ECSTATIC Recommends: Horror
Art-House, International, and Horror-adjacent Halloween Picks
Happy Halloween from ECSTATIC! I wanted to kick off the premiere of the ECSTATIC Screen Notes subscription site with three unconventional and diverse horror picks for all my readers. This October feels special since it’s my first one writing to you from the northwest Pennsylvania region, and the Fall experience is lengthier and more beautiful than any I’ve had in a while. And with the season, of course, comes the inclination to revisit some scary favorites, or add some new blood to our old Halloween movie lists. I want to borrow some inspiration from the Row House Cinema in Pittsburgh, which is currently presenting a smartly curated horror series. I recently caught a screening of my first recommendation there as part of their “Vampire” series, so if you’re into female-directed/Iranian/vampire/art-house flicks with a touch of spaghetti western, this one’s for you:
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) Ana Lily Amirpour
I had seen A Girl Walks Home at home not long after it’s release in 2014, but seeing it on the big screen was a particular treat, a reminder that you’ve often not fully experienced a film this beautifully lensed and scored until you’ve seen it writ large with incredible sound. While it may not satisfy those in search of the expected scare tactics, it does deliver some impactful bloodsucking moments that benefit from how they’re allowed to land within a movie that runs more on atmosphere than multiple jump scares. The performances of the leads (the gorgeous Sheila Vand and Arash Marandi) feel like they’re woven into the fabric of the cinematography, seemingly etched in charcoal, with the characterizations existing in their own emptied-out and hermetically sealed black-and-white world. While Amirpour has said she’s not a huge Jim Jarmusch fan, it’s impossible not to think of his stark and patient style in comparison. I’ll leave the comparison at a bit stronger recommendation for A Girl Walks Home than Jarmusch’s vampire effort from a year earlier, Only Lovers Left Alive (though still a pretty enjoyable entry in the art-house horror vein).
Being Amirpour’s first feature length film, it captures the same kind of confidence and coolness that Stranger Than Paradise did for Jarmusch back in 1984. A Girl Walks Home hypnotizes, a perfect seduction of a film, but balances it’s interest in texture and slowness with story and romance elements that drive the film through to the final frames. As the title might suggest, the film has more on it’s mind than retreading the tropes of a predominantly masculine genre, using the Vampire more to subvert cultural representation and femininity in the context of modern day Iran. In light of current protests by young, Iranian women decrying the regime and waving their hijabs in the air on social media and in the streets, and the backlash of violence perpetrated on Iranian schoolgirls, the film carries with it an even more immediate, political import. It’s a special film, and an important part of the story of how the horror genre has transformed it’s cultural role in the last decade. It will be interesting to see how Amirpour’s approach translates to the action genre, since her next picture is, supposedly, a remake of the Sylvester Stallone mountain-climber action flick Cliffhanger.
The Visitor (1979) Giulio Paradisi, aka Michael J. Paradise
The Visitor isn’t what you would call a great movie, and it’s not exactly a horror movie, but it’s also not really anything in particular, which is a big part of it’s appeal. In fact, The Visitor plays out like a few different movies from a few different genres cut into one glorious, wildly entertaining collage of a movie: a little of The Exorcist or The Omen, some Zardoz-era Boorman touches, or, possibly, cut scenes from some failed Corman project. In reality, The Visitor is a gem of an Italian rip-off of a number of late-70’s genre pictures, featuring an unbelievable roster of American actors who likely signed off on the picture for a free trip to Italy (though much of it ended up being shot in Atlanta). The cast includes: John Huston, Shelly Winters, Lance Henricksen, Joanna Nail, Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, and a cameo (that nearly broke my brain) from Sam Peckinpah. In the first five minutes of the film, the bald children of some nether region of space are told the legend of “Sateen” by a blonde guru who details how the exiled character escaped from a spaceship prison, found a hiding place on planet earth, and even though he was a “mute-ant” somehow evolved to live on earth until he was discovered by a space hunter who sent a giant swarm of birds to attack “Sateen,” who then turned into an eagle and killed all of the birds but three, who then wounded him in the brain, yet he still managed to mate with earth women and spread his demon seed. Again, that’s the establishing narrative. The first five minutes. After that the story becomes a bit confused. While attempting an entire plot synopsis of The Visitor would be futile, and possibly injury-inducing, lets just say that it involves a Linda Blair-esque demonic child as a key figure in some sort of eternal battle involving Huston’s intergalactic traveler, a cosmic Jesus, and some rooftop performance art (pictured below).
Director Guilio Paradisi and producer Ovidio Assonitis were blatant about making an Exorcist rip-off, but were afraid that it would look too much like and Exorcist rip-off, so they hired Italian-speaking American screenwriter Lou Comici to stitch together the converging genre ideas and scenes Paradisi would conjure day-to-day. Even though Comici attempted to develop some coherent narrative through Paradisi being fired from the film, then re-hired after an American producer was asked to do so with a gun pointed at his face (or so the story goes!), Comici’s script was finally handed to Paradisi and promptly thrown out the window, pages fluttering to the ground. While Italian cinema is no stranger to scattered plots, especially when it comes to horror and Giallo films, this particular knock-off stands out in it’s undeniably confounding construction. It also happens to be gorgeous in many of it’s effects and set pieces in a way that you could never expect from a modern cash-in genre movie, as with the Asylum or SYFY Channel production houses. Paradisi made this incoherent mess with confidence and considerable skill, and it truly must be seen to be believed.
One Cut of the Dead (2017) Shin'ichirô Ueda
It may be difficult to perceive the above image as a moment from a heartwarming film about family and friends overcoming obstacles both physical and emotional, but you’ll have to experience One Cut of the Dead to discover how that very trick is pulled. This one falls firmly into the “horror-adjacent” category, even though it presents entirely as one horrendously gory zombie flick. “The less said the better” applies to many a clever genre film, but few warrant it so completely as this one. What I can say about One Cut of the Dead is that it might be relegated by some to be not much more than a gimmick, but that reading disregards what an efficiently crafted and well-acted character piece it is, not to mention how brilliantly that particular gimmick is pulled off. Director/Writer Shin'ichirô Ueda possibly created a disadvantage in cloaking the real delights of this movie in a genre many shy away from, so all the more reason to recommend it here. One Cut of the Dead might be especially perfect for those who want to watch something with horror elements, but are maybe watching with someone who doesn’t do horror. But, beyond that, the film is just an absolute treat no matter the season, and the emotional resonance will stay with you more than the meta-cinematic play, as well as being one you’ll want to watch again to enjoy the clever mechanics of how it all unfolds.