by Oscar O’Sullivan

Monday – Play Misty for Me

Clint Eastwood was best known for playing cowboys and cops, so of course the logical choice for his directorial debut was this, a thriller where he plays a radio DJ tormented by a superfan who won’t take no for an answer. Eastwood’s deep, even tones make him surprisingly convincing as the host of a smooth jazz and poetry programme, while his usual brand of surly masculinity is perfectly suited to the drama of the dual romantic plotlines – he’s too emotionally unexpressive to convince the girl he wants to stay, or to get his unwanted suitor to buzz off. In classic stalker fashion, by the time he realises how much of a maniac Jessica Walker’s character really is, it’s far too late to break it off gently, with his escalating attempts to get her out of his hair causing increasingly violent outbursts that begin to spill over into his professional life. While this may sound like a traditionally high-octane thrill-ride, the film is actually anything but, luxuriating in itself as it floats unhurriedly towards the inevitable conclusion. Even when a burst of violence temporarily raises the film’s pulse, Clint has no problem turning on his heel and slipping right back into the hangout comedy vibe that really dominates the tone – see Clint’s bloody and battered maid weakly quipping that she’ll be charging double to clean up his utterly wrecked house as she’s carted away on a stretcher. None of the tonal shifts or lengthy asides feel like they clash or detract from each other because the film makes no bones about playing things fast and loose. It really does offer up a little bit of everything – comic police procedural, darkly humorous ‘woman scorned’ dramatics, concert documentary (yes, really), Giallo-style slasher scenes and an almost parodically tender love montage set to ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’. Maybe it doesn’t excel at any one of it’s many offerings, but you can’t say it doesn’t offer bang for your buck. 8/10.

Tuesday – Young Frankenstein

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Young Frankenstein is positively rolling out the red carpet for its inspiration. The obvious reverence for horror classics that permeates the film is both a strength and, at least from where I’m standing, a weakness. The specificity and the accuracy with which scenes and settings are replicated (to the point of securing the original 1930s sets and props) puts the film on par visually with the Universal horror classics, which in my opinion should be a pre-requisite for parody – any mockery rings hollow if you’re not capable yourself of matching the craft you disdain. But therein lies the rub, with Brooks’ love and affinity for the Monster Movie holding the script back from being in any way mean about it. While much of the humour is still top shelf stuff that any film would kill to have, I felt there was a strange lack of specificity that wasn’t present in, say, Blazing Saddles, a Mel Brooks genre parody that wasn’t afraid to really tear chunks out of the source material. When it cuts loose and plays with absurdism, it’s pretty magical – Gene Wilder dancing up a storm with the monster, Igor’s hump randomly changing side between scenes, everything that happens with the lurching wooden-armed constable – and there’s not a minute goes by without at least a chuckle-worthy one-liner. Would probably hit harder if I knew either more or less about Universal Frankenstein films. 7/10.

Thursday – Hell of a Difference

Extract from 2019 New York Times interview with John Krasinski

The two men were at Krasinski’s house for his 30th birthday party discussing a movie Krasinski had just seen. Krasinski told Anderson, “It’s not a good movie,” to which the “Phantom Thread” director nicely chastised him.

“He so sweetly took me aside and said very quietly, ‘Don’t say that. Don’t say that it’s not a good movie. If it wasn’t for you, that’s fine, but in our business, we’ve all got to support each other,’” Krasinski said. “The movie was very artsy, and he said, ‘You’ve got to support the big swing. If you put it out there that the movie’s not good, they won’t let us make more movies like that.’”

Friday – Shivers

Whenever I see ads for those custom-built idealised communities where everyone is your neighbour and you don’t even have to go anywhere for the shops or whatever, I have to imagine that living somewhere like that, once the novelty of the convenience wears off, would drive you sort of mad. That’s exactly what happens in Shivers, a futuristic Canadian apartment building falling into anarchy as the residents become debauched lunatics. Of course, the idea that this “modern” way of living is to blame is only subtext for the film, with the true cause of the insanity plague being goofy little worm puppets that we see knocking over screaming victims, who then become insatiably lusty drones infecting anyone else they can get their hands on. The film cuts between the lives of various residents as the plot is set up – the young couple who’ve just moved in, a wife worried about her increasingly ill husband, the resident doctor beginning to piece together that something is afoot – before narrowing it’s scope for the finale as the last survivors try to navigate the maze of halls and elevators where hundreds of zombie-like neighbours claw and scrabble for their very souls. It’s exceedingly simple, maybe even kind of dull, but it looks fantastic, especially when the setting is made menacing and claustrophobic during the peak of the outbreak. The sociological subtext elevates a standard zombie thriller into something that demands a little more attention. 7/10.

Saturday – The Brood and Dressed to Kill

Another body horror thriller from David Cronenberg, The Brood is altogether more measured and unique than Shivers, though not unrecognisably different in it’s style and execution. This time, the subtext is even more upfront and important to understanding what’s going on – a woman living in an experimental psychotherapy institute begins to physically birth deformed children that act out her subconscious desires, which mostly involves brutally murdering the people she feels have wronged her. All this is unknown to her estranged husband, who tries to figure out what’s happening and prevent himself and their young daughter from being next. The tangible trauma that their daughter goes through, witnessing murders and being kidnapped by awful little freakazoids, is a clear metaphor for the mental toll that divorce has on children and the strong emotional centre that makes the film more than just a scare-fest. Scenes of gore and violence are meted out with restraint, giving us plenty of time with the characters before we begin to lose them and creating a genuinely engaging family drama beyond the supernatural thriller. I’m not sure how much of what happens is even meant to be surprising, as the telegraphs towards the truth are so obvious – each kill is preceded by a therapy session where Nola vents about the people she resents the most, and no attempt is made to hide the fact that the killer is a freakish child. This is why it’s so important that the film works emotionally, creating stakes and investment beyond the anticipation of a reveal. Like if a Noah Baumbach film ended with the ex-wife stand-in morphing the creature from The Thing. 9/10

Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill – Visually? Impeccable. Plot-wise? Thrilling. Morally? Unconscionable. De Palma’s well-documented love for Hitchcock is on full display here as he makes his own modernised version of Psycho, for better and worse. You can’t get much more obvious than having an extended fake-out opening act before introducing the actual protagonist. The film is so open about the source it’s pulling from that it immediately telegraphs what was, in the original film, a last-second twist – that the female killer is in fact a man. This is where the problems begin. While I wouldn’t say the film is trying to be intentionally offensive in it’s discussion of transgenderism, there’s no ignoring how backwards and sensationalist it comes across. The killer’s desire to be a woman is treated as a purely sexual impulse and a symptom of broader insanity – if anything, it’s even more bafflingly offensive than Psycho, which wisely avoided digging too deep into the gender politics of having a man dress as his mother to kill people. It would be easy to say that this aspect of the film should be ignored, especially when everything else on display is so fantastically gripping, compelling and masterfully put together, but how can you ignore something that is so baked into every level of the story, that is discussed at length not once, but twice in the final act? Not to mention that the resulting double-twist of the ending is a slightly disappointing way to wrap up what was otherwise fascinatingly straightforward thriller. Still, I’d recommend it – with the caveat that you’ll probably be appalled by the way it treats a sensitive issue it has no business talking about. 8/10,

Sunday – Possession

A film that has been elevated to the status of horror classic in recent years, thanks to strong internet word of mouth, its visual uniqueness and OTT portrayal of mental issues set it apart from other 80s horrors – it may have more in common with the psychologically-minded “elevated horror” of today than the sort of slashers and freak films it was releasing alongside, explaining how it’s gone over so well with the modern cinephile. There’s also the rarity factor, as it’s by far the most widely-seen film from Polish director Andrzej Żuławski, meaning many who see Possession won’t have any frame of reference for why it looks and feels the way it does. The handheld camera floats through the film like a malign presence bearing witness to the extremely violent collapse of a marriage, as Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani both become increasingly deranged, bitter and violent with each other and everyone around them. The setting of divided Berlin is liminal and eerily sterile, as if the world has been emptied out of all people except some select few who have been chosen to suffer, adding to the apocalyptic vibe that rises to the forefront in the final act. Inner turmoil externalised – the end of a marriage is the end of the world. It’s all plenty distressing even without the overtly supernatural element of Adjani’s monstrous miscarriage creature/satanic lover, an element that is so downplayed and inexplicable that it wound up taking me out of the film a bit – it sort of overtakes everything else and makes the ending very difficult to follow, while also raising a lot of questions about what was even happening in the seemingly straightforward moments earlier in the film. Despite how impressed I was by the cinematography and the rawness of the performances, the story left me cold and unmoved, especially disappointing since it is so clearly constructed to provoke a reaction. 7/10.