Blood Feast

Blood Feast is considered the first splatter film, and the novelty of that is all I see here. It's a 1963 American film about an Egyptian caterer who kills young women to use the body parts in his business and to offer sacrifices to the goddess Ishtar.

Blood Feast (1963) - Feature by FilmGorillas

Moria says, "Blood Feast is one of those films that is so bad it exerts its own fascination for reasons that lie somewhere between the terrible and the outrageous." HorrorNews.net calls the acting "downright atrocious" but likes the ending. Stomp Tokyo concludes, "it should be watched for its historical value, but be sure to warm up your hooting and jeering equipment beforehand -you will need it." Roger Ebert's site says, ""Blood Feast" is a terrible film, and a historically important one, too." Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 36%.

The Babadook

The Babadook (2014) is a deep exploration of the effects of denying grief. It's a scary look at the life of a young mother whose husband was killed in a car accident on the way to the hospital to deliver their son. The son is now 7 years old. The pair is deeply disturbed. There is no gore here, more psychological terror than the more traditional jump scene-dependent horror movie. I highly recommend this one.

I'll wager with you, I'll make you a bet. The more you deny, the stronger I get.

trailer:

The Rolling Stone has a fascinating article on the inspiration of the film. The Atlantic says, "Those lucky enough to have already seen the movie, which the director of The Exorcist called the most terrifying film he'd ever seen, quickly realized it wasn't quite about the titular boogeyman itself". The New York Times has a positive review.

Entertainment Weekly opens their positive review with this:

Any parent with young kids lives in a constant, almost paralyzing state of fear that they won’t be able to protect them from danger. It may be the most primal emotion there is. Maybe that’s why Aussie director Jennifer Kent’s bogeyman chiller The Babadook zapped me with the high-voltage force of a cattle prod.

Empire Online concludes: "One of the strongest, most effective horror films of recent years — with awards-quality lead work from Essie Davis, and a brilliantly designed new monster who could well become the break-out spook archetype of the decade." Slate describes it as "a terrifyingly great horror movie about motherhood". Village Voice calls it "a rare horror triumph". Slant Magazine says, "It's a shattering psychological study whose supernatural aspect is a mere catalyst or perhaps even misdirection."

Moria says, "The Babadook belongs more to a school of psychological horror – if it has an ancestor it is surely Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), which follows the mental disintegration of a woman as she remains locked inside her apartment where her sanity begins to crumble to the point she has a difficulty distinguishing between reality and nightmare." DVD Talk calls it "a winner".

The Guardian says,

It got a rapturous response at the Sundance festival when it was first screened earlier this year and has received uniformly positive reviews. Kim Newman, the doyen of horror film criticism, described it this month as “one of the strongest, most effective horror films of recent years” which “imparts a lingering sense of dread that will stay with you for days”.

Roger Ebert's site says, "Kent’s directorial strategy is a marvel." Rotten Tomatoes has a 98% critics score.

The Exterminating Angel

The Exterminating Angel is a 1962 Mexican dark fantasy film directed by Luis Buñuel. Guests at a formal dinner party find themselves inexplicably unable to leave. Bizarre, but then it's a surreal film, so I expected that.

The Exterminating Angel by FilmGorillas

(The video is over three hours long for some reason, but the film is just over an hour and a half and the rest of the video is dark. At 94 minutes, this is well worth watching.)

Slant Magazine says, "From the start, Buñuel is pointing out all manner of innate and prescribed modes of behavior, offering up this spectacle of human folly for our shocked bemusement." The Guardian calls it "one of the most disconcertingly profound films ever made." Senses of Cinema explores the film in a short essay best read after viewing the movie.

The NYT says, "In his customary fashion, Mr. Buñuel stages this play with cumulating nervousness and occasional explosive ferocities. He whips up individual turmoils with the apt intensities of a uniformly able cast; and he throws in frequent surrealistic touches". DVD Talk reviews the Criterion edition and says the film "is endlessly fascinating due to its labyrinthine concepts, but it's also an enigma compelling enough to spark actual desire to witness the material many times over," calling it "Surreal and utterly gripping, it's one of Buñuel's best - and a tour de force in its own right."

Roger Ebert gives it 4 out of 4 stars. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 95% and an audience rating of 93%.

Every-Night Dreams

Screenshot from the Youtube video embedded below

Every-Night Dreams is a 1933 silent film by director Mikio Naruse. It is the tragic story of a family struggling during the Depression. The woman works as a bar hostess trying to earn enough money to support her son. The estranged man of the household returns, insisting he'll get a job to support them. In the scene above, which takes place before her son's father returns, the older woman has brought the tea kettle to the younger woman's room and tries to convince the young mother to seek more respectable work for the sake of her son.

This is just an hour long and free to watch. You can't go wrong here, unless of course you prefer happier subject matter:

via Youtube:

Senses of Cinema says, "Everynight Dreams was successful not only because it created a convincing social context for the melodrama but also because it featured a very delicate performance by the silent star, Sumiko Kurishima, in the role of the heroine." Slant Magazine gives it 4 out of 4 stars.
DVD Talk calls it the "least hopeful" of Naruse's silents.

FilmRef.com says,

Mikio Naruse's elegantly distilled early silent film Every Night's Dreams provides an archetype for the filmmaker's recurring themes: pragmatic, determined women who tenaciously hold onto their failing relationships, weak men who lead a life of increasing dependence on the women they mistreat, life stations that grow baser as characters paradoxically strive to improve their situation.

I'm sure there are more hopeful posts over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's weekly T party. Please join in the fun.

Images

Images is a 1972 psychological thriller directed by Robert Altman and starring Susannah York and René Auberjonois. IMDb offers this plot description: "Schizophrenic housewife, engulfed by terrorizing apparitions, kills off each, unknowing if these demons are merely figments of her hallucinatory imagination or part of reality." This is fascinating.

DVD Talk says it's

a relentlessly artsy picture that nevertheless amounts to a good puzzle picture about schizophrenia, experienced from the inside out. Susannah York gives one of her best performances as a woman so mentally fractured that determining what's real and what is not is a fruitless quest.

Moria says, "Images is sort of, if one can imagine, Last Year in Marienbad by way of Repulsion (1965)." Roger Ebert praises it saying, "“Images” is a film Altman admirers should make a point of seeing. Its very differences with most of his work help illuminate his style, and he demonstrates superb skill at something he’s supposed to be weak at: telling a well-constructed narrative."

Big River Crossing 42

photo from The Memphis Flyer

They're installing a pedestrian crosswalk on a bridge here that crosses the Mississippi River. It's not open yet, but here's a video from the Memphis Business Journal:

Here's a 5-minute history of the Harahan bridge:

I can hardly wait to walk across!

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a 1974 zombie movie, with a modern technology twist. It's a decent zombie movie, and I'm glad I've seen it.

Images Journal gives it a positive review but says, "A word of caution concerning Let Sleeping Corpses Lie: the first hour of this movie is extremely slow-moving, constructed more as a mystery than as an out-and-out horror film" and concludes, "Modern audiences might demand a little bit more gut-munching, I suppose, but I’m quite happy with Let Sleeping Corpses Lie just the way it is."

Stomp Tokyo concludes by saying the film:

has lapsed into semi-obscurity, overshadowed by the more graphic and intense Romero films and the wave of Italian gut-munchers that followed the success of Dawn of the Dead. This is truly unfortunate, as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is not as immediately disposable as many of its kin, and deserves more recognition as an attempt to expand Romero's zombie genre in a new, halfway thoughtful direction.

Moria says it "emerges as one of the better copies of Night of the Living Dead (1968)." Horror Movie a Day has a positive review. Horrorpedia has screenshots. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 79%.

Dark Water (2002)

Dark Water is a 2002 horror film, a ghost story, but not a scary or gory one. Such a sad story of trauma and sacrifice. Not many horror stories will make you cry, but this one will.

On the other hand, the mother makes me so mad!

trailer:

Moria gives it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. HorrorNews.net calls it "a first class horror film". Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 77%.

Dead to the World

Dead to the World is the 4th book in the Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris. I picked up the first five in this series at the same time when I saw them in the bookstore's used book section. More romance than horror, and neither genre is my thing at all. I picked them up because they were in the mystery department. The mysteries aren't really enough to make it worth slogging through the romance. I may make it through the next one, but then again, I may not. After the way the last book handled a particularly icky date rape, I thought I'd just give up on them completely. And yet, here I am... It seems wasteful somehow to have them and not read them... I'm torn.

They've been adapted for television. Ask me if I care.

from the back of the book:

It's not every day that you come across a naked man on the side of the road. That's why cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse doesn't just drive on by. Turns out the poor thing hasn't a clue who he is, but Sookie does. It's Eric the vampire -but now he's a kinder, gentler Eric. And a scared Eric, because whoever took his memory now wants his life. Sookie's investigation into who and why leads straight into a dangerous battle among witches, vampires, and werewolves. But a greater danger could be to Sookie's heart -because this version of Eric is very difficult to resist...

Night Tide

Night Tide is a 1961 creepy thriller movie directed by Curtis Harrington in his first feature film. It stars Dennis Hopper. A sailor on leave meets a young woman who plays a mermaid in a shore-side attraction, and it seems she may actually be a mermaid. I think "atmospheric" would be a good descriptive word for this film.

The review at Slant Magazine begins, "Few films capture the mood of dashed sensual yearning that often greets summer nostalgia with the vivid acuity that distinguishes Night Tide." DVD Talk calls it "a modest, moody psychological thriller that almost but not quite becomes a horror film." Images Journal says, "Night Tide is fun to watch for several reasons .... But the main reason for the movie's success is simply the presence of Dennis Hopper."

Eddie Zuckermandel and the Cat

I had never heard of Alice Neel until I came across the picture above online recently. She's described as a major twentieth century portraitist, but I'm uninformed about the art world. I'm glad to find her. I think this work is striking. There is a 2007 documentary film about her life, which can be viewed online here. It left me feeling sorry for her children.

Alice Neel (1900-1984) was born in Pennsylvania, the third of four children. In 1925 she married a Cuban painter and moved to Havana, where her art found appreciation. In 1927 they moved to New York with their infant daughter, who died of diphtheria just before her first birthday. They had a second child in 1928, but in early 1930 the father took the child and moved back to Cuba. Devastated, Neel suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. After a suicide attempt and a year in the hospital, she was released and eventually returned to New York. She never divorced or re-united with her husband. She did have two more children -one in 1939 by a night-club singer who left her in 1940, and another in 1941 by a communist activist who left her in 1955 to marry someone else.

Neel died of colon cancer on October 13, 1984, when she was 84 years old. Four years before her death she painted a self-portrait, a nude:

NPR says,

Neel commented that "the reason I did it was because my own face bores me. I can't bear that little Anglo-Saxon face. But with the whole body, there are strange things going on -- the flesh is falling off the bones...I always had bad feet -- I have a prehensile big toe and there's a leg that as a leg is frightful, but as a work of art, it's gorgeous."

Neel is naked in the painting, save for a pair of eyeglasses, which was her way of saying "look, I'm someonebody who looks. That's who I am. I'm somebody who inspects, I'm somebody who scrutinizes."

*******

"Art is not as stupid as human conversation." -Alice Neel

*******

In 1959 she appeared in a short Beat film named Pull My Daisy. The film was adapted by Jack Kerouac from one of his plays. You can watch it compliments of Vimeo.com:

Pull My Daisy (Robert Frank 1959) from Vladimir on Vimeo.

This video is a 15 minute staff-led overview of Alice Neel's life and times and a more in-depth exploration of one of her portraits:

The photo at the top of the post is from Victoria Miro, where there was a recent exhibition of Neel's work.

I'm scheduling this post as I can, because we're having internet issues here. Please share your T(ea)-related interests (you did notice the cup in that painting at the top of the post, yes?) over at Bluebeard and Elizabeth's weekly gathering.

Cry of the Banshee

Cry of the Banshee is a 1970 Vincent Price movie that focuses on the murder of witches in Elizabethan England. The witches aren't the evil ones.

Cry of the Banshee 1970 full movie by ursula-strauss

Moria gives it 1 star and calls it "drab and extremely cheap looking". DVD Talk says,

Nary a scene goes by without some poor actress having her top ripped off or yet another bit of unconvincing bloodshed. Hence a dullness sets in, as it is impossible to tell whether the actors are bad or just defeated by a relentlessly bad story.

The Last Winter

The Last Winter is a 2006 horror film directed by Larry Fessenden and starring Ron Perlman. An American oil company is building an ice road to explore the remote northern Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "The arctic tundra has been frozen for centuries... and so has what lies beneath." The members of the expedition seem to be going slowly mad. This is striking and eerie.

trailer:

The NYT says,

It’s amazing what you can do with a low budget, an expansive imagination and a smooth-moving camera. (A fine cast helps.) An heir to the Val Lewton school of elegantly restrained horror, wherein an atmosphere of dread counts far more than a bucket of blood and some slippery entrails, the director Larry Fessenden is among the most thoughtful Americans working on the lower-budget end of this oft-abused and mindlessly corrupted genre.

Weird Fiction Review concludes, "What this viewer was left with, at the end of The Last Winter, was a sense of having brought near something elementally numinous, as well as an appreciation for the gifts of Larry Fessenden and his talented cast.. Rotten Tomatoes has a 76% critics rating.

Mimic

Mimic is a 1997 science fiction/horror film directed by by Guillermo del Toro. The monster here is huge, genetically modified cockroaches. This director is a genius, but I'm not a fan of cockroaches. If you're squeamish about bugs, avoid this one. It's horrifying. Who would think genetically modifying cockroaches to help in disease control would turn out bad? Nobody? Well, it turned out bad, And now they're huge and reproducing and killing folks. Not my kind of monster.

trailer:

Moria says, "Mimic does the basics rather well." 1000 Misspent Hours calls it "a monster yarn in the classic style, efficiently told". EW says, "A stylish B horror movie about giant insects in the catacombs of Manhattan, it’s by turns queasy, gross, terrifying, and — never underestimate this one — enthusiastically dumb." Roger Ebert gives it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars and says,

"Mimic'' is superior to most of its cousins, and has been stylishly directed by Guillermo Del Toro, whose visual sense adds a certain texture that makes everything scarier and more effective. It's not often that a movie like this can frighten me, but I was surprised at how effective "Mimic" is.

Rotten Tomatoes has a 61% critics score.

Pyro

Pyro... The Thing Without a Face is a 1964 Spanish horror/revenge film about a man who has a brief affair with a woman who tries to destroy his family when he ends the relationship. It stars Barry Sullivan and Martha Hyer.

Troma Movies has it at youtube:

TCM has an overview. Rotten Tomatoes doesn't have a critics score, but the audience rating is 50%.

The Black Spider

The Black Spider is an 1842 novella by Swiss author Jeremias Gotthelf (photo above), his best-known work. An introduction and the first part of the book can be read online here. It's a story within a story, with the frame tale being the celebration of an infant baptism.

It begins

The sun rose over the hills, shone with clear majesty down into a friendly, narrow valley and awakened to joyful consciousness the beings who are created to enjoy the sunlight of their life. From the sun-gilt forest’s edge the thrush burst forth in her morning song, while between sparkling flowers in dew-laden grass the yearning quail could be heard joining in with its love-song; above dark pine tops eager crows were performing their nuptial dance or cawing delicate cradle songs over the thorny beds of their fledgeless young.

In the middle of the sun-drenched hillside nature had placed a fertile, sheltered, level piece of ground; here stood a fine house, stately and shining, surrounded by a splendid orchard, where a few tall apple trees were still displaying their finery of late blossom; the luxuriant grass, which was watered by the fountain near the house, was in part still standing, though some of it had already found its way to the fodder store. About the house there lay a Sunday brightness which was not of the type that can be produced on a Saturday evening in the half-light with a few sweeps of the broom, but which rather testified to a valuable heritage of traditional cleanliness which has to be cherished daily, like a family’s reputation, tarnished as this may become in one single hour by marks that remain, like bloodstains, indelible from generation to generation, making a mockery of all attempts to whitewash them.

The NYT calls it a "dire, bone-freezing short novel" and concludes,

“The Black Spider” is scary as hell, and the evil it portrays with such apparent simplicity seems, in the end, a more complex phenomenon than we might have thought. Throughout, Gotthelf keeps his readers aware of the rhythms of nature, so the awful powers unleashed here seem to arise out of the eternal order of creation, a great storm of evil combining the destructive forces of the natural world and the self-destructive force of human nature after the Fall. He does something only the best horror writers, and the best preachers, can do: he puts the fear of God in you.

The Northwest Review of Books says, "The Black Spider is so densely packed with symbolism and religious imagery that it carries the weight of a much longer novel. As a Christian parable it is predictable and heavy-handed, but as a horror story it is as haunting as the best works of Edgar Allan Poe." Strange Horizons says, "The Black Spider is an unflinching, theologically correct look at what it means to believe in the Christian god."

The Addiction

The Addiction is a 1995 horror film starring Christopher Walken and Lili Taylor. A different take on the vampire story in black and white.

via Youtube:

The NYT opens its review with this: "There are no neat, glamorous or witty vampires in "The Addiction." Instead, Lili Taylor portrays the vampire as grungy graduate student in philosophy, quoting Feuerbach before she bites."

Moria says, "The Addiction has a tendency to leave one feeling like they are being hit over the head by the collected works of Western nihilist philosophy" but calls it "a powerful and complex reworking of the central metaphors of vampirism." Rotten Tomatoes has a 73% critics score.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is the original, later re-made in 1978. This one stars Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, and Carolyn Jones (who played opposite Elvis in his best film and was priceless as Morticia Addams in the tv series). Also making appearances are Dabbs Greer and Whit Bissell. This one is a must-see.

trailer:

Moria gives it a full 5 stars. 1000 Misspent Hours says, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the quintessential alien paranoia movie. It is one of the most intelligent and original sci-fi/horror films of the 1950’s" and concludes, "I don’t like to throw words like “timeless” around casually, but this is one case where the use of that adjective is fully warranted."

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 98%.

Halloween II

Halloween II is the 1981 sequel to the 1978 slasher/horror original. This picks up right where the first one left off. Michael Myers continues to be scary.

trailer:

Reviews are wildly mixed. Moria calls it "a big disappointment." DVD Talk says, "the movie still works quite well for what it is." HorrorNews.net says, "Halloween II is the second strongest film from the lot, only falling short of the impeccable original."

Roger Ebert opens with this: "It's a little sad to witness a fall from greatness, and that's what we get in “Halloween II.”" Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 29% but an audience score of 64%.

Truly Madly Deeply

Truly Madly Deeply is a 1990 fantasy tale made for the BBC and starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. It's directed by Anthony Minghella. This is a sad, sweet, gentle ghost story.

trailer:

Empire Online concludes: "A divisive film -too overwrought for some, perfectly emotionally pitched for others- how much it will appeal will depend on how romantically inclined the viewer is feeling." Slate gives it a glowing review and closes with this: "It might make Minghella happy to know that those still figuring out how to mourn him can turn to his own best movie for advice."

Spirituality and Practice says, "Juliet Stevenson gives a heartfelt performance as an English woman who travels to the far country of grief and almost doesn't make it back. Watching the process whereby she is restored to the wonder, joy, and confusion of life is a delight to behold."

The NYT says it, "should be enchanting, but it isn't. Everyone pushes too hard, especially Mr. Minghella, the writer and director." Roger Ebert calls it "a truly odd film, maddening, occasionally deeply moving."