by stalking Marcus and killing everyone that he drags into his investigation, including the author of the urban legends book and Dr. Giordani.

If I were to judge the film on its merits as a mystery, it would be a failure. No amount of gore can cover up a preposterous plot and mediocre acting. And yet I liked this movie.

About two-thirds of the way into the story, Carlo attempts to kill Marcus so his mother’s actions will never come to light. Carlo even accuses Marcus of being responsible for all the deaths. If only he had minded his own business, no one except the psychic would have died. It sounds like the standard villain monologue, blame the hero for everything, etc., etc. … except everything Carlo says is true. Martha is crazy, but she only killed to hide her identity and cover up the earlier murder of her husband. Psychic Helga was doomed, but Martha killed the other victims only after Marcus got them involved with his amateur sleuthing. Is the viewer supposed to agree with Carlo and condemn Marcus? Not likely. Carlo suffers his own violent death just a few minutes later, which illustrates the primary appeal of the film. Marcus is an idiot, but he’s an idiot who moves the plot forward. And the plot provides a simple framework for the death scenes.

 

 

 

While the entire film is visually attractive, the death scenes are labors of love by Argento. They’re gratuitous, elaborately staged, and almost dream-like. When Dr. Giordani is killed, he isn’t just stabbed. There’s a robotic (?) puppet charging at him, and a shot from the killer’s POV as she grabs Giordani, and a close up of his mouth being jammed into several sharp corners, then a close up shot of the gleaming knife that tracks it’s motion, followed by the actual stabbing. And this mayhem is accompanied by a funky rock soundtrack courtesy of Goblin. Carlo’s death scene is even crazier. While escaping from the police he wanders into the street just as a garbage truck approaches. Any other director would simply have the truck hit Carlo, but Argento allows Carlo to barely evade being hit only to get caught by a hook that for reasons unknown is hanging from the back of the truck. So poor Carlo is dragged through the streets, and the truck makes every turn as sharply as possible so that Carlo will careen into the curb. His physical destruction is capped by a car running over his head.

The death scenes feel disconnected from the slow-paced mystery that contains them, as if a completely different movie takes over when the point-of-view shifts from Marcus to Martha.* But then Marcus is a drearily sane character who inhabits a sub-par crime thriller, while Martha is this delightfully insane monster who thinks she’s in a slasher film. Marcus lives in a world of clues and motives, Martha lives in a world where the violence is obsessive, unlimited, and always viewed from the best angle. Her blood is too red to be real, but who cares? It’s better than real.

Friday the 13th, Prom Night, Terror Train, Scream – countless slasher films have followed in Deep Red’s trail, combining the violence of grindhouse horror with the “whodunnit” mystery plot. And like Deep Red, most slasher films fail as mysteries. The first Friday the 13th, for example, resembles a giallo murder mystery, including shooting the murders from the killer’s POV to hide her identity. but the film doesn’t even introduce the villain until the final act, and since all the other characters (minus the heroine) are dead by that point, there’s no mystery as to who the killer is. Even the half-way clever Terror Train, which at least has a red herring or two, suffers in comparison to traditional mysteries such as Murder on the Orient Express.

It shouldn’t be impossible to produce a decent mystery that also happens to have gory deaths, but why would a mystery writer bother with extreme violence? It adds nothing to the plot and more than likely will become a distraction. And from a commercial perspective, it will almost certainly drive away a portion of the target audience. In contrast, slasher filmmakers lack the subtlety and restraint that mystery requires. The adolescent love of gore, a desire to scare the audience (or at least startle them), and an inexperience with the mystery genre collectively produce barely coherent plots that string together a few gruesome murders.

But in the hands of Argento, at least those murders will look good.

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* Carlo’s death scene is the one exception, because no other character is present to observe his demise.

Splashy: Drifting Roundtable

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This is part of a roundtable on The Drifting Classroom, and also part of the October 2011 Horror Manga Movable Feast.
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I haven’t read enough of Drifting Classroom to write my Grand Unifying Theory of Kazuo Umezu. But what I’ve read I’ve liked, especially the art. Panels that are detailed but not cluttered, expressive characters, a layout that guides the narrative — it’s the type of solid, mainstream craftsmanship that’s all too rare on this side of the Pacific. The most memorable feature of Drifting Classroom‘s art (in the first volume at least) is the frequent use of splash pages.

Splash images (whether taking up one or two pages) can serve many purposes. Using a splash as the first page of a comic is a common way to start things off with a bang (and a large image leaves plenty of empty space to squeeze in narration, credits, publishing information, and other corporate boilerplate).

Jim Aparo – Brave and the Bold #129

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Jim Lee – Justice League #1 (2011)

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Ending a comic (or a chapter in a larger comic) with a splash is like teaser trailer – the big, flashy image leaves the reader wanting more.

Kazuo Umezu – Drifting Classroom

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As for aesthetics, I far prefer Umezu to Jim Lee, but the above two images are similar in function. Full page splashes capture the readers’ attention and highlight an event that readers will presumably find interesting/exciting (an attack out of nowhere, or the first appearance of post-reboot Superman). And both images leave the readers in suspense, offering a payoff only if they buy the next installment. Who is crushing the girl’s hand and why?! Don’t you want to see Superman and Batman fight … AGAIN?! Of course, the notable difference is that the suspense in Drifting Classroom arises purely out of the narrative, while Justice League relies on the devotion of superhero fandom.

A splash image in the middle of a comic tends to arrest the narrative, panel to panel progression is put on hold so that the reader can appreciate the big picture (often both literally and metaphorically). There are several examples of this type of splash in Drifting Classroom.

 

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David Mazzucchelli – Asterios Polyp

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Who doesn’t like craters? These two images illustrate a point that might seem counterintuitive. In most comics, splash pages are “panoramic” images that fully capture some major object or event. But the above image by Umezu is close to the action, so close in fact that the reader can only see a portion of the hole left by the missing school. The enormity is implicit, and the the reader creates a massive crater in their mind using Umezu’s visual cues, such as the little boy (who provides a useful scale for size), the jagged edges, and the contrast between the black pit and the very white surface.

In Asterios Polyp, Mazzucchelli does something similar by cutting off the crater on the right, suggesting (or at least trying to suggest) that it goes on beyond the edge of the page. And he includes tiny people in the foreground to establish the sheer size of the crater. Yet, while Mazzucchelli is an undeniable talent, his crater seems less impressive that Umezo’s. This is because he’s unwilling to leave too much to the reader’s imagination. While part of the image is cut off, Mazzucchelli still draws nearly 75% of the crater. He wants to show AND imply the enormity, but cutting off the far right portion of the crater doesn’t imply much of anything. Rather it seems like Mazzucchelli just ran out of space when drawing his big hole.

Splash pages are also useful for establishing a place, not just in terms of scale or spatial relationships, but in mood.

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I particularly like the above splash by Umezo. The devastation beyond the school looks like an endless sea about to engulf and drown the tiny children. But the school itself is a bleak haven, the only distinguishing feature of the architecture is its complete lack of any distinguishing features. It seems like the children have only the options of sterile orderliness or complete annihilation.

Splash pages can also stop a narrative at a pivotal moment by encouraging readers to “soak in” a larger image rather than breeze through smaller panels. And the very size of the splash can signify importance.

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Prior to this scene, the story had not been violent, but then a teacher stabs a helpless child to scare the other children into behaving. It’s a shocking moment because the violence is so sudden, bloody, and arbitrary. The splash magnifies the emotional impact, and by freezing the plot in that moment, it forces the reader to consider the logic behind the teacher’s action. The school is order and safety, but that depends on a particular relationship between teachers and students. The school functions only when students respect authority, and that authority is based on brute force. On the other hand, the teachers are actually as clueless and desperate as the kids, so I’m curious to see where Umezo goes with this.

On a concluding note, comparing Umezo to American artists leaves me curious as to what artists like Aparo might have done had they worked on longer books. In an American comic (the old-fashioned “floppy”), more than one or two splash pages per issue is excessive, as the progression of the plot slows to a crawl. One advantage of the manga periodical format is the larger number of pages per volume allows for greater use of splashes without disrupting the overall pacing (in Drifting Classroom only a minority of the pages are splashes, but there are still close to a dozen in the first volume). And the same thing could be said of graphic novels in general. But given the current state of mainstream comics, a higher page count might simply mean more splashes of malapportioned Supermen glowering at the reader.

Women and Children First … To Die!

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Netflix streaming allows for an eclectic diet of movies. You can view not just Hollywood crap, but crap from all over the world. Recently, I’ve been watching Italian gialli films from the 1970s. Giallo (meaning “yellow,” a reference to the genre’s origins in a series of paperbacks with yellow covers) is a sub-genre of the crime thriller notable for its exceptional levels of violence. A giallo plot is typically a murder mystery with a few red herrings, gratuitous sex, and a chase sequence or two. In other words, hardly different than the pulp crime novels familiar to most Americans. But the lasting impressions of these films has less to do with the “whodunnit” plot mechanics than with the gore. Murder sequences are often long, bloody, and elaborate.

Of the four gialli that I watched, Profundo Rosso (Deep Red) was far and away the best. I’ll discuss it in my next post, but for now I’ll focus on three other films: The Black Belly of the Tarantula, Don’t Torture a Duckling, and Who Saw Her Die? Normally I’d give a spoiler warning, but these films are from the 70s, so deal with it.

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The Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971)
Directed by Paolo Cavara
Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Ezio Marano, Barbara Bouchet, and Barbara Bach

 

Genre entertainment can be roughly grouped into three categories: works that fail to satisfy the bare minimum expectations of the genre, works that transcend the genre, and works that embody the genre so precisely that the details become blurry, and instead you’re left talking about tropes. As you’ve probably already guessed, The Black Belly of the Tarantula falls into the third category. It has a murder mystery – someone is murdering impossibly attractive women (including a Bond Girl). It has a detective (Giancarlo Giannini). It is extremely violent. And it is utterly sleazy and misogynistic.

Giallo, and the crime genre more broadly, is not known for its feminism. Women are objects, women are tramps, and women are targets. In the case of the first victim, she’s all three. The character (played by the gorgeous Barbara Bouchet) is on screen for little more than 20 minutes and half of that time is spent stark naked. The other half of the time is spent teasing her blind masseur, cheating on her husband, and then being terrorized and murdered. And I don’t mean anything as prosaic as being shot. The name of the film refers to a wasp that paralyzes tarantulas with its stinger and then plants its eggs in the tarantula’s abdomen. The killer uses a needle to inject the wasp’s venom into his victims’ spine and paralyzes them. He then rips off their clothes and slowly cuts them open with a knife while they’re still alive.

The filmmakers engage in the pretense that everyone is horrified by this brutality. But brutality, directed at women, is the whole point. The murder sequences are lengthy, gory, and devoted to the display of female flesh as it is slowly penetrated by the killer’s blade. While undeniably loathsome, the intense misogyny gives the murder scenes a demented energy that’s absent in the rest of the film. The tedious domestic scenes of detective and wife and the film’s convoluted plot are poor attempts to legitimize exploitation.

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Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Starring Tomas Milian, Barbara Bouchet, Florinda Bolkan, and Marc Porel


Sometimes killing women just isn’t exploitative enough. Thank God for children.

Don’t Torture a Duckling is about a murderer who targets young boys in a small Sicilian village. There are suspects and red herrings everywhere. The killer could be the town idiot, the local witch, the overly-protective priest, or the big city harlot (Barbara Bouchet again). The police are worse than useless, and most of the detective work is done by a reporter, Martelli (Tomas Milian).

While Don’t Torture a Duckling has superficial similarities to The Black Belly of the Tarantula, the latter is nothing more than competent genre hackery with a dose of sexism. The former is a film with an actual point to make, namely that religion and superstition are terrible things. For example, one of the suspects is a gypsy witch (Florinda Bolkan) who confesses to the murder. But when the police ask her how she did it, she admits that she merely “cursed” the boys with voodoo dolls and has no idea how they actually died. The witch is not a killer but a pitiful joke, but that doesn’t save her from the superstitious townsfolk. In a scene reminiscent of medieval witch hunts, the fathers of the slain boys corner the witch and beat her to death in a gruesome sequence.

In contrast, the thoroughly modern reporter and the big city girl, Patrizia, are far more sympathetic. The treatment of Patrizia is notable in how it contrasts to treatment of women in The Black Belly of the Tarantula. Initially, Patrizia seems to be another giallo sexpot, teasing the young boys with her beauty. The film even hints that she might be the killer. But it turns out that Patrizia is neither a seductress nor a murderer – she’s just a harmless pothead who was banished to the country because of a drug arrest. The modern girl actually turns out to be a hero of sorts, and she even helps Martelli solve the mystery.

The murderer turns out to be the village priest, Don Alberto (Marc Porel), who was killing the boys to “protect” them from sexuality and ensure that they would go to heaven with stainless souls. While attempting to kill another child (his own sister!) by throwing her off a cliff, Alberto is instead pushed off by Martelli. This leads to an overdone death sequence where Alberto (actually a dummy that looks nothing like Marc Porel) slowly falls to his death as jagged rocks tear his face off, all the while flashbacks reveal his nonsensical motives.

 

Duckling Finale

Up with modernity, down with superstition! But the film’s point of view doesn’t survive scrutiny. Catholic priests have committed horrible acts throughout history, not least of which is the multinational child abuse scandal, but I can’t find any examples of a priest who actually murdered several children to help them avoid sin. Dying young to escape sin is simply not a Catholic obsession. Sin is unavoidable perhaps, but the penitent can always obtain forgiveness. So the filmmakers essentially invent a flaw in Catholicism that they can then throw off a mountain. One last point: the assertion that modern society is less violent than traditional society is ridiculous, especially in the country that invented Fascism (cheap shot, I know).

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Who Saw Her Die? (1972)
Directed by Aldo Lado
Starring George Lazenby, Anita Strindberg, Adolfo Celi, Nicoletta Elmi, and Alessandro Haber

 

More kid killing!

Who Saw Her Die Opening

Who Saw Her Die? is yet another story about a psycho killer who targets children (this time little girls instead of little boys). Franco Serpieri (George Lazenby) is an artist in Venice living apart from his daughter, Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi), and estranged wife (Anita Strindberg). When Roberta comes to visit, she is immediately targeted by a mysterious killer wearing a black dress and veil. Poor Roberta gets offed fairly early in the film, and Franco becomes an amateur detective to find out who murdered his daughter (because the police are, as usual, useless).

In most respects, Who Saw Her Die? is superior to the above two films. Venice proves to be an excellent locale for film noir. Aldo Lado turns the city of canals into a city of dark passages and winding alleys. The characters are a bit more developed than in the other gialli, and Lazenby puts in a decent performance as the grieving father. There are also a couple of wonderfully off-beat moments, as when Franco interrogates a man while playing a game of table tennis. And the score by Ennio Morricone (who also composed the score for The Black Belly of the Tarantula) is a trippy, addictive mix of rock and children’s choir. Unfortunately, the filmmakers never quite get a handle on how to incorporate the score into the film, and certain riffs such as the killer’s theme are overused.

The early scenes are kinda brilliant in a manipulative and evil way. Every time Franco leaves Roberta alone outside, the killer shows up and begins to close in.  But just as the killer is about to grab Roberta, Franco returns in the nick of time, completely oblivious to the fact that he just saved his daughter. But then Franco leaves Roberta alone to play outside just a little too long, and the killer gets her. First message to parents: your child is being targeted by a serial killer at all times! Second message to parents: do not leave your child outside while you get a blowjob from your mistress. You’ll just suffer dramatic guilt afterward when your child’s corpse is fished out of the water. On the plus side, your guilt will move the plot forward.

As in Don’t Torture a Duckling, there are multiple suspects and red herrings. Suspects include an evil businessman, a child molesting lawyer, a priest … I won’t waste your time, of course it’s the priest. But it gets better! He’s not just a priest but a cross-dressing priest. According to the Psycho Rule, that multiplies the evil by a factor of four. The film chickens out at the end though, when it is revealed that the killer was only impersonating a priest. The filmmakers were likely worried about offending Catholics. Though I suspect they were not so worried about implying that priests are murderers (Don’t Torture a Duckling was released in the same year) and more worried about implying that priests are cross-dressers. Some insinuations are beyond the pale.

Perhaps if cross-dressers had their own country and a global institution with millions of adherents, filmmakers might think twice about portraying them as degenerate child-killers.

Annotated Justice

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DC Comics has rebooted its line of superhero comics, beginning with its flagship title, Justice League. Written by Geoff Johns with pencils by Jim Lee, Justice League is supposed to be an entry point for readers unfamiliar with the DC Universe. That’s the theory. But DC Comics are not exactly known for being “new reader friendly.” And Geoff Johns is an acquired taste (one acquires that taste by reading superhero comics, and only superhero comics, for 40 years straight).

As a courtesy to newcomers, I offer this annotated guide to Justice League #1.

Cover

While the line-up of the Justice League has changed many times over the decades, the iconic team has always included DC’s most revered characters plus Aquaman. Starting at the top left and working clockwise, there’s Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern, Cyborg, Batman, and the Flash. Batman is arguably the most famous, but Superman has a TV show (Smallville) and a movie in the works, Green Lantern recently appeared in a movie that most of you didn’t bother to see, Cyborg guest-starred in about two episodes of Smallville, and Wonder Woman almost had her own TV series.

Casual fans might notice that the costumes look a bit different from their classic appearances. Superman no longer wears underwear outside of his pants. Most of the men appear to be wearing armor instead of spandex. And Wonder Woman now has a choker, presumably because her bare neck was drawing attention away from her cleavage.

Page 2-3

This is a great example of Jim Lee’s artwork. It’s full of dynamic motion, though I’m not sure what that motion is. Is Batman using his cape as a makeshift parachute? Or is he running away on his knuckles? I say the latter, because Batman is just that damn tough.

Batman is pursuing an alien monster while being pursued by the cops, and just when the alien seems to gain the upper hand, Batman is rescued by — Green Lantern.

Page 8 

As DC Comics helpfully reminds us, superheroes are modern myths overflowing with allegorical subtext. As this scene makes clear, Green Lantern is not just a guy with a flashlight in his chest. He’s also a metaphor for light, because lanterns provide light. And Batman is a metaphor for darkness, because bats like the dark. So they represent light and dark, the two sides of heroism (and humanity!). Green Lantern hits things in the light and Batman hits things in the dark. Green Lantern is like Zeus and Batman is like Hades. On second thought, Superman is Zeus and Green Lantern is Helios (Aquaman is Poseidon, that’s clearly a given). Or maybe Green Lantern is Jesus if Jesus were a space cop. And that would make Batman … um, let’s say Dark Jesus. The point is these characters are MODERN MYTHS.

Anyway, Batman and Green Lantern pursue the alien into the sewers, where Lantern gives Batman some grief about not having superpowers.

Page 14

Batman more or less punks Green Lantern and takes his magic ring. Given that Green Lantern has the power to do anything or create anything he wants, some readers may wonder how the unpowered Batman humiliates him so easily. Two reasons: first, Green Lantern is an idiot. Second, while Batman may not have super-strength or magic, he has the greatest superpower of all, one that allows him to win any fight: popularity.

Page 15

The alien screams “For Darkseid!” and blows itself up. Darkseid was, as every comic nerd knows, the main villain of the “Fourth World” saga, a collection of stories created by legendary comic artist Jack Kirby. Long story short, DC Comics kicked Kirby to the curb and mismanaged his creations for several decades. Darkseid’s last appearance before the reboot was in a recent story called Final Crisis. In the climactic battle, Batman shot Darkseid with a cosmic bullet and then Superman killed him with the power of song (the exact song was not specified, but it was probably soft adult contemporary). The scene was a dramatic celebration of creativity. Too bad actual creative people like Kirby don’t get as much love.

Page 21

This is the introduction of Victor Stone, the teenager who will eventually become Cyborg. He’s half man, half machine, and all black. That last feature is useful for marketing purposes because the Justice League isn’t known for its diversity.

And interacting with minorities would be a good thing for Batman and Green Lantern, as they have a tendency to engage in racial profiling. They decide that Superman, being an alien, must somehow be involved with the alien monster, so they fly to Metropolis to interrogate him. And Superman, rational adult that he is, punches out Green Lantern and then challenges Batman.

Page 24

Next issue: Superman vs. Batman! Who will win? Superman has super-strength, super-speed, flight, invulnerability, freeze breath, and heat vision. That may sound impressive, but Batman is really, really popular.