Racketboy Month of Horror 11: The Pandemic Edition

[dsheinem]

starting “The Shout”...

[prfsnl_gmr]

Awesome. I hope you enjoy the art film masquerading as a horror film...or horror film masquerading as an art film...or...whatever...it’s all so confusing! (I am genuinely interested in how you interpret the last scene, though. Also, the sound editing!!)

.....

Tonight, and on Ack’s glowing recommendation, my wife and I watched Lake Mungo (2008). Ack’s already reviewed it, and I agree completely with his assessment. It’s great, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough. A true hidden gem.

prfsnl_gmr’s Halloween Movie List 2020 - Outbreak Edition
Slither (2006) -
The Creeping Flesh (1973) -
Man-Made Monster (1941) -
Doctor X (1932) -
Audition (1999) -
The Vanishing (1988) -
The Return of Doctor X (1939) -
REC (2007) -
The Devil Doll (1936) -
Captive Wild Woman (1943) -
The Shout (1978) -
Phenomena (1985) -
Squirm (1976) -
Lake Mungo (2008) -

[dsheinem]

Awesome. I hope you enjoy the art film masquerading as a horror film...or horror film masquerading as an art film...or...whatever...it’s all so confusing! (I am genuinely interested in how you interpret the last scene, though.

The sound editing was ace and as someone who dabbles with synth/noise stuff a lot in his own creepy basement, that part of this film was gold. It spoke to me. I listened to it on some top of the line Sony Headphones, which added a lot to the experience...

I thought the ending was a so-so execution of a cool idea: that you could interpret it as the shout destroyed the cart/killed people and so the “shouter guy” was sane...or you could read it as the cart was destroyed in an explosion because of the chaos of the situation and the people around died from a result of the explosion, so “shouter guy” was insane. The ambiguity of the scene is the whole point, in my read. The final scene I then just read as an extended repeat of the intro, but now with a longer scene of identification since we know who these people are.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Awesome. I hope you enjoy the art film masquerading as a horror film...or horror film masquerading as an art film...or...whatever...it’s all so confusing! (I am genuinely interested in how you interpret the last scene, though.

The sound editing was ace and as someone who dabbles with synth/noise stuff a lot in his own creepy basement, that part of this film was gold. It spoke to me. I listened to it on some top of the line Sony Headphones, which added a lot to the experience...

I thought the ending was a so-so execution of a cool idea: that you could interpret it as the shout destroyed the cart/killed people and so the “shouter guy” was sane...or you could read it as the cart was destroyed in an explosion because of the chaos of the situation and the people around died from a result of the explosion, so “shouter guy” was insane. The ambiguity of the scene is the whole point, in my read. The final scene I then just read as an extended repeat of the intro, but now with a longer scene of identification since we know who these people are.

Yes, but...

Why was the nurse/wife looking specifically for Alan Bates at the end? What did she take from around his neck? Was it the buckle? If she was just a nurse in the hospital, I don’t see why she would have been looking for him specifically. His character is the ultimately unreliable narrator, and although the cricket game was ostensibly between patients and staff at the asylum, we only know that because a character tells us so. Might they all have been patients (i.e., is everyone mad here)? Why was Tim Curry’s character really there? He’s not a patient, apparently, but I’m inclined to believe he is, meaning we have a story told by an unreliable narrator told, perhaps, to a madman. I think everything in the movie is questionable, and I really liked that, at the end, it’s impossible to tell what, if anything, actually happened.

[PretentiousHipster]

Psycho 2 is honestly almost as good as part 1. A great study on mental illness and gaslighting, and Norman Bates is a conflicted character in such an interesting way.

[dsheinem]

Psycho 2 is honestly almost as good as part 1.

your definition of “almost” is a bit different than mine.

[PretentiousHipster]

Psycho is a 9/10 for me and Psycho 2 is an 8/10, so definitely almost :p

[Ack]

I'm gonna drop the marathon to 31 this year. Unfortunately, I am just not feeling it the way I have in previous years, likely for a multitude of reasons. That said, I don't want to deny at least attempting to point people to the ridiculous movies I enjoy watching, so maybe I'll hit upon something else that at least someone will enjoy. Plus, I still like thinking about these movies, even if I'm no Michi in terms of quality output.

Seriously, subscribe to Michi's review site. I do.



Cry of the Banshee (1970)

Let's get a few things straight right off the bat. There is no banshee; the title is only connected by a line a character mutters early on in response to a distant wolf howling. Also, despite that it was a period horror from American International Pictures and claims so on the poster, this is not in any way related to Edgar Allan Poe's writing. However, it does start with a Poe quote for good measure Got that? Good.

Vincent Price plays an old and wicked magistrate in Elizabethan England. For fun, he judges, tortures, and either humiliates or murders people accused of witchcraft. His family seems partly composed of sadists, and they enjoy participating in these regular witch hunts as well as a lot of rape. Like a lot of rape. Even pseudo-incest rape as one son goes after his stepmom.

Unfortunately, this bloodlust leads them to attack a weird nature-loving commune, which swears revenge using a foundling servant that has grown up in Price's household. Meanwhile, the one good son arrives with a new priest in time to investigate the various goings on. A mad dog is spotted around town, and everyone thinks it's what is doing the killing, but no. Oh no. It's way weirder than that.

Let's get something straight about Price's role here. Yes, he plays a sadistic English lord who hunts and judges witches, much like in another period horror he was in, Witchfinder General. This movie is not nearly as good and plays more like a cheap "me too." Script rewrites abounded, many of which made the witches more sympathetic and went unused. Also, Price was in ongoing contract negotiations and grew very bitter towards the AIP team; while he continued to work with them for several years, this was the last of his period horror films.

However, the script rewrites do make for some jarring shifts that at least make the movie interesting and less predictable. For example, Price goes on and on, railing against the "old religion" and praising his English ways, but he's the obvious conservative-minded individual. The witch coven is made up of mostly young people with long hair, flowers, flowy clothing made of likely bed sheets, and give a definite free love hippie vibe when they first appear. It's easy to see this movie up to this point as a response to divisions between generations in response to a rapidly changing culture in 1960s England and America...until you learn the witches really are Satan worshippers who sell their souls to get revenge using one of the few good people as their weapon. Suddenly the hippies are a lot less sympathetic.

And then comes the next twist: Satan turns the one nice guy into a wolfman when he kills. Yeah, suddenly it's a quasi-werewolf movie. Those script rewrites are a bitch, man. You even get a pseudo-transformation scene during a fight, though it basically works as more makeup being applied to the actor with each cut. IMDB even has it listed as a goof.

That's Cry of the Banshee, folks. Killer satanic hippies, a fake werewolf, a title that doesn't apply, sadist witchhunters, and even voodoo dolls show up. That's right, the hippie Satanists pull out voodoo dolls, because what better way to show your evilness than by making subtle references to the "evil" Black religion so often used as the source of villains' supernatural powers in other horror films.

And yet, I still somehow enjoyed this movie, probably because it becomes unpredictable as a result of the mess. It's no Witchfinder General though...so go watch that instead.

[PretentiousHipster]

Nightmare Ned is such a phenomenal game for kids. Look at the graphics. They have aged so well.

[Michi]

Well, that last movie was clearly a bust. So it's time for a hard reset by watching something that I know prfsnl_gmr likes.

Thusly, the next write-up in this months theme of "Movies I think prfsnl_gmr will like" is:

Daughters of Darkness



I can see why prfsnl_gmr liked this one. It's filled with color, style, interesting characters and sultry vampires. The master vampire Báthory is the type of villain that's scary because of cunning manipulation rather than physical dominance. On top of that, the whole movie is filled with bright colors and soft edges, which makes it feel distinctly feminine. Which is perhaps appropriate considering that most of the main cast is female. It's easily the most enjoyable vampire film I've seen in quite a while.