"When we were children, we were identical in every way. But she was the mistress and I was her slave"
I also sat down with one of the films from the second Video Nasties set whose trailer interested me. The 1981
Madhouse (aka There Was A Little Girl..., aka And When She Was Bad, aka Party des Schreckens!), an Italian-made, US-set (in Savannah, Georgia, lending a nice Southern Gothic feel. There must have been something about the South that drew Italian horror filmmakers to it, as Fulci set a few of his films around Louisiana, particularly The Beyond and Door To Silence) film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, perhaps most famous now as the producer who notoriously fired first time director James Cameron from Piranha II: The Spawning and directed the rest of it himself!
The story involves a lady, Julia, who has broken off ties with her abusive twin sister being coerced into visiting her at a hospital due to the 'bad sister' apparently having a disfiguring terminal disease. The 'bad sister' takes the opportunity to threaten the 'good sister' with punishment for abandoning her and then a couple of scenes later mysteriously escapes from the local hospital. The bad sister then takes up residence in both a hearse with tinted windows and in the basement of a massive gothic mansion inside which Julia has an apartment. The building itself is undergoing extensive renovations so our lead and one other kooky 60s-style bohemian landlady (who likes to airily dance around her drape-covered apartment) are the only residents, allowing the bad sister free reign. The half renovated mansion is quite a neat location, especially with its various back and front staircases and strange geography which even by the end of the film I was having difficulty figuring out! (It actually reminds me a little of that later 1990 thriller Pacific Heights in which Melanie Griffiths and Matthew Modine are menaced by nightmare tenant Michael Keaton, in the sense that you just know that the half built areas are going to be the location for a chase sequence, and that the dangerous work tools lying about are going to have to be used for something! Plus both films feature Japanese handymen who get disposed of early on!).
The mid-section of the film settles into a routine of the bad sister and her Rottweiler dog killing off various people (and pets, such as the good sister's symbolically opposed pet cat!) to build up a guest list for Julia's upcoming birthday party. The film is surprisingly callous about which victims it chooses, partly the cat getting hung but also one of Julia's favourite pupils at the deaf school at which she teaches getting mauled in the park by the Rottweiler. Although the film (tastefully?) doesn't show that attack, just the covered body being wheeled into an ambulance, while a couple of the other older victims have their throats torn out in graphic detail. Incidentally I like that the girl friend who stays with Julia and ends up becoming a victim of the dog too gets told by Julia in no uncertain terms not to leave the apartment at night, but does so anyway. I don't mind too much victims acting stupidly in a horror film if they have been warned not to! Then it seems it is the individual character more than the film itself that is being silly!
There's a final section twist once Julia makes it to the birthday party that is quite neat too, although I figured out the twist very early on:
As soon as the priest was too uncomfortably touchy-feely with Julia in the early hospital sequence and then the deaf boy after the sermon I knew he wasn't to be trusted! I did like though that it came across in the early section of this film that the slightly unsympathetic priest was acting as if Julia is entirely to blame for the rift between her and her sister, which adds themes of authority figures not taking your side in a conflict that I thought were really interesting. It pushes Julia into more turmoil regarding her feelings towards her sister as well, wondering if it is her own fears more than anything else.
I'm conflicted about the ending as it is a little too neat in tying all the potential mental issues up by showing that the priest was in league with the bad sister all along (and presumably had been carrying on a relationship and abusing her since a child, although this idea is very heavily implied rather than stated) and does neatly resolve all of the issues for Julia and allow her to escape the horror at the end, apart from the in vogue Carrie-style shock ending! But I was rooting for Julia throughout the film, so I was glad to see her safe, albeit traumatised, at the end!
This is one of those films that if made twenty or thirty years later would have to have the twist that the 'bad sister' and 'good sister' are one and the same (indeed even Brian De Palma's earlier Sisters came vaguely to mind whilst watching!), and the good sister has been driven schizophrenically insane herself by the past abuses. In a way the priest turning out to be the accomplice is both sillier and also rather refreshing in allowing Julia to have some validation in other people being responsible for her trauma!
And my, that ending of Julia axing the priest to death doesn't stint on the gore with enormous axe wounds to the back! It's almost like the ending of Witchfinder General!
Some of the performances in the film get a little weird (especially the goofy mad person at the end!) but in some ways the poor off-kilter handling of the stalking sequences end up strangely working. For instance the stalking of the bohemian landlady in the building shows the killer and a potential avenue of escape to the outside world in the same frame, which adds a nice sense of escape being so close and yet so far. Then the hiding under the bed sequence shows the lady extremely poorly concealed under there and the killer obviously sees her straight away, but there is a strange bit of toying with her that ensues that is nothing like Jason not being there until the split-second he emerges to kill a teen in the Friday The 13th films (though the Japanese handyman gets a 'pop up' death like that!). Here the killer is toying with her and when the lady runs and simply just hides in the corner covering her eyes, they strangely leave only to appear later on.
There is a complete lack of tension in the sequence from both the killer and the victim not 'properly' acting the ritual of stalk and slash films properly, but in a strange way that both makes the victim seem more desperately terrified and the killer more insane. So I think it works! Even in the final sequence the killer walks off into another room for a little while, allowing our hero to attempt to untie Julia from her chair, then the maniac notices what they are doing and with a little tut comes back to put a stop to it. Those moments where the tension completely disappears only makes the film feel more disturbing! Although I concede that this might be less conscious on the part of the filmmakers and maybe just that they don't know how to keep tension high!
There is a great Riz Ortolani score too, with beautiful 'creepy versions' of some lullabys, including the title one of "Rock-a-bye-baby"! But this is Ortolani still very much in Cannibal Holocaust mode as all of the various stalking and death sequences get scored to atonal electronic bleeps and bloops that are extremely similar to those in the earlier film. They can seem a little out of place in this context, but I liked that those particular sounds sort of acted as the very first signifiers that the death scenes were about to occur!
So it is an interesting, if perhaps eventually a bit of an average, film (I wouldn't argue too strongly against someone who found it just to be a standard slasher film), but it has a couple of really nice moments particularly involving the fantastic performance of the lead actress Trish Everly. According to imdb she never acted in anything else again but is great here, stunningly beautiful and provides a nice, natural performance (and even two great ear piercing screams at two separate acts in the final sequence! But also a great low key, "I already, and perhaps always, knew what was coming" reaction on being blindfolded and led to the party). The highlight of the whole film for me is the very early sequence just after Julia has been to see her sister in the hospital and is waiting in her boyfriend's office for him and talks about her relationship with her sister. It is where the quote at the top of this post comes from. Everly's performance in that scene is amazing with visible emotion but also a composure there too, able to recount events from her past and worrying about them surfacing again, but trying not to be overwhelmed by it. This is also supported by the male lead's sympathetic ear as the boyfriend asking all the right questions ("I was held up by a last minute schizoid in emergency. How are you?"; "Don't take off your [white] coat yet, your shift's not over"'; "Oh, really? You want to play doctor?"). The scene then ends with a cut to the next scene but with the remnants of Julia tailing off into reverie over it, adding a strange dreamlike-quality ("It was almost as if...I was doing it to myself...It won't ever stop...I know now that I...I can't get away"). It is a pure exposition scene getting out backstory to an audience, but the beautifully sad way it was handled made watching the whole film worthwhile for me, I think.
Oh, well also if you've ever wanted to see our hero put a Rottweiler (or gnashing Rottweiler puppet) into a headlock and powerdrill it into submission, this also might be the film for you!
