And the winner is…

Thanks to all the contestants in the CiNEZiLLA/ONARFILMS competition!

Whoever could have guessed that you guys knew so much about Turkish cinema!

Well done everyone, but there can only be one winner, and that winner is…

Mr. Özturk!

(who will receive his prize as soon as easter is over and done with)

Thanks again to all participants and to ONARFILMS for helping arrange and judge this competition with me.

Stay tuned to ONARFILMS for their forthcoming release of ZAGOR - Kara Bela, which you definitely want to buy as soon as it’s released!

Hell’s Ground

Hell’s Ground

Original Title: Zibahkhana

Directed by: Omar Ali Kahn

Pakistan/UK, 2007

Horror, 77min

Distributed by: Mondo Macabro

Generic horror - despite how predictable and cheesy it can be, you still have to admire the power that the simplest of structure can have for a genre movie. Omar Ali Kahn’s Hell’s Ground is generic horror with obvious nods to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974, Friday the 13th 1980 and the zombie flicks of George A. Romero. But apart from using a generic formula, the originality here is that it’s a coriander flavoured Urdu-English movie from Pakistan.

A bunch of stereotypical characters, the flirty, the momma’s boy, the dopey yeah, you get the picture are presented one by one as they lie, trick and deceive their parents and take off on a road trip with getting stoned and shagging as their final destination. Their road is obviously one long series of ordeals such as, finding the right road, making it there before dark, fleeing from mutant zombies and later fighting off a Burqa clad murderer. You know the drill, one of them goes to look for something and after a while the others go searching and true to formula they start getting killed off one by one and the ending comes with a by the book last moment surprise twist and one last scare.

Apart from some obvious nods to US genre films with a Maniac poster in an early scene there ‘s also the product placement showing covers of Mondo Macabro DVD’s Bandh Darwaza (The Closed Door) 1990 and Zindra Laash (Dracula in Pakistan/ The Living Corpse) 1967 from which a clip also is seen on the dopey genre fan’s television. That scene is also a great build for a small part by Dracula in Pakistan star Rehan who later turns up in the movie as the traditional “town imbecile” warning off our young band of protagonists. Every generic flick that plays by the rules needs an omen character, Rehan is Hell’s Ground’s demented voice of reason.

It’s a fun movie that plays with a lot of generic slasher film traits. Remember that you never ever drink liquor or do drugs or get laid because that’s gonna put you right on top of the shit list and it’s exactly what happens in Hell’s Ground. Not that anyone get’s laid, but you know from convention that dope fiend O.J. [Osman Khalid Butt], cocky jock-type Vicky [Kunwar Ali Roshan] or sexpot, Roxy [Rubya Chaudry], are amongst the first to meet their maker. Nobody get’s their kit off in Hell’s Ground, but I’ll write that off as playing it safe for a Muslim audience. Finally it’s down to the innocent and kind of helpless Simon [Hadier Raza] and there’s always a final girl, Ayesha [Rooshanie Ejaz]. It’s a rather predictable, but enjoyable dot-to-dot puzzle that has a few really fun tricks up its sleeve.

Getting back to those generic slasher horror traits… This movie is filled with smaller ones too, like sneaking off to be with mates, hiding the “sexy” clothes, lying to the parents, watching horror flicks and smoking dope. We all know that lies, deception, drugs and sex are under penalty of death in generic horror.

The movie opens with an obligatory intial attack setting the tone of the movie and declaring the genre we are in - horror. There’s the genesis of evil – a tricky one as Hell’s Ground has two protagonists, both the toxic waste created zombies and the killer in the woods. There’s a warped family back-story, here it’s the tale of a woman who see’s one of her sons become a cross dresser “you loose a son, but gain a daughter” and being a Muslim themed movie, I would say that the non-acceptance of cross-dressing is what drives him to the edge and makes him kill anyone who comes near him, or her, as his secret could lead to his, or her, own death.

A favourite highlight among many, is “brother” Baley [Salim Meraj] hitching a ride from the young kids and completely taking over Edwin Neal’s Hitchhiker character from the original TCM, and making it his own in a fantastic way. It’s an excellent moment and a brilliant homage.

As with most generic horror the movie relies on a morality complex, of which it would be true to say that Hell’s Ground has two that it builds off. The first being industrial pollution that creates a lethal army of undead-like zombies, even a dwarf zombie. Obviously this could be a comment on industrialism in areas like Pakistan and India, where conglomerates exploit the area and dump there waste where ever the hell they want causing serious damage to land and people. The second a fair warning – Don’t do drugs, don’t mess around, don’t have sex (or fool around with gender roles) or else you will end up dead! It’s generic horror storytelling, it works like clockwork, and it’s a complete fucking fun rush of gore, death and Punjabi beats.

Apart from a majority of brilliant traditional music featuring artists like Noor Jehan and Nahid Akhtar there’s no disadvantage of featuring Stephen Thrower & Simon Norris Cyclobe on the soundtrack, fittingly enough their Strix Nebulosa is used under the scenes of chemical waste and protesting Pakistani people - industrialism in more than one way.

The pacing of Hell’s Ground is fast and ferocious as the movie never really lingers on too long in any moment, and the camerawork is delightful with the most inventive use of a fisheye lens I’ve seen in ages.

The mondo macabre connection is obvious, and who better to get into the field that dvd company and book author Pete Tombs and Andy Starke. After all they have been distributing and writing the definitive texts and releases of weird world cinema for the past decades.

Two fun pieces of trivia concerning Hell’s Ground: Director Omar Ali Khan runs a couple of organic, homemade ice-cream shops in Pakistan where the interior is mostly horror memorabilia oriented and he’s currently in pre-production for a second feature to be shot in the last quarter of 2011.

Final note: rumour has it that Swedish wildcat’s NUJTAFILM will be releasing a double feature with both Hell’s Ground and Dracula in Pakistan, a release to look forward to if there ever was one!

PERDU DANS LE CIMITIÈRE - La symphonie d’un Jean Rollin

It’s time for a new CiNEZiLLA mixtape, and this time I have spent my precious time cutting, splicing, pasting and looping the soundtracks of Jean Rollin. You can grab it in a moment, but first I have a story to tell you.

My wife just celebrated an important birthday, and when asked where she wanted to go, she said Paris. This was our first real trip abroad for almost a decade, a well deserved one and Paris is a city that I’ve wanted to revisit for a long time.

Going back to Paris for the first time in more than fifteen years I was determined to return to the Père-Lachaise cemetery with an agenda of seeking out the resting place of Jean Rollin.

Spring had hit Paris, and the Père-Lachaise cemetery was covered in a green leafy drowsiness, the weather served up a gentle rain drizzle and cloudy skies creating something of a dim lighting not to unfamiliar to that of a light summer night.

From the pages of the latest Video Watchdog, I knew where Rollin was supposed to be (concession 168, land registry 484, 27th division) and a somewhat familiarity with the cemetery I though it would be a fast in and out action to pay my respects to one of my most favoured directors. Armed with a map pointing out all the celebrity graves, except Rollin, and my playlist of Jean Rollin soundtracks in my headphones, I started my own search within in the cemetery Rollin had used in so many movies over the years.

Finding division 27 was no real obstacle, although getting a grasp of where exactly the borders between the divisions was, some are clearly marked by paths, others are not and bushy areas simply flow into each other making it difficult to realise when one has gone too far and well into an adjourning division. This happened on more than one occasion and I found myself way past division 27 and far into some other division in the 40’s. Then there’s the problem of actually finding the correct spot. If you have never been to Père-Lachaise, then it’s hard to imagine the logistics of the place, if there even is one. The rational grid structure that one would have thought to have be the backbone of a cemetery is non-existent. Père-Lachaise, much like London’s Highgate Cemetery, is jumble of new, old, large, small, structure and chaos within the cemetery gates. Plants grow wild, trees sprout from tombs, next to a contemporary gravestone, there can easily be a cracked slate presenting glimpses into a deep webbed hole right next to each other. Well tended graves stand next to moss covered, broken, toppled and damaged graves, family tombs stand aside with monuments and simple lots with a mere simple cross marking it’s site. It’s a dreamy gothic flavoured location that triggers the imagination and it’s easy to see why places like these where favoured – and still are – by low budget filmmakers. These locations contain more production value than any set designer ever could come up with. They are authentic and that shows in the movies shot there too.

Walking the narrow passages, climbing steep, narrow overgrown staircases, squeezing through tight passages to get to graves behind, it was almost like being in a Jean Rollin movie. I was at times expecting to see the two twins come walking along the path, or a figure hide in one of the tombs, or find Nathalie Perrey sat mourning at a unmarked grave.

After almost two hours, my family gave up. We couldn’t locate anything with a marking of concessions, land registries or even a name that could match. Nothing, not Jean Rollin nor his full name Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil, nothing, not on any of the graves, not on any of the family vaults, not on any of the monumental tombs, nothing. After a brief lunch they took off and I returned to the cemetery, still determined to find where Rollin was resting.

I asked the staff at the cemetery, but even they seemed to have some trouble pinpointing where the plot was. despite in my terribly limited and tacky French I was now quite assure that division 27 was right. So I returned to the location and started all over again. Another two hours later, the light was dropping and a cool breeze swept through the cemetery. I don’t think that there’s a single inch of division 27 that I didn’t cover, search and roam over in my search. As said, there where no markings that indicated to Rollin and I was starting to feel low as I had imagined that Rollin’s final resting place would at least be marked in some kind of manner when compared to the other “celebrity” graves, although I could find nothing. Although amongst the lots in division 27 there was one very simple grave and the first time I stumbled upon it my heart sank to the ground, this could not be the resting place of Jean Rollin. Outlined by twigs and sticks, a rather rough spot where grass grew wild, and a rock merely a two fists in size laid as a headstone, this was the only spot that actually felt like it could be Jean Rollin’s place. Now there was a name scrawled in white paint on the rock, and it wasn’t Rollin’s name, but that of a woman, Jeanne. Now I still can’t say that this wasn’t the spot as the rock could just as well have been left by a fan, who like me was searching for Rollin. Common sense made me revaluate and convince myself that this couldn’t have been the place I was looking for, but then there was one last clue that caught my eye each time I walked past the modest grave…

…a single iron rose.

Being familiar with the symbolism, iconography and traits of Jean Rollin’s movies, movies that where very much him, that rose was undoubtedly the single item with the most Rollinesque aura to it in the whole division 27. This token was for me as certain an referent as the bottles of whiskey on Jim Morrison’s grave, or the torn out pages of De Profundis laid on the tomb of Oscar Wilde, a deliberate gesture, a magical totem that joins fan and master in some post-modern ritual.

I can’t say that this was the resting place of Jean Rollin, but that spot and the many hours spent wondering that small division 27, where what I needed. I needed to go there and pay my respects, I needed to be in the presence of Jean Rollin, because I missed the occasion to meet him in the flesh not only once, but twice. In all honesty I felt kind of sad when it looked like I was going to have to leave without finding what I was searching for. But after walking that lot back and forth for several hours, listening to the soundtracks, searching for something, it didn’t really matter if that spot was his or if it was any of the other unmarked graves that I took photographs of. I found something and I felt content that I’d achieved what I set out to do, pay my respects to the great Jean Rollin.

For a few hours I was in his presence, that dreamlike cemetery magically put me in a Jean Rollin movie. It was a few unreal, weird and maybe even pretentious couple of hours, but for me it was one of the most emotional and genuine moments in a very long time. For me that lone iron rose was the confirmation that I needed, that lone rose was the sign that I was looking for. That iron rose was as close to Jean Rollin as I will ever be.

To celebrate the fantastic legacy that Rollin leaves behind, I present you with the latest CiNEZiLLA Mixtape: PERDU DANS LE CIMITIÈRE - La symphonie d’un Jean Rollin

Enjoy it my friends.

J.

The previous tapes:

SLEAZY SUCCUBUS - The sounds of Jess Franco

VELVET RAZORBLADES - The sounds of Dario Argento

POSTCARDS FROM HELL - The sounds of Lucio Fulci

I'll Never Die Alone

I’ll Never Die Alone
Original Title: No moriré sola
Directed by: Adrián García Bogliano
Argentina/Spain, 2008
Rape/Revenge, 86min.
Distributed by: Njuta Films

Four chicks take a road trip to an unknown destination. Through their interaction we get accustomed with them and get some kind of grips on who’s who. Soon they come across a woman lying in the ditch at the side of the road. She’s bleeding from a serious head injury and further away a man raises a rifle and starts taking shots at them. They take the woman with them in their car, only to witness her die as they drive towards the nearest town.

In the town local sheriff takes their testimonies and as they are about to leave, a familiar car parks outside the police station and out steps the men they saw earlier. A brief car chase later, the girls are about to face their worst nightmares as the band of men start abusing them.

From here on the movie becomes a pretty hard and pretty formulated revenge flick as the girls turn the tables and stalk the men who raped and defiled them earlier on. And unlike many other recent entries this one actually manages to be quite grim on several occasions and has some spectacular moments of coldblooded revenge.

I’ll Never Die Alone is all in all a rather decent exploitation flick, it’s got a slow build, a progressive threat and that violent point of no return where the four girls are violated in a long and drawn out process that set’s the premise for the rest of the movie – Revenge.

I really liked the small details that elevate it above the average low budget flick. Small stuff like exterior shots of the car in movement and keeping the audio digetic - creating a distance between the characters and the audience (not the same as character dimension), the way small subtle hints of back-story give dimension, and how values are set at stake. Sure they don’t progress much, but the fact that they are there prove that there’s some thought gone into the movie.

On a down side, I’d say that there isn’t enough time and space focused on the right characters. One "final girl", Leonor [Marisol Tur] has a few lines of dialogue indicating a back-story where she’s promised to take care of the youngest girl - Carol [Gimena Blesa]. Fine, it says something of her character and sets a value at stake. Which will later become a pretty neat layered reason for revenge later on – hey call it guilt if you want, that one always works it’s way in there one way or another. Being both a victim and failing her, subtext quest of protecting the young girl, she is driven to take her vengeance. Another one of the women who goes into the last battle, Moria [Andrea Duarte] hardly get’s any place in the narrative – apart from a pretty provocative off-screen moment featuring a hammer during the rape sequence - and I don’t really have any relationship with her character, which is a pity, as I don’t really give a shit about her – despite this is the chick most resembling the late Tura Satana and dealing out the best moment of payback in the entire movie. Let’s just say that there’s barbed wire involved. Although keeping in mind that this is a rape-revenge flick, I really don’t need to care, but tossing in a few empathetic traits in the characters would have gone a long way. It’s an easy trick that will help me root for the characters, instead of just take them for granted.

Here’s a tip for writers and directors of by the book rape-revenge flicks. Make me care about the female victim – sure rape in it’s self is appalling, but these movies deserve some dimension to the characters, anyway, make me care about them, then stop chickening out when it comes to the revenge! I see all this violence towards women over and over again in genre cinema, and then when it comes to their revenge it’s quite often a quick fix and off to the next one! Remember the death of Tony [Heinz Hopf] at the hands of Madeleine [Christina Lindberg] in Bo A. Vibenius Thriller - En Grym Film (Thriller - A Cruel Picture) 1974? Slow, sadistic, appalling and perhaps most importantly innovative! You hadn’t seen that before had you? Well that’s where the revenge sequences of contemporary rape/revenge flick’s need to be, grotesque, appalling and provocative. Even Ingmar Bergman and Ulla Isaksson knew this when the made the original, kick in the balls, rape/revenge flick Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring) 1960 fifty years ago.

Nevertheless I’ll Never Die Alone is a much better rape-revenge flick than something like Stephen R. Monroe’s remake of Meir Zarchi’s I’ll Spit On Your Grave 2010, where the most important moment of the movie is kept off-fucking-screen!

Now let’s get something very clear here. These movies are primarily directed at a male audience, in some psychoanalytical reading I guess it would be safe to say that there’s some sadistic part of “the male gaze” that get’s a kick out of the ordeal these women are put through. Then why don’t we get punished for taking pleasure in watching those scenes, why the hell would you chose to keep your main antagonists (or any of them for that matter) torture off screen?

In the 1978 original I Spit on Your Grave the best remembered moment, the iconic one – no, not Camille Keaton boating whilst swinging an axe above her head – it the one where she lures her antagonist into a bathtub and slices his fucking knob off! Now that’s still a pretty strong moment more than thirty years later, so why a remake – or any rape/revenge flick – would choose to keep male mutilation off screen is a goddamned joke. Take the opportunity to be graphic, take the moment at bay to be provocative, settle the score in the most profound fucking way that you can, but don’t, and I repeat, don’t keep it off screen, get it on there, because that’s why we come to watch, to see the old eye for an eye thesis be put into action. Someone may enjoy the rape, but make us fucking suffer the revenge in the worst possible way.

I’ll Never Die Alone works because it at least tries to give some depth to characters, minimal yes, but miles ahead of a lot the shallow one dimensional stuff out there right now. It also has a great use of a “helper”, a sliver of optimism, in the character of the police officer that meets the girls when they arrive in the town with the corpse of the dead woman. He becomes something of a beacon of hope when he later receives a phone call from one of the girls’ mother and starts his own investigation into their whereabouts. It’s a good device that brings light to a dark matter, even if I don’t want him to save the girls and punish the bad guys, that’s the surviving chicks prerogative. The style and mood is grim, the rapes are grim, the vengeance is grim – I’ll Never Die Alone is a grim film that dares to take the step ahead of cowardly contemporaries and punch back harder than the rest.

Image:

Widescreen

Audio:

Dolby Digital 5.1 Spanish Dialogue, Swedish or English subtitles optional

Extras:

Trailers for other Njuta Films titles

A cast of a hundred thousand + …COMPETITION #3

I've just had over 100.000 visitors here at CiNEZiLLA, and to celebrate this happy moment it's competition time once again!

Together with my great friend Bill over at ONARFILMS we’ve set up a grand prize of five spiffy, spunky and surreal gems, that you really need to have in your collection.

CAPTAIN SWING THE FEARLESS

TARZAN IN ISTANBUL

THE RED PLUME GENGHIS KHAN

CASUS KIRAN – SPY SMASHER

THE SERPENTS TALE

Not to forget the 40 page booklet cataloguing the Turkish Fantastic Films!

But we’re not going to give them away for free! You will have to work for it if you want to walk away with the booty this time.

OK, so below you will find SIX questions, and you need to email me your answers (killfinger (at) hotmail (dot) com) before 2:20 am on the 15th of April 2011 to be valid. Thereafter Bill and I will draw a winner who will receive this awesome pack of psychotronic cinema from Turkey!

1. What’s the name of Turkey’s equivalent to Hollywood?

2. Name 5 Hollywood characters transferred to Turkish films.

3. Who played Tarzan in TARZAN ISTANBULDA?

4. Which ONE of these characters has NOT appeared in a Turkish film: FU MANCHU, DR. NO, THE INVISIBLE MAN, JACK THE RIPPER or THE ANGEL OF DEATH?

5. CASUS KIRAN stars Yildrim Gencer and Irfan Atasoy both starred in another Turkish masked avenger series directed by the same director. Who was he and what was the movie series?

6. Name 3 titles of Superhero/Fantastic movies with female characters in them!

There you have it! Get to work, and good luck to you all!

J.

Massacre Time

Massacre Time

Original title: Tempo Di Massacro

Directed by: Lucio Fulci

Italy, 1966

Spaghetti Western, 92min

Distributed by: Substance

The Lucio Fulci Spaghetti Westerns, all three of them - five if you count his two adaptations of Jack London’s Call of the Wild [Zanna Bianca (White Fang) 1973 & Il ritorno di Zanna Bianca (Challenge to White Fang) 1974 - but as far as straight Spaghetti Westerns – three. Nowhere near enough if you ask me. There’s plenty of shitty comments and hard critique aimed against these flicks. Perhaps more than the praise really they deserve is aimed at theses three movies. But they are important movies, and movies where Fulci explored and rooted some of his most favoured themes and traits.

From the opening scenes of “Junior” Scott’s merciless manhunt, obviously inspired by Ernest B. Schoedsacks The Most Dangerous Game 1932, the tone of Lucio Fulci’s Massacre Time is set instantly. A hard, brutal and sadistic movie is exactly what is being served up here, and if you didn’t quite catch just how bad ass Junior is, there will soon be several more occasions to see just how deep his hate of mankind goes.

There are a lot of fans that like Massacre Time, and try to force the works of Fulci upon other filmmakers, as to give some sort of cultural value to the works of Fulci. I can completely understand them, and appreciate why they do it, but for myself I have reached a point where I don’t feel the need to evaluate Fulci’s work compared to others. He was a masterful visionary, and a great director, so there’ nothing to debate, Fulci stands alone. As should every filmmaker! One point that commonly get’s “forced” into Fulci’s final scenes to Massacre Time is that it’s supposedly a influence or sometimes “similar in style to the ballistic ballet” of John Woo’s eighties action flicks. This is obviously completely absurd. Yes it's an amusing thought, but we don’t need to force Fulci referents into other works, and I’ll get back to what those pigeons mean in a while.

The only scenes in any Fulci movie to seemingly have had an apparent inspiration someone further down the road – apart from the obvious effects and grotesque moments - is the Egyptian bookend that opens and closes Manhattan Baby 1982. A little movie called Hellraiser 1982, directed by Clive Barker opens and starts in the exact same way. A mysterious market, a strange merchant and the obvious one, the Medallion/Lament Box being passed on and on. Fulci considered Barker to be one of his friends and dedicated Voci dal profondo (Voices from Beyond) 1994 to Barker, and Claudio Carabba.

The Fulci westerns are decent westerns, and they certainly do polarise their audience, where most Spaghetti Western fans consider them so-so, the gore hounds find them slow and tedious, whilst the hardcore Fulci fans are fascinated by them lapping up every second of the narrative as he brings his assortment of traits to the wild west. That’s where you find me; I’m still finding new stuff on each occasion I re-watch a Lucio Fulci flick.

Franco Nero, somewhat mimicking his performance in Sergio Corbucci’s Django, (Franco who also starred in Mino Guerrini’s Giallo Il terzo Occhip (The Third Eye) Antonio Margheriti’s I diafanoidi vengono da Marte (War of the Planets) and as Abel in John Huston’s The Bible all in the same year - no wonder the guy looks tired), gives an somewhat engaging performance as the young Tom Corbert, who after receiving a letter from home returns to the town he once rode out of. There’s an uncertainty to who summoned him when he confronts his drunken half-brother Jeffrey [George Hilton], who obviously didn’t call for Tom’s assistance. Although there is a very clear protagonist presented when Tom first rides into town and sees the insignia of J.S. on almost everything in town, and moments later the scornful Junior [Nino Castelnuovo in an awesome performance]. The two brothers share no love, and there’s some really sublime stuff going on in the Colt house. In one scene Junior points out to his father how he misses his late night love… make what you will of it, but there’s definitely an incest theme going on there, and they climax the scene by playing a tune together on the piano!Needless to say Tom and Jeffrey – who proves to be the real hero of the piece if we where to apply Joseph Campbell’s The Heroes Journey as he’s the one who “refuses the call” – argue and bicker until they have a good old classic bar brawl that more or less joins them at the hip and they decide to take on the sinister Scott family. Which exactly what they do, with a few obstacles along the way – obstacles like a good old whipping, some sneaky shot in the back executions and a jolly violent massacre at the end.

An important thing to keep in mind here is that up until Massacre Time, Fulci had only directed comedies and rather chirpy movies with musical segments. Massacre Time is of importance as this is where he first starts to explore the traits that would become synonymous with his later work in the seventies and eighties. The wonderful sadistic and exploitative violence of Lucio Fulci, and if you fail to see it, then just check out the whip scene and think of Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture a Duckling) and/or Paura nella città dei morti viventi (City of the Living Dead), and you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Where Dario Argento frequently uses several waves of assault in his violent scenes – like being pulled though a glass window, stabbed repeatedly in the heart, tossed through a ceiling window, hung and then finally fall to the ground, see never an easy death in an Argento flick – Lucio Fulci often tended to focus on the sadistic effects of events on his characters. It’s not just one or two bullwhip lashes that tear the skin of Tom Corbett, but an exaggerated and prolonged suffering that is a classic Fulci trait, all 87 of the lashings.

Being a stereotypical Spaghetti Western Massacre Time uses the schematic laid by previous movies, and has the hero take one hell of a beating before standing back up and settling the score. Massacre Time has the splendid peculiarity that the “Hero” in the traditional meaning still stays quite passive, and it’s brother Jeffrey, who actually is the sharpshooting settler of scores when it all comes around.

The script was written by Fernando di Leo, who was writing a lot of crime and Polizietti flicks at the same time, taking into consideration that there are No female characters of importance – a trait quite common in di Leo’s work – it’s most likely that Fulci didn’t have too much to do with the script. Because Fulci commonly had at least one cornerstone female in the most of his best works, and here’s that vital “Fulciesque” ingredient is missing. But this is not just a cheap spaghetti western when you start to explore it. I’d like to point out that there’s almost a story with Greek tragedy proportions hidden away in that great script. – Now before I get into explaining this, I need to warn you that I’m going to spoil a huge part of the movie here with this thread, so you ma want to skip over to the next section. - Tom Corbett is missing, lacking if you like, or even yearning for a family It may not seem so considering that he abandoned his mother, and he never really had any connection with his brother Jeffrey. But he packs up and heads home in a jiffy when receiving that letter summoning him back to Laramie. He has no idea of who his father is either. He’s quite a lonely character when it all comes around and there lies the desire to belong to a unit, a positive value, a family. He tries to bond with his older half brother Jeffrey, but Jeffery won’t have it, and instead they annoy each other. So during the final act, there’s a great sinister twist about to hammer down on the Tom character. An ironic twist, with a definitive tragic motif as Tom learns that his real father was Mr. Scott [Guiseppe Addobbati]. It was also Mr Scott who sent the letter to summon Tom back to Laramie, and Mr. Scott’s hidden agenda was to leave all the Scott fortune to Tom! This is also why Mr. Scott reacts to that exaggerated whipping earlier on; after all it’s his “favoured” child that’s getting his ass kicked. But it’s all going to be a waste of time as Mr. Scott is shot dead by his other son Junior after telling Tom about his inheritance plans. This leaves Tom’s final revenge on Junior even more cynical and harsh.

As for the Pigeons in that final shoot out… well to be true, the only thing the pigeon’s symbolise here is peace! The town of Laramie has had peace reinstated with the death of Junior. The town, the inhibitors and even the Corbet’s finds peace, hence the flying pigeons. To think that a simple shot of pigeons flying into the sky after a shoot out is an influence on Woo is about as abstract as claiming that George Hilton’s “Excuse Me Guys”, catchphrase used throughout the movie, was an influence on Richard Donner’s Goonies 1985 and The Sleuth’s “Hey You Guys!” catchphrase. It’s wishful thinking, and completely taken out of context, it’s peace they symbolise and this is further proven when sharpshooting Jeffrey lowers his revolver instead of shooting the dove that flies away in the last scene.

Massacre Time has a pretty catchy theme song “A man alone” sung by Sergio Endrigo to Coriolano Gori’s composition. Riccardo Pallottinis’ camerawork is nothing spectacular and never really gets above just doing the job, but it’s true to the genre and all the required wide shots and extreme close-ups of concerned gunfighters are in place. And I have to applaud the brilliant wagon-shooting stunt at the final battle, because that one is a gem.

A further co-worker of importance on Massacre Time was editor Ornella Micheli who once again worked with Fulci on what would end up a string of eighteen movies together. A string of movies that would contain some of Fulci’s finest mid-period works like Una sull’altra (One on top of the Other) 1969, Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture a Duckling) 1972 and Sette note in nero (The Psychic) 1977.

Massacre time – a great starting point for Lucio Fulci’s western trilogy, only to be followed by I Quattro dell’apocalisse (Four of the Apocalypse) 1975 and Sella d’argento (Silver Saddle) 1978.

Image:

16x9 Widescreen

Audio:

Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, English dialogue, no subtitles.

Extras:

Nothing fancy, a small poster gallery and the US and Italian trailers.

Ond Tro

Ond Tro

English Title: Bad Faith

Directed by: Kristian Petri

Thriller, 2010

Sweden, 105 min

Distributed by: Nordisk Film.

Think of the mystery of Italian genre thrillers, add the melancholy of Scandinavian Cinema to that and then spice it all off with the cinematography of award winning Hoyte van Hoytema, and you will have a movie so delicious that it will have the genre fans drooling from the mouth. Ond Tro is a god damned good movie. It looks like a genre fans wet dream, hardly surprising as Hoytema also shot the stunningly beautiful Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) 2008, the movie’s riddled with several referents to old Italian genre flicks, and the overall mysterious isolation is like something out of a Herzog movie.

Ond Tro is a very narrow movie, and it’s definitely not a movie for everyone, it’s a cryptic and delicate movie that has more than one obvious referent to genre cinema. And if you are ignorant of the referents within the movie, they it’s going to be lost on you. This unfortunately, what I see happened to this movie here in Sweden. Either you get it or you don’t, and this was painfully clear when the movie hit the screens here at the end of last year. Because when you read the movies narrative from the standpoint of a fan of genre, you will see stuff that probably was lost on a lot of the audience just wanting to see a thriller or a detective movie or what ever the hell they thought this movie would be. It when you wear the glasses of a genre fan that you see the greatness of this movie. No it’s not pretentious; it’s simply a splendid movie that pays homage to one of the finest genres of all time, the mind fucking and brain twisting Giallo.

Mona [Sonja Richter] has just moved from Denmark to a small town somewhere in Sweden. She’s got a new job, new colleagues, and a new apartment –in other words a new life. Going to a night out with colleagues Mona comes across the body of a dying man, the latest victim in a string of murders by the so-called Bayonet Killer. The encounter evokes something within Mona who becomes obsessed with the crimes and their perpetrator. Seeking solitude in a church, Mona meets Frank [Jonas Karlsson] and a reluctant attraction is started. Later she witnesses two men fighting in a car park, where one is left severely beaten, and the man still standing stares right at her shouting “don’t’ stare at me!” Mona becomes convinced that she’s seen the murderer, and her mania becomes almost an addiction. Her friendship with Frank blooms and eventually they become intimate. Frank also presents her with a theory that the killers face is left imprinted on the murder victims’ retinas when they die. Mona’s constant search and stalking of her suspected killer, peaks when she receives a phone call where the caller demands that she leave the him alone!

The somewhat underground cult author Magnus Dahlström penned the script to Ond Tro and the reason that this is interesting is because Dahlström who after a string of more or less minor successful novels vanished of the face of the earth. But now he’s back, and apart from the script to Ond Tro, he’s also got a new book out as of now. His writings could be compared to something of a Swedish William S. Burroughs, or even J.G. Ballard if you like, where texts and narratives are somewhat fragmented, but make sense the deeper you get into the worlds he’s describing. This style is something that find quite similar to the narrative of Ond Tro, the almost fragmented, dreamlike, ambivalent style in which the movie tells its tale.

Now it may sound farfetched to say that this movie is filled with referents to genre cinema, but it is. A few examples are the referral to the murderers identity being etched onto the retina of the victims – Dario Argento’s 4 mosche di velluto grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) 1971, the amateur sleuth, the taunting killer – who even goes so far as to call Mona and demand that she leave him alone – although I don’t really see that this exposes him, but instead acts as a red herring. It’s also pretty apparent when you think of the “dream like state” of the characters in the movie… does stuff like Aldo Lado’s La corta notte delle bambole di vetro (Short night of Glass Dolls) 1971 sound familiar or Francesco Barilli’s Il profumo della signora in nero (The Perfume of a Lady in Black) 1974 to name to movies fast. Searching deeper, there’s childhood motifs too and I’ll return to how these affect the outcome of the movie later.

One can draw parallels to the tripper movies of say Herzog, Antonioni and Polanski, but that’s where pretension comes into play. I don’t think of the movie as something that’s aiming that high, because for me this movie is all about Giallo, Krimi and euro thrillers, not art house movies – even though it may be one, much like Amer 2010. Let me give you an example of how this works with one of the most Giallo defining traits – the amateur sleuth. Mona witnesses a murder, she crouches next to the victim and get’s blood on her hands, which she shortly thereafter wipes off on her dress. Meeting her colleagues at the pub later she is questioned about her dirty hands and bloody dress. Like so many Gialli, Mona is inhibited from going to the police, as this would directly put her in the position of prime suspect. After all there are no other witnesses to give her an alibi, hence Mona is forced to start her own investigation to find the answer to the killer’s identity and prove her innocence. It’s a definitive Giallo trait, and there's more than one red herring in this movie too, just like in the Gialli.

There’s a neat little twist to the final act that can be seen as a logical culmination to the theme of isolation, solitude and yearning that the movie has held throughout. At the same time it’s also questions characters morale - but looking at the arc of Mona, it’s still a reasonable finale, and I feel that the ending is fitting. Somewhere near the midpoint of the movie Mona tells Frank a story from her childhood about how her father killed a stray kitten that she had found. This is the origin of her isolation, her distance to her emotions and also the reason why she won’t let anyone in. She rejects her new boss when he openly hits on her on more than one occasion. She’s hesitant to Frank, but when he shares her fascination for the killer’s identity – which Mona is determined of already – their relationship grows. The final moments of the movie tests their faith towards each other and the outcome is the only way to go. All else would have gone against the traits and development that has progressed so far and her fascination for serial killers makes this the reasonable choice.

I'd also go as far as claiming that our old pal guilt has a part to play in the character arcs too. Guilt over causing death - even if it was her father who killed the kitten - is what keeps Mona from getting involved in any relationship. This is apparent in the reoccurring scenes where Mona looks at her hands, and tries to "wash the blood away" as in metaphorically washing away her sins. Guilt of being a killer is also in the mix to, as this is a key to understanding the final scene. Forgiveness means tabula rasa and a new world can be created. I could go on, but I don't want to bust anything for you here.

The link between director Kristian Petri and genre cinema isn’t that too far fetched either. He’s already slated to helm the next John Ajvide-Lindqvist project Hanteringen av Odöda (Handling the Undead) in whatever shape or form it may take. And when he made his documentary Brunnen (The Well) 2005 - he spent a fair amount of that documentary talking to Jess Franco. Obviously about Franco's work with Wells, but still it was Franco. The style of the movie can easily be explained if you look at Petri’s body of work. His documentaries are often very visual, and at times dreamy. Tokyo Noise 2002 and Brunnen are two completely different kind of documentaries, but still they have a rather laid back driving force, which at times can be undetermined as they can swerve off track at any point. His fiction movies Detaljer 2003, and Sommaren 1995 deal with rather heavy topics, and both have themes of loss and loneliness. Themes not to far away from those found in Ond Tro.

Where Tokyo Noise is an impressive experiment in audio and editing, Brunnen is almost a mystery thriller in its approach, and looking at Ond Tro it’s once again the visual impression of the movie, the artistic pacing and the very deliberate minimalistic editing that build up the impact of the movie. This is obviously has a lot to do with the way editor Johan Söderberg has put the movie together, and at times he really stays with a shot for ages evoking something of a Tarkovskyan feeling to the images.

Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography is absolutely stunning. I’d be surprised if he hadn’t spent the weeks before the shoot watching a bag of old Gialli classics and then just adapted all that he saw onto his already trademark wide-angle photography so familiar from Let The Right One In. Then when he really gets’s in close for his close-ups they are so god damned beautiful that it’s almost like looking at an old oil painting covered in grit, grime and dirt.

Ond Tro is definitely a flick for patient fans of the good old Gialli, Hitchcockian thrillers and movies heavy on dreamlike narratives. It’s a wonderful piece of art, but also a great ride and undoubtedly one of the best Swedish genre pieces so far. It’s a movie that I know I’ll be going back to, so make sure to check it out.

Image:

Widescreen 2.35:1

Audio:

Dolby Digital 5.1 Swedish dialogue with optional Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and English subtitles.

Extras:

There’s fuck all on the extras, which is an outrage. You could easily fill a disc with commentaries by Petri, Dahlström, Hoytema and Söderberg that would have easily have been one of the most fascinating commentary track put to a Swedish movie.