Conspiracy of Torture

Conspiracy of Torture (1969) aka Beatrice Cenci aka Perversion Story

Dir. Lucio Fulci

Written by Lucio Fulci, Roberto Gianviti

Starring Tomas Milian, Adrienne Larussa, Georges Wilson, Mavie, Antonio Casagrande

Well, this one was on the same disk as THE WHIP AND THE BODY, and I figured, you know, Fulci, torture, conspiracy, probably someone gets raped, seems pretty straightforward. Meat and potatoes Italian torture porn stuff, the kind of hand-over-the-goods vehicle that used to exist to deliver gore and boobies to troubled teenagers before there was the internet. But I was wrong; instead of the exploitation genre dump I assumed we’d be getting, this turns out to be a surprisingly complex and grim historical drama (based on real events!), not really a horror film at all except in the morbid detail of the torture and murder the film’s title hints at. Not what I would expect from Fulci at all, but he turns out to be surprisingly adept at it.

As is typical of Fulci, it’s mainly an atmosphere-free effort, but a surprisingly strong script featuring a pretty ambitious fractured chronological narrative does a lot to keep you interested. Basically, this is the story of the aftermath to the 14th century murder of aristocratic asshole Francesco Cenci, purportedly by his own children and family. The Vatican honchos investigating the case are certain the whole family was involved, and decide to torture the truth out of them using a variety of colorfully imaginative horrors. They also have a vested interest in the case: if Cenci's heirs are found guilty of his murder, the church stands to gain an enviable chunk of the forfeited inheritance. As each family member is tortured and tells their part of the tale, you learn a little more about what actually went down… unless someone’s not telling the truth. So a little RASHOMON in there, unusual for Fulci if I may be so bold. 

Wheel of morality turn turn turn, tell us the lesson that we should learn

    In some ways this is a simple revenge story; Cenci (George Wilson, DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING) is a true monster, he almost rivals John Huston’s legendary turn as a rich, despicable father in CHINATOWN. There are innumerable great reasons to kill him, but the movie’s interest is in teasing out exactly who did it and why. Involved in the plot are his daughter Beatrice Cenci (Adrienne Larussa, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH) and her love-struck servant Olimpo (Tomas Milian, DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING and... AMISTAD!?), but exactly what they’ve done and why they did it only becomes clear as the flashbacks gradually unfold. It’s a real depressing story of various unspeakable outrages, but by structuring it as a flashback from different unreliable narrators we're allowed to put the pieces together ourselves and figure out how it came to this. It's a pretty rough saga of brutality, cruelty and line-crossing, made all the worse by the complicity of the Catholic Church, who are now engaged in torturing the very people they had previously abandoned to their cruel patriarch. 

'Oh, you got a little smudge on your face, lemme get that for ya.' 'Aw daaaad'

    The story has plenty of interesting little wrinkles in it; there's a really great large-scale foot chase, some seriously fucked up torture, plenty of scenes of memorable depravity by Cenci, conventional asshole stuff at first and then gradually more fucked up. I like that there's a scene where two people resolve to finally kill the old fiend, even hire a guy to do it, and then --faced with the prospect of murdering an old man in his sleep-- can't help but feel bad about it back out, even knowing how richly it's deserved. Apparently The film’s less-than-glowing portrayal of the Catholic Church produced a lot of anger against Fulci (people in theaters shouted death threats, how very Christian of them) but of course, that just makes it more impressive. It'd be easy to make this kind of film today; in Italy 1963, this kind of thing was pretty incendiary, maybe even more so than the explicit sex and violence which would later become Fulci's bread and butter. It helps that it's a true story, I suppose; a little thing like the truth never stood between a religious nutball and his angry opinion before, but it doesn't hurt to be able to say if the Church didn't want to be portrayed as a bunch of cynical sadists who tortured people to get their land... perhaps they shouldn't have acted like a bunch of cynical sadists who tortured people to get their land. Not to put too fine a point on it.

    Anyway, surprisingly adept work from a director who I know more for his accidental bizzaro greatness than his actual proficiency as a director. The acting and production here are both of way higher quality than usual, with some genuinely effective bleakness sneaking past the pedestrian lighting and framing. It’s a genuinely gripping, frustrating tale which unfortunately probably falls into the category of being too gory and exploitative for people who might like a gritty historical drama, but also too dramatic and depressing for horror fans who just want a geek show. But I dunno, it’s strong enough that it deserves to find the right audience somewhere.* So even though I'm definitely against torture and highly skeptical of conspiracies to do it, I can wholeheartedly recommend this one as a surprising, unusual tale from a director I may have underestimated. Aw geez, now I guess I have to re-evaluate ZOMBI?

    *Up til now, it hasn’t even really had the chance; it never had an official American release til this DVD came out a few years back.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No, based on a true story.
  
• SEQUEL: None
  
• REMAKE: There was a 1956 version of the same story by Riccardo Freda
  
• FOREIGNER: Italian
  
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: No
  
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None
  
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: None
  
• BOOBIES: ...I... think so?
  
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: Yes
  
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Beheadings at the end
  
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
  
• MONSTER: None
  
• THE UNDEAD: None
• POSSESSION: None
• SLASHER/GIALLO: None
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): No
  
• EVIL CULT: Catholicism?
  
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: No dolls
  
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: No
  
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Very high, only became commercially available in America recently.
  
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Sometimes you just can't win, and one of those times is if you're related to an aristocratic monster in 14th century Italy.
  
• TITLE ACCURACY: Both conspiracy and torture figure heavily in plot.
  
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A
  

The Order (2003) (ORDER VS. ORDER DOUBLE FEATURE PART 2!)

The Order vs The Order

Part II: The Ordering
(See Van Damme's attempt in the first exciting intallment!)

The Order (2003) aka The Sin Eater

Dir and written by Brian Helgeland

Starring Heath Ledger, Mark Addy, Benno Fürmann, Shannyn Sossamon, Peter Weller

So Van Damme’s THE ORDER is more or less what you’d expect, plus split-kicking while dressed like a Rabbi. You’d think Heath Ledger’s THE ORDER would be pretty much like you’d expect it to be, too. I mean, early millennial studio B-movie with a rising star and an often-frustrated writer-director working in a mostly disreputable sub-genre. Should add up to something akin to UNDERWORLD, maybe like an EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING, right? Sort of dull, drab, uninspired, safe, crappy and predictable. You’d think. But you’d be wrong. This THE ORDER is a really fuckin’ weird movie, it almost doesn’t do anything you’d expect of it. I mean, it is crappy, I guess that part is pretty expected. But not in the usual, predictable way these things go. This is crappy in a weird, alien way, like it was made by someone whose only previous contact with humanity had been through Cinemax Softcore films and Catholic fan fiction.

Here’s the story, I think: Heath Ledger is Detective John Order, a Catholic priest who belongs to an obscure THE ORDER which is frowned upon by the church hierarchy for their delving into arcane knowledge re: demon fighting, etc. Mainstream Catholicism is really embarrassed by their old fashion exorcism-having ways,* which is a little perplexing because it seems like there’s a demon lurking around pretty much every corner here and also let’s face it, by the time you accept the idea of a God coming to Earth to sacrifice himself to himself so he can legally forgive an entire species for a sin committed by the first woman ever, I don’t know why demons are such a stretch. Might as well go whole hog at that point.

Nah I’m just playing, I kid Catholicism, we’re friends. But seriously, with a mainstream religion as wacky as that, you can hardly blame the movie for this shit not making any sense.

What's he buuuuilllllldding in there?

Anyway, point is that Heath discovers that his mentor/adopted father has died under mysterious demonic circumstances in Rome, and the extremely shady Peter-Weller-esque Cardinal Driscoll (Peter Weller) wants him to hoof it over there and check it out. For some reason he also takes along Mara (Shannyn Sossamon, 2002 Teen Choice Award for Choice Film Chemistry) a mentally ill young lady who has just escaped from a mental institution she was placed in after trying to kill our boy during a (botched?) exorcism, and who also wants to bone him but she can’t cuz he’s a priest. And because three’s a crowd, they also meet up with the other guy, Father Thomas (Mark Addy, JACK FROST**) who is allegedly some sort of charming Irishman, in the role of fat best friend. So off to the races they go!

Basically for awhile it’s just your standard detective story, our boys making the rounds, shaking down the local demonic forces for info, meeting unsympathetic figures of authority, visiting crime scenes and collecting forensic evidence, visiting the crime lab (in this case, arcane supernatural bookstore) and talking to the nerds about what it all means. So far so good, but here’s the thing: after some routine evil demon child fighting and shaking down the local nameless malevolent force, our primary suspect emerges, and things turn decidedly strange.

See, the prime suspect here is this guy with the stripper name of William Eden (Benno Fürmann, “Inspector Detector” from SPEED RACER), whose job is that he is a “Sin Eater,” i.e. the movie’s original, less generic title. Here’s what a Sin Eater does: he finds people who normally would be eternally damned by the Church (heretics, excommunicated former members, people who wear linen and wool together, anyone caught in white after labor day etc) and removes their sins, bringing them onto himself. The person is now free to go to Heaven, Sin Eater gets paid, and also it makes him more or less immortal, so he doesn’t have to worry about Hell either. Pretty sweet deal for the guy, pretty awkward situation for the Church, which really, really likes to have a monopoly on who does and who does not get into Heaven.

"Oh Heath, if only you hadn't chosen to forsake the ways of the flesh and devote yourself to God, I would surely make love to you." "Be quite, Shannyn, I'm way into this sunflower right now" 

Here’s what makes the movie so weird: I think this dude is supposed to be the villain here; he does all the usual villainous things, like make speeches about how we’re not so different you and I, murders someone important, associates with known demonic forces, etc. But the movie is surprisingly ambivalent about him. In fact, after seeing him work, Ledger actually seems more or less in agreement with his motives and methods. And of course, it makes sense, because any person with even the faintest hint of a human soul has to applaud anyone that would do whatever it took to prevent someone else from going to hell, especially if they’re doomed to that fate because some asshole church bureaucrat excommunicated them over a political dispute. To wit: Ledger’s own mentor and adoptive father had recently been excommunicated over his quest for knowledge; officially, without some last minute sin-eating, this poor old man was doomed to burn in hell for eternity. I mean, who could possibly support something so horrific? And let’s remember, this is a God of forgiveness; murder as many people as you want, and the Church will still absolve you from your death bed if you offer sincere contrition. The only thing they won’t forgive is you getting kicked out of their club. Fuck that. Suffering for eternity because you opened the wrong book? This Sin Eating business sounds like a real victory for simple human decency. Did you fuckers learn nothing from my takedown of DANTE’S PEAK INFERNO?

That’s all pretty interesting philosophically, but it makes for a weirdly unstructured genre movie. I mean, what exactly is the conflict here? There’s a big conspiracy, but if the conspiracy is all in service of something you more or less agree with, or at least have very mixed feelings about, there’s not a whole lot of tension about punishing the people responsible, right? I guess the Eden part was originally going to be played by Vincent Cassel, he might have been more able to seem sneaky and villainous even while doing arguably the right thing. But Benno Fürmann has a real earnest Jeremy Renner nice guy quality to him, it’s hard not to buy that he’s essentially right. There IS one unambiguously evil guy, but I’m not actually sure what his stake in any of this was, or how exactly he’s involved. It kinda seems like he was involved in this conspiracy part time as a hobby or something, he does have an evil plan but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Heath Ledger or Sin Eating, at least as far as I can tell; he’s kinda got his own thing going and then they randomly happen to learn about it, unrelated to their investigation. They (SPOILER) him in the end, though, so… yay?

Good name for a bakery renowned for their rich chocolate desserts, possibly not such a good name for a movie. 

 

Aside from its weird wandering ambiguous plot, the movie has the unusual distinction of having a script which appears to be composed of 100% clichéd philosophy quotes taken out of context. How else could you explain an incident where a minor character solemnly intones: “Knowledge is the Enemy of Faith. And sometimes when you look into the abyss... the abyss looks back into you.” That’s not a line of dialogue, that’s a fortune cookie put together by a google search algorithm. Apart from being dodgy paraphrases of famous quotes, I can’t help but notice that those sentences have nothing to do with each other. Is knowledge supposed to be the abyss? I don’t get it. Heath Ledger nods gravely, though. Guess it’s one of those little in-jokes between seekers of arcane knowledge.

Also: “Every life is a riddle. The answer to mine is knowledge, born of darkness.”

The movie is full of that kind of thing, just total howlers. Writer Helgeland (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET IV: DREAM MASTER) would be nominated for an Academy award for his MYSTIC RIVER screenplay this same year; I’m not a huge fan of that one, either, but at least no one is throwing around Nietzsche quotes willy-nilly. I guess he was trying to match his characters’ diction to the big, gothic Catholic drama he’s trying to conjure here, but wow, does it not work. Even poor Heath Ledger gives a pretty embarrassing performance here. I think he’s going for naturalism, but given that dialogue you can imagine about how well it comes off. Mostly, he just seems kind of jet lagged and out of it, or maybe like he's trying to play off the fact that he doesn’t speak the language and can't understand a single thing anyone is saying to him. It’s weird, the whole main cast is more or less directly imported from Helgeland’s previous film, A KNIGHT’S TALE, where they’re all so charming and lively. Here, only Mark Addy comes off with any kind of dignity at all, and it’s really only because he’s the only cast member who occasionally smiles.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, whatcha gonna do?

There’s not a whole lot of dignity to go around for anyone; the entire enterprise has an off-putting amateurishness to it, full of awkward edits, listless framing, the whole nine yards. In fact, for much of the runtime it looks like it must have been made for almost nothing, you might even think it was a no-budget indie effort from a few years earlier if you didn’t know better. Occasionally, you do see some money on-screen (sins represented by CGI transparent soul squids, for example. I don’t think I remember that part of the bible) but mostly even if it looks like it must have been expensive they don’t get their money’s worth here, it comes off looking cheap anyway. They do have two pretty nice sets, though. One is a big evil throne room kind of deal (see pic above), lots of good detail there and even a little atmosphere generated solely by the set itself. The other is a set which is supposed to be the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s pretty convincing, as are a couple other fancy Vatican sets you see from time to time. They couldn’t have actually got permission to shoot inside a real Vatican church, right? These have got to be sets, but they’re good ones, real impressive looking and details-rich. So good job, set designer of THE ORDER, even though they kinda squander it by shooting things to look as cramped and unimpressive is they can.

I dunno, man, it’s kinda hard to even criticize this one since I can’t even confidently say what they were even going for to begin with. Is this supposed to be some kind of twisty gothic mystery? Some sort of morose philosophical meditation? A doomed love story, perhaps? A horror movie? I honestly have no idea. For a movie about an Order, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of guiding intent here. Maybe should have stuck with that Sin Eating title, guys.

These are some nice ass stairs. Good job, organized religion.

* Guess the new Pope watched this movie and saw the error in their ways, because…

** The Michael Keaton one where the dead dad comes back as a snowman, not the 1997 one where the dead serial killer comes back as a snowman and rapes a chick with his carrot nose, although now that you mention it they sort of have the same plot except for the whole carrot rape thing. And I gotta admit it’s been awhile since I watched the Keaton version, maybe that’s in there too.

ORDER VS ORDER FINAL SCORECARD:

WINNER: Van Damme, by virtue of at least being cheerful about all this.

LOSER: Anyone who had to watch both films.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? The early 2000’s were a rough time for movies.
WHO WORE IT BETTER? As much as I will always treasure my time with Rabbi Van Damme, you can't deny how fuckin' fly Heath be lookin' with those vestments. Insert applicable alter boy joke here.

VAN DAMME

LEDGER: WINNER

Alice, Sweet Alice

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

Dir. Alfred Sole

Written by Rosemary Ritvo, Alfred Sole

Starring Linda Miller, Paula Sheppard, Lillian Roth, Alphonso DeNoble, Brooke Shields

When adorable, church-going 9-year-old Karen (Brooke Shields, MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN) is murdered by a mysterious miniature assailant wearing a yellow raincoat and creepy doll mask, everyone immediately leaps to the assumption that the killer was her sister, 12-year-old Alice (Paula Sheppard, LIQUID SKY). And well they should, because the evidence is pretty fuckin’ overwhelming. Alice A) favors the raincoat/creepy doll mask combo in her leisure time B) has a history of violent anger towards her sister C) was found less than a dozen feet away from the corpse with the dead girl’s veil in her pocket, and D) is a combative sociopathic psycho. So yeah, the whole case seems pretty cut-and-dried.

The only thing that gives us pause is that Alice’s likeable parents Catherine (Linda Miller*) and Dom (Niles McMaster) seem to reject the idea that their daughter is a killer, and the people who suggest otherwise are all horrible bastards. Since we’ve seen a movie before, we have to assume that somehow this must not be what it looks like, even though man, it really fuckin looks bad for this chick. Even Alex was shouting “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with these parents?!” I mean, nobody wants to believe their daughter is a mask-wearing psycho killer, but geez lady, what does it take to convince you?

I speculate that everyone's problems started when the parents bought this fucking creepy three-faced doll in the first place. What where they thinking, giving that to a child?! Of course this was gonna end badly!

Fortunately, this is a wildly improbable and pleasingly unpredictable little slasher, so you’re never quite sure. Slant Magazine’s Ed Gonzalez called this movie, “possibly the closest American relation to the Italian giallo” and it’s pretty hard to argue with that description. The combination of artful filmmaking, excessive violence, Catholic perversity, bizarre and stylized characterizations and ludicrous plot turns all add up to the unmistakable feeling of an Italian film differentiated only by slightly better dubbing than usual. And I mean that in the best possible way; if this were a classic giallo**, it would still be one of the better ones. There’s tons of weird stuff going on in here, a steady stream of bloody murders, and a distinctly queasy sense of degenerate fun. Both Miller and McMasters are better and more likeable than they have any real reason to try for, but a slew of grotesque side characters steal show, including the shrill-bordering-on-hysterical Aunt (Jane Lowry, who pitches every line at an ear-punishing shriek), the morbidly obese pedophile landlord (Alphonso DeNoble), the militant church lady (Mildred Clinton) and 1930’s star Lillian Roth as a cynical pathologist.

This character is so unappealing you gotta almost feel bad for this actor, who apparently was less of an actor and more of a resident of Paterson, New Jersey, where the film was shot. His wikipedia says that he made extra money by dressing up as a priest and hanging around cemeteries, blessing people for tips. Awesome.

Though at its heart it’s a standard, well-structured whodunit mystery, the film is fraught with weird sexual elements and uncomfortable moments. Unpleasant older men keep making wildly inappropriate sexual comments about Alice, from her nauseating (but kitten-loving!) landlord to the police employee who administers her a polygraph. A police psychologist passive-aggressively suggests that Catherine must not be much of a mother because Alice hasn’t told her she’s begun menstruating. Even the Catholic and conspicuously unmarried parents have a highly inappropriate near-sexual encounter for you to wince over. All this plays out with the maximum possible Catholic guilt and repulsion to sexuality, particularly since everything seems to be tied to the church where the nice-seeming Father Tom presides.

By the way, this is a beautiful, expressive little painted poster for the movie (I think Czech?) which nicely teases the film's central icon...

so......

it's hardly surprising that they went with the below image for the DVD. Needless to say, absolutely nothing in that image is in the movie. Nothing. Not the house, not the car, not the dress, not the woman, not that... whatever that thing is that she's wielding, a sharpened police baton or something? Absolutely 0% accurate.
.

Ordinarily, this is where I would start wondering what these motifs represent, but I don’t know, here I think maybe they’re not explicitly symbolic so much as they’re just part of a generalized campaign to push your buttons and make the whole thing seem debased and repellant. Maybe this is in there to partially explain why Alice is the way she is, maybe it’s even some sort of comment on religious hypocrisy. But either way, the cumulative effect is to make the whole thing engrossing, shocking, and disturbing. This is a film which feels like it was made by someone genuinely unhinged, and you’re never really sure just how far it’s willing to go. Like its namesake, this is a brazen, aggressive movie that you’d rightly be a little wary about. Consequently, surprises and memorable moments abound. America wouldn’t really get bold enough to make too many more movies like this one, but at least in 1976 there were a few people out there willing to give Italy a run for it’s money in the giallo department.

*Linda is not only the daughter of Jackie Gleason, but is married to EXORCIST’s Jason Miller. And mother of Jason Patric, actually; let's hope he was a little nicer kid than Alice is.

** And considering the bright yellow raincoat the killer wears, maybe that didn’t escape the director’s notice either.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2013 CHECKLIST!

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: No, but you know it's coming, don't you.
• HAMMER STUDIOS: No
• SPAGHETTI NOCTURNE: No, but it feels like one
• MORE (PETER) CUSHING FOR THE PUSHING? No, I think Mr. Cushing was working on a different movie in 1977....
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: No
• BOOBIES: No
• DECAPITATIONS OR DE-LIMBING: Lots of slashing, I think limbs stay on, though.
• ENTRAILS? No
• CULTISTS: Catholics
• ZOMBIES: No
• VAMPIRES: No
• SLASHERS: Yeah, a great one!
• CURSES: No
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS? Actually, a creepy 3-faced doll IS a plot point.
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid, well-regarded cult favorite
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Yes, in fact I think she sort of loved it.