I Do Not Do Animal Acts: Body Double (1984)

I really do not have the time in my day to throw out to blogging, because I keep squandering any free time available watching movies, but it is also spring break around these parts so I am mastering the art of unproductively quite expertly, paired ever so dangerously with the recent change in time via daylight savings.  I really wanted to talk about The Lego Movie when I saw it two weeks ago but kept putting it off, so you are now forced to read as I wax poetic about what might be my new favorite Brian De Palma film in Body Double.  While I know that I have promoted my adoration for Blow Out in the past and, indeed, have been known to even outwardly defend that film, it cowers in comparison to this meta, post-modern film about making films.  I often find myself deeply frustrated when cinephiles or fans of De Palma point to works like Scarface as his crowning acheivement, because to me those are rather cursory works that are accessible, but do not truly possess the seedy, grotesque absurdity that makes something like Blow Out, or Body Double work.  What pushes Body Double to the next level is more than it simply being the better of the two film, indeed, it also involves what I see as an outright homage to the work of Alfred Hitchcock to a point of knowing satire.  There are sequences that are ripped wholly out of Rear Window, while others are expertly inserted from Vertigo and even lesser works by the master of suspense.  However, what should be cinematic remains disconcerting, because De Palma works in a medium that no longer holds the unknown attachment of viewer to subject that was classic cinema.  Between the humorous homage to the now long forgotten video rental store and enough point of view cinematography to make a found footage film seem derivative, Body Double taps into a moment of change in the genre film and absolutely revels in the ensuing nonsense.

Body Double focuses on Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) a struggling actor whose claustrophobic tendencies lead him to fail miserably when cast in a part as a vampire.  To make matters worse for Jake, he returns home to find his girlfriend in bed with another man.  Distraught and desperate, Jake begins drinking and perusing ads for a new job opportunity.  During a tryout for a part in a Shakespeare adaptation Jake meets Sam (Gregg Henry) another actor who is on a string of success.  After befriending Jake, Sam invites him to stay at a friends house while they are out of town.  While Jake is already grateful for the offer, since he has moved out of his apartment, the added benefit of having a neighbor, one Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton) who performs stripteases in the house across the street is purely added benefit.  While Jake's voyeurism is unchecked at first, when he is enjoying the spectacle one evening he notices that an electrician has also taken a liking to the show and the two are witness to a moment when Gloria's boyfriend beats her.  Attempting to help Gloria, Jake begins stalking her, only to have the electrician from earlier do the same, even going so far as to steal her bag on the beach.  Jake attempts to stop him, but is slowed down by his claustrophobia.  It is after this that the electrician breaks into Gloria's home and manages to kill her, leading to Jake becoming a suspect with the police, although he is able to evade guilt as he was clearly out of the space of the murder.  Suffering from insomnia, Jake takes to viewing pornography, wherein he notices a girl named Holly Body who looks and dances quite similarly to the now dead Gloria, leading to the curious and still infatuated Jake entering the world of pornography.  When it is revealed that Holly's similarities were not accidental the narrative takes a turn regarding deception and identity all the way till the closing shots of the film, which are followed by an equally mocking final sequence that suggests all cinematic endeavors are predicated on duplication and deception.

I mention that De Palma's film is an exstension of the work of Hitchcock, precisely because it is so heavily and blatantly invested in voyeurism.  In a previous post I discussed the manner with which a film like Friday the 13th, if wholly accidentally, reimagined the understanding of voyeurism and the viewers involvement in violence on screen.  If it was purely a sign of a changing relationship of gore cinema to the viewer, then one could certainly argue that De Palma is acknowledging such a binary and knowingly mocking it.  Indeed, the opening panning shot of the film undermines the viewer complacency tradition by going for a jump scare immediately.  Yet, in a doubling down of subversion, the scene quickly becomes less scary when it is revealed that the scary figure is Jake in makeup and that Jake is failing at his job.  This is repeatedly drawn attention to throughout, whether by the narrative jumping spatial and temporal bindings to show the fragile mental state of Jake, or by never clearly distinguishing a diegetic divide between the voyeuristic acts of Jake and those of the viewer.  Indeed, this comes to nearly perfect fruition during Gloria's murder where the camera shows the murder happening in a more traditional sense, while Jake's point of view is invaded by an attacking dog, as if to imply that the viewer is invested in seeing gore so much so that they are willing to negate the viewer/subject construct when it no longer fits this mold.  One might recall the work of Linda Williams in Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess wherein she suggest that voyeurism and masochism occur in three genres of film, the slasher, the melodrama and hardcore pornography.  The former and latter being rather distinct within the film and openly mocked for their fabrication.  However, the use of melodrama is also knowningly incorporated to subvert viewer ideologies, when Jake and Gloria kiss, almost wholly borrowing from the famous Stewart/Novak kiss in Vertigo, here with the same disjointed paranoia, one whose doubled body implications layer on as the narrative moves forward.  If anything, Body Double is the concerns of Williams at their most realized.

Key Scene: While there is so much to choose from, the sequence leading up to Gloria's murder is perhaps the most realized, particularly in terms of editing and its affects on narrative constructs.

This is a must see film and a gem from De Palma's ouevre.  While I would say get the bluray, it appears to have gone OOP immediately after release.  As such, the DVD will suffice accordingly.

Don't Do That Otis, She's Your Sister: Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)

I am constantly in search of a film whose opening shot thoroughly and evocatively establishes itself as something to be taken seriously, and am usually willing to extend this concession to an opening sequence.  Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is one such film that uses an open shot that pans out disturbingly slowly affording viewers a realization of exactly what they are getting themselves into, followed by a series of back and forth scenes establishing the serial killer narrative which will unfold throughout the film.  In many instances this type of sequence would emerge somewhere in the middle of the front half of the movie to set the stakes for the remainder of the film, but that is not the case here, the stakes are known by the title and the viewer enters into the experience out of a sense of perverse curiosity.  Director John McNaughton's work in Henry is both clearly influenced by similarly abrasive auteurs like David Lynch, Michael Mann and David Cronenberg, while also creating examples of how to make aesthetically pleasing films about the most deranged and debasing of subjects and individuals.  The score for this film which could be easily lost in the violent milieu of on screen body horror and a non-linear, but, nonetheless, temporal diagetic track of the various murders, make for moments that should receive nothing more than abject disgust take on a level of serenity that challenges the viewer to first not find comfort in some sense of beauty, only to critically reprimand any sense of safety that might emerge by jumping back to the violence on screen.  I often find myself having to step back from critically engaging with a genre film, wondering if I am indeed reading too much into the narrative and am in some ways expecting more out of a director in the way of filmic theory.  With a work like Henry, however, I am certain that McNaughton is playing with cinematic conventions both in terms of the meta and the traditional genre as a means to push towards a new understanding on not only how a person reacts to cinematic violence, but, more importantly, how such preoccupations with simulated violence can allow for real societal degradation in the way of murder and rape to become ignored to the point of a troubling collective ignorance.

Henry begins with a series of shots of women, who have been brutally murdered while cutting back to images of the title character Henry (Michael Rooker) going about his rather monotonous daily routine, a clear suggestion arising that he is the one responsible for these murders, eventually verified when a woman he picks up hitchhiking is shown murdered in a living room.  Meanwhile the narrative introduces viewers to Otis (Tom Towles) a ex-convict whose work at a gas station serves as cover for his work dealing marijuana.  Otis' sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) arrives at Otis' house in need of a place to stay after the final falling out with her ex-boyfriend, an occurrence that is of little surprise to Otis,who knows of Becky's troubled past involving erotic dancing and bad relationships.  It is then revealed that Henry is Otis' roommate and the two are close drinking buddies.  Becky, intrigued by Herny's silent demeanor and overt sense of good manners, becomes instantaneously enamored with Henry, despite the frustrations and misgivings of Otis who has a rather unhealthy attachment to his sister.  After an intense altercation relating to this realization, Otis and Henry attempt to rekindle their friendship by a night out for some beers.  This night out quickly turns into buying prostitutes, which then involves Henry killing not only his prostitute, but Otis' as well when she begins to panic.  Initially hesitant to let Henry's act go unreported, Otis has a change of heart, realizing first that he would probably be arrested as well, but also because he seems to take a perverse pleasure in the act himself.  This leads to the two going on joint killing sprees, which are eventually recorded on a video camera they bum off of one of their victims.  All the while, Becky continually makes advances towards the apparently asexual Henry, leading to considerable jealousy on the part of Otis, who is suggested to be bisexual, if not outright gay, during a drug selling sequence.  As such, when he awakes at home to find Becky attempting to seduce Henry, he goes into a rage, eventually being shot by Henry, who then suggest that he and Becky leave to start a new life.  During their first night in a motel, Henry does not attempt to sleep with Becky, but merely suggests they go to sleep.  However, the film concludes with Henry driving a car down the road alone before stopping on the side of the road to unload a heavy blue folding suitcase, its contents become somewhat obvious given Henry's violent nature and his penchant for destroying women who are open in their sexual behavior.

Looking, as I have already established in quite a few films here on the blog and even at least twice this month concerning horror films, is something that is assumed to be male and carries with it a degree of objectification.  Other elements such as castration, death drives and fetishism fall into this looking and too become issues within Henry considering that the opening scene is an eye at the center of a screen looking at/confronting viewers, the deceased nature of the body responsible for this stare adds on a layer of death to the entire act.  In fact, every moment of this film possesses a considerable feel for voyeurism, as the cinematic world of Henry suggests one fully involved in the notion of cinema verite, despite being a fictionalized version of real events.  I would argue that through this low-key, realistic depiction of the life in a lower class space, McNaughton establishes a difference between the priviliged viewer (this would certainly have been the case for moviegoers at Indie cinema scapes in 1986) and the othered lower class person.  While Henry and Otis' behavior is clearly to be chastised the way the narrative flows and how the two are established as working class, affords those looking at the film to detach themselves from the still present violence by asserting that it is not something that would occur within their more well-to-do spaces.  It is a vicarious look of sorts, but in the sense that the one looking is hyper-privileged as opposed to longingly desiring an item.  Here, murder and the look upon its occurring is all associated with the primal, wherein, some portion of the psyche of Henry, and later Otis are open to being barbaric and ruthless, because they have not learned the counter to this behavior due to educational lack.  Indeed, one could even consider the gaze to be one of a death drive on the part of a privileged individual who has achieved a higher level on the hierarchy of needs, thus privileging them to look for experiences in the violent for purely philosophical or ethnographic curiosity.  Indeed, as I write this down I realize how similar this film and Steven Soderbergh's stunning Bubble become.  Both look with disconcerting pity on troubled lower class spaces, but where Soderbergh finds attempts at protection and belief in a higher calling, McNaughton discovers a sense of morally degradation.  The larger question, however, is not the ethical problems of the individuals in the respective films, but instead; how one who is given the ability to watch condemns or empathizes with the acts of those on display.

Key Scene:  The metacinematic moment involving Beck and Henry kissing, wherein Henry continually wipes his mouth, is a perfect syncopation of direction, writing and acting and is one of many great payoffs in a disturbing, yet incredibly engaging film.

Netflix Watch Instantly is a great venue to look into this film, although I intend on filling my shelf with a bluray copy in the near future.

I Think That's Illegal, Even In Amsterdam: Hostel (2005)

I am going to begin this post with a bold assertion.  Eli Roth is the David Mamet of horror films.  This would require some heavy defense were it a statement to suggest that Roth's works have the rapid fire impossibly on point dialogue of Mamet's works, but instead, suffer from the same sickeningly "post-feminist" belief that to be a male of well-to-do status means that you are in some notable way suffering and that the entirety of society, or the forces of nature are systematically working against their diminishing privilege.  Think about the absurdity of something like The Edge, wherein Anthony Hopkin's character must fight off bears and severe weather all because he had a foolish notion that he could tame the wilderness, never mind the overarching suggestion that he feels quite guilty about the killing of Native populations (in that he does not).  I want to suggest here that while far less keen with its dialogue, and decidedly less gripping than say Glengarry Glenn Ross, Eli Roth's Hostel wants to make viewers suffer and relate to a group of individuals who for all intents and purposes have not point of suffering aside from placing themselves into rather foolish situations.  Indeed, they are incredibly exploitative and perfect images of unchecked consumerism.  In fact, I want to extend my frustrations with this film a step further and suggest that this is a quantifiable reason to be concerned with providing a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino unadulterated praise.  The producer of this film, Tarantino also suffers from his own problematic relationships with justifying white male privilege and, with the exception of Jackie Brown, his attempts to challenge this tradition often fall flat and become wildly ill-conceived.  It is only fitting that he would jump at an opportunity to produce this film, it is narratively in line with his own act of making the absurdly impossible suffering of the well-off seem palatable.  Hostel is not a good movie, it is not even really a decent movie.  It is not because of its choice of graphic material, it is actually surprisingly tame in this respect, but is purely frustrating because at no point does this violence or exploitative nature move into a realm of considerable social critique.  Hostel is a textbook example of everything that is wrong with contemporary horror films, precisely in the belief that a narrative deserves justification by existence alone.

Hostel focuses on a group of young men who have taken it upon themselves to backpack across Europe for no other apparent reason than to smoke a lot of pot and have as much sex as possible.  Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is the unofficial leader of the group, using his suave nature to help them navigate spaces, where as Josh (Derek Richardson) seems more inclined to simply passively move through the various spaces, spending much of his time in Amsterdam bemoaning an ex-girlfriend and starring at the scenery.  The duo also gains the friendship of the Icelandic wild man Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) who helps them to gain access to spaces previously deemed inaccessible.  It is through Oli and the help of a Russian man named Alex (Lubomir Bukovy) that they are made aware of a hostel in Slovakia known for its libertine ways.  The three jump at the opportunity taking the very next train to the country.  On the way there they meet an unusually friendly gentleman with a penchant for eating with his hands, who also sings the praises of the town, before becoming a bit too intimate for Josh's liking.  Upon arrival the space is exactly as described, a veritable land of sex and drugs, wherein the trio immediately find women to hook up with in their very own room at the hostel.  However, after a night of drug use, Oli goes missing, leading to a quest to find him, one that reveals that the Slovakian town is a bit darker and less welcoming than initially believed.  Yet, it is not until Josh goes missing that Paxton truly becomes worried and when he is taken to an art show, by one of the women he had been sleeping with, he discovers a dark underbelly to the idyllic space, wherein individuals pay large sums of money for the ability to torture, then kill, living humans (Americans fetching a higher amount than other persons).  After being maimed via having a few fingers cut off, an accident on the part of the torturer affords Paxton a chance to escape, saving a fellow member of the Hostel in the process.  Using his masculine privilege he is able to escape the space and eventually make it to a train station, at which point the woman in tow realizes the damage done to her face, thus leading to her committing suicide on the tracks, incidentally not proving enough to stop the trains from running.  On this train, Paxton realizes a member of this torture group is present, leading to his killing the man before returning to the train for an assuredly long ride home.

One of the major elements of any survival horror film is the necessity of having a character for with which the viewer can empathize.  At times this can work on a very specified level, as is the case in the always problematic sub-genre of rape revenge horror films, such as I Spit On Your Grave or in cases the nature of the film affords many survivors of varied identities in the case of most zombie films.  In even rarer cases the nature of the filmmaking and the earnestness of the performance allow for a reliability to a hyper-specified identity as occurs with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.  I would argue that this really does not work for Hostel, because the characters created by Eli Roth are merely extensions of Eli Roth, or the very selective set of filmmakers who seem to have taken an unwelcome control over the horror genre over the past decade.  The male characters in the film, again are inhibiting their own demise by entering spaces riddled with drugs and crime and, assumedly, engaging in rampant and perhaps unsafe sex.  If the threat of their demise at the hands of maniac murderers is intended to be jarring to viewers, it is only in a sense that a person watching the film would not find all of their previous behavior absolutely disgusting.  Indeed, they move through the space of the film consuming and taking as they please at no point seeming even slightly apologetic, but that does not stop Roth from distinguishing his characters on some moral high ground, either making them vegetarians to denote their higher sentience, or giving Paxton the ability to be bilingual as to make him slightly "less American" when it proves absolutely beneficial.  Furthermore, to make the degree of empathy work, there really has to be a build of suffering and a moment of realization on the part of the protagonist that never comes at any point within Hostel.  Paxton is always a bit too aware of the situation and fortune really favors his every endeavor, never once getting caught in a truly threatening situation once he is able to free himself from without a challenge.  Mind you he breaks out of a chained chair, saves a half-blinded woman and dodges a ton of guards and torturers without even a semblance of trouble, only to use previously threatening village children to his advantage, never mind a lack of authority and explanation to the outcome of any events.  Roth seems aimed at shocking viewers into intrigue, but manages to forget that intrigue must be established at all points, before any sort of disgust or jarring work might emerge.

Key Scene:  The eye removal scene may well be the only well-executed thing in this entire film, in that it was completely grotesque.

AVOID THIS MOVIE, not because it is gross, but because it is bad.

Jason Was My Son, And Today Is His Birthday: Friday The 13th (1980)

If through this marathon I still chose Possession as the best viewing experience, it will be solely because the film proved a far more jarring and cinematically challenging work, one that caused me to reconsider the very nature of the genre and larger confines of cinema as a whole.  If it ends up getting relegated to second place it will be, almost certainly, in relation to Friday the 13th, which may well be one of the most fully realized works in the storied history of horror cinema, both in terms of how it choses to execute its scare tactics, as well as the ways in which it becomes very funny when considered in a post-modern context.  Knocking this off of my shame viewing list has proved quite rewarding and burst onto my screen, much like its title card with such force as to provide me an entirely new film with which to consider how I approach cinematic language both when needing to provide examples as well as in how I understand my own descriptions of cinematic tropes and tricks.  Indeed, the very nature of the camera within this film, much like Possession, proves not only integral to the feel and dread evident in the film, but very much exists as a second character within the plot, one that invades the narrative and changes the mood of scenes, indeed in a very physical manner in this film.  While the point of view shot in Halloween predates Friday the 13th by roughly two years, the use in this teen slasher pic, is so focused and deliberately disconcerting as to almost prove the sole influence on the found footage genre that did, and to a degree still is, sweep American genre film over the past five years.  I know much of the genuinely positive reaction to this film comes from the wonderful bluray upgrade the film has received, almost becoming an absurd simulacra of life in its glossy feel and dreary ethereal quality, yet the other factor that makes this movie work so wonderfully is quite certainly the ways in which it has seeped into the popular culture collective, whether it be through its now iconic soundtrack or for its understanding of the role sex and violence plays into a good slasher film, if not for this its final act, layered with various levels of scares, manages to provide for one of the most tense closing shots, despite choosing one of the most serene images imaginable.

The film begins in 1958 where two camp counselors of the presumably wholesome Camp Crystal Lake sneak away to engage in young teen sex, much as seems to be the case for all camp counseling scenarios.  However, before they can even engage in the act, an of screen presence attacks the man and depicts the screaming visage of the woman, before jumping to a present day depiction of Annie (Robbi Morgan) a young woman who has been hired to to cook at the newly reopened Camp Crystal Lake.  Lost and a bit confused as to why she is being warned about the camp, Annie, nonetheless, obtains a ride to about half way to the camp from a local, despite the warnings of doom that will befall her from the town crazy Ralph (Walt Groney).  The film then cuts to the counselors already present at the camp, including the semi-authoritative, but, ultimately, spineless Steve (Peter Brouwer), as well as the sex-crazed Jack Burrell (Kevin Bacon) and the wise-cracking and somewhat mean Ned (Mark Nelson).  The camp also includes a set of girl counselors, most notably Alice (Adrienne King).  While the camp preparations appear to be going off without a hitch, the failure of Annie to arrive at camp, a result of her being murdered as viewers are shown, doubled with a warning by a local police officer, make for a tense situation at the camp.  When various members of the group start disappearing things become more troublesome, despite varying degrees of ignorance by the other counselors who are either too engaged in games of strip Monopoly or drug induced sex to notice any thing going afoul.  This, however, excludes Alice who immediately becomes aware of the unusual situation and makes certain of her safety as she navigates about the now hyper-threatening space of Camp Crystal Lake, discovering the dead bodies of her friends along the way.  At this point she meets the seemingly innocuous Mrs. Vorhees (Betsy Palmer) only to discover that the elderly woman is indeed the one responsible for the murders, as it was her son Jason who was a victim of neglect in 1958 when the two camp counselors distracted by their own sexual desires, resulted in his drowning.  Mrs. Vorhees has thus taken upon revenge on the space of Camp Crystal Lake and attempts to kill Alice, who eventually evades her and incapacitates her with a frying pan, fleeing to the center of the lake to await the arrival of officers.  However, this sense of safety is quickly undermined as the closing moments suggest more than the vengeful Mrs. Vorhees preside over the space of the camp.

While I have already been made quite aware of the power of gaze and "to-be-looked-at-ness" in cinema through personal research and undergraduate courses in film studies, it has not been until this semester in a Feminism, Media and the Arts course that I have become somewhat hyperaware of how deeply this act goes in film, no more clearly than in this horror film from 1980.  In fact, I would even argue that director Sean S. Cunningham and cinematographer Barry Abrams are having a field day with the notion of the voyeur or looker in the space of genre film.  On more than one occasion in Friday the 13th the viewer is meant to be synonymous with the then unseen attacker, as though to suggest that it is their presence looking onward into the space of the film that is causing the destruction, perhaps were one to never view the film the murders would thus never occur.  I know it is a weird thing to say, considering it sounds as though one should not watch the movie, but it is indeed quite the opposite, it merely suggests on a very psychological and visceral level the ways in which a moviegoer is looking at a moving image with the hopes of consumption, even if such consumption has a high degree of violent destruction.  The thrill of cinema exists in its very fabrication, while also proving wildly realistic thus becoming a sort of reality detached from reality where desires and hopes can be projected on and upon the space of the cinema.  This is precisely what makes Friday the 13th such a post-modern work of cinema, because it is precisely in this projection that the film calls attention to itself, both in terms of the narrative it creates for viewers, as well as noting the ways in which viewers will project their notions onto the space of the film, even if on a cerebral or unconscious level.  We watch the young women run from the camera collectively and while most would agree that murder is wrong, given an awareness of its projected nature we, nonetheless, engage in the act by a complicit involvement in the cinematic experience.  The reversion of the traditional slasher identity adds a gendered component to the look as one assumes the violence to be enacted by a male, through traditional gaze theory, thus adding another layer of post-modern play.  Yet the most clever challenge to the act of looking at the film comes in the closing shot of a serene lake, wherein given previous reveals in the film manages to be so tense and disconcerting as to cause one to look away from the film, the reflective quality of the lake at play, is no less a point of coincidence in the larger consideration of the violent look.

Key Scene:  One of the best opening shots to title card in the history of cinema, without question.

Get this bluray, I accidentally ended up with two copies, so when I post mine to Amazon feel free t buy it and enjoy it in all its genius.