Edgar Allan Poe Volume I: Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe Collection, Volume I: Annabel Lee (2008)

Dir. George Higham, Alfonso Suarez, Peter Bradley

Starring Thunderbirds, Paul Naschy

This trilogy of short films -- which I picked up off Netflix because the description said it was hosted by Christopher Lee, which it definitively is NOT -- showcases a kind of interesting idea: a surreal version of Poe’s poem Annabel Lee acted out by puppets. As I’ve pointed out before, the power of Poe’s work lies so much in the artistry of his language that visually depicting them often strips much of their power, but I like the idea of a more expressionistic, less realistic approach. If done well, illustrating his work with animation or puppets might well have the ability to meld nicely with Poe’s evocative poetry in a dreamlike way that live action would have a hard time with.

Unfortunately, this one does not do it well. It does it badly. Astoundingly badly. Let me ask you a question, you like Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee, right? It’s a sensitive, profoundly heartbreaking evocation of the depth of human love, loss and despair, yes? So when you visualize it, you don’t really jump to a garishly lit, Argento-esque gorefest populated by naked cenobites, do you? I thought not. Me neither. Seems like not the best idea, if I may be so bold. But then wait, it gets better, because you also probably don’t imagine the poem being intermittently read (it’s only 6 verses, and the film is 20-some minutes) by a teenager trying to sound like he imagines Glen Danzig would if he read verses from the Satanic Bible. And then you also got someone playing music who seems determined to try every single keyboard tone, one after another. Not sure if this was supposed to be symbolic of something but to me it symbolizes and also embodies being terrible. Not to put too fine a point on it.

Poe is right to look extremely skeptical

Not that there’s not stuff to like here. I mean, the puppets and sets are really well done, in a BEING JOHN MALKOVICH sort of way. It’s obvious that someone worked really hard to get the details just right. Unfortunately the details are just completely wrong for this particular project. Interpreting Annabel Lee as a story of Poe and his beautiful bride (who does not appear to be 13 or his cousin) frolicking happily on a sunny beach, and then having her soul stolen by cenobites, then having him go on a quest to find her and in the process becoming a zombie just doesn’t fit with the themes of the poem or it’s notable style of not sucking. I can only assume that director George Higham has an uncle or something who owns the distribution company, because even if Christopher Lee had actually been in here this is not something anyone puts on DVD. And if they did, they certainly wouldn’t also include a feature-length documentary about the making of the film (roughly three times longer than the actual film) or a mind-blowing two separate commentaries by the director, because why stop at one when there’s so much more to say? Fittingly, there’s also a two-slide written biography of Poe, because, you know, respect.

This is an actual still from the adaptation of Annabel Lee, I shit you not.

Fortunately, the other two short films on this disc are much better. First we have a telling of THE TELL TALE HEART which in typical Poe fashion is completely and utterly unrelated to the actual story, but still pretty good thanks to some nice gothic direction and a fun crazy performance from Paul “The Mexican Lon Chaney” Naschy. Then we have a vaguely film-noiry reading of The Raven, depicted fairly literally but with a decent performance by the young fellow who plays the lead, and a laudably stylized paperdoll raven puppet. It’s a little amateurish in some way (a portrait of Lenore which keep changing expressions feels right out of Where’s Waldo) but Poe’s words are strong enough to carry the day and create a piece which, at long last, gets Poe’s tone right. It’s a welcome pleasure, but definitely too small of one to be worth suffering through Annabel Lee for. Even in a collection dedicated to a true master of sadistic torture, that seems a little much.

PS: Don't take my word for it! Take a look at this highlights reel and bask in the hilarious shittiness!

Or, if you value your sanity, try the Raven instead, it's shorter and possible to watch without your eyes bleeding.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2013 CHECKLIST!

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Yup, three Poe adaptations. Brutally adapted.
• SEQUEL: Looks like the first in a series, judging from the name. I won't be making it to part II.
• REMAKE: No
• HAMMER STUDIOS: No
• SPAGHETTI NOCTURNE: No
• MORE CUSHING FOR THE PUSHING? No, although they falsely promised Christopher Lee
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None. Poe, maybe.
• BOOBIES: Do I remember seeing puppet boobies? Hopefully not.
• DECAPITATIONS OR DE-LIMBING: I think Poe puppet looses his legs. Seriously.
• ENTRAILS? I don't... think so, but maybe. I remember it getting pretty gnarly.
• CULTISTS: Nah
• ZOMBIES: Zombie Poe? Do puppets count?
• VAMPIRES: No
• SLASHERS: No
• CURSES: No
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Really, really high, thank God.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: She literally went to sleep in protest.

From a Whisper to a Scream

From a Whisper to a Scream (aka Offspring, 1987).

Dir Jeff Burr

Starring Vincent Price, Clu Gulager, Terry Kiser, Harry Ceaser

 Yeah, this isn't in the movie

                                                    

Don't you hate it when you're in the mood for a certain kind of movie, you find something that looks perfect, and then it's completely different than what you thought? That was my experience with 1987's Vincent Price horror anthology FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM. I was looking for a little horror film to ease my transition from into the October horror marathon. I was feeling entirely worn out and exhausted, and figured I needed something with a nice Halloween vibe but nothing too overwhelming. Something kind of crappy that I could zone out to but still whet my appetite for the season (the first of October is like the start of football season to the horror geek). I settled on this minor-looking cheapie horror anthology for three excellent reasons.

1: It stars Vincent Price. Price alone all but guarantees a certain unique vibe of macabre but usually overwrought (if not outright campy) horror film.

2: It's a horror anthology. Horror probably has a greater per capita ratio of anthologies to full-length films than any other genre, but most of them are not really all that, you know, good. Even most of the classic entries into that genre are not good. Does anyone actually like anything other than the last segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR? Of course they don't.

3: 1987. That's the same year as ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING. Not a great time for horror films, and even those legitimately great ones like EVIL DEAD II tend towards goofy, fun times rather than disturbing nightmares.

So I figured I had WHISPER pegged. I settled back, cracked open a MD 20/20, and let my eyes glaze over. The film begins promisingly enough with a lady who looks like she was built from the spare parts of 1985 who's being executed in soft focus via lethal injection. A reporter at the scene leaves and heads straight for Vincent Price's house –a sort of museum/library/gothic Southern Mansion, or at least a painting of one-- to ask him what he thinks caused his niece (the executee) to snap and become a sociopathic murderess a la MONSTER but uglier and 80sier. Price is looking very, very old and very, very tired, and halfway attempting a sort of Tennessee accent every fifth line or so in the grand tradition of Peter Cushing's SHOCK WAVES German cadence. The library he lives in looks like it could have been built and lit by Roger Corman himself. Price pontificates grandiosely (albeit in a way which suggest he was too tired to complain about one more take) about how the town itself is to blame for the murders. He tells four stories of residents of the town who have come to bad ends, bookending everything (unnecessarily, he appears in-between the stories as well to rehash exactly what he said before the last one.) Yes sir, this thing was looking like just what I had in mind.

But then something entirely unexpected happened. The movie got good. Not watchable, not better than expected; good good. The first story stars RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD'S Clu Gulager (absolutely unrecognizable) as a tightly wound grocery story manager who pines for a gorgeous but aloof female employee even as his devotion to his invalid sister holds him back. This story has about every ick scenario ever put in a horror movie, including but not limited to rape, incest, necrophilia, murder, cannibalism and terrible songwriting. No problem, except that it's executed to the hilt with a kind of sweaty, atmospheric mix of gritty realism and nightmarish Southern Gothic surrealism. Here's how good it is: when a tiny anamatronic monster zombie appears, you will only laugh a little. And you'll be genuinely unnerved as soon as you see the expression on Gulager's face. It's an upsetting little tale which treats its subjects dead serious and indulges in a pitch-black sense of humor only to heighten the horror, rather than relieve it.

This poster has even less to do with the film than the first one.

                        

The second tale, featuring a fantastic Terry Kiser and an even better Harry Ceaser focuses on a low-life scuzzball who is rescued, near death, by a swamp-dwelling recluse with an unspeakable secret. It's has a low-key sinister crawl building to another genuinely shocking moment, but its real strength is a superb sense of time and place, intelligently milking both evocative beauty and alien menace from its swamp setting.

The third story, the inevitable “weakest of the segments,” is about a carnival glass eater and his would-be girlfriend and their doomed attempt to leave against the wishes of the carnival's witchy owner. It also has plenty of atmosphere and great performances, but it's narratively a bit weaker than the first two, failing to get the most out of its gore hound ending.

The fourth story is not the best, but it may be the most interesting. It finds a group of despicable Union soldiers (who are introduced murdering surrendering Confederate troops without realizing that the war has ended) at the brink of their discovery of a mysterious farm, abandoned except for a curiously well-organized society of war orphans. It's a little BEYOND THUNDERDOME and a little CHILDREN OF THE CORN, and it admirably builds a creepy scenario while cultivating (but not overplaying) its central metaphor about what happens to a society born out of violence which loses track of the context of that violence. Unfortunately, its also the only story which feel a bit rushed as an anthology segment. We can guess where this is going, but the story zips along to the big conclusion without the pleasure of milking the menace for awhile. The other three segments make great, self-contained short stories, but this one probably deserved a novella.

I mention literary equivalents because one of the most intriguing and successful aspects of this film is that it truly captures the feeling of an effective short story. Most anthologies superficially mimic the abbreviated form of storytelling, but few capture the profoundly mysterious quality of the best short fiction, which often isn't so much interested in telling a story as it is at hinting at a story and letting your mind fill in the gaps. The best short fiction suggests rather than tells; few short film anthologies seem to really understand that. This one, for whatever reason, has that lyrical, amorphous quality of cultivating mood and mystery with a few simple strokes and letting the viewer do the work of exploring the dark corners it only hints at. Which is not to say that its some sort of arty narrative-free tone poem; each segment tells a complete story. But what lingers is the shapeless darkness which pervades each story, ties them together, and brings forth something a little more menacing than the straightforward horror show that exists on the surface.

The director here is Jeff Burr, who impressed Vincent Price enough to sign onto one of his last film roles. This was his first big film, but he would on to be a prolific director of shitty sequels to horror films like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III, and sequels to PUMPKINHEAD, PUPPET MASTER, STEPFATHER, and others. Too bad, because here he shows serious promise. This one is intriguing and unique and deserves a place in any horror anthology buff's heart.