Mercenarios de la Muerte (1983)

With the release in 1973 of "Enter the Dragon", the world was introduced to the great talent of martial artist Bruce Lee. His tragic death, only six days before the film's release (it would had been Lee's first film for an American studio), turned him into an icon, a real action films legend. The enormous worldwide success of "Enter the Dragon" would result in a fever for anything related to martial arts which would be reflected in the vast amount of martial arts films produced not only in Hong Kong, but in every corner of the world. Nevertheless, those attempts to get into the genre often resulted in bizarre films: in England, Hammer FIlms would produce the hybrid of gothic horror and kung fu "The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires" in 1974, while in Spain the comedic duo of the Calatrava brothers would add their comedy to "Los Kalatava contra el imperio del karate" (1974). In Mexico, famous masked wrester Santo would star in "La furia de los karatekas" and "El Puño de la Muerte" (both released in 1982), but the wackiest mexican kung fu movie would be released the following year with the title "Mercenarios de la Muerte".

In "Mercenarios de la Muerte", the story deals with an ancient sect of asian monks belonging to the temple of Shiolang, whom after a great war against the Black Dragon sect they were forced to travel far away from their lands, to a small town in northern Mexico were they took their relics and traditions. Years went by and the monks lived peacefully in Mexico, becoming an important part of the community and establishing a martial arts school. However, at the turn of the century, a new threat appears in the horizon for the monks, as mercenary Sung Ya (Armando Silvestre), the last disciple of the Black Dragon sect, has gathered a gang of warriors from all over the world with the intention of destroying the monks in order to steal the ancient relics of their new temple. The venerable master Tata (Emilio Fernández) knows of this great danger, and asks master Jin Ho (Aries Bautista) to pick amongst the temple's most advanced students a warrior to defend the temple from Sung Ya. This mission will be given to two youngsters, Mai Ko (Gregorio Casal) and Chang Piau (Jaime Moreno), who will have to face the mercenaries of death.

As can be see give its plot line, "Mercenarios de la Muerte" (literally "Mercenaries of Death") pretends to make a mix of Westens and kung fu movies. While the idea sounds bizarre, it isn't that strange given the way that the modern martial arts film as devised by Bruce Lee and Wei Lo was very influenced by the archetypes and stories from classic Westerns (Bruce Lee's own "Meng long guo jiang" is the perfect example). The screenplay for "Mercenarios de la Muerte", written by Avinadain Bautista, not only borrows Western elements, but in fact sets its plot in a small wild west town. The story has the intention of being an epic of gran scale, with the arrival of Sung Ya forcing the monks to prepare themselves to fight for the town that gave them shelter. However, while creating this hybrid of Western and martial arts writer Avinadain Bautista opts for exploiting old cliches from both genres, diluting whatever epic was intended to be put in the film in favor of long training sequences, supposedly philosophic dialogs that doesn't say a thing, and poor saloon fights, forgetting to develop his characters' drama, leaving them as walking stereotypes.

But even if the screenplay is of a mediocre quality, the film could still have been resulted in an interesting (if odd) martial arts film if it wasn't for the disastrous work of directing from filmmakers Manuel Muñoz and Gregorio Casal. From starters it's clear that the film was lacking in terms of budget and production values, as it seems to had been shot in forgotten sets from Estudios América's old Westerns. Still, this wouldn't be too much of trouble if it wasn't for the simplistic camera set ups chosen by the filmmakers to tell their tale, set ups that only make notorious that the scenery is fake. In the same way, the craftsmanship of the figts (which should be the highlight of any kung fu movie) is deficient, not only because of the poor execution by the fighters (Aries Bautista is perhaps an exception) but also because of the way the fights are filmed, as it's impossible to cover the fighter's lack of skill and it becomes apparent that the fights are fake. The cinematography, in charge of veterans such as Fernando Colín and Ángel Bilbatua, ranges from regular to pretty bad, as the poorly lit climatic fight can exemplify, a final fight where it's hard to see what's happening.

Acting is another big negative element in "Mercenarios de la Muerte". The fact that legendary actor and director Emilio "el Indio" Fernández takes place in a project such as this one is perhaps symptomatic of the poor state in which the mexican film industry was submerged in those times. Fernández' performance as Tata (a venerable Shiolang monk unexplainably dressed as a cowboy) limits basically to recite his line with a certain severity, though at times one can see glimpses of the talent and charm of the old filmmaker. The protagonists, Jaime Moreno and Gregorio Casal, make what's probably the word job in their careers. Moreno, who is arguably the lead character, limits himself to look nice for the camera and trying to look gracefully at moving like a kung fu fighter. Casal's character is relatively more complex, but the actor is unable to establish this supposed depth and fills his act with clichés. Armando SIlvestre is probably the only cast member that understood that the only thing that could work in this debacle was to ham it up and exaggerate a half-baked impersonation of Fu Manchu.

It would be hard to find something to praise in this weird martial arts flick where incongruence and incoherence are a constant thing. And while one could put the blame for this chaos to the low budget, poor production values and mediocre script, it's actually a matter of bad directing what generates the vast majority of the film's problems. On one hand, there is not a clear definition of the space in which the story is set, so at times the temple seems to be near the town and at times it's too far from it (conveniently for the plot). As mentioned before, there isn't any care for the film's visual narrative, as if the camera had been placed in a random place without thinking about what would be on the frame. Finally, the sound design is another big problem in the film, as given the lack of sound recordings, the film is dubbed in the worst possible way: no synchronicity, no dramatic continuity, and even some actors dub characters they weren't playing at all. This can only be seen as a sign of problems during production and postproduction, and perhaps that's why there are two directors and two cinematographers credited in the film.

Despite being one of the greater disasters in mexican filmography, "Mercenarios de la Muerte" still has a bizarre charm. Maybe it's the fact that's so unusual to see a martial arts film made in Mexico, or the mixed emotions at seeing great actors of old (Fernández and the Junco siblings) getting involved in a mess like this. Maybe it's the great naiveté and ignorance that seems to have existed in the mind of the film's makers given the lack of verisimilitude the film often has. Whatever it is, the only certain is that involuntarily, "Mercenarios de la Muerte" makes for a great comedy of errors in a very surreal way. Amongst the many martial arts films done after Bruce Lee's great success (and there were quite a lot), "Mercenarios de la Muerte" is without a doubt one of the strangest of all time.

2/10

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Incubo sulla città contaminata (1980)

Without a doubt one of the key moments in the history of Italian horror took place in 1978 with the release of American filmmaker George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". Distributed by Dario Argento with the name "Zombi", the film became a total success and the Italian film industry saw in Romero's zombie epic the path to follow in the making of new horror films. So, the following year would see the release of "Zombi 2" by director Lucio Fulci, and even when it had nothing to do with Romero's film, it was named that way to capitalize in the success of "Dawn of the Dead". Applying the classic stylization and aggressive violence of Italian horror, "Zombi 2" also was a great success, so soon more films about the living dead began to appear, copying the model established by Fulci. Italian horror was gaining new force thanks to the zombies, but just like it happened before to Spaghetti Weseterns, the clones rarely reached the level of quality of the original. "Incubo sulla città contaminata" is a classic example of this, as it's closer to involuntary comedy than to true zombie horror.

Known in America as "Nightmare City" (though the literal translation is "Nightmare in the contaminated city"), the film begins when reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) is assigned with the job of interviewing Dr. Otto Hagelberg, famed scientist who designed a nuclear plant where a damage has been reported. Miller goes to the airport to wait for Hagelberg's arrival, when a an unidentified plane makes a forced landing in one of the runways. When the local police surrounds the plane, Miller gets closer to watch the facts. The door is opened and a group of mutant zombies comes out from the plane, armed with axes and knives. A bloody battle begins between the police and the zombies, while Miller manages to escape without being seen. Desperate, Miller tries to warn the population about it, but he is stopped by General Murchison (Mel Ferrer), who doesn't allow the news to be known. The plague spreads, and Miller decides to find his wife Anna (Laura Trotter) to the hospital where she works, in order to escape from the city that has become a nightmare of death and destruction.

Written by veteran Piero Regnoli collaborating with Antonio Cesare Corti and the Spanish writer Luis María Delgado, "Incubo sulla città contaminata" isn't technically a zombie film, as the creatures that it shows are radioactive mutants with a taste for human flesh and the necessary lucidity to handle weapons and drive vehicles. Nevertheless, the story follows closely the classic pattern of a zombie movie, with the main characters trying to survive in the middle of the chaos that engulfs their city as the plague spreads and society begins to crumble. The story does handle several interesting ideas, like for example its heavy handed ecological message, its clearly anti military stance and its use of intelligent and agile zombies as the monsters of the film (predating the running zombie of modern films). Unfortunately, those ideas are lost in a screenplay plagued with holes, incoherence and a bunch of characters making illogical actions, that more than once result in absurd situations of great involuntary comedy.

The execution from director Umberto Lenzi (famous for his cannibal horror film "Il paese del sesso selvaggio") doesn't help much to solve this big problem, on the contrary, the poor craftsmanship the film has make even more ridiculous the situations that take place in "Incubo sulla città contaminata". Nevertheless, if there's anything worthy of recognition in Lenzi's work is the fact that he keeps action a constant in the film, with a frantic rhythm that avoids tedium. Despite the low quality of the whole production, Lenzi achieves to make a couple of quite effective scenes where his eye for mise-en-scène. These are the attack to the dances at the TV station, and the big attack to the hospital, two scenes where Lenzi manages to transmit the atmosphere of chaos that the story has. Sadly, Lenzi fails to keep this level of quality through the film, and "Incubo sulla città contaminata" ends up filled with technical problems, that range from an awful work of make-up to a pretty uneven editing, not to mention a somewhat mediocre cinematography (by Hans Burman, whom years later would do the cinematography for the film "Tesis").

The acting in the film is another of the biggest problems in "Incubo sulla città contaminata", as in general the quality in this element is pretty poor. Leading the cast is Mexican actor Hugo Stiglitz, playing reporter Dean Miller, and actually his work isn't that bad. While he lacks the classic image of the hero, Stiglitz manages to transmit an intensity pretty appropriate for his desperate character, and he is perhaps the only actor in the film taking the movie seriously. Mel Ferrer, with his days of "Scaramouche" (1952) long gone, makes an uninspired turn as General Murshison, as if he wasn't really interested in the resulting film. The same can be said of Spanish actor Francisco Rabal, who had the main roles in Luis Buñuel's classics "Nazarín" and "Viridiana", and in this film makes a pretty poor performance as Major William Holmes. Nevertheless, if the acting from those actors looks pretty average, the rest of the cast is completely awful, beginning with the work of Laura Trotter, whom seemed to base her entire performance in screaming constantly.

As mentioned before, "Incubo sulla città contaminata" is a film full of technical problems, something that wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the fact that the film also suffers from a poorly developed screenplay where things take place randomly and even characters and subplots are introduced without a reason other than to extend the movie's runtime. While director Umberto Lenzi has demonstrated in the past to be a competent filmmaker, in "Incubo sulla città contaminata" there's nothing that could give ground to that argument. However, something pretty remarkable about "Incubo sulla città contaminata" is how oddly funny it is. While maybe this wasn't done consciously, as the Lenzi's film unfolds and the story moves towards absurd, soon the ridicule of the scenes becomes downright comedy stuff. Despite its innumerable technical problems, there's in "Incubo sulla città contaminata" a certain charm in the exaggerated things that take place on screen that's impossible not to think that the crew had a great time making the film.

With a terribly awful screenplay, mediocre acting and a craftsmanship that leaves a lot to be desired, it's hard to recommend "Incubo sulla città contaminata" as a good example of Italian horror cinema, as even when compared to other films of its time it's still a pretty bad movie. However, if there's anything that Lenzi has achieved in "Incubo sulla città contaminata", that is the film's skill to avoid falling in tedium. Despite its many flaws (or perhaps due to them), the film ends up being a quite funny experience, though one that's probably not everyone's cup of tea. The truth is, if one's looking for true horror cinema of good quality, the best that one can do is to search somewhere else; but if what one's looking is a piece of involuntary comedy, "Incubo sulla città contaminata" from director Umberto Lenzi could actually be a pretty good choice.

4/10
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Quella villa accanto al cimitero (1981)

Italian director Lucio Fulci found international recognition with the release in 1979 of "Zombi 2" (also known as "Zombie Flesh Eaters" in the UK), a violent tale of zombie horror that was sold as an unofficial sequel to George A. Romero's classic "Dawn of the Dead" (which was known as "Zombi" in Italy). After this success, Fulci would use the horror genre to explore more complex ideas, related to metaphysics and the after life, resulting in the films "Paura Nella Città Dei Morti Viventi" ("City of the Living Dead") and his masterpiece, "L'aldilà" ("The Beyond"), films that, while dealing with different stories, both explored the theme of portals that communicate between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Fulci would close the circle with a third film, "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" ("The House by the cemetery") in 1981, and while the film returns a bit to a more traditional style of making horror cinema, it also explores a similar theme and completes a thematic trilogy related with death, melancholy and hopelessness.

"Quella villa accanto al cimitero" begins with two deaths: a woman and her boyfriend are brutally murdered in an abandoned house located in New Whitby, Boston. The following day, Norman and Lucy Boyle (Paolo Malco and Catriona MacColl) are in New York preparing their stuff to move, as Norman wants to continue the research that his late colleague, Dr. Peterson, was doing before committing suicide. Their destiny is precisely the house in New Whitby, despite the fact that their little son Bob (Giovanni Frezzi) has warned them not to go, as he has received a strange psychic message from a mysterious girl (Silvia Collatina) telling him there's a grave danger. The family moves anyways, and begin to install themselves in New Whitby. Norman finds out that his colleague was researching on a certain Dr. Freudstein, the old owner of the house the Boyle live now. In the meantime, a young woman named Ann (Ania Pieroni) is hired by Lucy as a babysitter. Strange noises are heard in the mansion, so Norman and Lucy decide to open the cellar; however, this will release the evil locked under the house by the cemetery.

Based on a story by Elisa Briganti (author of "Zombi 2"), the screenplay was developed by Fulci and his regular collaborators, writers Giorgio Mariuzzo and Dardano Sacchetti. As mentioned before, "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" is a more traditional horror film, that leaves aside the oneiric surrealism of the previous films and focus instead on a more linear plot that seemed to mix the classic Gothic horror with the gory violence of Fulci's style. In top Gothic fashion, the film features a family moving to an old house and ending up a victim of the dark secrets that the mansion has buried in its past. And yet, "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" returns to the very same concepts of the Gates of Hell films: again there's a portal that has allowed the crossing of dark forces into our world, though this time they have taken possession of the rotting corpse of Dr. Freudstein, transformed by Fulci's imagination into one of the most iconic monsters of Italian cinema. It's worth to point out that in the screenplay there's a notable influence from the stories by the master of supernatural horror, H.P. Lovecraft.

The influence of Gothic horror that's imbued in the script for "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" can be found as well in the style given by director Lucio Fulci to this film. In this movie, Fulci shows a greater care in the creation of atmospheres and the handling of suspense than in his previous works, and while his taste for gore is still present, in "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" this stops being a gratuitous effect and becomes a quite important element in the characterization of the film's monster. Certainly, there's a great improvement in Fulci's technique, which is made apparent by the great use he gives to the brilliant work of cinematographer Sergio Salvati and the score by Walter Rizzati. Both elements are use to great effect, giving the film an uneasy atmosphere of dread that remains constant ever since the family sets a foot on the Freudstein house. The work of Salvati is worthy of recognition, as he manages to give "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" a very particular look, capturing Fulci's vision of a savage, brutal and oneiric tale of Gothic horror.

As in the previous films in the Gates of Hell cycle, British actress Catriona MacColl appears in a main role, playing housewife Lucy Boyle, who faces the horrors found in the Freudstein's house while his husband Dr. Norman is away. MacColl makes a very good job as Lucy, though maybe not on the same level as her performances in "L'aldilà"; nevertheless, she shows that amongst Fulci's cast, she is one of the most talented members. But if MacColl doesn't shine that much, that's maybe because the main role is for young Giovanni Frezz, who plays little Bob, the psychic kid. The problem with Frezza's performance is that his work is the one that suffers the most problems with the awful work of dubbing done for the film, receiving a voice such annoying and bland that doesn't match his acting. Better luck has Paolo Malco, who makes a good counterpart to MacColl when playing her husband, Dr. Norman Boyle. The beautiful Ania Pieroni appears as the babysitter Ann, but her performance is so poor that seemed to be limited to looking good and recite her lines.

Again it could be said that the acting is the weakest link in this film by Lucio Fulci, however, the problem is not exactly in the acting per se, but in the disastrous work of dubbing done in the film. The core of the problem is that, in those days dubbing was common place in Italian cinema due to the multicultural casts. To Italian producers, it was easier to have each cast member to act in their own language and then to make the dubbing later. For "Quella villa accanto al cimitero", this was tragic, as those who dubbed the child actors Giovanni Frezza and Silvia Collatina doesn't sound really as kids, and instead give their roles annoying voices that do not represent by any chance the work done by the young actors. Adults fare better, but the fact that the kids sound that bad provokes an unintentionally comic effect in what otherwise is a serious horror film. It's sad that this problem has such effect in "Quella villa accanto al cimitero", as even while this is not a revolutionary horror film, it is really one of the best works done by the Italian filmmaker.

Owner of a gorgeous Gothic beauty and a savage gory violence (that made it to be included in the infamous video nasties list in the United Kingdom), "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" is a powerful example of Fulci's craftsmanship at a moment when it was at its best. Certainly, its low budget affects the results in more than one occasion, but Fulci manages to create a tale of Gothic horror with a powerful atmosphere and a brutal climax that make it one of the most interesting movies in the Eurohorror of the 1980s. Of course, the dubbing is awfully bad, but leaving that aside, one can see that Fulci was not merely a commercial filmmaker jumping on the bandwagon of Italian horror cinema, but a truly consummated artist of the genre. "Quella villa accanto al cimitero" closes with style the Gates of Hell trilogy.

7/10
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Nekromantik (1987)

Cinema of Transgression, term first used by filmmaker Nick Zedd to describe a movement of independent cinema (of which he was an important member) that took place during the late 70s and early 80s and which had as main trait the fact that it was often shocking or outrageous for the more conventional sensibilities. While the Cinema of Transgression was strictly an American movement, a lot of similarities can be find with the work of a German filmmaker named Jörg Buttgereit and the series of transgressive films he made during the last half of the 1980s. Earning experience by making Super 8 short films, Jörg Buttgereit first experience in a feature length film was his collaboration in Michael Brynntrup's experimental film "Jesus - Der film" in 1986. The following year, he debuted as a feature length director with the film that would define his career as a transgressive filmmaker: "Nekromantik". As the title may suggest, in "Nekromantik" Buttgereit tackles one of society's greatest taboos, necrophilia, the sexual attraction to corpses.

In "Nekromantik", Bernd Daktari Lorenz plays Robert Schmadtke, a timid young man who works at "Joe's Streetcleaning Agency", a company that removes corpses from public areas after the police work is done. While Robert doesn't really enjoy his work, it's the ideal position for him as Robert enjoys collecting body parts and organs, which he takes to his apartment with his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice Manowski), who also shares Rob's fascination with the dead. One day, a body is found in the river, and Robert is left alone to dispose of the body. Seeing this as a one in a million opportunity, Robert decides to steal the body and takes it home, where an excited Betty welcomes the decaying body as the ultimate romantic gift. From then one, Rob and Betty have passionate sex with the corpse, in their necrophiliac version of a ménage a trois. However, things don't go well for long, as Rob is fired from his job after pissing off his boss (Harald Lundt) with his tardiness. A disappointed Betty decides to leave Rob for good, and takes her loved corpse with her, leaving Rob desperate and alone.

More an absurd (and quite black) comedy than a typical horror tale, "Nekromantik" is the story of a twisted mind who finds the delicate balance in which it exists shaken away when his equally disturbed girlfriend leaves him. Told from the point of view of its pathetic antihero, Rob, "Nekromantik" explores initially the disgusting yet initially harmless obsessions of the couple of perverts, pretty much limited to collecting body organs. Betty, perhaps the real necrophiliac of the two, is a very dominant woman while Rob is merely a sad, dependent and very twisted man looking for understanding. With this purpose, Robert gives Betty the ultimate expression of his love: a full corpse for her enjoyment. And when she prefers the corpse over him, to the desensitized Rob it means the loss of the only person in his life that had understood him, and the beginning of the path of destruction (or better said, self-destruction) that writers Jörg Buttgereit and Franz Rodenkirchen (his frequent collaborator) describe in the second half of the story.

And director Jörg Buttgereit doesn't really shy away from showing the twisted world of Robert and Betty in all its grotesque glory. From the initial sequence, Buttgereit shows his taste for the graphic display of guts and gore. The effects, by Jörg Buttgereit, Rodenkirchen and Lorenz himself, are of a pretty acceptable quality, considering the extreme low budget that the production had. In fact, it's actually amazing what Jörg Buttgereit achieves within the scope of his limitations, Like Buttgereit's earlier short films, "Nekromantik" was shot in 8 mm, and while the footage capture by cinematographer Uwe Bohrer is certainly crude, this is actually fitting given the grizzly subject matter. And about the necrophilia, director Jörg Buttgereit keeps things in the thin line between the oddly poetic and the blatantly exploitative. Buttgereit eroticizes the act in order to shock, and succeeds at it by juxtaposing the repulsive with the romantic, and all with a touch of absurd comedy that's fits nicely to the perverse mix.

Unfortunately, the lack of budget and experience is evident, particularly in the performances by the cast. Daktari Lorenz, who plays the film's antihero Robert, isn't actually that bad, but even when he does show real commitment to the project, his lack of experience betrays him from time to time. Beatrice Manowski, who plays his girlfriend Betty, delivers acting of a slightly inferior quality, a bit more artificial in her delivery, though she does manage to transmit the passionate emotions of her character. The rest of the cast is pretty mediocre at best, and while the vast majority of the remaining cast members play bit parts, it's evident that many of them weren't real actors. Harald Lundt, who plays Robert' boss Bruno is pretty stagy in his performance, and the same could be said of Colloseo Schulzendorf, who plays Joe, the owner of the company where Rob works. Certainly, the cast was made mostly of friends, which becomes evident when noticing that even director Jörg Buttgereit himself played a bit part as one of Rob's coworkers.

As can be imagined, "Nekromantik" is definitely not a film for the easy offended, as Jörg Buttgereit's transgressive film doesn't hold back in its grotesque visual imagery. And this is not a flaw, because by taking this exaggerated visual style, Buttgereit's vision remains close to his perverse touch of absurd comedy. In fact, the real flaw of the film is, oddly, the fact that it begins to lose steam as soon as the necrophilia aspect begins to be removed. What I mean is that as soon as Robert loses both his girlfriend and his corpse, the lonely mental deterioration that he suffers through the film's second half is considerably less interesting than the disturbing first half. With the couple element gone, Buttgereit's film loses the initial strength of his themes, loses its direction, and becomes a rambling sequence of events in which an increasingly insane Robert keeps moving around doing increasingly evil things. Certainly Robert's dehumanization is the center of the story, but Buttgereit's vision loses focus without Robert's female counterpart.

Infamous amongst cult films due to its graphic and often disgusting take on its taboo subject matter (which by the way, receives a more traditional approach in 1996's "Kissed"), Jörg Buttgereit's "Nekromantik" is an uncompromising horror film that truly live up to the title of "transgressive art". Jörg Buttgereit is not afraid of offending sensibilities with his film, and he succeeds in making a remorseless and bizarre study of a twisted mind. Certainly, the movie is lacking in the technical aspects (and the mediocre acting doesn't really help), but it's clear that "Nekromantik" is true to its director's very particular style. Absurd, revolting, bizarre and even hilarious at times, "Nekromantik" can be described by a multitude of adjectives, but typical is not one of them.

6/10
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The Changeling (1980)

Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft once wrote "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." Perhaps nothing represents best this notion than ghost stories, as since immemorial times, the mystery of death is one that has always been both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Naturally, ghost stories found their way into film, and so ghosts and hauntings have been part of cinema since Georges Méliès's short films in the 1890s. Given their settings, ghost stories are definitely a mainstay of Gothic horror in film, and have been the basis for several of the subgenre's greatest masterpieces (Wise's "The Haunting" and Clayton's "The Innocents" to name just two). Peter Medak's 1980 film "The Changeling" continues this long tradition of ghost stories in a Gothic horror vein, by having at its core an ominous haunted mansion, and the terrifying journey that its latest inhabitant must endure in order to solve the mystery behind some serious ghastly disturbances.

"The Changeling" is the story of John Russell (George C. Scott), a successful musician and composer who has just lost his wife and daughter in a tragic car accident while on a winter vacation. Still mourning his loss but hoping to rebuilt his life, Russell moves to Seattle in order to teach music at the local university, and leases a huge abandoned mansion that belongs to the Historical Society, hoping to find the quietness to compose again. The mansion, named the Chessman House, is enormous in size and supposedly has been empty for twenty years. However, Russell begins to experience a series of supernatural events that make him begin to wonder if he is truly alone at the house. Noises and other occurrences point out to the presence of a child who lived there a long time ago. While reluctant at first, Russell decides to investigate the mystery in order to find peace for both him and the ghost, and begins to discover the secrets of the Chessman House's past and the mysterious events that took place there.

Based on a story by Russell Hunter (and supposedly based on his real experiences living in Cheessman Park, Denver), the movie was written by William Gray and Diana Maddox, who cleverly built a captivating tale of mystery that slowly unfolds as Russell's investigation takes place. Putting the genre's conventions to good use, the writers follow closely the classic Gothic pattern for ghost stories, keeping an appropriate balance between the horror and the mystery. And mystery is the key of "The Changeling"'s screenplay, as the plot is filled with many twists and turns that build up a story that works like a hybrid between detective fiction and horror film, with Russell being akin to a hardened tough guy on a difficult case. This focus on Russell's research is perhaps "The Changeling"'s main departure from its otherwise classicist approach, but it's one that truly makes the story very interesting, particularly because of the and the fact that the main characters are very well developed, elevating the story from its formulaic origin.

Director Peter Medak creates an enormously atmospheric movie that really takes good advantage of the story's decidedly Gothic style. With a superbly elegant and classy work of cinematography by John Coquillon, Medak perfectly uses his location to make the Chessman House itself an important character in the movie. It's not only a mere set, Medak makes it an extension of the presence that lives with Russell there, much like director Robert Wise did decades before in the legendary classic "The Haunting". And as in Wise's film, Medak's "The Changeling" succeeds in making a horror movie where the terror comes from simple and mundane objects instead of complicated special effects. In "The Changeling", a red ball can be a more terrifying element than any monster. Medak plays with what's unseen and unknown to create horror at its purest sense. The great focus placed on mystery and suspense is classic Gothic horror, and the film's heavy atmosphere of dread and somber tone truly make it a proud heir of the ghost stories that precedes it.

Better known for his remarkable performance in Franklin J. Schaffner's "Patton" (1970), George C. Scott once again shows his enormous talent as the tortured composer John Russell. Scott's acting feels natural and realistic, easily making his character come to life with an honest charm that makes hard not to feel identified with him. Certainly, Scott's image fits nicely in the film's context, as he creates a character tough enough to the task, yet sensible, fragile and wounded. George C. Scott's real life wife Trish Van Devere plays his character's counterpart, Claire Norman, a member of the History Society and the one who helped Russell to get the house. In a character that easily could had become a cliché, Van Devere delivers a natural performance that enhances the film's subtle mix of realism with dark fantasy, and while her screen time is considerably smaller, her performance is effective. The film has also great performances by Melvyn Douglas, Jean Marsh and John Colicos in the supporting roles.

Overshadowed by the better known horror films that were released in the same year (namely Kubrick's "The Shining" and Deodato's "Cannibal Holocaust"), Medak's "The Changeling" has many elements that make him one of the "forgotten" great horror movies of the 80s. With its classicist style and ominous Gothic atmosphere, it's certainly a throwback to a subtler kind of horror, more disturbing and unnerving than graphically shocking. In terms of style, Medak's "The Changeling" could be seen as the polar opposite to Spielberg and Hooper's "Poltergeist" (another great ghost story of the 80s), as both films tell the story of a haunted house, but with completely different craftsmanship. Restrained and simple, "The Changeling" may feel slow at times, particularly as it unfolds it's complex plot (which at times may be too complex for its own good); however, the slow pacing only enhances the suspense and tension built by director Peter Medak and ultimately benefits the movie as a whole.

"The Changeling" remains Peter Medak's most accomplished and remarkable film, as while his return to horror in "Species II" wasn't really bad, it was far from the supreme achievement he did in this film. Classy, subtle and restrained, "The Changeling" offered a modern take on the classic style of ghost stories, and left a mark that did found echo: the famous Japanese horror "Ringu" clearly borrowed certain elements from "The Changeling"'s plot and tone. With its haunting atmosphere of nightmare, superb work of cinematography and its appropriate slow rhythm, "The Changeling" is a worthy heir to the style of Gothic ghost stories that directors Wise and Clayton seemed to perfect in the 60s. A remarkable modern Gothic.

9/10
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Ariel (1988)

With a calm and candid twist on the romantic comedy called "Varjoja paratiisissa" ("Shadows in Paradise") released in 1986, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki began to leave his mark in the history of cinema, developing his very particular style of deadpan delivery and ironic melancholy. After making a modern noir reworking of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in 1987 (titled "Hamlet liikemaailmassa"), Kaurismäki returned to the themes of social alienation and absurd misery that he had previously explored in "Varjoja paratiisissa". The result was "Ariel", the second installment in a thematic trilogy about Helsinki's dispossessed that has been known as "the Underdog Trilogy", "the Losers Trilogy" and more famously, "The Proletariat Trilogy". As those names may imply, the central characters in those films belong to the working class, and their stories explore their struggles in the difficult economic panorama that resulted after Finland liberalized its economy. And all done in Kaurismäki's distinctive brand of black comedy.

In "Ariel", Turo Pajala plays Taisto Karurinen, a chain-smoking coal miner in his 30s who has spent all his life in the rural town where he works. When the mine is closed, Taisto's father (Erkki Pajala), also a miner, gives his 60s Cadillac to Taisto and commits suicide, but not before advising his son to leave the town. Taisto gathers his life savings and heads to the big city, Helsinki, looking for a better future. Nevertheless, the capital doesn't really give Taisto the best of welcomes, as soon after arriving he ends up beaten and robbed. Without job and without cash, Taisto's wanders through the city looking for a job, which he fortunately finds on the docks. Taisto's life then becomes a routine of day labor work and night rock n' rolling at a club, but everything changes when he meets Irmeli (Susanna Haavisto), a divorced mother of a young kid (Eetu Hilkamo) with who he begins a relationship. Seems like luck is finally smiling to Taisto, but things ain't easy for the dispossessed, as soon Taisto gets jailed for a crime he didn't commit.

Written by director Kaurismäki himself, "Ariel" is basically a tale of bad luck as Taisto's life often finds itself set back by the forces he can not control. From the closure of the mine he worked to his arrival to prison, "Ariel" is a story of hopelessness and absurdity at its most Kafkian sense. But unlike the works of the great Austro-Hungarian writer, Kaurismäki's stories are imbued by a bittersweet sense of compassion shaped in the black humor that's deeply rooted in them. There is no pessimism in "Ariel", just a honesty that seems to answer with stoic indifference the many setbacks and bad jokes of life. Taisto, the Kaurismäki anti-hero, finds himself stripped of everything upon his arrival to Helsinki, and yet, in this tragedy he finds himself self-confident for the first time. The self-confidence of someone who has nothing else to lose, and everything to win. With sparse, yet carefully constructed dialogs, Kaurismäki builds up a set of unforgettable characters that become the heart of this relatively simple story of love, crime and bad luck.

As a director, Aki Kaurismäki refines the stark visual style of "Varjoja paratiisissa", which in its austerity contrasts the harsh and cold atmosphere of Finnish urban landscape with the warmth that brings the people who live in it. There's a greater emphasis in the film about the state of Finnish economy, not explicitly stated, but implied by the subtleties of the characters' actions (and emphasis not found in the other films of the Trilogy). Kaurismäki's regular cinematographer, Timo Salminen, captures the bleakness of Helsinki's streets and nightlife, and nicely frames the hopelessness of Taisto's struggle. Salminen finds a strange beauty in the alleys, bars and docks of Helsinki, that shines naturally, without idealizing them. Kaurismäki's narrative is more polished than in his previous film, perfecting the slow pacing and the deadpan delivery of his comedy. Certainly, his timing is more precise this time, as in "Ariel" there's a greater emphasis on finding the humorous side of the absurdities of life.

Acting in the film is of great quality, with Turo Pajala leading the cast perfectly capturing the spirit of Kaurismäki's style. With great ability, Pajala manages to deliver his character's stoicism with enormous subtlety and style. There's a great naturalness in Pajala's performance that helps to make easier to enter into Kaurismäki's style. Subtlety is the key in Pajala's performance, and it's remarkable what he achieves with minimalist gestures and strong delivery. Unfortunately, Susanna Haavisto isn't that lucky, and her performance as Taisto's love interest, Irmeli is just average. Instead of subtle, she feels a bit forced and artificial in her delivery. Kaurismäki's regular Matti Pellonpää appears as Mikkonen, a convict who helps Taisto to break from prison. A familiar face in Kaurismäki's body of work, Pellonpää once again makes a good performance, perhaps a tad limited by the seriousness of his character, but ultimately fitting as a counterpart to Taisto's naiveté.

The rest of the cast is effective, and particularly worth of notice is young Eetu Hilkamo's performance as Irmeli's son Riku, who truly steals every scene he is in. All in all, "Ariel" is a strong entry in Kaurismäki's cinema, a mature work that displays a more developed stage of the minimalist style that the Finnish filmmaker had been experimenting since his debut. All of Kaurismäki's themes and obsessions appear in "Ariel", from its absurd take on irony, to its depressive working class setting, it's all there, as a statement of the direction that Kaurismäki was heading his work at that point. And for this reason, the same problems present in his cinema appear again in "Ariel", particularly the difficulty that may present his offbeat and highly idiosyncratic deadpan comedy. Deliberatedly slow and contemplative, the stark minimalism of "Ariel" could be off-putting to audiences expecting a more traditional comedy. It's certainly, an acquired taste. Nevertheless, "Ariel" has in Turo Pajala an actor with enough charm to make all work.

Taisto's journey, from his rural town to the depths of prison, isn't really any different from an epic adventure of grand scale. The hero of the tale still must sort out all kind of problems and win the favors of goddess Fortuna. The minimalist scale of this epic is only representative of what's probably the core of the Proletariat Trilogy: surviving this life is already a matter of heroism. The misadventures of Taisto, product of an apparently interminable streak of bad luck, feel all the more realist and human. Without cheap philosophy or arrogant pretentiousness, in this second exploration of the world of the dispossessed director Aki Kaurismäki uncovers the bittersweet glory of the common man.

8/10
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Varjoja paratiisissa (1986)

In the early 1980s, cinema of Finland experienced a grand renovation, as a new generation of young filmmakers erupted to reinvigorate the Finnish film industry. At the head of this new era were the Kaurismäki brothers, Mika and Aki, whose film "Valehtelija" (released in 1981, directed by Mila and written by Aki) represented both a heartfelt tribute to the French New Wave and a rupture with the Finnish old-guard. Two years later Aki Kaurismäki debuted with the feature length film "Rikos ja rangaistus", an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic novel "Crime and Punishment". Its follow up, the absurd comedy "Calamari Union" gave more insight about Kaurismäki's idiosyncrasies, but it would be in his third film, "Varjoja paratiisissa" where the Finnish director would fully establish the path his vision of cinema was taking. The first part of a thematic trilogy (collectivelly known as the Proletariat Trilogy), "Varjoja paratiisissa" is an introduction to the bleak black comedy of Kaurismäki's Helsinki.

Known in English as "Shadows in Paradise" (the literal translation), "Varjoja paratiisissa" is the story of Nikander (Matti Pellonpää), a shy and lonely garbage man living in Helsinki. One day and old co-worker Esko (Esko Nikkari) proposes him to join a new company he is starting, and while Nikander accepts, the project is finished when Esko dies of a sudden heart attack. This event begins to affect Nikander, and gives him the courage to invite Ilona (Kati Outinen) to a date. Ilona is a supermarket clerk, lonely like Nikander but with the aspiration of leaving Helsinki for good. The date goes wrong and a melancholic Nikander gets drunk and ends up in jail, where he befriends Melartin (Sakari Kuosmanen), who later joins Nikander as a garbage man. Ilona loses her job at the supermarket, and decides to begin an on-again off-again relationship with Nikander, whom is surprised by this. However, this is only the beginning for the stoic garbage man, who harbors dreams of stop being a loser.

"Varjoja paratiisissa", written by Kaurismäki himself, is at its most basic, the story of a lonely man looking to give some meaning to his life. Romance ends up playing a central part in the plot, but "Varjoja paratiisissa" is by no means a romantic comedy, or at least, not one in the traditional sense. Nikander, the protagonist, has spend his life just existing, until the dead of his old co-worker triggers an urge to do something else in life. An impassible stoic man, Nikander tries, fails and tries again without making a big fuzz about it. On the other hand, Ilona's more desperate attempts to improve her condition make her a more impulsive character. Their pairing is odd, and their relationship a difficult one, but in the end, most couples in real life are this way. Love, in the bleak world of Kaurismäki, isn't the solution for the problems, but it certainly helps to make easier the handling of the absurdities of life. Kaurimäki's view of the underclass is neither condescending nor harsh, just bittersweet.

The tone of "Varjoja paratiisissa" is decidedly ironic, with Kaurismäki preferring deadpan delivery for his comedy instead of a more overstated or energetic one. This simplistic low-key approach, which would become one of Kaurismäki's most familiar trademarks, is strangely fitting in the gray coldness of Helsinki that the director captures through the camera of Timo Salminen (Kaurismäki's regular cinematographer), which oddly, gives a warm feeling to this coldness. In a way, Salminen captures the warmness of humanity, who struggles through the absurdities of life looking for meaning. The struggle itself seems to be the point in "Varjoja paratiisissa", which finds its humor in its characters' apparently pointless and pathetic quests. And yet, there's neither cynicism nor condescension in Kaurismäki cinema, but a more honest naturalist contemplation of the absurd. Ultimately, the quests prove to be neither pointless nor pathetic, as amidst all the depressive bleakness, there's always some enlightenment.

Playing an extrapolation of the character he played in Kaurismäki's earlier "Rikos ja rangaistus", actor Matti Pellonpää delivers a subtle, yet remarkable performance as the stoic Nikander. Practical yet naive, introverted yet courageous, Nikander is a man full of contradictions, and Matti Pellonpää manages to create a painfully realist portrait of Kaurismäki's perennial underdog. In his deadpan delivery, there's a great sense of honesty that permeates everything he says, and that prevents his performance from looking artificial or rehearsed. As Ilona, Kati Outinen is also a great asset of the film, as with simple gestures and mannerisms, she manages to transmit the great bleakness of Ilona's world, and her the struggle to survive it. The eyes of both Pellonpää and Outinen synthesize the underlying themes in "Varjoja paratiisissa": Nikander's stoicism and Ilona's desperate depression are reflected deeply inside their eyes. Also of notice is Sakari Kuosmanen's highly charismatic performance as Nikander's friend Melartin.

The stylish aesthetic of Kaurismäki's cinema is at the same time its greatest asset and its most difficult problem, as it is certainly an acquired taste. The deadpan delivery and the bleak outlook could easily be taken as dull or tedious, and in fact the slow pacing that Kaurismäki gives to "Varjoja paratiisissa" makes it reach at times a point of boredom. Certainly, Kaurismäki's style was not yet entirely developed at this stage, and this is best reflected in the uneven slowness of its pacing, which can get tiresome. While realist in its approach, the bleakness of its atmosphere may not be that accessible on the first instance, and may take a while to get the black humor that lays underneath its brooding tone. Nevertheless, once one gets past the initial shock, the charm of Kaurismäki's subtle comedy begins to be more notorious as the characters reveal themselves. With its simple story, the heart of the story is in the characters themselves, whom in their big humanity reflect hwo strangely funny can tragedy be.

While far from a masterpiece, "Varjoja paratiisissa" or "Shadows in Paradise", is an important film in Aki Kaurismäki's cinema as it's where his distinctive style began to shine. As part of the Proletariat Trilogy, it introduces the themes that would be better explored in the posterior films ("Ariel" and "Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö"), and while it's brooding, melancholic pacing can be tiring, it offers a Kaurismäki willing to take risks to deliver a more honest work. Flawed, but enormously interesting, "Varjoja paratiisissa" may be a difficult film to like (perhaps Kaurismäki cinema in general is this way), but it's also one that offers a strangely warm joy found in the cold difficulties of life.

7/10
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The Thing (1982)

In 1951, the sci-fi horror film "The Thing from Another World" was released and became a massive commercial success for producer Howard Hawks, who apparently also directed it (though credit went to Christopher Nyby). The film had a tremendous impact in a young kid named John Carpenter, and it prompted him to pursue filmmaking as a career. After film school, Carpenter earned cult status with two independent films: 1976's "Assault on Precinct 13" and 1978's highly influential horror film "Halloween". Both film had shades of Hawks in their making, the former being a spiritual heir of Hawks "Rio Bravo" and the latter directly referencing "The Thing from Another World" by having the film appearing on a TV screen. After having his third major commercial success with the science-fiction adventure "Escape from New York" (1981), Carpenter was set to enter the world of major studio filmmaking. And the film that would mark his entry would be another direct Hawksian reference: a full-fledged remake of "The Thing from Another World".

Titled simply as "The Thing", the story begins in the winter of 1982, in a U.S. research station located in the remote territories of Antarctica. Suddenly, the members of the American crew notice a Norwegian helicopter coming their way, apparently chasing a Husky dog that runs towards the American base. The helicopter lands, and their pilots, showing sings of insanity, try to kill the dog desperately, accidentally shooting towards the Americans. Unfortunately, both pilots end up killed accidentally, leaving the Americans the task of figuring out what made them to be insane and chase the dog, which soon finds itself at home at the base. Being unable to report the incident, pilot R. J. MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) venture to the Norwegian camp to find out more. To their surprise, they find the base destroyed, and the burned remains of a humanoid corpse with horrid features. Returning to the American camp, they'll Soon they'll discover that the dog the Norwegians were hunting wasn't a normal dog, but a thing from another world.

Adapted by screenwriter Bill Lancaster, this version of "The Thing" is a lot more faithful to its source (John W. Campbell's novella "Who goes there?"), with the monster as a creature able to imitate the crew members (or any living creature), a concept that was blatantly ignored by Hawks' version. This approach makes Carpenter's "The Thing" less a straight remake and more a completely different conception of Campbell's novella. As such, Bill Lancaster's script plays with mystery and suspense with great success, enhancing the sensation of paranoia and unpredictability of the plot with excellent results. Lancaster also builds up a great set of well-defined and complex characters, an instrumental element in the film, as a lot of the tension raised steams from the difficult relationships between the crew members, who trapped inside their camp, begin to distrust each other. Unlike Hawks' version, the film's tone is remarkably bleak and pessimist, as an atmosphere of impending doom begins to surround the crew.

In his seminal slasher "Halloween", John Carpenter placed more emphasis on suspense and atmosphere over gore and shock, and while "The Thing" makes great use of Rob Bottin's remarkable work of special effects, it still could be seen as an evolution of that style. Despite the extensive display of Bottin's work, there is still a greater focus on the ominous atmosphere of isolation, distrust and dread that's imbued in the film. Suspense in fact plays a major role in the film, as paranoia begins to grow within the American camp and everyone is suspect of being the Thing. With the great eye of cinematographer Dean Cundey (Capenter's regular collaborator), director John Carpenter creates a claustrophobic nightmare inside the American camp, which with the storm raging outside, becomes a haunting secluded location through Carpenter's vision. And as written above, the work done by Rob Bottin in the special effects department is simply amazing, a superb work of grotesque and absolute genius.

Since the tensions between the crew members make for a quite important element in the movie, the performances by the cast are instrumental for the success of the film, and in this aspect the cast of "The Thing" is also of great quality. In fact, the performances are so effective that one can almost cut the tension with a knife. Carpenter's regular collaborator Kurt Russel stars as pilot MacReady, a cynical man forced to be the man in charge as the situation gets worse. Wilford Brimley delivers another terrific performance as Dr. Blair, a scientist that goes insane figuring out the Thing's purposes. Brimley conveys perfectly the sense of despair that the whole station is, and in his character's madness is perhaps represented the crumbling of their hope. As the short tempered Childs, Keith David is also pretty good, being essentially MacReady's rival in the crew's leadership. Also of note is David Clennon's performance as Palmer, and Donald Moffat, whom adds a lot of dignity in his role as Captain Garry.

When initially released in 1982, John Carpenter's "The Thing" got a cold reception by both the critics and the audiences. Somber, dark and overtly pessimist, the film was seen as a shockingly grotesque spectacle and ended up overshadowed by Steven Spielberg's "E.T.", which had a quite different and friendlier approach to extraterrestrial beings. Nevertheless, Carpenter's take on "The Thing" stands as a monumental achievement in horror filmmaking, proving to be a nightmarish masterpiece that goes beyond its violence and gore, it's a dark venture into mankind's darkest fear: the fear of the isolation. Not only the crew is geographically isolated, they are suddenly alone amidst a bunch of strangers for, nobody knows who could still be human. In this aspect Carpenter surpasses Hawks, who left the monster as an outsider entity. Carpenter's Thing is astute, evil, and could be anyone in the crew; and as Dr. Blair and Captain Garry crumble demoralized by the Thing's menace, Carpenter makes the point that neither science nor military is enough to face it.

While certainly there are aspects in "The Thing" that haven't aged well, this remarkable film still stands as a wonderfully crafted work that shows the extent of Carpenter's talent as a filmmaker. While probably he'll always be remembered for his landmark classic "Halloween", the level of mastery achieved in "The Thing" makes it perhaps his greatest achievement. One of the most interesting and actually scary horror films of all time, "The Thing" is a perfect example of a remake that puts a different angle to its source and creates a powerful new story out of it. The student surpassing his master. Beyond the horror genre, John Carpenter's "The Thing" is probably one of the finest American films ever made.

10/10
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Joey (1985)

German director Roland Emmerich is nowadays best known as the man behind Hollywood blockbusters such as "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow", big budget science-fiction films where he has shown a taste for using a heavy amount of visual effects, a style that has earned him his fair share of detractors. While certainly Emmerich may not be the most original or artistic director in the history of cinema, it's hard to deny that his films have a very particular style of his own, a style that he had been developing from his early films, and that owes a lot to his "spiritual guides", the great masters of fantasy cinema of the 70s: George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (reportedly, watching "Star Wars" in his youth made him decide to become a filmmaker). Lucas' influence is clear in Emmerich's first movie, the sci-fi adventure "Das Arche Noah Prinzip", but his second film makes Emmerich's devotion to Spielberg all the more evident: the little fantasy film named "Joey".

Better known in the U.S. as "Making Contact" (where it was had 20 minutes cut), "Joey" is the story of its titular character, a 9 years old kid named Joey (Joshua Morrell) who after the tragic death of his father, begins to experience strange psychic powers. This powers allow him supernatural abilities like moving inanimate objects with his mind or setting things on fire. Joey soon even manages to apparently make contact with his dead father. Naturally, Joey's sanity is questioned by those around him, but the kid really doesn't mind. However, not everything is good for Joey as his newly found powers accidentally awake an evil supernatural force that had been contained inside the body of an old ventriloquist's dummy that Joey had found in an abandoned house. Flecther (Jack Angel) the dummy, possessed by the ancient evil force, claims to be the ghost of the ventriloquist and shows pretty similar powers to Joey's. Soon Fletcher puts the lives of everyone near Joey in danger as the evil Dummy has dark plans for Joey's special powers.

Written by Emmerich himself, along with scriptwriters Hans J. Haller and Thomas Lechner, "Joey" is has many classic elements of a supernatural horror movie on the lines of Tobe Hooper "Poltergeist" (a Spielberg production released three years before "Joey"), but done with the approach of a fantasy movie for children pretty much on the style of "E.T.", another Spielberg film. To be fair, while there are many elements and reference to classic sci-fi, the premise has its fair share of originality and in fact results in several pretty good scenes. Sadly, the script's overall development is quite typical of its time, and resorts far too much on the genre's clichés to work. Focused entirely on Joey, the film works more as a creepy adventure film than as an strictly horror movie, mainly because the story is written in a way that highlights the main character's fight versus the evil force over the horror created by the Dummy. This is not to say that there aren't any horror moments, they are there, and some actually work really good.

While done with a relatively low budget, Emmerich packs his film with very good dark visual imagery, and even in this early film there are signs that forecast Emmerich's taste for big budget special effects. It's really interesting what he achieves with his minimal resources, and it could be said that even at this early point in his career the director already knew the kind of films he wanted to do in the future (visual nods to George Lucas abound through the film). Cinematographer Egon Werdin crafts some nice atmospheres, particularly when the film veers towards horror territory, where the visual style gets closer to the afore mentioned "Poltergeist", a similitude that certainly can't be exactly unintentional, as "Joey" could be seen as Emmerich's ultimate tribute to Spielberg and Lucas. Unfortunately, "Joey" also shows what perhaps has been the downside of Emmerich's style through his career: the scenes with special effects work, whereas the ones without them show his shortcomings as a director.

The cast in "Joey" is sadly, really average in their work, and this is actually one of the film's weakest points (perhaps in fact "The" weakest). Unfortunately, the lack of experience of the cast (specially in the case of the kids) becomes increasingly notorious as the film unfolds, and given the fact that the director was also unexperienced at this point did not help (and honestly, directing actors has never been one of Emmerich's strengths). Anyways, the only actress with real experience, Eva Kryll, plays the role of Joey's mother and delivers easily the best performance of the film. Unfortunately, her character is really a small part and doesn't have enough screen time to allow her to display her talent. Josua Morrell, who leads the cast as Joey, could be the case of inspired casting, as the boy looks pretty natural in front of the camera. His delivery is a tad stiff, but actually manages to carry the film. The rest of the cast is where the problem gets evident, as most look pretty artificial in their delivery, even those in smaller roles.

An unexperienced young cast paired with an unexperienced young director is many times a deadly combination for any film, and "Joey" has this as one of its biggest flaws. The actors' delivery is pretty poor and Emmerich's uninspired direction (when there aren't special effects to support the action) results in a pretty bland storytelling. In fact, the film gets dull many times when the special effects are gone, as Emmerich fails to keep a good balance between the action scenes and the more expository, dialog-based ones. The screenplay is not without its problems, as there are times where serious plot holes show up, and it becomes clear that the three scriptwriters were unable to make a cohesive work that tied up every of their ideas (interesting plot points are introduced and later abandoned). Nevertheless, despite all this flaws, director Roland Emmerich manages to pull off an entertaining adventure out of this messy ingredients and, while definitely troubled, has some good elements for a children's horror movie.

Perhaps the best use "Joey" (or "Making Contact") can have is as an introduction to the horror genre for young children, as with its touch of fantasy and adventure, it could be attractive despite its darker imagery. Unfortunately, more experienced horror fans won't enjoy it as much as kids, and won't find things to like in Emmerich's first entry in the horror genre. "Joey", like Emmerich's other early films, certainly shows the young talent of a master of visual effects that, while probably not a very accomplished artist, still manages to make entertaining and attractive films that deliver good doses of entertainment. While lacking in many aspects, "Joey", or "Making Contact", is definitely a good tale of horror to enjoy with the kids.

6/10
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Demonoid: Messenger of Death (1981)

By the early 60s, the Mexican film industry was beginning its slow but constant decline after the Golden Age ended. After a brief resurgence in the early 70s, the country's big financial problems and the stronger competition from foreign industries left the Mexican industry in its darkest hour during the late 70s and early 80s. It is during this difficult period when director Alfredo Zacarías crafted two ambitious horror films starring American actors: 1978's "The Bees" and this film, 1981's "Demonoid: Messenger of Death". Not exactly a newbie in the Mexican film industry, Zacarías began his career as a writer under the guidance of his father, director Miguel Zacarías, and later with legendary director Gilberto Martínez Solares. Soon Alfredo Zacarías started making films on his own and found success directing the light comedies of Gaspar Henaine "Capulina", however, Zacarías had big plans in mind and attempted to enter the American market with horror films. In the case of "Demonoid: Messenger of Death", the outcome wasn't really what was expected.

Also known by its Spanish title as "Macabra, la Mano del Diablo", "Demonoid: the Messenger of Death" stars Samantha Eggar as Jennifer Baines, the young wife of wealthy American entrepreneur Mark Baines (Roy Jenson), who is visiting the mining city of Guanajuato in Mexico as her husband owns an important mine that promises to be very rich. At the time when Jennifer arrives to Guanajuato, Mark is facing the refusal of his workers to go deeper into the mine, as they believe the place is haunted. Thinking it's all mere superstition, Mark and Jennifer decide to enter the mine on their own, and discover that the workers had dug out an ancient altar to the Devil, with the Devil's Hand as a relic. Mark doesn't really take the altar seriously, and grabs the Devil's Hand as a trophy for the triumph of man conquering superstition. However, soon he'll discover that the Devil's hand has a mind of its own and transforms it's owner into a psycho killer. Jennifer will have to escape from the Hand, that keeps possessing people in its attempt to kill her.

While the screenplay is written by Amos Powell (of Roger Corman's "Tower of London" fame) and David Lee Fein (who later would write "Cheerleader Camp"), the film is the brainchild of director Alfredo Zacarías himself, being that he wrote the source story the script was based on. The concept of a transplanted that controls itself is not new (any version of Maurice Renard's novel "Les Mains d'Orlac", like "Mad Love", proves it), but Zacarías adds interesting ideas to the mix, like the demonic possession angle and the transference of the demon from person to person so, unlike his previous work in "The Bees", it could be said that Zacarías succeeds in giving his story some originality. Sadly, the premise gets wasted as the plot lacks the coherency and the sense to put all the elements together and the result is a bizarre story that never really takes off. Ultimately, the plot degenerates into a series of vignettes where the hand goes from host to host, that only have the purpose of being excuses for having many scenes of severed hands.

Alfredo Zacarías' direction is tacky, sloppy, technically effective yet horribly slow and tedious, owner of an unpolished narrative style that feels outdated and unimaginative, as if the movie had been done for television and was 10 years older than its true age. To Zacarías' credit, he makes a couple of really interesting set-pieces for some of the film's goriest moments; however, the unfortunate work of cinematography by Alex Phillips Jr. (far from his best work), together with the notorious low-budget and the contrived and ultimately incoherent plot, end up diminishing the power those scenes could have. While Zacarías had proved to be good at handling with comedy, in "Demonoid: Messenger of Death" there seems to be a great difficulty in handling the dramatic tension and the suspense of the film. The few action sequences of the film are actually well done given the film's low budget, although again, with a somewhat archaic style in the execution. Nevertheless, Zacarías greatest problem arises from his inability to make the awful script work.

"Demonoid: Messenger of Death" has two pretty good actors in its cast, and both deliver some of the worst performances in their careers. To be fair, Samantha Eggar seems like she did her best with what she had to work and manages to carry the film despite the movie's more than obvious problems. The development of her character is almost non-existent, but Eggar at least makes her Jennifer a likable character. Still, her work is far from her delivery in Cronenberg's "The Brood" (1979). The experienced Stuart Whitman is sadly a lot less successful, playing the tortured Priest that tries to help Jennifer against the Devil's Hand. Certainly, his character is a bit more developed, though Whitman's acting is uneven, to the point of changing between different accents though the film without any apparent reason. The rest of the cast ranges from mediocre to downright awful, although it's hard to tell if it's completely the actors' fault given the poor way in which the script is developed.

It would be tempting to put the blame for the many flaws in "Demonoid: Messenger of Death" on the low budget the filmmakers had, or in the cheap looking special effects, or in the inability of the director to translate the story to screen competently; however, the real problem in "Demonoid: Messenger of Death" is the poor way the script was built. Everything else is just an extension of that. Contrived, rushed, and ultimately absurd, the story not only fails at fulfilling the potential of its premise: it never really goes somewhere. While the ideas thrown into the mix definitely look good on paper, the film's poorly developed screenplay contains bizarre scenes that are unintentionally funny at best, and ridiculous at worst. As written above, Alfredo Zacarías' work is good on the technical side (and it's remarkable what he achieved with low production values), but pretty poor in a purely narrative way. Zacarías has done better films when he has a good script to work with, but in "Demonoid: Messenger of Death", the lack of coherency of the plot simply make the film boring and tedious.

"Demonoid: Messenger of Death" is the sad case of an interesting and ambitious idea wasted by an awful story and subpar execution. While released in 1981 (on the wake of the release of Oliver Stone's similarly-themed "The Hand"), Zacarías' film was done a couple of years before, which may explain its relatively outdated visual style. Despite its many flaws, "Demonoid, Messenger of Death" is not without its good things (technically, it's not that bad of a film), though they are certainly overshadowed by its problematic screenplay. It certainly can be entertaining at times (and some absurdities are unintentionally comic), but in the end, "Demonoid: Messenger of Death" results being another good idea that was just badly developed and poorly executed.

4/10
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Veneno para las hadas (1984)

One of the most prominent filmmakers in Mexican horror cinema is without a doubt Carlos Enrique Taboada, who thanks to four famous Gothic horror films cemented a reputation as a master of horror. Taboada's body of work extended to other genres, though most of them were less fortunate than his horror output (a notable exception being "La Guerra Santa"). "Veneno para las hadas", released in 1984, is not only the last film in Taboada's Gothic horror cycle, it was also the last film of his career. Unfortunately, it's the less known as well, mainly because it's more than a bit different to his other horror films, being an offbeat story about witchcraft told from the point of view of a child. After a five year hiatus after 1979's "La Guerra Santa", director Carlos Enrique Taboada returned to horror genre with "Veneno para las hadas" (known in English as "Poison for the faeries" and occasionally with the less inspiring title of "The Evil Faeries"), a strong drama with horror elements that closes the career of one of the most important figures in Mexican horror cinema.

Set in the late 50s, "Veneno para las Hadas" is the story of the strange friendship between two little girls. Flavia (Elsa María Gutiérrez) is the daughter of a very wealthy family who have just moved to the city, and in her first day of school becomes good friends with Verónica (Ana Patricia Rojo), a very smart and manipulative girl who is fascinated with witchcraft and claims to be a witch herself. An orphan living with her old grandmother, Verónica spends most of her time under the care of her nanny (Carmen Stein), who tells her stories about witches and magic. These stories find a fertile ground in Verónica's enormous imagination, and she begins to be deeply interested in becoming the most evil witch ever. Flavia, being more innocent and gullible, begins to believe Verónica's claims, specially as strange events start to happen around them. What at first began as an innocent friendship soon becomes a nightmare as Flavia is tortured psychologically by the possessive Verónica and her threats of using her witchcraft against her.

Written by Carlos Enrique Taboada himself (as usual), the film moves far away from the blatantly supernatural horror of his more famous films ("Hasta el Viento Tiene Miedo", "El Libro De Piedra" and "Más Negro Que la Noche") and focuses on a subtler and slightly more realistic kind of horror. In this aspect, it could be closer to his other offbeat horror film, "Vagabundo en la Lluvia", but the tone is completely different, as fantasy plays a big role in the story. In a sense, "Veneno para las hadas" brings back the theme of corruption of childhood found in "El Libro de Piedra" and gives it another turn of the screw. Now the darkness does not come from the ghost of a boy, but from a very alive girl. And then, Verónica is not entirely developed as a villainous evil child, but as a complex portrait of a troubled girl. The story unfolds at a very slow pace (at times too slow for its own sake), but it carefully develops the bond between the two girls and the morbid details of their bizarre relationship.

The most notorious feature in "Veneno para las hadas" is certainly the fact that director Carlos Enrique Taboada shots his film entirely from the children's point of view, even to the point of having the adult actors being shot from a child's perspective (Their faces rarely appear at all). This style, while certainly a bit gimmicky, allows a greater emphasis on the two main characters, and actually reflects the reality of their lives in relation with the adult world. While different, both girls share the loneliness of being outsiders in their families: Verónica's grandmother is too old to take care of her, while Flavia's parents are cold and even emotionally distant. The cinematography, by Lupe García, is kind of average but Taboada manages to put it to a very good use in creating haunting Gothic images that once again show a strong influence from Italian filmmakers. In this twisted ode to childhood, Taboada succeeds in crafting a fairy tale for adults that's all the more disturbing in its bleak realism.

Given that the film focuses on only two characters their performances are vital for the success of the film, and while certainly not entirely amazing, the overall result is quite positive. As the manipulative Verónica, Ana Patricia Rojo is an absolute joy to watch, as with great talent she can be both adorable and hateful at the same time. Despite her young age, her performance is remarkable in the complex role of the little girl who claims to be a witch, and it's easily the film's greatest asset. Unfortunately, Elsa María Gutiérrez as Flavia is a lot less fortunate, seeming at times a bit wooden and unprepared. Nevertheless, there are also moments of quite believable realism when her innocence is truthfully transmitted to the screen. As written above, the adult roles are for the most part minor and many times reduced to voice acting. While the work is effective for the most part, sometimes the dubbing is not entirely good, sounding a bit artificial and staged.

Taboada's final Gothic horror film is certainly a quite different kind of beast than his other Gothic set pieces, which could feel initially like a disappointment. It remains decidedly Gothic in atmosphere, yet follows a different kind of horror, subtler than in his previous films, yet somehow more disturbing. A horror that comes not from beyond the grave, but from the logical and inevitable consequences of people's actions (again, in a similar vein as "Vagabundo en la Lluvia"). Unfortunately, "Veneno para las hadas" is marred by an average work of cinematography and a terribly slow pace, which prevent the film from truly being flawless. Lupe García, a veteran camera operator, creates pretty bland images, that are only saved by Taboada's slick sense of visual narrative. However, the slow pace the movie has is probably what hurts the film the most, as at times it makes it drag a bit too much for its good, and gives the film a tone closer to television melodrama than to horror cinema.

Despite its flaws, "Veneno para las hadas" remains as one of director Carlos Enrique Taboada most original and captivating films, offering a profoundly bleak fairy tale for adults. While nowhere near as famous as "Hasta el Viento Tiene Miedo", and definitely not as polished as his Gothic masterpiece "El Libro De Piedra", this little gem is still a pretty good, albeit different, entry in the Gothic horror genre. While it was well received by audiences and critics, Taboada never made again a film after "Veneno para las hadas", and focused his career on television. A thematic conjunction of Taboada's usual themes and obsessions, "Veneno para las hadas" is truly a fitting closure to a great director's career.

8/10
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E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldilà (1981)

After making himself a career directing comedies, spaghetti westerns and giallos, Italian director Lucio Fulci finally achieved worldwide recognition in 1979 with "Zombi 2", his very own take on the then popular zombie subgenre (the "2" of the title being the result of it being marketed as a sequel to Romero's 1978 horror classic "Dawn of the Dead"). Fulci would return to the horror genre the following year with the violent "Paura Nella Città Dei Morti Viventi" ("City of the Living Dead"), where he would use the zombie subgenre to explore metaphysical concepts such as Hell and the after life in a vein closer to surrealism in film. What Fulci started in "City of the Living Dead" would be further expanded in his follow-up, "L'aldilà" ("The Beyond"), the second film in the so-called "Gates of Hell" thematic trilogy ("Quella villa accanto al cimitero" or "House by the Cemetery" would be the third one). Amongs Fulci's varied filmography, "L'aldilà" has achieved cult status and is often considered to be his masterpiece. And not without a reason.

The story begins in Louisiana, 1927, where an enraged mob gathers outside the Seven Doors Hotel decided to lynch an artist named Schewick (Antoine Saint-John), as he is being accused of practicing witchcraft. Schewick is brutally crucified and as a result, one of the Seven Doors of Hell is opened. The doors connect the world of the dead with the world of the living so, the townspeople decide to seal the basement in the hope of keeping the evil forces trapped inside. 54 years after Schewick's death, a young woman named Liza (Catriona MacColl) arrives from New York after inheriting the Seven Doors hotel. Liza has plans to reopen the hotel for business, but her renovation works reactivate the portal to Hell and soon strange accidents begin to take place. Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck) arrives to the scene to help an injured worker and becomes friends with Liza. Both of them will have to face the evil force that has crossed the portal, and their only help comes from a strange blind woman (Sarah Keller) who seems to know a lot about what's going on.

Based on a story by famed Italian writer Dardano Sacchetti (Fulci's regular collaborator, and a man who wrote scripts for many of the important Italian horror filmmakers during the 70s and 80s) and adapted to the screen by Giorgio Mariuzzo, Lucio Fulci and Sacchetti himself, "L'aldilà" is a nightmarish story of supernatural horror that, while initially looking like a typical horror film, it soon moves further into the oneiric realm as the story unfolds. Highly symbolic and surreal, the storyline is diffuse, almost non-linear, more interested in the effect of its visual imagery than on having a traditional narrative. The overall effect is akin to experiencing a nightmare, where logic is less important than the atmosphere and symbolism transmitted through its images. The zombie film is used just as basis for what is a dark meditation on the afterworld. It's certainly a highly ambitious and risky idea, but Fulci and Sacchetti craft a powerful story that, while probably incoherent at first sight, truly transmits the feeling of being a nightmare put on film.

While in "L'aldilà" director Lucio Fulci moves to more metaphysical concepts thematically, stylistically he remains faithful to the same carefully detailed gore he had showed before. However, in "L'aldilà" he takes his penchant for violent gore to a higher artistic level, resulting in creative set pieces that are not only disturbing and horrifying, but also owners of a strange ethereal beauty. Despite the obvious low-budget the film had, Germano Natali's special effects are for the most part pretty effective (though a scene involving spiders is particularly poor). "L'aldilà" is also benefited by a very good work of cinematography by Sergio Salvati (another of Fulci's regular collaborators), who truly captures an ominous atmosphere of dread and enhances the sensation of being watching a nightmare come true. Fulci's narrative is, like the screenplay, more symbolic than linear, and so it may initially seem disjointed. Nevertheless, there is a strong artistic vision that gives coherence to the story as an atmospheric tale of horror.

Certainly, one of the weakest elements in "L'aldilà" is the acting, which is not really the best that can found in Italian horror. To make things worse, the work of dubbing (common in Italian films of the period) done in the film is terrible, and makes the actors sound even worse than they probably did originally. Nevertheless, it's worth to point out that British actress Catriona MacColl delivers a fairly good performance as Liza, the main character, and really keeps the film on float despite the mess the dubbing is (MacColl appears in the three "Gates of Hell" film). Italian actress Ciniza Monreale also does a good job, playing the mysterious blind woman Emily. While the dubbing does damage their performances, it's safe to say that both are really good in their characters, and deliver the best performances of the move. Sadly, the same can't be said of actor David Warbeck, who comes up as bland and uneven. In fact, Al Cliver (a familiar name in Italian horror) makes a better and more charismatic performance despite having a small role.

"L'aldilà" received a quite cold reception when it was initially released in the U.S. in 1983 (two years after its European premiere), but this can be adjudicated to the fact that it arrived with an awful dubbing, a different musical score and heavily censored (in a version titled "Seven Doors of Death"), all in all resulting in a much different movie than what Fulci intended. While certainly "L'aldilà" is not exactly without its flaws, it's a bold supernatural horror movie that attempts to go beyond the typical clichés of its genre and succeeds in creating a highly atmospheric experience. Perhaps its most difficult trait is the deliberately elliptical narrative, which may appear as loose at best and illogical at worst. However, the diverse holes in the narrative symbolize the bending of logic and reality as the supernatural forces begin to affect the normal world. As written above, "L'aldilà" is built following the logic of a nightmare: the narrative patterned in symbols instead of in a chained sequence of events.

While probably a difficult film given its loose structure and ambitious storyline, "L'aldilà" is a quite rewarding horror film thanks to its ominous atmosphere and it's cleverly conceived graphic gory sequences. All the elements that are part of Fulci's style appear at its best in the movie, and it wouldn't be exaggerated to call "L'aldilà" as the epitome of his highly idiosyncratic vision of horror. Certainly the strange and atypical way the plot is structured may turn off some viewers, but once one gets captured by its nightmarish surreal beauty, "L'aldilà" is a powerful oneiric experience. "L'aldilà", or "The Beyond", is a terrific masterpiece of horror that fans of the genre should not miss. It's really a beautiful, haunting and influential example of metaphysical horror.

9/10
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