Alucarda

Alucarda

Original Title: Alucarda, la hijas de las tinieblas

Aka: Sisters of Satan

Directed by: Juan López Moctezuma

Mexico, 1978

Satanism / Occult / Possession, 85min

Distributed by: Mondo Macabro

Last week I discussed the heritage of Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, and the phenomenon of El Santo, but don’t for a second think that Mexican genre cinema is all about Lucha Libre and masked heroes saving the day. Even though that specific niche may be the one most associated with Mexican sub-genres, there is still a goldmine of highly explosive movies come out of Mexico if you know where to search.

Juan López Moctezuma’s Alucarda is one of, if not the best, demonic possession, movie ever made. It’s creepy, disturbing, gory, loads of fun and holds extremely high production values that all add up to make it one of the most entertaining movies to come out of Mexico during the seventies.

I would be wrong to slot this film into the nunsploitation genre even if this would seem fitting: Yes there’s certainly a whole lot of nuns engaging in battle with the evil forces at bay. Also it takes place in an orphanage/church where daily prayers and religious artefacts fill every scene. But there’s none of the backroom sleaze activity from the nuns, which usually characterizes the nunsploitation genre. It’s not the nuns that are sinful, but the poesies young women. (If you feel that taking your kit off and lesbian desires are sinful that is) Instead this is a good old possession movie where the devil corrupts the minds of young innocent women in his quest for world domination, with a healthy dose of exploitation traits at play.

The mood, tone and atmosphere of this movie is firmly set from the very start of the film. A young mother [Tina Romero in a double role as she later plays the grown up Alucarda too] gives birth to a little girl who, after being named Alucarda, is quickly taken by a strange old woman leaving the mother to face the strange entity that obviously is lurking the strange crypt like place she has chosen to give birth in…

Many years later, Justine [Susana Kamini, who starred in all of Moctezuma’s movies but the last one.] arrives at an orphanage where Sister Angélica [Tina French] greets her and shows Justine her new home. Justine is introduced to her roommate Alucarda [Tina Romero again] who comes right out and makes an impression of being quite eccentric and intense as she shows Justine her collection of secrets that she’s found out in the woods surrounding the orphanage. In reality it’s all pieces of twigs, dead beetles’ and small pebbles, but it set’s a naïve character trait that will be necessary to build the Alucarda persona. We understand that our impression of this peculiar young girl is the same as the other girls in the orphanage and realise that Alucarda is a loner without friends, which is why she so early on attaches herself to Justine, the new girl, so instantly. The new girl is a clean slate and holds no prejudice towards Alucarda.

They two friends run out into the woods to find more secrets and meet a hunchbacked Gypsy [Claudio Brook who you may recall from Guillermo Del Toro’s Cronos 1993, Robert Fuest’s satanic turkey The Devil’s Rain 1975 or one of the many Luis Buñuel movies he starred in. He also held the lead role in Moctezuma’s The Mansion of Madness (La mansión de la locura) 1973, and just like Romero holds double roles in Alucarda, as you soon will see.] Anyhow, the gypsy hunchback tries to sell the girls more “Secrets”, but his secrets are much more sinister than simple woodland titbits, and after running away from the creepy hunchback they find themselves in the crypt, or abandoned chapel from the opening birth sequence. Filled with adolescent curiosity they initiate a blood rite promising to be BFF’s and open one of the graves that they find there (possibly Alucarda’s mothers?) and the demonic forces start to arise. The audio is exhilarating here as the feeling is almost as if the sound producer has grabbed a mike and started growling and snarling into it right on top of the soundtrack. At first it is quite annoying, but the longer it goes on for the more profoundly it disturbed me. This trick is used throughout the rest of the movie, acting as a haunting audio key to indicate that the satanic forces at work are even larger than the movies narrative.

From here on the movie definitely goes into psychotronic land, safely back at the orphanage the girls undress and engage in a blood pact to stay friends for ever and never to walk the earth with out each other, and guess who shows up to interfere and lure them further into the darkness, yes it’s the hunchback. Inducting them into the pleasures of Satanism and blood rituals the heavens open up and blood pours from the skies. The Hunchback takes the girls with him out to the gypsy camp where a full-fledged satanic ritual is in progress. Nothing is held back as the naked participants engage in a huge orgy as Justine and Alucarda watch on in anticipation until the horned one makes his impressive entrance welcoming the girls into his dark world. At the same time Sister Angelica prays for her ward Justine, call upon the saviour the hardest she can, crying blood, sweating blood, levitating and begging the lord for Justine’s salvation. And would you believe it, in some kind of synchronized dance/possession Sister Angelica and the gypsy high priestess fight it out ever so elegantly, leaving Sister Angelica a crying mess, but successful and the high priestess dead in a pool of blood. The entire sequence is further propelled in surrealism as the before mentioned growling and snarling right in the front of the audio is right there adding to the visual wildness on screen.

Back at school the girls taunt their nun teachers and recite long passages of biblical texts only to blaspheme them and evoke the name of Beelzebub. The nuns are terrified and call in Mother Superior [Birgitta Segerskog obviously a Swede who I cant’ find anything more info on] who after talks with Father Lázaro [David Silva who also starred in several Moctezuma and Alejandro Jodorowsky movies] decides that the two girls need to be exorcised and bring all his religious gusto to the exorcism session where the girls are tied up to crosses and Justine stripped bare. I never quite understand why the church always have to tear the clothes of the poor lasses to go though exorcism, but still that’s what they always do and it creates a creepy feeling of hypocrisy as the nuns are all wrapped up in their habits and the poor young, fresh girls are exposed. Finally the monks get to see some skin. But you need that nudity in there or it wouldn’t be called exploitation cinema would it.

The local doctor, Dr. Oszek [Brook in his second part] arrives just in time to witness Justine die at the hands of the Father Lázaro, or is it the evil forces that take her life as they have other plans for Justine… He damns Father Lázaro and the church for this outrageous act, but Father Lázaro defends himself by claiming that the girls are possessed by the devil and need to be set free, hence drastic action is demanded. Dr. Oszek takes Alucarda and his blind daughter out of the school and back to the safety of his own home. But have no fear for the movie is defiantly not over yet... As Sister Angelica prays by Justine’s body it starts to twitch, and the movie cranks it up to a higher level as it begins the build towards the coming fifteen minutes of climax that makes this one of the most amazing movies of cult cinema. Demons are fought, Justine bathes in blood, Nuns have their throats torn out, Fireballs are thrown, Monks are engulfed in flames, crucifixes burn, Alucarda brings hell to the ordinary world in an inferno of damnation. It’s good vs. evil in a battle older than mankind, and it is stuff that will blow your mind.

Upon watching Alucarda one could easily feel that this movie, in many ways like the Italian nunsploitation flicks, is anti clerical and a protest against the church, therefore choosing exposing their sinister sides and dark secrets, but I feel that the movie actually is more pro than against. For even though the clergy do kill Justine (in some ways she’s all ready lost due to the possession) Father Làzaro is right. The girls are possessed by the devil, and even the goody two shoes Dr. Oszek joins the church in the fight against the demons once his daughter is threatened. It’s splendid to see how easily lead on we are as an audience, and just how easy we are to manipulate. As Moctezuma has built the characters of Justine and Alucarda as young, naïve and innocent, we obviously take sides with them during the movie, hence directing us to root for the antagonists if you like. Yes antagonists. Justine and Alucarda are the evil forces of the movie, and the church; Sister Angelica, Father Lázaro and Dr. Oszek are the protagonists. It’s a wonderful trick when it works and Moctezuma pulls it off with bravura, as we don’t want the girls to be punished and want them to come out victorious against the forces of the church.

Finding his inspiration in Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla text, Moctezuma and his co writers, among them his wife Yolanda, come up with a splendid story. It’s safe to say that Moctezuma makes the source material his own and uses the source material as an inspiration not a template. Although the gothic setting is preserved, the vampire element of Carmilla is abandoned; keeping the core - yearning for companionship and the extent you will go to for this camaraderie. Not to forget the controversial, well at least in 1872 when Fanu wrote it, homoeroticism especially the lesbian girl on girl elements. Exploring daring themes and using them in your text isn’t simply a ploy of seventies - eighties exploitation cinema; it’s been used since mankind started putting words on paper, and for some unexplained reason it provokes e heck out of certain people. Also Justine's name is a reference to De Sade’s Justine text, where the themes of good and evil, opposing oneself against accepted tradition, the corruption of the church and a young woman's coming of age are key elements.

Alucarda is a fascinating movie, the acting is splendid, the story is highly entertaining, Xavier Cruz's cinematography is marvellous, the compositions are stunning and at some times it’s almost like watching a theatrical presentation of the material. The movie is disturbing in many ways, one of the most effective is reminiscent of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and that’s the deafening audio track, screaming girls and growling demons make up a truly disturbing soundtrack. It’s a bold and innovative gamble that the sound crew and editors have taken, but in it’s own strange way it works in favour of the movie. Romero and Kamini scream as if their lives really where on the line, and the demonic growling placed up front make it impossible to escape the threat presented.

I’d say that the movie feels theatrical because of Moctezuma’s background in the theatre and radio. After working with radio, creating Panoama de Jazz in 1959, a show which aired for almost 35 years, Moctezuma set his eyes on the area that had always inspired and enticed him, Cinema. His road there went via several TV shows, a number of short movies and his assistant work with theatre legend Seki Sano.

Seki Sano was an exiled Japanese director and writer of theatre who spent time in prison after being accused of spreading socialist ideas through his work. Sano spent some years in the then USSR where he associated and worked with the likes of Stanislavski and Meyerhold, before moving on to America. But even there his “radical and socialist” ideas where criticized and he ventured further south ending up in Mexico during 1939. Here he would become somewhat of a key figure for the next generation of belligerent players on the Mexican scene. It is probably during his time as an assistant to Sano that Moctezuma picked up his method of writing, acting, directing and the theatrical grandeur that comes with his movies. It's also during this time that he befriended the Chilean multiartist and creative shaman Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Teaming up with his new friend Jodorowsky, Moctezuma worked with him on Fando y lis 1967 and the midnight classic El Topo 1970, for which he both received producer credits on. It was only a question of time before Moctezuma himself would direct his own full length features, and in 1973 Moctezuma wrote and directed The Mansion of Madness loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether. Just like Jodorowsky, Moctezuma regarded his art passionately and held it close to himself on a personal level which had him refuse compromising with his principles and, again just like Jodorowsky, he was quite rigid, which is one of the reasons why he only directed a few movies during his career. It’s all about quality and not quantity for visual directors of Mocetezuma's stature.

But those five movies still hold up today as the surreal art house horror crossovers that they where intended to be. Themes, style and elements of the fantastic played for real in some of the most fascinating movies you will ever see.

Image:

Full screen 4:3, which presumably is the OAR.

Audio:

Dolby Digital Stereo with English or Spanish dialogue options.

Extras:

Juan Lopez Moctezuma – A Cultured Maverick: A short documentary on the director and his movies, Theatrical Trailer, a gallery of stills and photos. Interview with Guillermo del Toro on the legacy of Moctezuma. There’s also a text interview with Moctezuma and cast and crew biographies.

Paperhouse

Paperhouse
Directed by: Bernard Rose
UK, 1988
Horror/Drama, 89min
Distributed by: Lionsgate

Story:
Young Anna Maddon, starts having strange dreams during fainting spells. In these dreams she finds herself walking an imaginary world that she has drawn in one of her notebooks. After a while characters from her drawing start turning up in her dreams and several inverted reflections of the real world start to become apparent in the dream world. But when anger towards her father’s absence starts to enter the dream world they take on nightmarish proportions.

Me:
Here’s one of those movies that I often have referred to as a forgotten British horror gem, but now, after re-watching it, I have really mixed feelings about. So much that I contemplated dropping it from the pile of stuff to be reviewed as the end credits rolled on screen. On one hand I remember it as a very scary and effective movie and brought more than a decade of respect for the movie with me to the couch before enjoying a dear reunion with Bernard Rose’s Paperhouse. But after seeing the movie again I had the churning feeling that it’s really only a pretty silly and tedious piece of confusing junk. Well the silly/tedious/confusing junk bit goes on for ever during the last fifteen minutes of the movie, and that’s probably why I completely had forgotten about it, because there are a few really good scares here, some fabulous moments of fear, an intriguing plot and a great pre-adolescent love story underneath all the parallel world dream/nightmare stuff. It’s funny how fifteen years of space between viewings can warp your impression of a movie.

Anna [Charlotte Burke, who never starred in anymore movies, but did win the Best Actress award at the Spanish Fantasporto festival in 1989 for her part in Paperhouse] starts having fainting spells where she awakens in a dream world that reassembles the drawing she drew during the opening titles. Anna passes out during a game of hide-and-seek and can’t be found for several hours, her Mother [Glenne Headly] is worried sick, and Anna’s father is away with his work. The police find her and the family doctor, Dr. Sarah [Gemma Jones who apart from playing Bridget Jones mum, and Madam Pomfrey in the Harry Potter movies also played Mrs. Folder in Jaume Balagueró’s Fragile 2005] orders Anna to a few days rest. She also tells Anna about another patient she is treating, a little boy in Anna’s age, who also is bedridden. Anna draws the boy into her drawing and he, obviously turns up in her dream world but he’s disabled and unable to walk. Marc [the late Elliot Spiers, who only ever did one more movie apart from Paperhouse, Taxandria 1994, which also features a nearby lighthouse on the seaside] The two children start a platonic relationship in the dream world that eventually leads up to an innocent kiss. That’s when Anna’s father [Ben Cross] appears in her dream and he’s not the loving parent that you may think, but rather the opposite as he wielding a hammer, chases Anna round the paper house, screaming that he will find her and punish her. Anna and Marc destroy the threatening father, but their action which takes place both in the dream world and in reality ends up with Anna being put in hospital. As she awakens in the real world her real father is there, full of remorse for having spent such a long time away from home. Anna also learns of the real world Marc dying. Together the family goes on holiday and in one last confused state of reality and dream Anna and Marc take their goodbyes and Anna moves on into adolescence.

Now how do you go about this movie? It’s difficult to place it in a determined slot as it mixes several genres and styles together throughout the course of the movie. Is it a coming of age drama, is it a horror, is it a fantasy or is it an art house movie? Well it’s difficult to pigeon hole it because it does move between a varied assortment of styles, and more than once I found myself thinking of last years Let the Right One In which also, more or less, is an adolescent drama with horror themes. Such is the case with Paperhouse. An adolescent drama with horror and fantasy themes to give a deeper dimension to the narrative.

Right from the start there’s great character establishment being made as we rapidly become fond of Anna. We know that she has a fair amount of skin on her nose as she talks back to the fatty bully type in class and yanks away her desk causing the bully to crash into the floor. Her teacher punishes her and sends her into the hallway. Anna stays on making faces at the bully. When her teacher further reprimands her, giving her a detention despite the fact that Anna tells her it’s her birthday. Anna complains that she feels dizzy and the teacher ignores her until it’s too late and Anna passes out in the hallway. Anna’s mom picks her up at school and at first is affectionate, but later is disappointed as Anna claims to have faked her fainting spell (although we know it was for real) and drives her back to school. Anna becomes humiliated and worried what her friends will say when they see that she’s been enforced back to school. All of this is valuable material because it establishes Anna, her mother, their current living situation, and it creates empathy for Anna. It’s little innocent Anna against the classmates, pre-teens and adults which generates emotions that we can relate to, something that we are going to need if we are going to give a damn about this kid during the rest of the movie, and a child protagonist really does wonders for a horror movie if you manage to create that empathy.

Anna is just coming into her teens, she’s just on the threshold of puberty and still innocent, boys are “yucky” and she’s still just a little girl. This is nicely portrayed in the scene during the start of the movie as she and friend Karen [Sarah Newbold, who never starred in anything else either] spend some time after school putting on makeup and talking about the party Karen recently went too. The differences in the way they wear their school clothing and act towards each other gives away that Anna is a few steps behind her friend on the journey into puberty. Karen has her skirt hitched high, her socks rolled down, Anna’s skirt is hug low almost to her knees, where her socks are rolled up almost a few inches away from her skirt hem. Karen applies a modest amount of makeup, where as Anna naively paints it on in the way a child would. Karen talks about going to parties and snogging with loads of boys, Anna listens with an almost disgusted look on her face before asking her friend if they should play hide-and-seek. “I’m too old for that game now…” her friend replies. This indicated that Anna is somewhat behind her friends as they are maturing faster than her, hence leaving Anna behind. This is one of two reasons why Anna escapes into her imagined world and meets Marc… the first boy who isn’t “yucky”.

Daddy is the monster in the dream world, and this is also part of growing up and exploring the values of one’s parents, re-evaluating there importance that every child does as they enter puberty. The breaking of paternal bonds, making new friends outside the comfort of the family and becoming an individual. Two main factors add up the fuel behind Anna’s sudden despite for Daddy. He’s obviously got problems with his drinks, as Anna and her mother Kate talk about daddy being drunk, and that he was drunk in the photo Anna holds most dear, which obviously flips the value that the photograph has for Anna and she in a blink of an eye despises the photograph. Secondly, he’s never there. His work has him constantly on the road, and away from home, which also adds to fuel Anna’s sudden hatred. A hatred that she dare not speak aloud, but is confronted in her dreams. Also there is definitely something going on there worthy of some psychoanalysis as her father shows up and wants to beat her to death just after she receives her first, but still innocent kiss. Her affections have shifted from her father to the young boy.

On a more sinister note, Ben Cross plays the father so disturbingly that I keep getting a creepy feeling that there’s an unwritten child molestation story going on somewhere in here. There’s nothing to validate this feeling, it’s just there. The almost apologetic way he approaches Anna, the distance between them. There is definitely something in the backstory that never is presented, but brings a really distressing atmosphere to the scenes with Anna and her father.

The ending is still rather tedious there’s no getting around that, because it goes on a bit too long without anything really happening until Anna spots the lighthouse at the seaside where she and Marc spent their last dream together. Throughout the movie, the dream world and real world are reflected in each other. To start with, they are fantasy reproductions of that what Anna puts in her drawing, but gradually they become negative projections of the real world. When Marc is getting better in the real world, he grows ill in the dream world and vice-versa. So at the end of the movie, when Marc can walk (he even runs), and flies away in the helicopter he drew in his reality, we understand that he has died. Then there’s that final scene on the end of the cliff here dream and reality once again crossover into each other. In the dream world Marc has promised to obtain a helicopter so that he and Anna can fly down to the beach. A promise Anna made to him early on was that they would leave the house and walk the beach. Anna stands on the cliffs as the helicopter appears, but instead of urging her on, Marc tells her to step away from the cliffs and ignore the ladder that she is reaching for. In the last possible moment Anna’s mom grabs her and she falls back over onto the safety of the ground as the helicopter flies away. Credits roll on the hugging family. It’s confusing and silly, but an if you want, you could say that it’s a closure of the childlike dream world Anna has been in, her age of innocence, and as she fails to grab the ladder (metaphorically the stairway to heaven as the fall off the cliffs would undoubtedly be her death.) she puts all her childhood (i.e. fantasies, dream worlds etc.) behind her and takes her first step towards growing up.

The production design by Gemma Jackson is fabulous, those sets of the dream world are awesome and really look like the paper drawings that Anna has done, and the darker and dirtier the drawing gets, the darker the sets get it’s impressive to say the least, especially all those items that only have two dimensions in the drawing but have three dimensions in the dream world. It’s really original and well done. In 2005 Jackson was nominated for a Best Achievement in Art Direction Oscar for her work on Marc Forster’s Finding Neverland.

The movie also features a wonderfully haunting but rather mysterious soundtrack by Stanley Myers, who scored several of UK Horror/exploitation king Pete Walker's movies and several John Hough movies too. The score to Paperhouse was co-written with a young Hans Zimmer who together with Myers had founded the Lille Yard Recording studios in the early eighties, where Myers and Zimmer had been combining the potent sound of a full orchestra with state of the art electronics. Paperhouse is a great example of this, where the score elegantly combines childlike pling plong keys that flow over into dark brooding drones with a touch of bombastic orchestral pomp much in the trademark style that Zimmer would later become infamous for.

A fun detail that had me sniggering is the frequent smoking in Bernard Rose movies, especially his horror flicks. There are two scenes in Paperhouse where Glenne Headly’s Mother character smokes within inches of her child. Once in a car driving her home from school and once on the train when they go on holiday. It’s the same in Candyman that Rose directed in 1992, there’s loads of smoking going on in that movie and almost every second scene has Virginia Madsen lighting up or butting out her smokes. You don’t see that much anymore in movies. I would guess where it twenty years ago meant nothing; it could be seen as a burdening trait to characters in a more modern storytelling. A parent ignorant of the dangers of secondhand smoke. That’s possibly something to jot down in a note book and bring out at a valuable moment of writing.

Speaking of writing, Paperhouse is based on Marianne Dreams, a novel by Catherine Storr, who didn't like the ending of the movie either, but rather preferred the TV series Escape into night which aired on ITV during the early seventies and stuck closer to her original story. The screenplay for Paperhouse was written by Matthew Jacobs, who previously had written Mats Helge Olsson's The Ninja Mission from 1984. Jacob's later settled into a nice run of TV shows, writing primarily for The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones series.

Paperhouse is a enjoyable movie, and even though one could ask for more in some areas I still enjoyed it, apart from that ending, which could have been much more effective and shorter. Also I’m not quite content with the final scene. After dragging on for a bit too long, the movie ends abruptly on the cliff after the climax. Perhaps some closing dialogue or an epilogue would have been in place. But after brooding on the movie for a few days and making some sense of the ending I feel that Paperhouse can go back on the shelf and keep the label “A Lost British Gem”


Image:
16x9 Widescreen. No subtitles.

Audio:
Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0

Extras:
Unfortunately nothing more than the theatrical trailer and a few of the adult cast and crew filmographies.

No trailer unfortunately, but here's a short scene with that score by Myer's and Zimmer and some marvelous acting by Burke and Spiers.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Original Title: Valerie a týden divu
Directed by: Jarmil Jires
Czechoslovakia, 1970
Horror/Fantasy /Drama, 77min
Distributed by: Redemption

Story:
A young woman awakens from a strange dream and realises during a walk in the courtyard that she’s having her first period and becoming a woman. This starts off a series of events that plunge he into great trouble as her youthful blood draws vampires to her and soon she learns that the Vampires are more than just uninvited guests!



Me:
You could say Buñuel-ish or Jodorowsky-ish, but that would be an insult to Czech director Jaromil Jires and his amazing surreal horror story adaption of Vitezslav Nezval's book Valerie's and Her Week of Wonders, about young Valerie’s first days as a woman. Strange, sometimes incomprehensive and very stylish as the doe eyed Valerie [Jaroslava Schallerov] takes her first steps into womanhood is filled with randy priests, lustful vampires, shocking family constellations that twist and turn though out the movie making it a great piece of early seventies art house horror. With a storyline reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland and imagery that works like a strange blend of Jean Rollin’s sexy vampires and Herzog’s Nosferatu (although Herzog shot his nine years later so it’s most likely he who was inspired by the blue flesh tone of the master vampire) It’s a strange tale told merely through what feels randomly assembled happenings as the movies starts of with a really poetic and delicate string of imagery showing Valerie becoming a woman. I call it poetic and delicate, because it is just that, and could have been much more provocative, or disturbing, but Jires does the right thing here and keeps it more as a visual reference and not an exploitative trick, which draws you in much easier than being explicit from the start. And the incoherent imagery and scenes start to make sense once you get past their initial visual glory and start to puzzle the narrative together. Slowly but safely the characters are all introduced. Eagle, the young boy who steals Valerie’s earrings several times during the movie, Valerie’s Grandmother, her best friend Hedwig, and the main antagonist, The Evil Constable, who shifts character throughout the movie and is also the Black Bishop, the Vampire, Richard and possibly Valerie’s grandfather and Lover of her Grandmother too!


Keep an eye on Valerie’s earrings, as they are important throughout the movie and play an important role in the story. Not to mention the symbolism they portray. The earrings where heirlooms left for Valerie by her mother, and the searching for the earrings over and over again, throughout the movie is a metaphor for Valerie’s search for the truth about her family. They are once again stolen by eagle and then he produces the pearls telling Valerie to swallow them when she is in trouble, and they will help her. Needless to say they help her out of several creepy situations, adding yet another dreamish surreal feeling to the movie.


Her grandmother tells her not to wear them as they are not suited for a little child. Valerie looks at her and tells grandma that she’s no longer a little girl, but a woman as she got her first period yesterday. From here on the Grandmother becomes obsessed with regaining her youth, desperately trying to seduce the priest that visits them, so that she can feel desired once again. Unlike the last visit he made only a year ago, he rejects her as he has his eyes set on young Valerie and Grandma ends up making a deal with the Vampire, who seems to have at one time been the previous owner of the house that Valerie and her Grandmother live in. She gives him back the house and he promises to restore her youth. This is done very symbolically when Valerie’s best friend Hedwig is married to an older bloke in the village, before he has a chance to consummate the marriage, the now vampiric embodiment of Constable and Grandma, sneak up and bite the young virgin in the neck, draining her of her life-force. Grandma now becomes a revitalized young woman and moves back into the house with Valerie claiming to be her long lost aunt. This theme of feasting on the young and innocence returns later on when Valerie goes to bed with Hedwig for a lesbian snog, bringing Hedwig back to her youthful self through the process. You could also be as bold to state that it's early feminism as Valerie rejects all the male characters making advances on her and instead submits to the gentle caress of her girl friend.


The Vampire grows old and weak, and in her youthful naivety Valerie pities him, but he has concocted a sinister plan together with the now reincarnated Grandmother to take not only Valerie’s but also Eagle's life so that old couple can live on in new forms. Valerie starts to learn the terrible truth of her origin, her mother married to the Bishop didn’t die at all, but was forced away from the house and village by the Vampire, and on top of that, her love and platonic boyfriend Eagle is Valerie’s brother! This is also why Valerie keeps seeing visions of her father all the time! She needs to be reunited with her family to find peace in her new phase in life.

It comes as no shock to that the movie is riddled with nods at coming of age tales and filled to the brim with symbolism as the entire movie is all about the conflict between youth and aging, new and old, life and death…


The original score by Luboš Fišer and Jan Klusák, was released on CD just a few years ago and has inspired much of the work by British Electro band The Broadcast. The album Ha Ha Sound from 2003 is the most obvious with a track being called Valerie. The movie is also said to have inspired Angela Carter who wrote the screenplay for Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie A Company of Wolves which utilizes the same themes, womanhood and coming of age.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonder is a perfect example of how European filmmakers totally master their crafts elegantly blending horror and eroticism to a perfect cocktail of Stylish cinema. Jires never goes too far, but stays just on the line between art house and exploitation which makes Valerie and Her Week of Wonder a definitive jewel of the genre that definitely deserves a spot in every cineasts DVD collection.


Image:
Full screen 4:3. Unfortunately the Redemption print isn’t the best quality, but to their credit they did make sure that the movie got distribution, even in the days of video it was one of their catalogue titles. Second Run DVD have on the other hand re-issued the movie where the transfer has undergone print restoration, new subtitling and an improved audio track has been added. So the Second Run DVD with it's extras (An Essay by Peter Hames, introduction/interview with film historian Micheal Brooke and an interview with lead actress Jaroslava Schallerová) and improved image and audio is the one you should go with.

Audio:
Dolby Stereo 2.0 Czech language, English subtitles burned into the print,

Extras:
There are not many extras that have anything to do with the film, but there is a trailer gallery (Renato Polselli’s Black Magic Rites and Jean Rollin’s The Shiver of the Vampire), a Still gallery (which painfully obviously are all frame grabs), and a music video for Italian Goth/Metal band Cadaveria produced and released on “Triple Silence” the record label owned by the Redemption team. Finally there’s the pathetic Video Art gallery which only has two images of the Facets US DVD sleeve, and the UK Redemption sleeve.

Here's the Second Run DVD trailer for you to enjoy!

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
Horror, 2006
USA, 90min
Distributed by: Noble Entertainment

Story:
Meet the hottest girl in college, Mandy Lane. Every guy at school has the hots' for her, every single one. When Mandy is invited to spend the weekend at Red’s farmhouse with some of her new friends, things start to go really terribly wrong as someone is stalking and killing them. Who could it be and why? And what is it with Mandy Lane that makes all the boys love her?


Me:
Excuse me? I thought that All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was supposed to be the new smash? The shit, the real deal, amazing and according to all those festival reviews and rant the best darned horror movie in ages with a surprise twist ending… Erhm, what? No I’ve got be honest and say that I really didn’t enjoy this movie. OK, I’ll give them credit for an interesting set up where the strange relationship between Mandy Lane [Amber Heard] and Emmet [Michael Walsh] is presented and explored, it’s really creepy when he manipulates the Jock wanting to get into Mandy’s pants, and her total cold reaction to the terrible event that follows as he smashes into the floor of the pool. But that’s about it. The jump forward in time, and then the red herring that Emmet and Lane don’t get along anymore is kind of lame. Then the expositions to set up that still, all the boys want to bone Mandy Lane. And here’s my first problem, why don’t the other chicks react? If they are a nice little clique of friends that hang out, drink and fuck together, then why the hell would the girls be the ones to arrange and bring Mandy Lane with them on the weekend trip? You’d never bring your own competition to a party would you! That just threw me off as its plain stupid. And from there it’s all down hill, the stupid “beer heist”, the hand job in the back of the car, the arrival at the Ranch and introduction of hero character Garth, the drinking games that lead nowhere and the total despicable characters that are unravelled in front of us. There’s nothing new going on here at all. It’s all genre convention at its worst, stupid kids drinking, taking drugs, and teenage hormones running rampant in their lust for a shag and not enough nudity to keep it interesting. And it would have needed it because the story isn’t that great to tell the truth. Then the antagonist makes it’s entry.


Stuff usually gets going after mediocre exposition and setup when you throw in the antagonist to start the mayhem off, and from a start I thought that this might get better as the first time you actually see the antagonist, no one else does! Obviously inspired by J-Horror and Asian ghost movies, the killer is already in frame as Marlin [Melissa Price] walks up to the totally un-empathetic Jake [Luke Grimes] with a comforting blow job. A very neat detail that I thought would follow through the movie, but unfortunately not. At least this scene evokes some sort of audience emotion, as Marlin tries to comfort Jake and expects the same sexual favours back from him, makes us feel some what empathetic towards her, but totally wanting Jake to be the first to die. But never forget that in generic horror the slut gets more than dick first, she’s also the first to die.

But from there on it just goes for the same old tricks, and then the worst of all why the heck would you expose the killer so early on? It was fairy obvious from that “Not friends anymore!” scene before the kids took off for the ranch that Emmet was going to be the guy stalking them down in a “if I can’t have her nobody else can either.” That is what the opening pool party death and the race track incident add up to, so there’s no real reason to keep Emmet hidden, but then again you want to keep your audience guessing as long as possible, and my line of thought was shattered there as soon as he was revealed. I’ll get back to the reveal I was hoping for later on when I explain how this movie could have rocked so much harder.


Here’s a quick mention of other really stupid things that got me feeling that I was wasting my time with this flick. There’s a power failure and the ranch looses all electricity after Jake fiddles with the fuses in an attempt to make a move on Mandy, which the other two lads already have done. Why don’t the other girls get jealous? Especially as the “pretty” one claims that Mandy looks so much better than her in a tender intoxicated moment in the bathroom. If you say a thing like that you are obviously threatened by Mandy’s good looks and would be jealous as hell if the bloke you where trying to make a move on went after Mandy instead. Ridiculous. Anyway, there’s the power shortage, which separates the group, decent enough move I’ll give them that, but then as Jake makes his move on Mandy, there’s a soft seductive music track playing in the back ground…!? What? I thought this was supposed to be a horror movie, not a romantic piece of schlock. That music did more to break the illusion than anything else, and it lies so low that I really thought that it was supposed to be music playing in the house. Stupid. The party! Now I’ve been to a fair amount of parties just like this one, cesspools of debauchery where alcohol, drugs and sexual lust are so tangible that you could slice it, package it and sell it as a sex aid overseas. But this party just lingers on and on and on, and nobody gives the impression of having a good time or passing out. So I just don’t get it. It’s insulting to me as an audience member. Now for a quick focus on the killings… …well I thought that we where quite used to and all right for onscreen violence and total chaos when it comes to our horror movies. After all 2006 saw grotesque imagery and gore fests like The Hills Have Eyes, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Feast, SAWIII, Hatchet and a whole load of other movies heavily depending on onscreen carnage and death. But after the first initial kill, this movie almost goes off-screen with the violence. Now go figure that out? Why would you do that? Especially that scumbag Jake, I’d torment the crap out of him if this was my movie.

Then there’s the surprise twist ending. Twist yeah maybe, but definitely not surprising at all. It more or less makes sense that Mandy is in cohorts with Emmet, and I started thinking that this was going to be the surprise ending a few minutes before it was revealed, but I still don’t understand for what reason? That’s what annoyed me, it’s just stupid. If they where total outsiders yeah, I could have gone along with it, but these two kids where accepted parts of school hierarchy. Emmet goes with Mandy to the first party, and it’s only because of Mandy snubbing him on the race track that the Chloe disses him. Then when Mandy decides to double cross Emmet just because she’s got the hots for the ranch hand Garth is also quite sudden and illogical. The ending isn’t very satisfying at all, and to be frank not much in the movie as the end credits scroll have been either.

But if you want to say something good about this movie, I have to say that the cinematography by Darren Genet is beautifull, and you have to take your hat of to whoever cut the trailer, because that is an impressive trailer, and it sure had me holding high hopes for this movie, it's just a pity that it turned out to be rather tame. But still a great trailer.


Now here’s my take on the whole thing. First accident/death at the pool party. Yeah keep it it’s going to be essential to the final twist. Also it does a nice job of setting up the strange relationship between Emmet and Mandy. Get the kids out to the ranch after snubbing Emmet on the race track. Fine, keep it and get them out there. Set’s up a good line that will return in the final act. Loose all the ridiculous girlfriends talking Mandy into coming along for the ride. Flip that around and have them doing it as a favour to say Red or one of the other blokes. This gives you the opportunity to alienate Mandy from the other girls later on, and also weave in some complicated threads as Mandy obviously goes along for Jake, which is why she’s appalled when he gets that hand job from Marlin in the back of the car later on. Chloe convinces Mandy to come for Red, Mandy comes for Jake, Chloe is disappointed when Jake tries to go after Mandy, just like all other boys in the film, and devastated when he goes with her best friend Marlin. See you have a very fragile and delicate set up there. None of the girls get along when it comes to men and love, just like in real life. Then bring in your masked antagonist, but make him really terrifying. Keep the great cheerleader chant as he beats Marlin to death, but make it much more visual, that’s why the kids are here. Keep the violence on screen and much more provocative. When the antagonist drives the car up to the house and shoots fireworks at the on the porch, let a fire work hit one of them in the face, ruining their good luscious looks and taking one of the few values they have away from them. Imagine, your friends face is a smashed burning crater, and as he/she lies screaming on the porch the others have already taken to hiding behind the front door. Create a moral dilemma, risk your life to save your mate, or cower as he dies a painful death! Sprinkle a lot more nudity throughout the movie, give us a few teasing shots of Mandy “the untouchable” if you really want her to be so much hotter than the others. Make the audience want Mandy too. Shock ending, here you go, Hint at Emmet being in the area, but don’t reveal that he’s the killer, don’t even show him, just hint Let the audience do the math, give them an investigatory challenge. Then the surprise twist, just before the last fight the last crescendo Chloe runs towards Mandy, reveal the killer in the car… OH MY GOD IT’S DYLAN, FROM THE POOL PARTY! With his scared face and disfigured back after the terrible accident in the opening sequence he’s made it his mission to kill Mandy and all of her new little mates, because, “If I can’t have her, no one can!” This makes sense because, after all the guy threw himself of a fucking roof in an attempt to get in her panties remember? Then as Mandy kills Chloe have her stare in terror at Dylan, because that’s NOT who she was expecting to see, she was expecting Emmet, who she shares a death pact with. Enter Emmet, have him and Dylan fight to the death, Mandy assisting Emmet. In the fight Dylan tears Mandy’s clothing exposing her breasts, even keep them in her bra if you are too prude, but tear that shirt, it’s setting you up for the REAL shock ending. The fight goes on, Emmet is more or less dead, you now think that he’s only been there to stalk Mandy and through his mad behavior saved her life for a moment longer. Mandy beats Dylan to death even in the cow grave just like in the real movie if you like. It’s a nice disturbing touch. She goes back to the lethally wounded Emmet, and sits next to him. They look at each other and we realise that they still are very close friends. “Did I do good?” He asks, “You did great” Mandy says sobbing. She drags his head into her lap and he produces the vial containing the suicide pills and explains their death pact just as in the real movie. Then she sobbingly agrees as he tries his best with his bloodied hands to cover up that exposed breast. She kisses him and they both take the pills. Now Garth who we have been counting on to be the hero drives up in his jeep only to find a bunch of dead kids. GOSH! That’s shocking! Three killers, two working as a team the other one solo, but all of them unaware of the others presence. But for this to work we need to set two things up, one in that opening sequence, one later after the reveal. In the opening sequence, Emmet needs to try to get a peak at Mandy as she changes clothes or something, this to give effect to the final scene where he tries to cover her up, his love is now much deeper than the other blokes as his love is much more than lust and the desire to see a pair of tits. The second set up needs to be the back-story of why Emmet and Mandy chose to go on a killing spree. We need to see how the new gang engulfs Mandy and more or less alienate Emmet from her, preferably by some humiliating rite where Mandy can’t intervene but is present. This will be their reason for murder. The death of Mandy at the end will pack much more impact than the lame drive off ending that the movie has now. And that my friends is my take on how to create a shocking movie with a surprise twist ending.


Image:
2.35:1 Anamporphic Widescreen

Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts Digital Surround, English dialogue with Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish subtitles

Extras:
Trailers for other titles from Noble; The Mist and a totally terrible Kärlek3000 trailer. That's all folks.