Shivers (1975)

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David Cronenberg is a favourite director of mine, He occupies that strange middle ground between respected auteur and body horror genre director, at least in the early part of his career: later on,the body horror disappears and Cronenberg safely gets the approval of the snobbish critics whi sniff at his earlier work, even this film, which is safely gathered into the canon of we horror aficionados, Yet this is no B movie. It deserves more.

Amonst the cast, of course, is Barbara Steele, to whom the phrase "horror queen" could be applied. And this very modern film (for 1975), opening with a posh advert for a load of posh aparments on the St Lawrence in Montreal, is certainly within the horror genre. Yet it centres ver specifically on a body horror equated exactly with sexzuality. As Janine says, while trying to seductively kill Dr St Luc, mere existence is sexuality; we exist to reproduce, The species is all. So here we have a Dr Hobbes who plans to replace malfunctioning organs with useful parasites that do the same job, yet (after the nonce dies after murdering a schoolgirl he'd been shagging, causing distressingly little outrage) his true philosopjy is that humans are too cerebral and insufficiently sexual. This is the perfect premise for a film based on the phenimenon of disgusting little phallic worms which can hardly do other than represent male sexuality. There's a clearly rapey theme here, intended to evoke bloody disgust, and no one gets out alive, as we're all guilty of having sexual desires, if not necessarily violent ones. 

This is at once a superb horror film, belying its low budget, and a harbinger of what Cronenberg has yet to bring us.The man's a genius.

Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)

"It's a bit like one of those old houses in horror films."

"I see what you mean. It's like Boris Karloff's going to pop up any minute..."

Wow. A late '60s horror film with a very genre cast (what a cast though!) that manages to be not at all kitsch as its Hammer and Amicus cousins usually are but, in spite of being very much full of the usual cliched tropes, is actually a film of genuine quality. Then again, it's scripted by the two men behind The Web of Fear.

Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff both excel in roles that suit their perspective brands of silky, sinister charisma, although sadly Barbara Steele's role is too small to be worth much comment. Mark Eden does well as the hero, although it's a shame that Robert gets such a tiresomely and predictably rapey scene with Virginia Wetherell's Eve, something that dates the film every bit as much as the '60s fire engine at the end.

The true star is the script, though- this tale of a witch burned unjustly at the stake under Cromwell and seeking bloody revenge over the centuries involving violence, fear and, er, a fair bit of BDSM from the very start, and centred around an old house with a hidden past may be typically gothic fare with a huge number of horror film cliches all present and correct right down to the petrol pump attendant warning us off the house in question, but the execution is undeniably superb. Don't mistake it for one of the many films of a similar type with a similar cast at a similar time; this one is well worth watching.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

"Do you know where you are, Bartolome? I'll tell you where you are. You are about to enter Hell, Bartolome, HELL!... The netherworld. The infernal region, The abode of the Damned... The place of torment. Pandemonium. Abbadon. Tophet. Gehenna. Naraka. The pit... and the pendulum!"

One of the first films I did for this blog was Roger Corman's House of Usher; I didn't expect it to be quite as long until the next one of his Edgar Allan Poe films which happens, coincidentally, to be the second one made. I seem to have accidentally managed to do them in order so far.

This is a far superior film to its predecessor, with the use of a blurred and tinted picture for the flashbacks being a particularly inspired directorial flourish and Vincent Price being superb. Only the very end of the film is faithful to Poe's (very) short story with a plot invented to sound vaguely Poe-like, utilising many of his tropes, not least of which is premature burial. It works, and the plot is superb with a fantastic twist.

This is a profoundly gothic film in which the sins of the past- both before and after the twist- threaten to destroy the well-meaning but helpless present generation with the sheer weight of their evil. In this case it is the tortures of the recent Spanish Inquisition which weigh oppressively on the present, and the acting and superb direction Jane this a genuinely powerful and disturbing film. I'm left to ruminate that gothic horror is fundamentally progressive: it is fascinated by the past but all too aware that bad things happened there.

I was expecting a bit of campy fun with this film but instead, in spite of John Kerr's dodgy acting, I found a genuinely excellent film. Highly recommended.

8½ (1963)

"A writer's block? What if it's not just temporary, my friend? What if it's the final downfall of a liar who has run out of talent."

A single viewing probably isn't enough for me to properly discuss Federico Fellini's magnum opus. Suffice to say it's a beautifully shot and profoundly eloquent film, every shot pregnant with far more meaning than I can adequately discuss here. It's magnificent but, while it is everything I just said, it is by no means a "difficult" film to watch. There is a straightforward narrative in spite of everything.

Guido is a forty-three year old film director, like Fellini himself, and the assumption must be that the character is a self-portrait. This is interesting, as the character suffers from a profound writers block which he cannot overcome, ultimately leading, after much angst, to an expensive, abandoned failure. This is, of course, the underlying anxiety of all artists. But there is, I think, more, an ennui and existential angst, mixed with mid-life crisis, that seems very appropriate to the early '60s.

I wonder if Fellini has a similar difficult relationship with his wife? And, of so, if her reaction to the film on seeing it was the same as the fictional Luisa?

There are many dream sequences (one of which involves a harem of showgirls, and a whip!), all of which are deliberately shot so as not to be straightforwardly separated from the main narrative. Delightfully metatextual games are also played: I love the character of the critic. Not only does Fellini get to use the character to anticipate any and all criticism but he skewers the worst sort of critic quite delightfully.

Not exactly light viewing, this, but extremely rewarding. I recommend it hugely.