The Horror List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[knives]

And his first feature Loving Memory which is available on a lovely Bluray from BFI.

[Mr Sausage]

52 minutes isn't really feature-length.

[knives]

I consider it to be and to give a third party perspective so does IMDB.

[domino harvey]

The Academy's standard is anything over 40 minutes. Something to keep in mind for the upcoming First Features Mini List

[Mr Sausage]

I stand corrected.

[Rayon Vert]

Wow, what a lovely thing that Aranda film sounds like.

[therewillbeblus]

Too bad it’s been spoiled

In all seriousness, I laughed out loud at that synopsis but I have to admit I have no idea if the husband is supposed to be justified or not in the world of the film, which is disturbing enough for it to make a list on a meta-level

[Rayon Vert]

Tenebrae: Argento revisits are hot and cold but this one clicks in all the ways it intends, encompassing the feel of a dime-store mystery novel while remaining self-referential to deliver on structural gags. I’m not sure I like it as much as Deep Red, which occupies so much physical and narrative space it earns its position near the top of his filmography (these two draw the line between thriller and horror for me but in the end come down as qualifying slashers); but Tenebrae is probably his most engaging story all the way down to the ridiculously twisty finale. Suspiria, a break from the Scooby Doo mold, is my uncontested favorite as a vane demonstration of pure style that works on mood alone; and Opera, perhaps Argento’s most disturbing film (the eye spikes, never forget) is up there as well for taking his typical outlines and turning the disgust factor up to 11. I’m not sure if I’ll have much room on my final list for more than one, but all four are worth considering.

The Argento that will be making my list is his first. Deep Red and Tenebrae I also remember liking also, though I'll have to revisit his filmography at some point. I never went past Phenomena, so Opera is still on my to-watch list, as are the films between Crystal Plumage and Deep Red. Is anything past Opera worth watching?

[Mr Sausage]

Is anything past Opera worth watching?

Not really. It's the same stuff he was doing before, just without the spark of madness to make it work. Probably the best of them, Trauma and Sleepless, are interesting just for how they aren't any different from the films that preceded them, and yet they fail to come to life, like hollow imitations of Argento movies (and we already have Lamberto Bava for that).

[therewillbeblus]

By his first you mean as director, not just writer: Birds of the Crystal Plumage? I recently watched it again and though I had recalled liking it a lot it didn’t leave a mark this time. I’m probably the wrong person to ask on post-Opera since I think I’ve only seen the recent final chapter of the Three Mothers and found it forgettable. Don’t sleep on Opera though, if memory serves (granted it’s been years) it is Argento deciding to make a more disturbing film more akin to modern rancid horror.

[Rayon Vert]

Yes, I meant Plumage. I just think it's so solid in terms of both the suspense and the style, and such a confident film for a first-time director. I'm not the greatest slasher fan which explains why I won't have more of his films in. Suspiria was too silly for my tastes, despite its mood and style as you say.

[domino harvey]

Opera is the Argento Film for me, just 100% effortless style

[therewillbeblus]

Despite its cult status I completely understand any shrugs towards Suspiria. There’s just something about how he flaunts uncompromising confidence in every arrogant decision that melts me.

I don’t like slashers much either, and looking at my own list the only pure slasher that’ll make it is Halloween (Psycho is much more than that, and Happy Death Day is a slasher with enough of a twist to credit its inclusion to reasons that serve to counter the idea of the slasher film).

[Mr Sausage]

Since you’re on a Bava and Argento kick, might I recommend moving on to the only heir worthy of them, Michele Soavi? He only made 4 films before his early retirement, but each is a stylish treat. His masterpiece is Cemetery Man, perhaps the most original Italian horror ever made, but his slasher film, Stage Fright, does the genre about as well as one could, and his delirious mess, The Sect, is so rich with symbols and visual ideas that it’s twice as interesting as most properly assembled movies. The Church is his least interesting film while still managing to be the best of the Demons film series.

[Rayon Vert]

Halloween is also the only slasher on my list (I think) apart from the Argento, if you want to call Crystal Plumage a slasher. Domino's valiant slog through the subgenre is inspiring though. It's tempting to imitate that path one of these days (part of the fun would be revisiting awful-but-disturbingly-amusing ones like Sleepaway Camp - NSFW), although Domino didn't seem to find it much fun!

[therewillbeblus]

Sleepaway Camp is ridiculous, and I sought it out in the midst of my own 80s slasher kick maaaany years go (though I didn’t have the stomach to go as deep as domino) without knowing the ending which made it stand out quite a bit! I actually think the ending works because the idea is so absurd that it fits with the insane “rationale” behind most slasher-logic by going too far in an already established too-far realm, fitting right at home.

Sausage, I’ll check those out- and with a faux-light at the end of the tunnel with less than ten films yet to revisit before turning my back on this project and switching back to the 50s I guess the pile keeps rising! Who was I kidding, plenty of time to take more recs if anyone’s got them. knives’ spotlight already moved from the bottom to basically the top of my list so anything is possible now.

[domino harvey]

I am a cautionary tale, don’t do what I did!

[dwk]

The Argento that will be making my list is his first. Deep Red and Tenebrae I also remember liking also, though I'll have to revisit his filmography at some point. I never went past Phenomena, so Opera is still on my to-watch list, as are the films between Crystal Plumage and Deep Red. Is anything past Opera worth watching?

I'd recommend The Stendhal Syndrome. Godawful CGI aside, I think it might be his last great work. But it must be watched in the Italian dub, the English one is garbage. Two more that might be worth checking out: His half of Two Evil Eyes is not without its nutty charms and The Card Player, which has his two best leads (Stefania Rocca and Liam Cunningham) since Tenebrae, but they are stuck in a film that is okay at best (it really seems much better when compared to his films that surround it. So if you have to check out something from the 2000s , make it this.)

[Rayon Vert]

Thanks for the rec's. I've imposed a limit on what I'll see for this project, but I'll keep those in mind, as well as Mr. Sausage's, for the future. I'll probably do a Bava revisit at that point too. I didn't like most of his films all that much the first time, but I should give them another chance. I'll try to remember Soavi too.

[colinr0380]

I will definitely second Mr Sausage's Michele Soavi recommendation. Stage Fright might be the very best of all the slasher films (up there with Black Christmas and Halloween at least), unafraid to be really violent (another unforgettable Giovanni Lombardi Radice death scene to add to the pile!), extremely tense and then above it all strangely poetic out of nowhere in the stage scene (I love that sequence of having to crawl under the stage to get the key back! The comings and goings of that only key out of the studio are really well tracked throughout the film), as well as having a nice sense of black humour to it involving a (terrible looking) rehearsal for a musical about a serial killer having its midnight rehearsal crashed and everyone from on-stage to backstage re-cast in new roles by an actual psychotic killer. Maybe he just wanted to get involved because it all looked like so much fun! But in the 'feather storm' climactic scene (very much like the stunning 'in a snowglobe' ending of Cemetery Man/Dellamorte Dellamore) when the killer can rest easy having achieved his goals, he seems to have forgotten to have an audience to witness his tableaux! Well apart from the 'final girl', and perhaps in a meta-way the audience of the film itself is who it is really all being staged for!

And really it was all the fault of our heroine and her friend for going to have the friend's sprained ankle looked at by the doctors at the local mental hospital in the first place!

I'm not as huge of a fan of The Sect but it has some astonishing images, not least Herbert Lom being smothered to death by a Turin Shroud-like piece of fabric!

[Finch]

I am a Ghost is finally on tubi where I could stream it and I'd like to echo knives' and therewillbeblus' praise for the film. I got hooked immediately. What's not to love about an Emily Dickinson quote and heavy ambient sound, a rounded corner aspect ratio and inserted frame burns before the opening credits even start? I also loved the film's clever use of elliptical editing when she prepares to go out for her groceries and it cuts to an exterior shot of the front door opening but no one behind it, then it slams shut and in the next interior shot she is back in with the basket full of the things she bought. It's little touches like that that won me over. And the last time a male groan was this unsettling to me was watching Island of Lost Souls's grisly climax.

[Mr Sausage]

Regarding the I am a Ghost discussion a few pages back, especially the ending:

SpoilerShow

I want to take a different perspective, for the sake of argument. I think the readings above over-focus on Emily. Emily is only one half of a bifurcated consciousness, so while she may end in a place to move on, metaphysically and therapeutically, what about her monstrous self? At the end, he regains normal eyes and watches with grief and pain the objective reality of his own actions, ie. the blunt effect of a woman stabbing herself to death without the insane rage of his own self-projection to mask the image. But when that happens, the black that masked his eyes, that masked true sight in effect, bleeds into the room containing them. His anger is no longer bound in him, but invades their shared psychic space. The question is: is this a part of his gaining insight by having his psychic processes given an objective reality for him to observe, much as Emily observed herself carrying out her fragmented daily existence? Must he see how his rage infected everything and turned his reality into a prison? Do they both have to inhabit their shared internal blackness before being able to emerge into light?

The above is possible. But it might also be something worse. Is the void of his eyes related to the void outside the house, the only other thing to terrify Emily the way her monstrous self did? Was the monster containing the void, and now that he's weakened, has the void been unleashed to swallow their psychic space and return them to nothingness or worse? Was this successful therapy, or is horror, pain, and despair an inescapable void that, in Emily's case anyway, can be contained and avoided, but will out eventually and consume everything? Is blackness too deep to find its way out of? After all, her therapist abandons her, chanting desperately at another patient entirely that she'll never communicate with as Emily is left to confront her demon alone. We're left with a real possibility that a yawning gulf awaits us, whatever we do.

[knives]

That's a lot to chew on though mostly I'm glad the recommendation seems to be a success so far.

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My gut feeling is to criticize my own perspective. I've been taking a very medical model approach to Emily's journey so far, but you're right that the man is equally her and not a monster in the traditional way. I'd still say his fear and transformation is a good thing as it seems to signal that she is not disassociating herself from her actions any longer, but who he is for her remains something of a mystery. I don't know yet how to respond to your perspective which is a joy for me.

[therewillbeblus]

Regarding the I am a Ghost discussion a few pages back, especially the ending:

SpoilerShow

I want to take a different perspective, for the sake of argument. I think the readings above over-focus on Emily. Emily is only one half of a bifurcated consciousness, so while she may end in a place to move on, metaphysically and therapeutically, what about her monstrous self? At the end, he regains normal eyes and watches with grief and pain the objective reality of his own actions, ie. the blunt effect of a woman stabbing herself to death without the insane rage of his own self-projection to mask the image. But when that happens, the black that masked his eyes, that masked true sight in effect, bleeds into the room containing them. His anger is no longer bound in him, but invades their shared psychic space. The question is: is this a part of his gaining insight by having his psychic processes given an objective reality for him to observe, much as Emily observed herself carrying out her fragmented daily existence? Must he see how his rage infected everything and turned his reality into a prison? Do they both have to inhabit their shared internal blackness before being able to emerge into light?

The above is possible. But it might also be something worse. Is the void of his eyes related to the void outside the house, the only other thing to terrify Emily the way her monstrous self did? Was the monster containing the void, and now that he's weakened, has the void been unleashed to swallow their psychic space and return them to nothingness or worse? Was this successful therapy, or is horror, pain, and despair an inescapable void that, in Emily's case anyway, can be contained and avoided, but will out eventually and consume everything. Is blackness too deep to find its way out of? After all, her therapist abandons her, chanting desperately at another patient entirely that she'll never communicate with as Emily is left to confront her demon alone. We're left with a real possibility that a yawning gulf awaits us, whatever we do.

SpoilerShow

Great thoughts Sausage, though I think this actually aligns with my own reading, as to me this fits just as well with an IFS therapeutic take where the monster is just another part of her (just as the “Emily” we see is a part). IFS’ thesis is essentially that our parts are all trying to service us, they all have positive intentions, and that the only way to true growth is achieving harmony by giving attention to each part and validating it. So the monster is trying to protect Emily even if it’s maladaptive and its narrative is one of pain as inevitable or deserved. If we take this as an analogy for therapy, which I believe we must, the monster will absolutely still be within Emily (we do not escape our parts even if we become “unblended” with them, which is really the goal to get some sense of objectivity and freedom from those constraints), so it will reflect the pain of the world as a dark horrific space and find the evidence for such if she simply buries it. This fits with your attention to detail in the monster appearing to be vulnerable at being forsaken.

My take is that the world will continue to be a horrific place until Emily learns the skills to be able to be comfortable (or for her scared part to be comfortable) conversing with the monstrous part to hear what it needs. The inevitable process of some kind of retreat from this meeting is in line with her previous actions of trying to find the easiest path to not confront this trauma, and her path will likely be one of gains like we see, followed by that attempt to bury, more struggling, rinse cycle repeat - just like much of therapy as a nonlinear process. The end is hopeful for me because I absolutely believe pain is in her future and she is nowhere near a place where she can validate and feel comfortable sitting with that part (this takes years and years usually and she just barely built rapport and had her first real ‘breakthrough’ still in the young stages) but she’s ready to move on to the next step, having strengthened and motivated the 'scared' part, giving it evidence of its abilities to function, and most importantly she has become 'unblended' from her scared part to suppress the monster, triggering the real therapeutic work into motion. Things will get worse, but she is on the path to getting better, just as the beginning of it.

I guess it’s hard for me to explain how I see this in words as it’s so true to this kind of therapy that has taken me years to grasp in my own practice so writing about it feels strange and difficult. This film means a lot to me because of how well it fits with this exact style though and knives’ humanist reading is even more on point than he may realize as this is - in my opinion - the most humanist therapy even more than Solution-Focused, Narrative, or any of the modern subjective therapies that have been the loudest public voices in stressing client-centeredness. I don’t think the therapist “abandons” her, but is using a common intervention in all client-centered work: Silence. The therapist can only do so much, but holding her hand through all the work is not part of that, and when Emily is ready to sit with her parts and able to do that, sometimes “silence” is the best therapeutic intervention to elicit information from the client- even if that information comes from nonverbal reflection and empowerment as a result of scaffolding.

[therewillbeblus]

Opera is the Argento Film for me, just 100% effortless style

I can get behind this. It’s not my favorite but if I wasn’t married to Suspiria’s gonzo exhibitionism I’d probably go with this for second. A revisit reminded me of how genuinely fun it is and the technical choices are not only inspired but careless insofar as refusing to develop a consistent set of choices which allows the film to fall into its own kind of unpredictable rhythm. I love the way Argento films action around the birds differently every time. This is clearly the work of someone who had been working for a while, figured out how to master style and narrative and then decided to go for broke by experimenting further with both but without investing himself too seriously in story. So what we get is a film that feels more violent than all of his others put together not from literal violence but in a charge against sacrificing any ideas for the sake of attending to anything but superficialities. Characters squirm and the camera violates more than any of his other works, but it’s so damn entertaining and never pretends to be realistic. This is the film he’s been working towards his whole career and it’s no wonder that afterwards he didn’t make anything good. This is resources depleted.