Review: Casting JonBenet (2017)

Similar in structure and purpose to Rodney Ascher’s Room 237, Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet presents the audience a pile of speculation regarding a mystery (in this case the murder of the titular child-pageant queen) to explore the nature of curiosity and psychological projection. Ascher’s approach abstracted his participants into conceptual objects, making them somewhat beyond judgement. Green, on the other hand, chooses to show her interview subjects, often speaking directly to the camera, and that lack of distance makes the condescension inherent in both projects unfortunately visible. It’s tough to watch Casting JonBenet and not feel like Green is begging us to laugh at these actors and their wild theories regarding the murder. In the early going, she edits the film for maximum comic impact and irony, which gives the eery impression that Green is exploiting her well-intentioned participants, rather than the murder itself, for our entertainment.

Fortunately, Green’s film gradually finds empathy for these people, ditching the sense of mockery for one of community. As the theories and personal projections pile up, the emotion takes centre stage. Perhaps this is part of Green’s point; that the human need for understanding is greater than any one foolish attempt. The last 10 minutes almost make up for the missteps, a startlingly powerful culmination of the film’s process, heartbreaking and intellectually satisfying in equal measure. Nevertheless, it’s a bumpy road to get to that rather humanistic finale, and one I don’t feel entirely comfortable condoning.

Review: The Love Butcher (1975)

“No one loves a cripple!”

Erik Stern holds this together in the dual role of Caleb and Lester, the split personalities of a creepy gardener; the former a relatively harmless simpleton with a hunchback, the latter a suave misogynistic killer with a sweet toupee. Stern makes both personalities completely distinct without losing the connection between the two, and he manages to make conversations with himself resolutely compelling. He’s relentlessly threatening, but also the major source of levity in this greasy bastard.

The film surrounding his bravura performance is a mess of police procedural and stomach churning misogynistic mayhem. Unlike Donald Jones later Murderlust, The Love Butcher is gory and over the top, the hateful actions and words presented much harder to swallow because they are presented with such glee. In the world of The Love Butcher, hate is the closest thing any of these men have to affection, and every single one of them justifies their actions by a past sin of a woman. It’s really upsetting stuff, but, for a while, it’s also a really fun slasher, full of maniacal speeches and piles of bodies. The tone gradually shifts from semi-comedic to maliciously disturbing, and that shift isn’t completely successful.

But when you’ve got such delectably insane monologuing like “Your feminine pulchritude is detestable, and you were trying to drain the energy from me!”, it’s hard not to have a little uncomfortable fun.

Review: Awakening of the Beast (1970)

I realised pretty early on that this wasn’t a Coffin Joe film of the nature I presumed, and that watching it prior to my viewings of the others was probably a bad idea. But I only had the DVD for another day, so I did some quick research and powered through. This may have been a mistake.

What I assumed would be a B-grade horror film actually turned out to be a masturbatory meta-commentary on the nature of transgression and also the power of Jose Mojica Marins’ artistry? Awakening of the Beast is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some strange shit.

The first 2/3 of the film present themselves as a bizarre TV program about an experiment involving four individuals who are injected with LSD and then enact a series of sexual perversions, with the film occasionally cutting to a board of people (including the scientist in charge of the experiments) commenting on the validity of the findings. Marins in there as well, and everyone, including himself, are confused as to why he’s present.

This section is mildly compelling and hypnotic, a gently surreal dive into sexual mores and desire, Bunuelian but more intent on shocking the audience. There’s no narrative as such, but there is a collective force blooming, even if its point seems nebulous. Gradually, however, we cut more and more to the panel, where Marins begins defending himself, and his Coffin Joe character, as an artistic statement, using mockumentary footage of an obscenity trial to justify his art. A strange thorough-line regarding Marins (and by extension, Coffin Joe’s) place in the public consciousness becomes visible.

That thread culminates in the final sections of the film, a breath-taking, full colour nightmare sequence that occurs when the test subjects are shown a Coffin Joe film. There’s no continuity or arcs here, just 30 minutes of hellish, hallucinogenic imagery. It’s wild and disturbing stuff, and, without spoiling anything, reveals the film as essentially a big jerking off by Marins, who claims to be exploring the necessity of transgression in a politically closed minded country, but is really just saying that he’s pretty fucking cool.

Having seen the first true Coffin Joe film by the time of this writing, I can agree that Marins is a talented, probably pretty cool motherfucker, but Awakening of the Beast is still ridiculously self-indulgent.

Review: Wild Side (1995)

“I take offence to that, the rape of my protégé. You know what you get for rape? 10 years in a cell with a gorilla! A psycho gorilla!”

The film that killed Donald Cammell.

A seedy neo-noir with the usual things to say about the relationship between sex and power, Wild Side is elevated by director Donald Cammell’s sensuously offbeat vision and the most Christopher Walken performance I’ve ever seen Walken do. He wears a jet-black wig in this movie and screams about having to go to meetings. He’s simultaneously distancing and entrancing.

Anne Heche stars as a banking exec who moonlights as a high-end escort. She gets tangled up in a sting operation set up by an undercover rapist cop (a hyper-macho Steven Bauer) to take down Walken’s corrupt financier. Unfortinately, Heche can’t help but fall in love with Walken’s girlfriend, played with effortless magnetism (but little actual character) by Joan Chen. Things quickly spiral out of control, as they are wont to do.

This is essentially soft-core Hitchcock, a rote erotic noir narrative that’s enlivened by the intensely strange script. Every scene goes on a little too long, every exchange a purple whatsit of psychosexual tangents, every line just a little off. Cammell shoots everything with his customary flat bloom lighting that pushes everything into a dream-like realm that is always suggesting someone is about to have photo-ready sex, even when no one is fucking. Cammell compounds the discomfort by vacillating between rapid fire cuts and languid long takes, constantly pushing the viewer off balance and almost, almost making them forget that what they’re watching is trite BS.

Tragically, this would be Cammell’s last film. Originally made for an exploitation production company with the promise of classing the place up, Wild Side was eventually taken away from Cammell and edited against his wishes. He killed himself. A couple of years later, friends and collaborators put together Cammell’s original vision.

I watched that cut.

Review: Murderlust (1985)

The quotidian misogynist.

Thoroughly pleased by its ability to create consistent discomfort, Murderlust finds great power in following its fucked-up protagonist in extreme, banal detail.

Our main man is a Sunday school teacher and security guard who moonlights as an explicitly misogynistic serial killer. We are not privy to the origin of his hatred, all we are given is the procedure to every aspect of his life. We follow our moustachioed asshole as he attempts to pay rent, as he rises up in the church, as he tries to go on dates, as he just lounges around his apartment. All the while, he contemplates killing the women he finds so dire. Murderlust is not gory, it’s not particularly exciting, but it is compellingly tedious. By bathing us in the whole existence of this self-loathing killer, director Donald M. Jones is able to acclimate us to his worldview, the true boredom that permeates every aspect of his life; when the murders finally do occur, they become cathartic, for him and the audience – finally something of interest.

And that’s the rub, the true power of this film. Jones forces us to empathise with this psycho, if only on a very primal level, partially created by our expectations of horror movies. Truly sickening shit that made me feel dirty.

Well worth a watch.

Review: Pigs (1972)

“It seems as though dead people don’t have any civil rights at all!”

Surprisingly thoughtful (if obviously problematic and gross) exploration of community and family dynamics, rather than the admittedly awesome man-eating pig movie I assumed I was getting into based on its poster.

Opens with our protagonist, Lynn (played by Toni Lawrence) being molested by her father before killing the old bastard. After escaping a mental hospital, she ends up living with an aged diner owner (Director/Writer Marc Lawrence) who – gasp – feeds the dead to his pigs. Instead of the terror coming from that dynamic, however, the two soon form a symbiotic bond, as her trauma-induced murders are protected by the old man’s body disposal techniques.

In its own strange way, Pigs (or Daddy’s Deadly Darling, the original and more accurate title) is trying to understand father-daughter relationships. What is expected from each side, and how the world views the often disturbing implication of close ones. Lawrence is aided immeasurably by the fact that he is playing opposite his actual daughter, and they truly do share a familial intimacy that helps us buy into their bond.

Unfortunately (well, for society, this makes it interesting for me), Lawrence’s thematic ideals are undercut by Lynn’s characterisation as a castrating lunatic who is beyond help, creating a gender dynamic that always shifts the blame slightly towards her. Also, while Lawrence often shoots this under the cover of expressionistic darkness, much of the light shots and scenes are goofy as hell, seemingly due (at least in part) to an outmatched budget.

Still, that goofiness has its charms – what other movie about sexual abuse and man eating pigs has its own theme song?

Review: Kinski Paganini (1989)

Klaus Kinski was a crazy person. Sure, his Wikipedia page opens by stating that he was German actor known for his work with acclaimed director Werner Herzog, but, mostly, he was a maniac. Find any video of him on Youtube, and you will find this old bastard screaming his head off, at anyone, for anything. He believed in his prowess as an actor so greatly it entailed a degree of danger; any challenge to his skill or himself was met with anything from a fistfight to a gunshot. He was a bad man.

He was also a genius.

Kinski’s directorial debut (and last film before his death) is an indulgent, disgusting, and maddening autobiography under the guise of a biography. It is also, despite its many frustrations, masterful – cinema at its most unhinged and visual. Against the odds, it becomes a poignant statement on the life of its main actor, who may have been an evil lunatic, but who was also one of the greats.

Kinski Paganini is a mess. Kinski initially offered Herzog his script, but Herzog declined, calling it “un-filmable.” So Kinski decided to direct it himself. When his producers saw the final cut, they panicked and cut it to shreds. Kinski’s director’s cut was eventually released to the public on this DVD, but it looks terrible. The theatrical version – though an impossible and failed attempt to bring sanity to Kinski’s madness – looks gorgeous. Kinski’s version, however, was never restored, making much of the naturally lit film near-unwatchable. Despite its hellish transfer, tracking down this versione originale is worth it, if only to understand the full majesty of Kinski’s ambition.

And Kinski is nothing if not ambitious here. Ostensibly a biography of famed violinist Niccolo Paganini – a notoriously lecherous violinist who was so musically talented that he was accused of possession – Kinski Paganini instead acts as a prismatic dive into the writer/director/star’s broken mind. The film consists primarily of montages, intercutting Paganini playing his instrument with him having occasionally un-simulated sex with scores of women. In voiceover, “Paganini” acknowledges his ugliness before confessing that his virtuosic playing still sends women into orgiastic desire for him. Eventually, our “hero” begins to die, and his son becomes his only companion; but those things don’t occur until very late in the film, essentially acting as a sad epilogue. Most of the film plays out thusly: Paganini plays, women masturbate; Paganini plays, women fuck Paganini; Paganini walks ominously through a town square, his son cries; Paganini plays, women beg for his member; Paganini grows sick, he plays to grow well again; and so on.

There is only the hint of a story here, barely any arcs. Kinski is attempting to mirror the swirling memories of a dying man, and that non-narrative approach produces a fractured, impressionistic work that never lets up. Despite its pretentions, it finds a way to sneak staggering emotion into its heart. The climactic sequence, in particular, found me tearing up despite my rational annoyance at it. Kinski forced me to feel sadness for him (and his character), almost against my wishes.

Which leads me to a perhaps unsettling thought, which I will preface by saying that I do not condone any of Kinski’s behaviour, on or off film sets. Now, having said that …

Maybe Kinski was onto something.

Klaus Kinski clearly believed himself to be an artistic messiah. He believed himself worthy of all the pain he took and inflicted. In his mind, he was a great, and his belief in himself lead to persecution and glory in equal measure. It’s easy to see how Kinski saw himself in Paganini, and it’s surprising how much power he finds in the comparison.

That previous paragraph was hard to write. It makes me a little sick to give into the ego of a man who thinks it necessary to show himself engage in un-simulated sex in a film about his greatness – and that’s to say nothing of his personal life, and the alleged sexual abuse he engaged in with his children.

Again, I do not think that Klaus Kinski was a good man. I do not want to celebrate this film.

And yet, my rational protestations of praising Kinski’s cinematic id were unable to fight the waves of poignancy that arose from watching it. I wanted to dislike this, I wanted to hate it – but instead I found it strangely beautiful.

It’s tough be apolitical when consuming art. When everything is rife with systemic abuse, it’s hard to see Casey Affleck’s Oscar win as indicative of anything but a sexist system. It’s hard to believe that Woody Allen can say what he said at Cannes a couple years ago about his wife and still get actors to work with him. It’s hard to accept that Roman Polanski is still making films despite the fact that he is literally a runaway statutory rapist.

It’s a struggle, which itself seems strange. Morally, shouldn’t these men be put away, left to die away from the arts? Why, beyond the aforementioned systemic rot, is the separation between art and artist even a conversation?

I ask these questions, and I don’t have anything better to say than this: art is powerful. Art can transcend its origins and work magic on an audience, for better or worse. Sometimes horror creates beauty, and sometimes that beauty can be stronger than the horror ever was. In a perfect world, of course, we wouldn’t allow any of the awful stuff to happen in the first place. But it’s not a perfect world, it’s a broken one, and, if we fail to stop the horror, it makes sense to embrace any wonder that comes out of it.

Kinski Paganini is an ethically dubious proposition to endorse, but it understands the relationship between art and life in a way that I think is important to spread. I think promoting that message is a damn fine way to find something good in Kinski’s legacy, rather than just wallowing in the misery of the rest of him.

Remember hell, but look to heaven.

Review: Goodbye, Uncle Tom (1971)

Arguably more noble in its intentions than Jacopetti and Prosperi’s previous exercise in questionable ethics, Africa Addio, but so unbelievably, bafflingly misguided that, at the time of its release, both sane people and David Duke hated it. Somehow, Goodbye, Uncle Tom can’t even commit to being a vile, racist piece of trash, instead existing as a strangely broken example of Satan wanting to be God and failing.

The film opens with a helicopter descending upon a plantation filled with slaves, and we are quickly introduced to the premise: two documentarians travel back in time to document the horrors of slavery. This requires the character of the filmmakers to sit back and watch said horrors without doing anything, which is already a questionable idea. From this auspicious start, we become witness to an enormous production that subjects hundreds of actors of colour to the degradation and torture that was put upon the slaves of the time. Goodbye, Uncle Tom sits in the horror, relishes it, uses it as the very foundation of its being. If one believes that Jacopetti and Prosperi’s intentions were pure, one could argue that these sections are intended to break the viewer, make them understand the despicable terrors of slavery. Whatever they meant to say, it’s all for nought because not a single character of colour is given any characterisation beyond an inarticulate, de-individuated mass. Every white character, regardless of how negatively they are portrayed, are shown as articulate persons with actual personality. On top of everything, every goddamn thing, the brief stabs at narrative exploitation the filmmakers inject into the picture primarily involve sexual assault, such as the scene wherein one of the documentarians takes advantage of a virginal 13 year old slave who offers herself to him – FUCK.

JESUS.

And yet.

And yet,

There is undeniable artistic craft pumping through the veins of this racist trash. As I wrote in my review of Africa Addio, Jacopetti and Prosperi have an innate understanding of how to match image and sound to make a sort of magic, utilising Riz Ortolani’s gorgeous (if at most times disturbingly upbeat) score to mold this destitution into something resembling art. If these men were saints instead of monsters, they could have made a film to change the world.

But they’re monsters.

What this mess adds up to is a film that condemns the brutalisation and exploitation of a people while doing the very same thing. It is impossibly fascinating as a historical object, endlessly rewarding a thing to explore; but it’s also sickening, disturbing, and morally reprehensible.

I don’t know.

Review: Africa, Goodbye (1966)

Horrifically racist at worst, extremely patronising at its low best, Africa Addio is nonetheless continuously fascinating, a feat made possible by the fact that the directors, monsters though they may be, know how cinema works.

Africa Addio is set around the de-colonisation of Africa, and its thesis is essentially that the colonists left Africa too soon, and without the guidance of them, Africa has descended into chaos. What that simplifies to is that Africans are savages, and always have been. It’s disgusting, sometimes cartoonishly so (there’s a scene the narrator states that the Europeans taught the native population to desire homes, which is not even the craziest statement made through it all), but it’s disgusting with a clearly knowing eye. Getting outraged is all part of the filmmakers’ plan, getting you to gasp and choke in the theatre is what puts coin in their pockets. Hell, I sought this out for my expected outrage, which means, even all these years later, they still won.

In their ostensible attempts to show the continent as lost without colonists, the filmmakers shoot an incredible amount of amazing but terrible footage – minutes upon minutes of animal torture and poaching, civil wars and violent outbursts – shot with an eye for movement and maximum power. The cameramen get close to action, sometimes distressingly so, trying to get the best angle on their exploitative hell. There is a scene involving a pile of amputated hands, the camera lingering and cutting back to the image again and again, that made me sick. I cannot quite articulate how much pain it brought me to view sections of this film.

And yet, and yet, the directors are men of the cinema. They know how to assemble image and sound to create a rush, even if you feel bad for having that rush. The score is lush and prosperous, and the screen moves with rhythm and pace that often overcomes the episodic structure. It often comes close to approximating beauty in its own ugly way.

Appreciating a film like Africa Addio takes a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance. I acknowledge that it is morally reprehensible, and yet I find it utterly fascinating.

My approval comes bundled with a million caveats.

Review: Blonde Death (1984)

“What’s wrong with a dad letting his daughter wear her momma’s big heels and walk all over daddy’s face?”

I went into this expecting an entertaining ineptitude, and nothing more. I was happily surprised to find that, while such ineptitude exists, it is clearly the result of a refusal to compromise a vision, not a lack intelligence or craft.

Every line in this film is gold and utterly quotable. It’s a hilarious, angry, screaming shit on the face of suburbia, consumerism, organised religion, sexuality – anything and everything under the sun. Writer/director James Dillinger was once called the “angriest gay man in Brooklyn” and he lives up to that title. He wields his wit like a crowbar, and every blunt joke and rant hits in a powerful, if obviously blunt fashion. This is a film where (SMALL SPOILER) the characters sneak into Disneyland (and actually film there) and poison the entire park with cyanide Tang. Take that, Escape from Tomorrow. James Dillinger, bless his bastard soul, rips my throat out and makes me cackle with what’s left.

To end this review, a bunch of wonderful quotes:

“Nice girls FUCK.”

“I’m so sexed up right now, I could pump it to a weasel in a mini-skirt.”

“When that bible study retreat collapsed, I just snapped.”

“We may even die!” “As long as you’re inside me when it happens.”

“Redneck pork belly duster driving can’t even tell a cli-TOR-is from a broken fan belt!”

“We went for a windswept drive through the vast mediocre swaths of Orange County.”

“We’re going to be one big happy menage-a-twat.”

“I haven’t cried since I saw ET, but this is too much.”

And, finally,

“Sure beats watching MTV.”