The Cremator

This week I watched the Czech black horror comedy:

The Cremator (1969).

This is going to contain some spoilers, so be aware.

The titular character, Karel Kopfrkingl, is a senior employee at a crematorium in Prague. He seems to be happily married with two children, but there is a lot of darkness beneath his constant beatific smile and heavy, bulging eyes. He meets an old army buddy, Reinke, from WWI who has become a Nazi, and who pushes Kopfrkingl to join the party as well. Kopfrkingl isn't that interested, as he only really cares for his crematorium, or Sacred Temple of Death, as he call it, as well as a book on Tibet and Buddhism. Kopfrkingl believes that when the body is gone, the soul is free to reincarnate or go on to its heavenly reward. This means that in his mind, cremation hurries the process along, which makes it a sacred act. However, Kopfrkingl has a weakness: sex. Once a month he visits a brothel in secret, and once Reinke shows him pictures of all the pretty girls he can be with as soon as he joins the Nazi party, Kopfrkingl eagerly jumps on board. He is literally seduced into national socialism, and once he gets a taste of what this can get him, a grim downward spiral starts that will cost a lot of people their lives. After all, his wife is half Jewish...

The Cremator is one of the stranger movies I have seen, so I need to break this down a bit.

The comedy elements seem to be concentrated on a couple who always arrive late to everything, and then leave immediately as the wife invariably becomes hysterical over something, so that her husband has to drag her back out while admonishing her angrily. This happens again and again, but I didn't find it funny as such, rather it adds to the surreal atmosphere that has this movie in a iron grip.

The horror isn't what you might think just from the word either. There are no jump scares, very little blood and no common horror tropes at all. What The Cremator has is an unrelenting creepy and unsettling atmosphere from beginning to end.

Kopfrkingl is played by Rudolf Hrusínský and he does an amazing job! His entire being becomes this disturbing little man who seems harmless at a glance but carries volumes of horror in his soul once you look closer. He has this weird habit of repeating the same lines over and over once something triggers them, like how he met his wife at the zoo, or how he is abstinent, even if it makes no sense to repeat them. He also likes to comb other peoples hair, then his own, even the corpses at the crematorium gets the comb, and you never see him wash the comb either.

The Cremator is shot in black and white by choice to give it a more sinister look, and as it takes place just prior to WWII, the monochrome look fits well with the period. The director, Juraj Herz decided to shoot with a variety of lenses, one that he had to go to France to get, as it was that rare. The strange angles are in order to disorient the viewer, a clever move, since it makes Kopfrkingl's eyes pop more and makes many scenes even more unsettling due to forced perspective. Brilliant cinematography in other words. The movie also uses lots of quick cuts when Kopfrkingl becomes excited by something which mimics his quick darting thoughts.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, it is brilliant, but it is also really strange. The Cremator is entirely in Czech, so unless you know the language, prepare to read the subtitles. I suppose I missed out on a lot of subtleties, as subtitles usually don't convey nuance too well, but this didn't detract from the enjoyment of watching this movie. The Cremator is a bizarre masterpiece and if either Herz or Hrusínský had dropped he ball the entire movie would have fallen apart. I don't think this is a movie for everyone, but if you like disturbing surrealism, do give this a go.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

Death Walks on High Heels

Quite a while ago, I talked about The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970) by Luciano Ercoli. That was the first movie he directed, today we're looking at his second movie;

Death Walks on High Heels (1971).

The movie starts with a murder on a train. We then meet the daughter of the murdered man, Nicole (Nieves Navarro), a stripper who lives in Paris with her ne'er-do-well lover Michel (Simon Andreu). It seems her father stole a load of diamonds and everyone wants them. The common belief is that she has them, despite her protestations to the contrary. The killer calls and threatens her before attacking her in her home. Terrified, paranoid and desperate to get away, Nicole leaves town with an ardent admirer from the club where she dances, Dr. Matthews (Frank Wolff). The good doctor is a respected medical man from England and she gratefully jumps the country with him. He spoils her shamelessly and sets her up in a love nest by a lake. Unfortunately, he is already married although unhappily. To make it worse, it's his wife Vanessa that owns all the money, including his clinic. Then things get worse, much worse, until we reach a dramatic finale.

Death Walks on High Heels is solid in all matters from acting, to locations, props and music. No problems at all. The dialogue, at least the English dub, was a bit subpar, but long term Giallo fans are used to that. My biggest complaint is that the movie tries to pack too much into a time frame that is almost too short to handle it. The run time is 1 hour 48 minutes, which is already long, but this story, which is very good, would do better as a short mini series. There is just so much to unpack.

Much like The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, it is almost impossible to solve the central mystery. Not because everyone looks guilty as all hell, but because no one really looks all that guilty in the first place. To solve the riddle that is Death Walks on High Heels, you need a great deal of information, and the movie doesn't give you that until the very end. Instead it drowns you in clues, some relevant, some red herrings and some that you don't know the relevance of yet.

I won't go so far as to accuse Death Walks on High Heels of cheating, but it is close. By the end all the threads are sewed up, and everything makes sense, but up until then I was very confused. The movie also has an interesting tendency of slamming on the brakes and doing a 180, only to do it again moments later. A dangerous technique in film making, but it really works. Ercoli pulled it off, which is impressive considering it was his second time directing.

At times I wondered what I was watching, especially in the early middle of the film where the pace dies a bit, but once the end rolls around I was impressed. As mentioned above, the story is really good, one of the better in all the Gialli I have watched. Often the story isn't that important, it's in how it is told that Giallo shines. Death Walks on High Heels almost does the opposite.

I have a couple of very minor nitpicks I want to share. At one point, Nicole and Dr Matthews is eating fish. The scene is clearly meant to be intimate and erotic, but seeing them plop bits of greasy fish in their mouths was way too gross to be sexy. I also noticed that the junior Scotland Yard officer wears white socks... I very much doubt that would have been allowed. Finally I want to mention the unevenness of the murders. One is very bloody while another is incredibly lame and one even happens off camera. Odd, but no deal breaker.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! Death Walks on High Heels maybe a bit slow at times, but it is an excellent thriller and a damn fine Giallo.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

What is Giallo Really?

I checked the post listing and realized that I have written about Giallo movies for over a year now, and it has been a blast. Some of these movies have been amazing while some have been awful. I don't write about the bad ones, just to make that clear, but overall, I have loved every minute of this journey.

On occasion I have tried to succinctly explain what Giallo is, but it is a bigger subject matter than what can be described in a paragraph.

Luckily, I have found someone who can explain it, and that's what we're doing this week.The Youtube channel TheKingInGiallo has two videos the chronicle the rise of the Giallo literature as well as the movies. How they came about, how they worked under Mussolini's regime, what influenced them and what they in turn influenced. If anything I've written about these movies has made you curious, do check these videos out.

But beware, there are some very gory images and some spoilers for a large amount of movies. Overall, the spoilers aren't that bad, they drown in a flood of information, but in all fairness, I have to warn you.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD6Svl7tcO8

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Val-dy4yBDc

I'll embed them below, for you convenience as well, but that's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

 

The Psychic

Fueled by last week's entry, The Lizard in a Woman's Skin, I watched another Fulci Giallo;

Seven Notes in Black, a.k.a. Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes, a.k.a. Death Tolls Seven Times, a.k.a. The Psychic (1977).

We begin the movie with a woman leaping to her death from the cliffs of Dover while her daughter back in Florence sees it happening. We cut to the current day (back in '77) and the now adult daughter, Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) is happily married to a rich Italian businessman, Francesco Ducci (Gianni Garko). He departs on a business trip and while she's driving home, Virginia starts having vivid visions. She sees a room in red, a hole hacked in a wall, a woman murdered, a magazine cover, someone being walled up alive and more. Deeply disturbed, she visits her parapsychologist friend Luca Fattori (Marc Porel) to get some advice. Later, Virginia decides to renovate an old palazzo that her husband owns in order to distract her from the visions and as a nice surprise for him. To her horror, she recognizes a room in the palazzo and frantically hacks a hole in the wall. What she finds sets in motion a long investigation and series of horrific events.

That's pretty much what I can reveal without spoiling too much.

Like his other Gialli, The Psychic is beautifully shot. I have been so impressed with Fulci's cinematography in his Gialli that I may have to revisit some of his horror movies to see if it was always there, but I have been too distracted by all the buckets of blood and the hordes of zombies to notice. Time will tell on that one.

The Psychic actually has two plot lines that intertwine. One is Virginia's psychic visions and the other one is everything else. The visions are well done and don't cheat. Everything you see is relevant, whether you and Virginia understand what is shown or not. The other plot is a bit muddled. There were a few scenes where important things were mentioned but it's so quick that if you sneeze, you might miss it. That annoyed me as when I read a synopsis after I was done watching, I realized that what I thought was a bit of fluff was actually a super important clue. This might be an issue with this version of the movie, or just a bit of a screw up.

My other big criticism is that most of The Psychic is really slow. A movie being slow isn't automatically a bad thing, but the sense of mystery and doom doesn't manifest until we get to the “endgame”. At that point everything makes sense and I got the feeling that it wasn't just all worth it but that The Psychic is actually a good movie. Before then, I wasn't so sure.

Besides the lovely cinematography, the rest of the movie is also competent. The actors are very good, particularly Jennifer O'Neill, who's piercing eyes work perfectly for the role of Virginia. I realized while watching this movie that Fulci had a real talent for making people seem sinister so that it was absolutely impossible for me to solve the mystery. I did pick up on a couple of important clues, but not the most relevant one.

At one point, Virginia is gifted a watch that plays the titular tune, and I just knew that I had heard it before. Then I read that Quentin Tarantino wanted to remake The Psychic, but that project failed to materialize. However he used the tune in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and that's where I had heard it.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, it is good, at least when you get to the end. It's not really up there with The Lizard in a Woman's Skin or Don't Torture a Duckling, but it is absolutely worth watching.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

A what in who's skin?

This week we're talking about:

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971).

This Giallo is directed by Italian horror Maestro, Lucio Fulci, who also directed Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), which we've talked about before. Interestingly after Duckling was released, Fulci was accused in court of corrupting a minor until he could prove that it was an adult little person. In Lizard, he was accused of excessive animal cruelty until he could prove, again in court, that it was all special effects. Fulci had bad luck with Gialli and the law.

The story is this: Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan), her husband Frank Hammond (Jean Sorel) and Frank's teenage daughter Joan (Ely Galleani) live in an expensive flat in London. Frank, a lawyer, works for Carol's father, Edmond Brighton who is a wealthy lawyer and politician. Carol sees a therapist in order to come to grips with the vivid and disturbing dreams that torment her. Most of these dreams are about her being seduced by their neighbor Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg). Julia is a bit of a pest in the building as she likes to host drug fueled orgies that are very loud.

One night Carol dreams that she stabs Julia to death, and soon after, Julia is found murdered. Things get worse when it turns out that she was killed in exactly the same way as in Carols dream. The question becomes, did Carol kill Julia? If so, was she even aware that she did it? Was it someone else trying to frame and destroy her by driving her mad?

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is set and shot in London, presumably because, like with The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, it was a bit fancier than filming in Italy. Fulci does a great job with the scenery here. He fully uses the fancy old buildings and the rolling green fields that are so unlike Italy. In fact, it lends the movie an almost Hammer Horror feel that other Gialli don't have.

Something that confused me at first was how Fulci mostly uses steady shots that allow you to take in everything, but then suddenly uses a handheld, shaking camera with closeups. Then it dawned on me that this only happens when Carol is extremely agitated. The shaking camera mimics her shaking hands as she lights a cigarette to calm her shattered nerves. There is also a brilliant bit when a person is breaking down a door and every time the door is struck, the camera quickly zooms in on Carol. Annoying at first, but effective at hitting us with some of the stress she feels. One could perhaps accuse Fulci of being gimmicky, but it's done well, and I call it clever camera work.

The actors are all really good, no complaints, and the music by Ennio Morricone is... there.

Besides all that, the standout part for me is the story. Sure, the theme of the heroine loosing her mind as she tries to escape the clutches of a deranged killer is not only a regular theme in Giallo, it's pretty overused, but Fulci does something a bit different with this tired trope. I completely failed to solve the mystery and I had a blast doing so. This is an extremely well crafted movie in every aspect. It doesn't cheat, it actually tells you everything, but putting all the clues together in the right order, and from the correct perspective is the tricky bit.

So, do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! A Lizard in a Woman's Skin rocketed up into my top list of Gialli. It is in my opinion one of the best in the genre. Just be warned that there is a lot of nudity, some simulated sex and while the gore overall isn't that bad, the scene that landed Fulci in court is extremely disturbing and gruesome. Be careful who you watch this movie with and you'll be fine.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!