Blog Directory CineVerse: October 2017

Sonny in the seventies

Sunday, October 29, 2017

CineVerse kicks off its new two-month schedule on November 1 with “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975; 125 minutes), directed by Sidney Lumet, chosen by Tess Stanisha.

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November-December CineVerse schedule hot off the presses

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Learn what's on the docket for November and December at CineVerse by viewing our new two-month calendar, available by clicking here.

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Horror with a generous helping of hilarity

Menace and mirth may seem like strange bedfellows, but a good horror film often features an ample touch of comedy. It helps relieve the tension viewers feel and can serve to put as at ease right before the filmmaker chooses to terrify us with a jump scare or sudden fright. A worthy example of a scary flick imbued with a wickedly funny sense of humor is "Creepshow." An autopsy of this picture revealed the following observations:

WHAT TOOK YOU BY SURPRISE, GOOD OR BAD, ABOUT THIS FILM?

  • It has a deliciously dark sense of humor that, while it may not buffer the violence, gore or gross-out shocks for those who are sensitive, makes the movie more satisfying and easier to swallow. 
  • It attempts the look, feel and spirit of old-time horror comic books, as evidenced by the animated titles and comic panel transitions between segments, the exaggerated colors, the clever episode titles, the split-screen compositions, the appropriately atmospheric and stylized score, and the choice to retell two tales first shared in the old EC Comics. 
    • Writer Slarek from CineOutsider wrote: “The stories in E.C. Horror Comics had a distinctive style. Usually brief and simple in structure, they were largely morality tales in which the wicked and greedy paid the price for their actions, often at the hands of those they had wronged. And in horror comics, killing someone wouldn't prevent them from coming back from the dead and dishing out an appropriately themed punishment. Sometimes events sent the central character on the road to madness or inadvertently brought about their own death or downfall, and many of the tales concluded with a satisfying sting.” 
  • It feels like it was made with love and care by those who love and care for the original source material. And this is true: the director is George Romero, the screenwriter/actor is Stephen King, and the special effects wizard is Tom Savini, and they’re paying tribute to the notorious EC Comics titles of their youth, such as “Tales From the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror.” The animated sequences were also drawn by Jack Kamen, one of the original artists for EC Comics. This film wasn’t made by hacks and hired guns—it was crafted with TLC by true fans and legends of the horror genre. 
  • Each tale is distinctive and memorable in its own way, with some more humorous or violent or disgusting than others, and some longer than others. 
  • Like other memorable horror anthology films, this one features a wraparound story that bookends the movie: in this case, the mini-tale of a young boy getting revenge on his disciplinary father. 
  • We are often made to identify and sympathize with the murderers than the ones murdered. Consider how the daughter who murders her father was treated by him, or how henpecked and distracted the professor is made by his harpy-like wife. 
  • Creepshow features a pretty impressive cast for a B-horror movie, including Ed Harris, E.G. Marshall, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook and Ted Danson. 
WHAT THEMES RUN CONCURRENT THROUGH SOME OF ALL OF THESE STORIES IN CREEPSHOW?
  • Poetic justice. As Roger Ebert phrased it: “In an EC horror story, unspeakable things happened to people – but, for the most part, they deserved them.” 
  • A character with an Achilles heel or fatal flaw: For Bedelia, her flaw is loose lips and prideful boasting. For Jordy Verrill, it’s ignorant curiosity. For Richard Veckers, it’s his pretentious cleverness and twisted cruelty. For Upson Pratt, it’s his air of superiority, dictatorial demand for control and cleanliness, and desire to live in a bubble. 
  • Bigotry and segregation—these are the thinly veiled subtexts of the final episode, which features a man who looks down upon other humans as lesser creatures whom he tries to keep locked out of his private and sterile Eden. 
SIMILAR MOVIES THAT CREEPSHOW BRINGS TO MIND:
  • Tales From the Darkside: The Movie 
  • Trick r Treat 
  • Twilight Zone: The Movie 
  • Tales From the Crypt 
OTHER FILMS DIRECTED BY GEORGE ROMERO:
  • The Living Dead films, including Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead 
  • The Crazies 
  • Martin 
  • The Dark Half

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The most fun you'll ever have...being scared

Sunday, October 22, 2017

CineVerse's Shocktober Theater and our current Quick Theme Quartet concludes on October 25 with “Creepshow” (1982; 120 minutes), directed by George Romero. Plus: the “Meet Sam” episode from “Trick ’r Treat” (2007; 21 minutes)

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Far out tales from the Far East

Thursday, October 19, 2017

It doesn't boast much action. Its pace may be glacier slow for many Westerners. And many would scoff at categorizing it as a "horror film." But Masaki Kobayashi's "Kwaidan" is still considered one of the greatest of all horror anthology movies. On the strength of its unforgettable visuals alone, here is a picture that can leave a memorably macabre imprint and implant an unshakable feeling of foreboding doom and dread. After discussing the movie last evening during our CineVerse meetings, here were the major takeaways we concluded:

WHAT LEFT A STRONG IMPRESSION ON YOU ABOUT THIS FILM?

  • The stylized and artificial sets and colors; the filmmakers seem to be purposely trying to avoid realism and instead portray an exaggerated, expressionistic simulation of reality in which visuals and sound are hyperbolic manifestations of a particular character’s mindset or experience.
  • The craftsmanship evident is meticulous; this was the most costly Japanese movie to date; it was photographed nearly completely on hand-painted sets within a giant airplane hangar, providing a needed sense of vast scope that enabled the use of extreme widescreen (2.35:1) to portray extra wide compositions.
  • The soundtrack abandons traditional over-dramatic horror/mystery music, instead relying on outlandish instruments and objects to generate unsettling noises and music. Essayist Gwendolyn Foster wrote: “Toru Takemitsu’s bold and modern soundtrack, which deftly avoids the clichés of conventional film music…uses expressionist sounds, and bizarre instrumentation interspersed with sections of uneasy quiet and deliberately disarms the spectator, while simultaneously weaving a spell that draws the viewer further into Kobayashi’s colourful and highly stylized realm.”
  • The horror isn’t violent, graphic or traditionally shocking. Instead, it evokes an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere and a milieu in which the characters seem to be drifting between two states—the real world and the supernatural world, which often blend together. Foster further suggested: “Kwaidan is a film of nuance and restraint, despite the excesses of sound design and wildly stylized visuals. Kobayashi’s misc en scene is deliberate and proceeds with the assurance of dream-like logic, or the lack thereof. Kwaidan is a psychological horror film for those who are seeking an utterly immersive experience, in which the viewer is gradually seduced by the deeply saturated colour, the expressiveness of the seemingly vast hand built studio sets, and the sheer time factor. In its visual and thematic structure, Kwaidan is ultimately an expressionist fairy tale for adults, in which all is artifice, and yet at the same time mesmerizingly real.”
  • The film feels decidedly Eastern in its sensibilities, yet comprehensible to Westerners. Consider that the source material comes from Japanese folk tales reinterpreted by a westerner—Lafcaido Hearn, an Irish-Greek writer who lived in Japan—and was inspired by woodblock printmaking of the 17th century Edo period and Kabuki theater. Yet, the stories would fit right in with western-style anthology horror and thriller texts like The Twilight Zone.
WHAT THEMES ARE EVIDENT IN KWAIDAN?
  • Cosmic karma: how breaking your promise can come back to haunt you.
  • The dangers of venturing beyond the normal limits of safe reality. Criterion Collection essayist Geoffrey O’Brien wrote: “These are not tales that point to any obvious moral other than the danger of venturing, deliberately or by accident, beyond the invisible barriers that mark the limits of the human world. What lies beyond those barriers is the domain of supernatural terror, but it is also the domain of art. In Kwaidan, beauty is not decoration but a direct link to unknown and perilous realms.”
  • The terrifyingly cold and vast emptiness of the universe. “The three main stories of Kwaidan offer no escape. The gorgeousness of their painted skies and otherworldly color schemes, the transparent unreality of everything we see, all the bravura touches of stylization, only emphasize that one may travel to the farthest reaches of the imagination only to find at last a great and terrifying void,” noted O’Brien.
  • “Hauntedness as a state of Japanese existence,” according to Slant Magazine’s Carson Lund. “. Kobayashi’s gambit is to contextualize these hauntings in political terms, as reflections of deep-seated anxieties within Japan as a result of its strict moral codes…(the film) seems as much a cautionary message to Japanese audiences on the danger of following the mistakes of history.”
OTHER WORKS DIRECTED BY MASAKI KOBAYASHI:
  • Black River
  • The Human Condition I, II, and III
  • Harakiri
FILMS THAT KWAIDAN REMINDS US OF:
  • Suspiria, with its lavish and exaggerated color
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, two Kubrick films that share a sense of cold, expansive and hermetic space

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A stir-fried helping of tasty Asian horror

Sunday, October 15, 2017

On October 18, three themes converge on CineVerse: World Cinema Wednesday, Shocktober Theater, and Quick Theme Quartet. Join us for “The Black Hair” and “The Woman of the Snow” episodes from “Kwaidan” (1964; 83 minutes), directed by Masaki Kobayashi. Plus: the “Nightmare at 20,000 feet” episode from “Twilight Zone: The Movie” (1983; 30 minutes) and a trailer reel preview of the November/December CineVerse schedule

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Terror times three

Thursday, October 12, 2017

It's not often you see Boris Karloff in a color horror film – especially one with garish hues and exaggerated chromatic tones like "Black Sabbath," perhaps director Mario Bava's finest hour (or should we say 90 minutes). If the funky colors – which predate the psychedelic era – and atmospheric lighting don't leave an impression, other unsettling visuals probably will. For a roundup of our CineVerse discussion points from last evening, read on.

WHAT STRUCK YOU AS DISTINCTIVE, UNEXPECTED OR RARE ABOUT THIS MOVIE?

  • The color photography and lighting design is especially memorable; we see deep and sometimes exaggerated colors that catch the eye. “Favoring bright primary hues, sets are bathed in washes of color that can only be called hallucinatory. Electric greens and crimson reds, steely blues and deep purples give the screen depth and character,” wrote reviewer Glenn Erickson.
  • Often, there are long stretches of little to no dialogue, allowing the story to unfold via pure visuals, unnerving sound effects, and strength of performance by the actor. Consider the last nine minutes of the third story, “A Drop of Water.”
  • Arguably, each story improves upon its predecessor, resulting in a film that gets better as it progresses. This is often true of horror anthology movies, which commonly save the best episodes for the conclusion.
  • This film presents a vampire tale that goes against the grain: introducing to many the disturbing concept of the “wurdulak,” an undead fiend that feasts on the blood of its loved ones.
  • The epilogue peels back the curtains on movie magic and shows us how the sausage is made in a humorous way.
  • This movie was memorable enough to inspire a major heavy metal band to name itself after it: Black Sabbath. 
  • The film stands as another example of giallo — “a lurid, colorful, perverse and blood-drenched brand of Italian horror”, as described by New York Times writer Andy Webster.
WHAT THEMES RUN AS UNDERCURRENTS IN ONE OR MORE OF THESE THREE EPISODES?
  • A person being alienated from their own home and attacked from within a would-be safe sanctuary; consider that two of the three stories occur completely or primarily inside a small apartment, with a female being besieged by a real or supernatural force.
  • The sins of greed and lust do not go unpunished: the nurse’s avarice and the prostitute’s seedy profession come back to haunt them.
  • Family ties can bind – An adherence to traditional family values and patriarchal respect can ironically destroy the entire clan. Erickson wrote: “the idea that family is a weakness against supernatural evil goes against conventional horror tradition, and is all the more disturbing for it.”
  • Revenge of the dead upon the living.
  • Personal and psychological horror can be more terrifying than a physical or supernatural manifestation. Director Mario Bava was once quoted as saying: “If I could, I would only tell these stories. What interests me is the fear experienced by a person alone in their room. It is then that everything around him starts to move menacingly around, and we realize that the only true 'monsters' are the ones we carry in ourselves. Alas, the marketplace demands terrible papier-mâché creatures, or the vampire with his sharp fangs, rising from his casket!"
WHAT OTHER FILMS, TELEVISION SHOWS, OR WORKS OF LITERATURE COME TO MIND AFTER WATCHING BLACK SABBATH?
  • Thriller, a TV show hosted by Boris Karloff
  • The Hammer horror films of the late 50s/early 60s, with their saturated colors, Gothic sets and costumes, and amped up sex and violence
  • Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart
OTHER FILMS DIRECTED BY MARIO BAVA:
  • Black Sunday (also known as The Mask of Satan)
  • The Evil Eye
  • Five Dolls for an August Moon

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Cat scratch fever

Monday, October 9, 2017

You won't want to miss Cineversary on Thursday, October 12, at the Oak Lawn Library, from 6:30-8:45 p.m.. That's when we'll celebrate the 75th anniversary of “Cat People” (1942; 73 minutes), directed by Jacques Tourneur

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A movie so scary it inspired the name of the first heavy metal band

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Shocktober Theater and our current Quick Theme Quartet returns to CineVerse on October 11 with “Black Sabbath” (1963; 92 minutes), directed by Mario Bava. Plus: the “…And All Through the House” episode of “Tales From the Crypt” (1972; 11 minutes), and the “Amelia” episode from “Trilogy of Terror” (1975; 24 minutes)

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Tea, crumpets and ghost stories

Thursday, October 5, 2017

The granddaddy of all anthology horror films is arguably "Dead of Night," a lesser-known and rarely seen outing from Britain released in 1945. Martin Scorsese ranked this picture among his 11 scariest horror films of all time, and it places high on other reputable lists as well. Creaky in some spots, excessively padded in others, and certainly tame by today's Tinseltown terror standards, this film nonetheless gets under your skin – if you give it a chance. Among the major discussion topics at last evening's CineVerse meeting are the following:

WHAT DID YOU FIND CURIOUS, SURPRISING OR OUT OF THE ORDINARY ABOUT THIS FILM?

  • It varies in tone and style – some of the episodes are scarier than others, while at least one is downright humorous and may not fit tonally with the rest of the picture (the ghost golfing vignette). Interestingly, each story was helmed by a different director – with four in total. Arguably, that helps distinguish each episode from one another in terms of visuals, pacing, themes, and overall feel.
  • Anthology films in general can be risky: just as one bad apple can spoil the barrel, one lesser episode in an anthology can sour the rest of the movie for the audience. Then again, word-of-mouth about only one or two good episodes in an otherwise mediocre anthology horror film can be enough to keep it alive and resonant.
  • It’s surprisingly creepy and effective as a good horror movie, despite being released overseas in the mid-1940s. Remember that Britain was not known for horror pictures – in fact, between 1942 in 1945, the government barred the import and viewing of all H-rated pictures (meaning H for horror), likely due to the brutality of World War II and to keep morale and spirits up at home.
  • Dead of Night carries on the tradition of the classic English ghost story; it feels very British, yet appeals to Americans because we have an affinity for the English ghost story and famous writers of this genre, including Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, M.R. James, Henry James, and Algernon Blackwood.
  • It features a compelling circular wraparound story that serves as a framing device . The epilogue provides a twist ending that makes the viewer feel unsettled and helps the overall film resonate more with viewers.
  • This film apparently inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho; consider that Psycho uses mirrors in several scenes to depict a split personality or some off-screen menace that could come into view at any moment. Psycho also ends with a psychotic individual in custody and overwhelmed by the dominant side of his split personality – similar to Maxwell being capped in a sanitarium and talking in his ventriloquist dummy voice.
  • Speaking of Hitchcock, this movie brings back three memorable actors from the master of suspense’s last great film made in Britain: The Lady Vanishes – Michael Redgrave, and Naunton Wayne as Caldicott and Basil Radford as Charters; the latter two characters became a popular duo who starred in their own films after The Lady Vanishes, and the actors reappear here as similar characters.
  • Apparently, the film also influenced the Big Bang Theory. Writer Jez Connelly wrote: “Astronomer Royal Sir Fred Hoyle and his Cambridge colleagues Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold were inspired by a viewing of Dead of Night when formulating their pre-Big Bang ‘Steady State’ theory of the Cosmos. ‘My God! It’s a cosmology. Maybe there’s something in this cyclical cosmology’ wrote Hoyle in his diary after witnessing the film’s famously elliptical narrative, and so was born a theory explaining life, the Universe and everything based on a horror film about one man’s never-ending nightmare.”
  • Lastly, this film is memorable for attempting something rare, especially for an older film: allowing the twist to play out while the end credits roll. That’s risky, considering that some viewers may walk out or turn off the movie as soon as they see the first credit text appear.
MANY CONSIDER THE VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY FINALE EPISODE TO BE THE FILM’S STRONGEST CHAPTER. IF YOU AGREE, WHY DO YOU BELIEVE THIS IS SO?
  • Perhaps it’s because, among all the tales told in Dead of Night, it allows for either a psychological or supernatural reading; in other words, it’s the most ambiguous and subjective. There’s a suggestion here that Hugo is really alive and autonomous; it’s also quite possible that Max is deranged and suffering from a split-personality disorder, only imagining that his dummy is alive.
  • Consider that this may have been the first instance of ventriloquist dummy horror in film; many imitators have followed, including Magic, Dead Silence, and Devil Doll. Prior to this film, ventriloquist dummies like Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy were considered cute, comedic and harmless. This story helped introduce the creepy notion that dolls can be possessed by supernatural forces and should not be trusted. That’s a formula that’s worked countless times in pop culture, from the Twilight Zone’s Talking Tina to Chucky to Annabelle.
  • This vignette also features an A-list British actor for the time, Michael Redgrave, who gives an outstanding performance – probably the best in the movie.
  • There are also fascinating psycho-sexual dynamics at work in this story, as Max seems to be involved in a strange love triangle with Hugo and his rival Klee. 
WHAT OTHER FILMS COME TO MIND AFTER VIEWING THIS MOVIE?
  • The Topper films 
  • Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors
  • Tales from the Crypt, the Vault of Horror, and Asylum – all anthology horror films by Amicus Studios
  • Hitchcock’s Psycho, Vertigo and The Lady Vanishes

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The English know how to tell a pretty good ghost story, too

Sunday, October 1, 2017

On October 4, Shocktober Theater returns to CineVerse, this time in the guise of a Quick Theme Quartet we call "A Fearsome Foursome of Anthology Horror." Once a quarter (every third month), CineVerse will explore four movies tied together by a theme. Our fourth quartet will focus on four horror anthology films (featuring separate scary stories within one movie). Part 1: “Dead of Night” (1945; 103 minutes), directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, et al. Plus: the “Morella” episode from “Tales of Terror” (1962; 22 minutes)

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