Alexx's Journal

Today, Kestrell and I finished watching an absolutely bonkers werewolf movie from 2001 called Brotherhood of the Wolf. It's in French, though a decent English dub is available.*

The story is based on a real historical event, the Beast of Gévaudan, where a wolf-like creature ravaged the French countryside for a few years in the 1760s. Many historic details are faithfully recreated in the film, though it veers into extremely fictional territory as well. It's historical romance, it's horror, it's action movie, it's mystery, it's political conspiracy thriller, it's Enlightenment versus Catholicism, it has all the tropes.

Our hero, Grégoire de Fronsac, a soldier by profession but a naturalist by vocation, has been sent by the king, not to catch the Beast, but to taxidermy its corpse (once caught) for return to the court. But Fronsac has his own ideas about what he should be doing. His independence is evidenced by the presence of his right-hand man and blood-brother, Mani, the last survivor of an Iroquois tribe. Mani is pretty awesome, but he is undeniably a Magic Indian, with all the baggage that entails.

Fronsac has relationships with both a Good Girl and a Bad Girl. The Good Girl's brother is our token disabled character, and somewhat of an antagonist for much of the film. There are more tropes throughout, but I don't need to list them exhaustively (and several are major spoilers).

The horror scenes are pretty effective, and the action scenes largely well choreographed. I only cavil because the final fight in the film *seriously* broke my suspension of disbelief. I can accept a hero handily defeating dozens of minions while shrugging off near-fatal wounds, that just goes with the territory. But that final fight almost edges into anime territory for sheer over-the-top gratuitous weapon-fu.

The film's pacing was... odd. Along with all the different genres, there was some unusual storytelling choices. Several times during the film, a major piece of the mystery plot gets off-handedly revealed to the audience in a scene that none of the protagonists are privy to. One of which is the question common to a notable minority of werewolf movies, "Is there really a werewolf here at all, or is there a more mundane explanation?" I won't answer that for you, but I will say that the answer was complex and surprising.

While set in the 1760s, the story is embedded in a frame set during the French Revolution. This has more significance to the plot than is at first apparent. One of the historical details the film adopts is that the king's failure to remove the threat of the Beast damaged the king's political standing. In an age where The Divine Right of Kings is starting to be questioned, but still official dogma, werewolves can be a surprisingly political issue.

Content warnings: Lots of gore and violence, including violence to and by animals. One distressing (though brief) rape scene. Death of some protagonists. A fair amount of R-rated-level nudity, of both men and women (though for most of my readers, I expect that's a plus). Racism (albeit frowned on by the script). Misogyny in the typically casual French way. Mocking of organized religion.

[It occurs to me, as I compose that list, that this story could be an Assassin's Creed videogame with relatively few changes. Right down to, "The final confrontation is ludicrously implausible."]

Not a great movie, but solidly entertaining. Recommended, with caveats.

* I also had the subtitles on and, as is often the case with foreign films, the subtitles and dubbing didn't always agree on how to translate. Usually in minor ways, but I was struck by a pronoun issue. The dub referes to the Beast as "it", whereas the subtitles use "she". The Beast's gender doesn't much matter to the plot, but I felt it gave a very different flavor to the story.

First things first: despite the “based on” this is NOT Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It has some substantial quotations from Jackson’s text, and considerably more paraphrases and echoes. Nonetheless, the plot, characters, and even tone are all significantly different. While this TV show is undeniably inspired by Jackson’s novel, it is not an “adaptation” in the normal sense.

Despite that, Writer/director Mike Flanagan has yet to make an unsuccessful story. This is the first time he’s made anything of this length (10 episodes of about an hour each), and you might worry for the first few episodes that the pacing was too slow. It is a slow build, but a steady one, as he puts all his pieces in place, including many that you don’t realize were there until hours later. By the midpoint, there were no more complaints about pacing. If anything, some sequences bordered on the too intense.

The show is an ensemble piece. There are seven main characters and many more supporting. Pleasantly, even most of the small parts get their moment in the spotlight. While Flanagan is certainly capable of bravura, show-off direction (one episode features some astoundingly long takes), he’s also fond of giving characters significant monologues where he simply puts the camera in front of them and lets them act. One of them in particular struck both Kestrell and I as the equivalent of Quint’s speech from Jaws; it came out of nowhere and just completely transformed the tone and raised the stakes.

The one thing that I would say is completely shared between the novel and the show is that they both posit a world which definitely contains scary, unexplained supernatural things – but in which the supernatural is not remotely as terrifying as the experience of lonely human beings attempting to connect with one another (and all too often failing). Many of the most harrowing scenes contain little or no supernatural element, just human dynamics taken to extremes.

I admit that I felt conflicted about the final 20 minutes. A surprising (to me) number of the characters got happy endings, to an extent that I don’t feel was quite earned. But that’s not going to stop me from watching it again (after some recovery time). I wholeheartedly recommend this show to the discriminating horror fan, or for fans of highly emotional drama.

The inimitable John M. Ford once said: “Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight.” Of course, the number is far larger than three, for EVERY individual reader has their own expectations and casts their own shadow across the work. Also of course, this is just as true of movies as it is of books.

Today, Kestrell and I each saw a movie that no one else will ever see.

Mindhorn is a fun, silly movie. It opens with a prologue in the 1980s, where actor Richard Thorncroft is starring in the hit TV series “Mindhorn”, playing a police man with a bionic eye that also functions as a lie detector. When the story jumps to the present day, however, we find that Richard hasn’t landed a decent role since. He is therefore thrilled to find that some actual police need his help in a way which he hopes will generate publicity. They have a lead in a murder case – but the suspect refuses to speak with anyone except Detective Mindhorn. Along the way, Richard reunites with several friends (and enemies) who he hasn’t seen in a quarter century. Needless to say, wackiness ensues, and before long Detective Mindhorn is actively investigating the case.

The script is decent, if rarely actually surprising. The actors are engaging and funny. I can recommend it as an amusing bit of fluff on those grounds.

But the movie which Kestrell and I saw was side-splittingly HILARIOUS for reasons which we did not anticipate. You see, it turns out that this suspect who will only speak to Detective Mindhorn demands to be referred to as “The Kestrel”. Which is often followed up by an utterance of “Ca-KAW!” It is quite common for us to take longer than the stated running time to watch a film because I frequently pause it to describe a detailed piece of visuals. It is less common that I have to pause to wait for one or both of us to stop helplessly giggling. Today, there was A LOT of pausing.

ETA: Kestrell's take.

This film is based on a Nikolai Gogol short story from 1835. I had never previously heard of the story, but it was apparently influential enough to inspire about half a dozen film adaptations, of which it would seem that this 1967 one, from Russia, was the most faithful. It’s also a pretty good example of the folktale sub genre of horror.

It opens in a silly mode, with a Kiev seminary about to let the students out for a holiday break. The students appear to be young men in their 20s – at least physically; mentally, they act a lot like boys in junior high. Lots of pranks and little respect for authority. The local town folk view the students, quite correctly, as an emergency on par with a small army invasion.

As the student mob gets further and further from Kiev, it splits and shrinks at every crossroad. Soon, we are left with a trio, the “philosopher” Khoma Brutus and his two friends. They, not too surprisingly, find themselves lost in the wilderness with night coming on. Coming across a farm, they pound on the gates until an old lady reluctantly agrees to give them shelter for the night, albeit in three separate resting places.

Brutus beds down on some hay in the barn, but doesn’t get to sleep very much. The old woman comes in and approaches him with an extremely suggestively leer. Brutus attempts to put her off from what he assumes our sexual advances. He’s in for a surprise, though. She hypnotizes him, climbs on his shoulders, forces him to run through the countryside – and then to fly above it! Yes, the wizened old crone who looks like a witch actually IS a witch.

After some time of this, the flight is interrupted (I think by a black cat crossing their path) and they fall to earth. Brutus picks up a stick and proceeds to cudgel the witch within an inch of her life. At which, the old crone transforms into a beautiful maiden, who continues to lie on the ground moaning. This is too much for Brutus, and he flees back to the seminary, even though holiday has just begun.

The seminary proves to be no refuge for him. A wealthy landowner (and patron of the seminary) sends word that his beautiful daughter is mysteriously ill and has specifically requested Brutus to say prayers over her for three nights. Brutus does NOT want to go along with this, but no one involved is interested in giving him any choice. So, a bunch of peasants from the farm head back with him, pausing along the way to spend a night in a pub and drink a lot of vodka. There is a LOT of vodka drunk in this movie. (Digression: It reminded me of an old storyteller meeting where one of our number was discussing the lessons she had learned from reading a tome of Russian folk tales. “In a Russian folktale, if you have lost everything you own in the world, the first thing you must do is get blind stinking drunk. Corollary: in Russia, vodka is cheaper than dirt.)

Arriving at the farm, Brutus finds that the aristocrat’s daughter looks suspiciously similar to the transformed which he beat up. Oh, and by the way, before he got here, she died. Not that that lets Brutus off the hook. The nobleman insists that he will pray three nights over her corpse in the nearby church. (As Kestrell says, one of the great things about the horror genre is that you can die early in the story, but still be a major character.) If Brutus complies with this demand, he will receive 1000 gold pieces; if he refuses, 1000 lashes. And to make doubly sure, he will be locked inside the church.

The first night arrives. The church has some beautiful artwork, but on the whole is fairly run down, with lots of cobwebs in the corners. It is also infested with cats, leading to a few well done literal cat-scares. But Brutus gets over his skittishness, lights a bunch of candles, sets up his Bible on the lectern, and begins to pray aloud.

He hasn’t been praying for very long before the lid flies off of the coffin, and the beautiful but pale-as-death woman sits up, in a manner presaging Michael Myers. Brutus is understandably terrified, but it transpires that he has learned a thing or two in the seminary. He very quickly draws a chalk circle about his lectern, and proceeds with his (panicked) prayers. The circle seems to protect him both physically and visually. The witch cannot see him, though she eventually tracks him down by touch – to the extent that she hits the invisible force field of the circle. She pounds upon it with all her might, but to no avail. Brutus prays and prays and prays, and at last the cock crows, the witch returns to her coffin, and the farmhands unlock the church.

Brutus doesn’t actually tell them what happened. Perhaps he’s worried they won’t believe him. Perhaps he’s worried that they’ll blame him for beating the witch in the first place. Probably, though, just doesn’t want them to think he’s scared. After all, he is a Cossack by blood, and Cossacks fear nothing! They DO, however, indulge in a great deal more vodka before going back for night two, as well as hiding a bottle in their robe.

The second night starts in a fairly similar fashion. Only this time, instead of getting out of her coffin, the witch levitates her coffin and rides around it. After a while, she even stands up in it, thus looking a bit like an undead Silver Surfer. She alternates between zooming around the church in dizzying circles, and RAMMING the chalk circle force field with the coffin. Brutus does a lot more gibbering then praying, but manages to hold out until cock-crow. The witch has tried to curse him, with partial success. He does not go blind, but his hair does turn instantly white.

On his way back to the farm, Brutus dons a goofy fur hat, so people don’t immediately realize what’s happened to him. On arrival, he demands music at once! A peasant pulls out a pipe, and Brutus begins to do a goofy Cossack dance, presumably to prove to himself how not-afraid he is. But his hat falls off, and all the peasantry are shocked to see his white hair.

For night three, the witch pulls out ALL the stops. If he can’t beat him alone, she’ll bring help. She summons forth disembodied gray arms that emerge from the walls and the floor. She summons vampires, werewolves, skeletons, ghouls, gargoyles and all manner of unpleasantries. The level of special-effects technology is not very advanced, but the artistry with which that tech is used is pretty great. As are the practical makeup effects; no two of the monsters are identical. This out-in-the-country church is not very big, and now it is FULL of revenants. But they still can’t break the protective circle.

At last, the witch decides to summon… VIY! Even the other monsters are scared when they hear his name! The thumps of his footsteps are audible as he approaches the church door. It opens, and he strides in – an immensely broad humanoid figure, with a huge head but no neck as such. Notably, his huge eyeballs are covered with enormous flaps of skin that reach down to his chin. “I cannot see anything. Lift up my eyebrows.” Two of the vampires do so. Brutus, against his better judgment, looks at Viy. When he sees Viy, Viy sees him, which apparently breaks the power of the circle. Monsters leap upon Brutus from all sides, burying him completely beneath them.

Sadly for them, however, the monsters are having so much fun that they lost track of time. The cock crows. The monsters flee for the windows, but mostly die half out of them. The witch reverts to her crone form, and lies back upon the altar, hopefully never to rise again. Since this is a RUSSIAN story, Brutus also fails to rise, having apparently died of fright.

That’s the main outline, though I’ve certainly left out a bunch of detail. There’s some great scenery, nifty historical costumes and scenes of peasant life. The lead actors are fantastic; even without subtitles I’m sure one could follow the plot from the action and facial expressions. And the final night has some virtuoso (if low-tech) effects work. Recommended.

Girl Asleep is a delightful recent entry in the sub genre “girl on the cusp of womanhood who is confused by her changing life (and body) and learns to deal with it via a fantasy universe”, like Labyrinth and Mirror Mask. (I’m sure there must be more examples, but I’m having difficulty recalling them. Anyone want to add to the list?)

This particular girl, Greta, is growing up in Australia in the late 1970s. This is, in itself, more than a little fantastical, and the boundaries between the real and the visionary remain porous throughout the film. (I particularly liked the “integrated captions” for the scene changes, such as focusing on a bucket of fried chicken with a logo on the side reading “later that day”.) Her mother means well, but doesn’t understand her introvert daughter. Her father is little better, and over indulges in dad jokes (and an impressively 70s ‘stache). Her older sister is clearly thinking about moving out and has a dangerously sexy boyfriend. The family has moved to a new town, so Greta has to deal with the new school and all that entails. The only kid at school who seems to want to be friends with her is incredibly dorky (and adorbs). But a gang of archetypical “mean girls” also offers her membership – with unclear but intimidating strings attached. And then mom takes it into her head to invite all her little classmates to Greta’s 15^th birthday party. The horror, the horror!

The party starts out okay, but piles stress upon stress until either reality or sanity fractures (there’s enough ambiguity that you may have your pick). Greta becomes lost in the woods, which are inhabited by wonders, but also by Big Bad Wolves. (And a friendly huldra. Don’t see too many of them around…) It all comes to a head in a climactic battle that I was quite charmed by, alternating seamlessly between hair pulling and pillow fights on the one hand, and advanced martial arts movie moves on the other.

The story had its genesis as a stage play, but the film fully embraces the possibilities of its new medium. While the film doesn’t seem to have a huge budget, it used that budget to excellent effect, creating many beautiful and memorable images. What I think it brings most from the stage is a “theatrical” sensibility, where the creative staff are willing to trust the audience’s suspension of disbelief, presenting images that work on multiple levels simultaneously, and respecting the audience’s ability to interpret. Both Kestrell and I were reminded of the excellent work of Lifeline Theater in Chicago.

It’s available on DVD and on Amazon video. Highly recommended.

I found this film on YouTube (split into 12 parts, not sure why) as part of my great Thelma Todd binge. She’s only got a supporting role in this one as “the bad girl rival”, but does quite well in it. The film stars Charles “Buddy” Rogers, one of Todd’s classmates in acting school, and the only other member of her class to have a significant Hollywood career. Nancy Carroll plays the female lead, a local golf champion in competition with Thelma Todd for both trophies and for Rogers’s affection. The lead couple aren’t called upon to do much of a dramatic range, but do carry out their roles pleasingly. Also notable in the cast is a pre-Tin Woodsman Jack Haley, whose face I did not recognize but whose voice I did, in an extremely silly role. Matching him in silliness is Zelma O’Neal; the romance between her and Haley is delightfully off-kilter.

O’Neal and Haley had both been in the Broadway show that this film was based on. With a well tested story, and some of the actors already very familiar with their roles, I found the film more successful than the average of this era.

Of technical interest, this is one of the very first Technicolor films. They were still working the kinks out, so the whole thing has a fairly muted palette, but the history-of-technology geek in me found that neat to see.

In addition to the romantic comedy, it’s also a musical, mostly using pre-existing pop music of that era. The songs are well sung, if not enduring classics. Most of the choreography is either quite restrained, or looking very much like a stage number that was filmed. That said, there is one bizarre exception. A production number late in the film (section 8 of the split up YouTube version) “I Want to be Bad” starts out with some fairly nifty pyrotechnics and what could plausibly be practical effects. But it just keeps going more and more over the top, with angels descending literally from heaven and getting caught in the flames of hell, cupids in the clouds summoning astral fire engines, and things like that. I have to wonder if they borrowed young Busby Berkeley to choreograph that section. If they didn’t, I have to believe it was an influence on him.

Overall, a pleasant bit of fluff, and mildly recommended. But Sovay, you should at least check out that one song.

Thelma Todd has a fairly small, thankless role in this as a tough society dame who has the misfortune of not being nearly AS tough as headliner Clara Bow. But Bow, in her apparently-best talkie role, is riveting. In this, her penultimate film role, she demonstrates that she definitely still has IT.

The story is purely melodrama, but it is pre-code melodrama, with lots of room for implied salaciousness. Bow plays a young lady named Nasa, who has a fiery temper and a wide emotional range. By the time she’s out of finishing school, the tabloids have nicknamed her “Dynamite”, and she’s earned it. Her character arc brings her all over the map; from rich society girl, to destitute single mother prostitute, back to riches, and finally (perhaps) true happiness with the one who quietly loved her all along. Along the way, she rides horses (and men), whips rattlesnakes (and men), has knock-down drag-out fights with Thelma Todd (and men), and enjoys lots of offscreen sex with men (just men, though I gather the original novel had rather more range).

One notable historic tidbit: this film apparently contains the first not-even-coded depiction of gayness. At one point, Bow goes slumming to a cabaret with mincing waiters singing a saucy song about sailors! Like many incidents in the film, it’s hideously offensive by modern standards, but historically interesting.

I can’t say it’s a GOOD film, but I mostly enjoyed it.

This is the FIRST movie version of the Hammett novel, now known basically as a footnote to the legendary classic remake in 1941 starring Humphrey Bogart. I watched it because of a Thelma Todd part, which turned out to be a poor reason, as her part is small and without much scope (Mrs. Archer). On the other hand, as a piece of comparative storytelling it was FASCINATING!

In this case, the interesting comparisons are largely to be found in the acting and direction. Both sets of writers wisely realized that the source material was sufficiently strong that it didn’t so much need to be adapted as transcribed.* The screenplays are not identical, but each of them takes about 90% of their plot, and even dialogue, directly from the novel. With so much the same, the differences are starkly highlighted.

The biggest difference is in the character of Sam Spade himself. While Bogart would focus on a cynical world-weariness, Ricardo Cortez spends more time grinning than not. He seemed to me to be saying, “YOU characters may think you’re in a gritty crime novel, but I’M in a romantic sex comedy!” Emphasis on the sex; this pre-Code Spade is a complete slut. He spends a lot more time getting laid (and thinking about getting laid) then Bogart. Our first view of this Spade is in silhouette, through his office door, smooching a VERY satisfied client; he then returns to his inner office and straightens up the disarranged pillows of his sofa. Bogart may have slept with Mrs. Archer, but he gave the impression that it was under duress; Cortez also breaks off with Mrs. Archer, but only because she has become inconvenient, not because he has any objection whatsoever to sleeping with his partner’s wife. Cortez is certainly capable of being tough or serious; he just does so as little as possible.

This lighter-hearted Spade plays excellently well against Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly (this version dispenses with the multiple aliases of the femme fatale). In fact, Daniels is the one actor who I would say did a distinctly better job than their 1941 counterpart. This is no great surprise, as I think Mary Astor is the weakest element of that version. Daniels is more obvious in her duplicity, but also significantly more vivacious and seductive. Cortez’s Spade knows enough not to trust her from the start, but obviously also thinks that she is sufficiently hot that he is more than willing to go along with her for the time being. It’s tawdry, but it makes obvious sense, something that their relationship in the 1941 movie never did for me.

On its own merits, as a pre-Code proto-noir, this is a fine little film. It’s not an enduring classic like the 1941 version, but you knew that.

Of course, having watched two versions, now I’m going to have to go watch the in-between 1936 version, Satan Met a Lady, starring Bette Davis. No doubt I shall report back…

* Kestrell and I refer to these as “gift stories”. As in, “You were given this as a gift; all you had to do was not throw it away.” I’m not always a purist when it comes to adaptations, but when you’re given perfect source material, have the sense to recognize it. Case in point being Treasure Island, which is been filmed a dozen times at least, but only a couple of them had the sense to just tell the story they were given.

What a delightfully odd film! When I first read the Netflix summary, I thought it contained grammar errors. But no, it was merely a case of trying to describe an extremely convoluted structure in a small number of words. Luckily, I have no such space restriction here.( Read more... )