Blood Link

PROGRAMMING NOTE: So, here we are, more than half a year out, and I’m still posting reviews from my Halloween marathon. That turned out to be a flagrantly ridiculous number of movies, and since it takes much longer to write about them than watch them --and then I got interrupted by the obligatory year-in-review-- we’re still truckin’ on. Fortunately I took detailed notes and have a pretty good outline review of everything I still need to post, but there’s no way around it, these things take time. I’ve decided to stop using the logo and the checklist, just to make things a little more expedient, and I’m also gonna try to be a bit more concise than usual just in an effort to get everything up and move into next year with a clean slate. But fear not, they will maintain the trenchant insight you have come to expect from this blog, just in a somewhat less protracted format. So bear with me as we dive back into obscure horror movies no one cares about with...

Blood Link (1982) aka Extrasensorial

Dir. Alberto De Martino

Written by Theodore Apstein

Starring Michael Moriarty, Michael Moriarty, Penelope Milford, Geraldine Fitzgerald

What we  got here is a strange, twitchy, sleazy little giallo which hits the expected notes from its simple premise, but also goes off in weird directions. The premise in question is that Michael Moriarty (Q: THE WINGED SERPENT, THE STUFF, various ultra-right-wing talk shows) is a successful doctor who keeps having visions of himself murdering women. Don’t worry, he’s not secretly a multiple-personality killer, that would be silly. Instead he has an evil twin brother (also Michael Moriarty, TROLL, IT’S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE), long-believed dead, who has been on something of a murder bender and is psychically transmitting the experiences to his goody-two-shoes brother.

Granted, all that makes perfect sense. The “weird direction” is that this doesn’t play out as the standard psychic detective story you might assume it would. Instead, it’s more about the fraught, nebulous relationship between the two brothers. It’s some kind of weird relationship study of two people with no similarity to anyone who has ever existed, drawn together by entirely imaginary circumstances into a patently ridiculous drama. Who then have only one scene together. Huh. Italian director Alberto De Martino (HOLOCAUST 2000, STRANGE SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM) seems to think he’s directing a standard giallo (complete with gloved, point-of-view murders and copious female nudity) but writer Theodore Apstein (WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE is his only other movie, but he’d been a prolific TV writer since the 50’s) seems to have something more psychological in mind. With an emphasis on “something,” since the movie never really seems to figure out exactly what that is, but whatever. At the very least, it provides an unusual clash of tones between the dreamy id of the giallo and the comparatively literal-minded ego of American psycho-thrillers.

Moriarty is great in both roles, but, as you might imagine, he’s especially great as the psycho brother. It’s a good psycho role because, unusually, the guy is really psycho. Like the killer from ANGST, he’s irrational and impulsive more than calculating. He’s doesn’t seem to have much of a plan, or even a clear set of desires. He’s been on a murder spree, but it seems to be because he somehow knows this will bring his brother looking for him, more than for his own amusement. The murders don’t seem to independently interest him much at all, they’re just a way to get the gang back together. This was in the days before Facebook, so obviously a psychic murder-gram was the only good way to reconnect with an old acquaintance.

Evil-Moriarty is a pretty interesting character. He hates his brother (who had the chances he feels he was denied) but also sort of nakedly loves him, even has a sort of hero worship thing going. He wants to ruin him and also be him, and also a  whole bunch of emotions which don’t have names. You can tell all that mostly from Moriarty’s spazzy, uncomfortable performance, but give the movie credit, they actually seem to have thought this out a little. The character seems to have been written to have a little vulnerability, even though he’s still a despicable villain. Nothing really comes of it other than giving Moriarty the chance to see how many emotions he can put on his face at one time, but hey, that’s reason enough as far as I’m concerned. Like all great dual-performances, Moriarty makes the two brothers distinct enough that you can immediately tell which one you’re looking at simply through their bearing and individual tics, but just in case, you can also tell because one of them always wears a scarf.

One touch of class is the score by Ennio Moriccone, in one of the 10 million suitable-but-not-especially-memorable for-hire jobs he did on shitty Italian movies in the 80's.

There’s enough production value here for a few striking scenes; there’s a posh hotel room with a giant fishtank, a nightmarish acupuncture machine, a moody graveyard, and something my viewing notes call an “apple store” (I honestly don’t remember what I could possibly mean by that -- maybe it’s shorthand for some kind of Kubrickian all-white modernist hellscape, or maybe they just go to a store which sells Granny Smiths in a way which I thought was visually stunning enough to include in my notes). But despite the perpetually enjoyable Michael Moriarty double-role, the direction is pretty flat and the movie is dispiritingly short on momentum or tension. If it’s too weird to be exactly boring, it’s definitely listless and poorly structured, with sane-Moriarty seeming oddly ambivalent about his predicament. In the last act, his girlfriend (Penelope Milford, Academy-Award nominee for COMING HOME, and already in dire straits enough to have to appear nude in 60% of her scenes here*) randomly shows up and becomes the main character for the climax, while sane-Moriarty sits around back home looking concerned. Having a character who has not been part of the movie up til this point suddenly becoming the hero for the finale is definitely not a hallmark of strong narrative fundamentals.

But, narrative and momentum considerations aside, it does, at least, offer some surprises. The movie is not afraid to dive into some uncomfortable territory, which often means rape (like, three times) or just random sadism (for example, the sequence in which Evil-Moriarty torments an old man [Cameron Mitchell, everything from HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE to FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM] until he has a heart attack). That definitely makes it not as fun as something this goofy probably ought to be, but on the other hand it contributes to pushing this premise in unexpected directions. In fact, it seems to almost deliberately avoid going the places you would guess it would; for example, the daughter of the guy Evil-Moriarty kills (Sarah Langenfeld, only two other films) immediately and without question accepts that Sane-Moriarty is a twin, with surprisingly little evidence. You’d think with so much talk about how the brothers are connected, there would be more emphasis on the mistaken-identity angle, but nope. Likewise, when Sane-Moriarty starts banging her, she becomes the co-lead for awhile while they search for her dad’s killer.** But then she just gets brutally killed off a few scenes later, and his forgotten American girlfriend shows up again for the finale (if she is at all upset that, literally a day into his European vacation, he’s fucking a new woman half his age who just saw her father beaten to death by the exact double of the twitchy balding beanpole she’s now enthusiastically bedding, she never mentions it). It may be poor screenwriting, but it does keep you on your toes.

As the previous paragraph suggests, there’s lots of tits and plenty of blood here, but it’s all handled so glumly that it doesn’t seem exploitative as much as it seems intentionally transgressive. For better or worse, that seems to be what the screenplay has in mind, with all its suggestions of impotence and rape and simmering jealousy and insecurity between twins. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of this is quite well-developed enough to really make a meal out of. Both Moriartys are fun to watch, and the movie’s eccentricities are, at least, surprising, but I think they’d probably work better if the movie itself were bettered structured and more entertaining. It’s kind of novel, but also kind of a dour slog, and it’s not much redeemed by the out-of-the-blue bizarreness of the ending. Still, I can’t find it in my heart to totally condemn a movie with this much Michael Moriarty weirdness packed into it. BLOOD LINK isn’t as good as its ingredients, but it’s worth the time for any committed giallo-phile in the market for something a little different.  

*And only a decade away from being “Woman in the Woods” in HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER: PART II

**The fact that we already know he has a girlfriend back home who is so devoted to him that she’ll later cross an ocean and offer herself as bait for a rapist serial-murderer just to get him out of prison doesn’t seem to bother the movie at all.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

• TAGLINE: Bound by Blood, Severed by Murder!
• DEADLY IMPORT FROM: American/Italian/German co-production
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Former Academy-Award Nominee Penelope Milford, venerable film and Broadway star Cameron Mitchell.
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: I think Moriarty has been in enough horror movies to count.
• BOOBIES: Oh, very, very many.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: Yeah, lots
• POSSESSION: Theres some suggestion to this effect.
• SLASHER/GIALLO: Yes
• VOYEURISM: Yes, good Moriarty and Evil Moriarty get to see each others's lives
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Very high, never on DVD to my knowledge.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: If you want to get in touch with an estranged relative, you should commit a series of brutal murders and psychically transmit them.
• TITLE ACCURACY: Sure, why not.
• Alex Made it Through Awake: N/A

The Dunwich Horror

The Dunwich Horror (1970)
Dir. Daniel Haller
Written by Curtis Hanson (?!) and Henry Rosenbaum and Ronald Silkosky
Starring Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, Sandra Dee, Talia Shire

    Loosely based on the H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name, this schlocky 70s Roger Corman / Arkoff/Nicholson production finds a young Dean Stockwell as a strange young man who is a little too interested in getting his hands on the unabridged copy of the nefarious Necronomicon that the local college conveniently stocks.

    If there ever has been a film adaptation that truly lived up to Lovecraft’s talents, I’ve never seen it. Stuart Gordon has had some good attempts, and of course there’s that NECRONOMICON anthology I watched earlier this month, but to really capture that epic, almost philosophical horror that makes Lovecraft unique is a hard thing to do, in the same way it’s so difficult to capture that romantic melancholy which has thwarted so many who try to adapt the works of Poe. Corman tried both many times, and I’ve never seen one which I thought really succeeded. Director Daniel Haller is not the guy to beat the odds, but he does bring some nice touches which ensure that this one isn’t a total wash.

A nice spot for a romantic picnic/sacrifice/demon impregnation

      For one thing, even though the adaptation is loose most of Lovecraft’s fundamental ideas are still pretty well represented. You still got Stockwell name-dropping Yog-Sothoth, still got the insane mom impregnated by an extradimensional demon, still got an aspiring young hellraiser seeking out the Necronomicon in search of the the secret recipe for cooking up the return of an Elder God. The details are there, and I think it was a genuinely earnest attempt to adapt Lovecraft’s world to film (its biggest alteration is its decided non-Lovecraftian tendency to remember that women exist). But really, more of it’s DNA comes from its Corman/Arkoff/Nicholson production than from the land of Cthulu. That means pretensions of gothy atmosphere mixed with swinging 70’s psychedelia and amateurish production elements. That can sometimes be a fun time on it’s own, but mostly it means inert productions which mostly consist of iffy acting in overlit but impressively constructed castle sets. Which is the case here.
   
    Stockwell, actually, is quite good as the not-quite human Wilbur Whateley, bringing a sort of understated anger masked by softness to the role. Problem is, he’s kind of a cypher and usually up to no good, but there’s not really any other character for the viewer to identify with. Ed Begley (in his last role!) crops up from time to time and ultimately has to save the day, but really he mostly just delivers exposition and sits around. Sandra “Gidget” Dee falls under Whateley’s spell early on and spends most of the rest of the film in an undressed stupor. Talia Shire is her friend who briefly seems like she’s going to try to put a stop to the madness, but it’s Talia Shire so we're not entirely shocked to see her raped to (spoiler) death by a many-(spoiler)tentacled (end spoiler) monster. I mean, I guess we’re a little shocked. Maybe the fact that it’s shot in alternative negative gradients to show us how Ca-raaaazy it is helps soften the blow. Which ultimately leaves us with just Stockwell, far and away the only compelling character anywhere in sight. We even kind of understand why he wants to destroy mankind when we see how fucked up the local Christian villagers treat him (they even interrupt his impromptu funeral for his own grandfather to tell him he can’t bury the old guy in a “Christian Cemetery”). But we’re not supposed to be rooting for this guy, are we?

Isn't technology amazing. This is where Stanley Kubrick got the idea for 2001, no question about it.

    Ironically, my fellow horror-marathoner Dan P. thought it unraveled at the end, whereas I though it actually picked up some steam. After a grueling expository slog* of mildy entertaining but overlong psychedelic mumbo jumbo which is only occasionally weird enough to be interesting, the end seems to get a little bit of life as the editing quickens, the photography gets more focused, the monsters get loose, and people start getting eaten and/or raped to death. For a second, it seems kind of like Stockwell may pull it off and you start to get a little excited to see where this is going. Unfortunately, the whole thing gets defused so easily it ends up feeling a little disappointing. How do you defeat a half-demon madman summoning an elder god into Gidget’s womb? You just yell some nonsense at him, and that takes care of that. Oh, I guess we needn’t have worried.
   
PS: I do like it’s Saul Bass-inspired credits sequence, however, which plays like a mix between the opening credits to VERTIGO and THE PINK PANTHER. If the rest of the movie had been that stylish and playful, we might really have had something

See Dan P's take here, as Abbot and Costello do something with something else etc..


*Most of the movie, by the way, is spent gradually discovering the “secret” which was the movie’s tagline. Not a great move.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: Yeah, and semi-faithful as far as this type of thing goes.
BOOBIES: Yep, but Gidget keeps her top on, dammit.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: No memorable gore.
SEQUEL: No, although arguably part of "Cthulu mythos"
OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid. B-movie, but readily available.
MONSTERS: One so awesome that even though he's invisible we still sometimes see him.
SATANISTS: We're way past Satan here.
ZOMBIES: No.
VAMPIRES: No.
SLASHERS: No.
CURSES: No.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

The Dark Half

The Dark Half (1993)
Dir. George MotherFucking A Romero
Starring Timothy Hutton, Timothy Hutton, and Michael Rooker.

You forget sometimes, that Romero did other things than zombie movies. Or I do, anyway. I don’t know what you do. You never talk about your feelings. How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me? The key to any successful relationship is open communication regarding George Romero and his perceived confinement to the zombie subgenre. I mean, I always try to bring it up, but you’re always getting all offended and telling me to stop talking about George Romero while we make love. As if that’s just something I should magically know not to do. But if that is how you think of him, I don’t blame you. I mean, after all, the guy basically invented the very concept of a zombie which now permeates our culture pretty much to the point of saturation. Before his seminal NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, zombies were basically the fare of racially questionable British Voodoo movies (perhaps understandably, since that’s where the word originates) like WHITE ZOMBIE and KING OF THE ZOMBIES and PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES. These zombies were more likely to be possessed humans than corpses, and were more interested in doing their masters’ bidding than eating braaaaaaiiiinnnnnns or pulling out someone’s intestinal track (those were dark days.)*

Romero changed all that. He pretty much completely changed the definition of a zombie (not intentionally, of course -- as he points out, no one calls them “Zombies” in his films) and created an entirely unique iconography which has since lurched into the popular consciousness so completely that having zombies start running in the early 2000’s seemed like a stunning reinvention. As he made more “Dead” films, it quickly became clear that not only had he created a new monster, but a new metaphor for listless, directionless American consumerism and unfocused aggression. By the time LAND OF THE DEAD rolled around in 2005 (nearly 40 years after the original) the series had established itself as a bleak, ever-refining dark satire on the American cultural, political, and economic landscape. They stand as scrappy, scruffy, unmistakably recognizable milestones not just in cinema, but in popular culture.

But what’s funny is, Romero directed or co-directed a stunning 10 other films in- between the “Dead” films. KNIGHTRIDERS. MARTIN. SEASON OF THE WITCH. Even a romantic fucking comedy! And in contrast to the Dead series’ sometimes shoddy production and inelegant scripts, after 1988’s MONKEY SHINES these films were often big studio pictures with mid-level movie stars, professional lighting, the whole deal. Aesthetically, you would never guess that the guy who made DAWN OF THE DEAD made THE DARK HALF, or even that the guy who made LAND OF THE DEAD more than a decade later made it. There’s almost nothing in common except that they’re filled with little unexpected elements of greatness.  

THE DARK HALF is adapted from a Stephen King book of the same name, and actually feels way more like a King project than a Romero one. I mean, it’s pretty much got all the hallmarks. Troubled writer (Thad Beaumont, played by Timothy Hutton**) ; Northeast Hometown (Castle Rock, Maine), clever poetic device (parasitic twin, sparrow swarms), extremely literal title (“the Dark Half”) etc. If this randomly came on TV and you were too lazy or drunk to check*** you would probably never guess Romero had directed it, but you’d definitely guess that King wrote it. In fact, the novel is apparently somewhat autobiographical in that it was a response to King’s own exposure as the man behind the pen name Richard Bachman, a name under which he published his own more lurid, cynical stories throughout the seventies. So it’s a veritable treasure trove of King’s themes and fixations, including a few of his recurring characters.

Tim “Youngest Person Ever to Win An Oscar For Best Supporting Actor” Hutton is an interesting character in that he’s a nice guy, a family man, and a classy writer of well-respected respectable classy writing, but on the side he’s been writing trashy crime novels under the name George Stark. We’re told that he’s a recovering alcoholic, but we never see him be anything other than charming and responsible. But everyone knows that when he’s writing as Stark, he retreats from the world, starts drinking, becomes a different person. A “Dark Half,” if you will. This might not seem as strange if someone had bothered to explain to him that when he was born there was this giant swarm of sparrows that engulfed the hospital, and when he was young he used to get horrible headaches which could only be cured by writing, and when they cut his skull open to get out what they figured was a tumor they actually found his unborn twin fetus stuck up there, staring out (apparently at the top of his skull, before it was opened) with a giant creepy eyeball of obvious sparrow-induced evilness. OK it still might have seemed strange, but still seems like the kind of thing someone ought to have mentioned to him. I mean, I’d want to know. 

I mean, honestly he seems pretty well adjusted for a guy named Thad Beaumont, a name so outrageously douchey it honestly makes me want to unlock the secrets of time travel just so I can go back in time to the sixth grade and give him a wedgie so powerful they’ll name it after him. But the film implies that his nice guy persona is only part of him, a cover which can exist only because he can also escape to his Dark Side through his fictional alter ego. So when said alter ego comes under threat of exposure and Beaumont resigns to retire Stark for good, a part of him reacts violently, inasmuch as it dresses like Henry Fonda from ONCE UPON THE TIME IN THE WEST and goes about slicing up anyone responsible for Stark’s shit-canning. The question is, though, is the evil murdering Stark actually Beaumont losing his marbles, or has his pen name someone wormed his way into the real world? And granted that second possibility makes perfect sense, but even if it’s true, does Thad have some responsibility for his alter ego’s crimes?

 For a King novel, it’s surprisingly hard on --and maybe even a little unfair to-- its protagonist. Stark, real or not, IS a kind of wish-fulfillment empowerment fantasy for Thad, a way to get his dark side out and still be the nice responsible husband and father he acts like. The film intriguingly challenges Thad to look at the physical embodiment of his darker leanings, and by proxy challenges us to do the same with our voyeuristic interest. In lots of ways, George Stark is a much cooler character than Thad -- he has black cowboy boots, he drinks, he smokes, he’s seductive and powerful and has a menacing folksy wit to him. He’s a seductive fantasy in our imaginations, but when he’s out in the real world he’s a horrifying nightmare. And to the audience, the implicit challenge is the same: you wanted this, right? Wouldn’t you rather watch murderous George Stark than affable nerd Thad Beaumont? I mean, wouldn’t you rather watch a film about Dirty Harry than a thoughtful, fair, effective cop who did his job and tried to help the community? And yet, which one would you prefer to actually have on the job in your home town? But when you fantasize about it, you make it real, at least on some level, and maybe you bear some responsibility for that. It’s not enough that Thad is a nice guy who cares about his family -- just because he can control himself doesn’t mean he’s not a bad person on the inside, on some level.  

Obviously, this is a weird outlook for a horror writer, of all things, to have. But honestly, after so much horror apologist rhetoric about how violent, sadistic, or otherwise fucked-up art helps channel our own darker impulses into something harmless and positive, it’s kind of an interesting perspective. Don’t shrug it off just because you didn’t do it. Look at yourself in horror because you thought about it. Existentialist that I am, I don’t buy the film’s way of looking at things and I can’t exactly imagine that Romero or King do either, but it’s an interesting and different perspective which is built seamlessly into the story itself. It challenges its protagonist not just to act better, but to be a truly better person on the inside, the kind of person who genuinely wants no part of any kind of George Stark, real or imaginary.

The novel Dark Half was published in 1989, so King couldn’t yet have known that his own George Stark would come back to haunt him, but that’s exactly what happened when a series of school shootings from 1988 to 1999 were materially tied to his Richard Bachman 1977 novel “Rage,” which he eventually took out of print over fear it would lead to more violence. Let’s be clear: I’m 100% against censorship of any kind. But not because I don’t think art is harmless -- art can have great power, and sometimes can be dangerous. I don’t think King’s book was to blame for what happened, but I also think it would be foolish to completely dismiss it as irrelevant and meaningless. Fantasies, when shared or even harbored, still have unintended effects on both their creator and the world. THE DARK HALF is a horror movie not about a murderer, but about the unintended ramifications of the darker side of our imagination. 

That said, it’s not a perfect film. Romero is no stranger to cinematic metaphors, but as a director his approach is an entirely literal one. That works for the hordes of zombies, which function as both a literal threat and a literal metaphor. It works slightly less well with the metaphysical nature of this particular horror story, since it removes any ambiguity about what’s actually happening and hence we just have to accept that a lot of this is caused by undefined “magic.” Romero creates some great images, like the oscillating swarms of sparrows which seem to be everywhere in Castle Rock, Maine, or the Argento-esque blue-lit hallways where Stark kills a guy. But this story might have worked better being depicted as the nightmare it surely is. After all, there’s no explanation or clear logic to the world of the film, so why stick so stubbornly to reality most of the time? 

Still, it’s a well-constructed film. For a George Romero adaptation of a Stephen King novel, it doesn’t seem particularly concerned about being a horror film. It takes its time setting up the world and the characters in it, and seems perfectly content letting the horror of the premise speak for itself without throwing a bunch of “boo!(s)” and lame scary faces at us. Long stretches pass where it seems like basically a drama, and the fact that you’re involved enough in the story to be OK with that speaks highly of the film’s strong storytelling fundamentals. Hutton is good both as Beaumont and as Strark, resisting making either part seem showy. The specific connection between the two characters is a little tenuous, but Hutton makes the film’s final act (where the two meet) work very nicely. Impressively, you never get caught up in thinking about the technical achievement of the two Huttons interacting, nor does the duplicate actor draw you out of the film. It works nicely, and manages to capitalize pretty well off the building tension of the film’s themes (also: a great death-by-sparrows finale). 

So overall, a win for the world. The film does reveal some of both artists’ flaws. For Romero: overly literal staging, capable but indifferent cinematography. For King, wandering plotlines and overreliance on handy plot devices. But this particular collaboration ends up generally getting the goods out of the story and creating something unique and memorable. As much as I might have enjoyed, say, a nightmarish David Lynch adaptation of King’s work, I have to say that Romero’s guileless directness brings out the underlying nightmarishness about the work which exists beyond the well-staged murder scenes and effective but standard thriller plot. It could have been a great surreal horror film, but as it is it’s something a little more interesting: a film which makes you ask, uncomfortably, how much of the horror is inside you after all. All the scary images we can put on screen will never quite match that odd feeling of holding up a mirror and asking if that’s George Stark looking back.

*Come to think of it, that actually sounds like an entirely fitting metaphor for this world where the force of the government so utterly suits the whims of the amoral wealthy class. I say it’s high time to make some zombie movies using the traditional definition. That would be cool. Less racism this time though, OK fellahs? Everyone’s fine with Bela Legosi having zombie slaves, but suddenly when its a white zombie he’s gone too far? 

**Who I wrongly thought played George W. Bush in that insipid 9/11 Showtime puff piece that Brian Trenchard-Smith directed. Turns out that was Timothy Bottoms. While obviously Hutton should have seen that mistake coming and changed his name to avoid confusion, I would like to apologize for whatever small part I had in this unfortunate misunderstanding. 

***I know, there’s no such thing as too drunk to check movie trivia, just stick with me for this hypothetical example.