Forgotten Giallo: A Killer's Hands Fall Quiet on the Keys

In 1979, a piece of giallo cinema made its rounds on the Italian film circuit and then found its way across the ocean for a brief run in the United States. Less than a year later, a studio fire in Turin, Italy destroyed the master print, sealing its fate for future audiences.

The film was Un assassin silenzioso cadere le mani sui tasti (or A Killer's Hands Fall Quiet on the Keys), and those who were lucky enough to see it claim it to be a masterpiece of giallo. Today, all that is left are writer/director Michele Sene's notes concerning the film, a badly burned copy of the original script, and the recordings of screen composer Carlo Connetti's emotive and unsettling original score.

The film itself concerned a string of serial killings in New York City in the late 70's (carrying on the tradition of Italian filmmakers finding a fascination with the mythology of violence on major American cities). Jack, a young concert pianist, (played by a then unheard of Robert Gold) begins to suspect that he, operating in a state of parasomnia, may in fact be the killer. Tensions rise as the body count climbs, and authorities -- especially Detective Simonetti (played by veteran Italian action star George Paul) -- refuse to believe that Jack is murdering people in his sleep. However, as Simonetti and Jack's lover Linda (the lovely Angela Melani), begin to look closer and closer into Jack and his past, it becomes apparent that no one, not even Jack, are prepared for the answer behind the slayings.

Un assassin silenzioso cadere le mani sui tasti has almost been forgotten, and it wasn't until composer Carlo Connetti started a Soundcloud account with some of the cues from the film that information regarding this complex journey into the giallo style has begun to surface. Connetti's page, complete with 6 cuts from the film's score can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/carloconnetti  

Connetti's score is comprised of the traditional Italo-electro style one would expect from a giallo in the late 70's and early 80's. Most telling is the heavy use of a single Roland TR-707 drum machine to provide the compressed backing rhythms. Faster cues like the upbeat funk of "Pursued by the Killer" give way to the reverb-washed space of "Jack and Linda" showcasing the versatility of the drum machine while still maintaining a cohesive sound. The electric piano found throughout the score is similar to the sound of a 1977 Rhodes, but is more likely a polyphonic synthesizer built or modified by Connetti himself. His next score, 1982's La luna si accende follia (The Moon Ignites Madness), also directed by Sene, would rely almost entirely on these "homemade" instruments.

In addition to these breathtaking tracks from Connetti, we're lucky to have some of the personal notebooks of Michele Sene in which he writes about the concept for Un assassino silenzioso cadere le mani sui tasti. As we know, when Sene died in 1998, he destroyed many of his papers for reasons unknown to even his wife Adalina. Below are some excerpts from these notebooks, as well as a set of character sketches written by Sene and in the care of DMV Distribuzione Filmirage.

Michele Sene's original pitch for Un assassin silenzioso cadere le mani sui tasti (A Killers' Hands Fall Quiet on the Keys). Taken from the 1978-1979 notebooks of Michele Sene, used with permission from Adalina Sene.


New York, 1977. A black gloved killer is on the prowl in the smaller boroughs of the city. Three dead already. The last, a young Avenue A type, was attacked with unflinching savagery. Pathology reports conclude the killer is the same as the one responsible for the first two women, and yet his sudden jump to mutilation and dismemberment have authorities concerned there is a certifiable madman on the loose.

Jack Browning is a prodigy concert pianist. Despite, or maybe because of, his sudden rush to success and fame, he has trouble sleeping, and often stricken with horrific nightmares. Bizarre things have been happening to Jack lately. He believes he's being followed. He keeps playing a strange and yet familiar melody whenever he is alone in the conservatory. And then, there is the blood.

Jack wakes one morning after a particularly stressful performance to find spots of blood on his sheets and clots of blood and hair stuck between the treads of his boots. A knife from the kitchen is missing, and although he uses it regularly, he has no memory of where it might be. It isn't until he sees the article in the Times, about a young woman -- one of four now -- found viciously beaten and stabbed, that he begins to wonder what happens when he falls asleep. The article said the girl's head was stomped until her skull caved in.

Is Jack, by night, the unwilling vehicle for unquenchable blood-lust? Or is the man in the black gloves tormenting Jack for reasons we can't yet see? Will Jack's love interest, Linda, fall prey to the monster who stalks the streets of New York, or will Jack solve the mystery before more blood can be spilled?

Only if he manages to stay awake….

-Michele Sene, June 1978

Original character sketches by Michele Sene. Used with permission from DMV Distribuzione Filmirage.

Jack Browning: Having grown up in a home where good was never good enough, Jack pushes himself and his talents to the point of physical exhaustion. He often comes home wondering why he plays the piano at all, other than the fact that he's preternaturally talented. Passion seems to elude him. It is only Linda who makes him feel truly human. Jack isn't used to expressing feelings of love and adoration, and can feel stilted at times. He finds that with Linda, his actions come more and more easily each day.

Despite all this he is still essentially a nervous man. He still frets over paying the bills though he makes a more than comfortable living as a well-known concert pianist. We get the sense that Jack is harboring intense feelings of guilt, which take a lot of energy to suppress. His nightmares grow increasingly horrific, and his visions have started to spill over into his waking hours.

Linda Barret: She's been with men before, and they have treated her badly. She's found quiet comfort in Jack, though she senses there is something he isn't telling her. She doesn't believe that Jack is a violent man, and is instead concerned that he may be suffering some kind of mental break. She's had a history with violent men, and has always been able to tell when their veneer of civility and sanity has begun to crack. In Jack, however, she sees something of a different nature happening. Though she becomes, at last, terrified, she is certain Jack is not the killer.

Detective John Simonetti: Simonetti is a hard-nose detective of the tradition of 60's noir, yet with a defeated sense of realism. Much of this comes from his years of working in NYC -- the endless violence, wasted lives. The sudden string of serial killings has awakened something in him. He believes without a doubt that Jack did not murder anyone. He remarks to his former partner that he senses something made from pure evil on the streets, and that some looney kid just doesn't have what it takes to rip a human being apart. Assigned to follow Jack, nonetheless, Simonetti becomes helplessly entwined the murder plot, and plays a key role in the final act of unmasking.

~

Although we'll never be able to see the forgotten masterpiece that is Un assassino silenzioso cadere le mani sui tasti, the reputation it leaves in its place is like an unshakable haunting in the film community. Those who were lucky enough to catch a screening in 1979-1980 still talk with revolted joy about the over the top gore of the rib-cage scene, and recall with a kind of mystified wonder the final shocking reveal and the showdown in an abandoned concert hall.

And while fans of the giallo style still mourn the death of Michele Sene, we are speculating with great interest over a comment made recently by Carlo Connetti in an interview with Gallant Giallo Magazine:

"I miss Michele greatly. We all do. But he is not completely gone. That is to say, he had a number of finished and unfinished works which didn't make their way to the fire before his death. I can't say much about it, but I will say I've been back in the studio lately, and it suddenly feels like the late 70's all over again."

-Carlo Connetti, July 09 2014

Viewer Vomit #11: The Devil Within Her (1975)

Also known as I Don't Want to Be Born and The Monster.

Or, to this reviewer, Rosemary's Omen.

I've seen The Devil Within Her floating around on Netflix for what seems like forever, but never made the effort to watch it. And while I can't say that I'm immediately better off for having watched it after years of checking out the cover and deciding "Nah," I do have some thoughts:

While embarrassingly similar to The Omen and Rosemary's Baby (actually, the movie plays as some kind of half-assed mash-up of the two) TDWH has so many weird quirks it's almost charming. In a nutshell, it's about a woman who is cursed by a male burlesque performer with dwarfism to give birth to a devil-child who is also inexplicably the dwarf's psychic and physical other. If you think that sounds god damn ridiculous, then you're right. But the movie has heart. Like, I get the feeling that someone really thought this was a great idea and sank some cash and personal effort into it only to see the thing completely fall apart when actually put to film. Note that the freaky hand with baby legs wielding scissors on the poster does not make an appearance in the film (awww shucks).

What is completely disregarded, and what made TDWH's two illegitimate parents so affective, is any sense of mystery or questioning on the part of the viewer whatsoever. We're pretty sure from the get-go -- literally from the opening credits -- this baby is some sort of demon spawn. There is absolutely no psychological tension. Instead, the film relies on the notion that the audience will be legitimately afraid of a 4 pound devil toddler in a fuzzy yellow onesie. Unfortunately, we aren't.

So much of it just comes off as completely illogical and impractical that you're never even close to suspension of disbelief. Instead, watching TDWH is more like floating above the movie, wondering how the hell anyone ever thought this would come off. But maybe that's part of why it's kind of fun. It has a habit of moving from unbelievable to downright absurd (picture a grown woman fleeing from a murderous baby whom, due probably to a limited special effects budget, we never actually see), and constantly plays it straight as an arrow.

The Donald Pleasence factor, however, reaches a good 4.7 on the designated 10 point scale. We don't get too much of him, but when we do he's delightfully dry. He looks a little more turtle-esque than he would a few years later in Halloween. He also gets beheaded by a newborn while going on a Loomis-y jaunt through a walled garden, and that shit has to count for something when evaluating a film, right? Bonus points are also in order for casting Caroline Munro, though she's largely wasted. I appreciate the effort, nonetheless.

And that's really what TDWH is all about. The effort. This movie sucks pretty hard, but god damn it, they put in the effort. And because of that, it's an enjoyable watch, if even for all the wrong reasons. My recommendation would be to watch it with a group of friends so you can bag on in. I watched it alone at my laptop and had, I can imagine, less fun.

Oh, and one last thing. The soundtrack was surprisingly lush at times. Very prog-rocky with some great sounding synthesizers. It sort of reminded me of Walter Rizzati's scores (1990: Bronx Warriors, The House by the Cemetery). I went back and looked up the composer, Ron Grainer, and apparently he composed the theme music to 1963's Dr. Who as well as for The Omega Man later on in '71. I always thought The Omega Man had a cool score, so it's definitely interesting to find out it's the same guy. 

Much thanks to The Moon is a Dead World for having me participate in this edition of Viewer Vomit!

Video Vortex: THE ABOMINATION (1986)

The most excellent Alamo Drafthouse, conveniently located right here in the sandblasted nowhere that is Lubbock, Texas, recently began running a film series called Video Vortex. Once a month (?), the powers that be choose a cringe-worthy relic straight from the dusty shelves of your childhood video store and blow it up in full analog glory to appease the morbid curiosities of rabid tape fans. In less poetic terms, you get to watch so-bad-it's-good VHS releases while eating limitless bowls of popcorn and giggling with everyone around you. And, it only cost a buck. Since I'm super cheap (and super broke), that's almost the best part.

Last night was my first trip down the Vortex, and I had so much fun that I plan to make reviewing these films (and the experiences attached) a regular segment in Full Meta Jacket.

So now that we're all on the same page, let's get down to last night's labor of love, 1986's The Abomination.

I guess call the Maytag guy.

The Abomination may very well be, objectively, the worst movie I've ever seen. Don't get me wrong. I mean that in the best way possible, as I totally enjoyed wincing through it. But on a craft level—like, a film making level—it was a mess. The editing looked like it was done on two VCRs and possibly no monitor. The dubbing was almost constantly out of synch with the picture. There was consistent microphone hum, inexplicable, lingering shots of horses, and the most bland, monochromatic color composition I've ever seen. And the acting. Oh, God! The acting!

But the thing is, none of these terrible missteps were more or less terrible than anything else going on in the movie. So in that sense, there was a very cohesion to the whole thing. It was bad, but it was consistently bad in all departments, and therefore curated a certain charm. The audience and I laughed regularly at much of the unintentional ridiculousness throughout, and "Ew'd" and "Hah'd" at the over-the-top special effects. It was a good time all around.

Too cool for school.

Then, while I was watching a woman resembling the poor man's Frances Bay get eaten by a giant toothy tumor that lives in her kitchen cupboards, I had a thought that I've, honestly, never had before: I wish someone would remake this.

Because here's the thing. The idea behind The Abomination is incredibly unsettling and bizarre. And, dare I say, actually kind of frightening. Despite the fact that its production was handled with the finesse of someone peeling an orange with a chainsaw, the story plays into many of the same pockets of fear explored in the body-horror subgenre, while also touching on less tangible fears stemming from spirituality and perceptions of reality.  

It sounds like I'm giving a lot of credit to a shitty shot-on-tape release from the mid-80's, for sure. But I just can't shake the unsettling air that surrounds the premise. Which essentially (and without spoilers) is this:

A woman—both a hypochondriac and an obsessive viewer of televangelism— and her son, Cody, live together in a small, isolated house somewhere outside of Dallas (I think). The woman, convinced she has a tumor in her lungs (and despite evidence to the contrary), patiently and faithfully awaits to be healed by the televised word of televangelist Brother Fogg. One night, while her son is out, she goes into a coughing fit, and hacks ups a bloody, fist-sized, pulsating tumor. 

Returning home late, Cody falls asleep. In the night, the tumor-thing squirms from the kitchen trash and into his room. It them enters his body via his throat. When he awakes, he finds that he is vomiting blood, and soon begins coughing up more tumors. The tumors grow into eyeless toothed mouths, and Cody is inexplicably compelled to murder those around him in order to feed the grotesque monsters.

It ate all my Oreo crackers.

Of course, the execution does a lot of damage to the core concept of the film. 90% of the movie is just people standing around staring at shit, and almost every shot goes on about 10 seconds longer than it should. Combine that with bad narration (a voice-over, for fuck's sake) and all the afore mentioned technical problems, and the original idea, good or not, gets lost in a sea of ineptitude.

But—and I'm asking you to fly away with me to a magical world of Filmatic Ifs—imagine that instead of being shot on a prosumer camcorder and cast with full-on lobotomy cases, this story was handled by someone like Frank Henenlotter or David Cronenberg. I get psychic glimpses of what that presentation might look like, and it gives me shivers (no pun intended). I just can't help but wonder what a contemporary filmmaker might do with the concept if given the opportunity.

And maybe the most obnoxious thing, to that end, is that the special effects that bring the abominable tumor beast (or whatever) to life are pretty goddamn effective already! The thing looks utterly repulsive. And there's something about the way that it writhes around inside of cabinets and under the stove that makes it even more disgusting. Like it's fusing with the house or something.

Anyway, if you have the opportunity, you should check this crap-fest out. And if you live near a theater that's doing the Video Vortex thing (I assuming if it's happening in Lubbock, it must be happening everywhere), definitely get on board. Easily one of the best dollars I've ever spent.
  

Frank Miller's ROBOCOP is the Sequel We Deserved

TP edition of Frank Miller's RoboCop.

 If you're like me, then you don't really give a shit about the semi-recent RoboCop reboot/remake/rehash. I'm not mad about it, like a lot of die-hard fans seem to be. I just really don't care. There is simply not enough energy left in my body to be upset over the endless string of lazy remakes that Hollywood keeps throwing at us. And besides, reviewers generally agree that it's an "OK" movie in its own right (even though I think it's a sad state of affairs when we are praising a film or filmmaker merely for being competent, but that's a different story altogether). Instead, I'm here to offer up a relatively unknown alternative to the remake AND all of the terrible sequels.

The story goes like this:

In the late 80's, comic book writer and artist Frank Miller was at the top of his game. He'd already blown away mainstream readers with his take on the Daredevil saga, which lead him to write and illustrate his own epic adventure, 1983-84's Ronin about a cyborg samurai transported from feudal Japan to a distant dystopian future. THEN, Miller turned his eye for dark humor and gritty, realistic characterizations to the Batman legend with The Dark Knight Returns in 1986. TKDR was an instant slam-dunk with readers, and has since become one of, if not THE, most important pieces of writing in the Batman cycle.

Cover for issue #6, drawn by Miller.

Needless to say, Miller was doing big things in a big way, and by 1990 he was ready to transplant his talent to the silver screen. Enter producer Jon Davison who was gearing up with Orion Pictures to film a sequel to 1987's RoboCop. Having seen the success of The Dark Knight Returns, Davison contacted Miller and asked if he'd pen the screenplay. Miller accepted. And rest is something of a sad history.

It goes without saying that Miller did not find the film making world to be what he expected. While he was used to having almost complete creative control over his comic book projects, movie-making was quite the opposite. His original script was called "unfilmable" by the studio executives. It was too violent, too vulgar, and, perhaps above all else, too bleak. It just wasn't the kind of summer action blockbuster they were trying to churn out. And so Miller's script was treated by a handful of less creative individuals, and eventually became the watered down heap of shit we know as RoboCop 2. He took his name off the project (except for a brief acting credit as a lab technician), and fans of RoboCop and Miller alike were left to wonder about what could've been.

Then, in 2009, Avatar press announced they would be releasing a 9 issue comic adaptation of Miller's original screenplay. The result is a brutal and violent graphic novel which feels way more in line with the RoboCop saga than any of the actual film sequels. It maintains all of the black humor and social satire we loved in the original movie without any of the bullshit Hollywood plot thinner the higher-ups poured all over the second and third films. It has teeth, man. And, more importantly, it's completely true to what we'd expect from a follow up to Verhoven's masterpiece.

Miller's RoboCop was raw and uncompromising. Some have said that the series is perhaps too violent for its own good, that this plays down the effect in some way. I, on the other hand, argue that this level of insanity is rightly earned through a realistic investigation of the degradation of Old Detroit. Do things seems completely fucked-to-the-limit in Miller's novel? Of course they do. But this is as it should be. We curiously never got to see much of the rotting corpse that is Old Detroit in the original film, as much of it was concerned with conspiracy at the corporate level. But the beauty of Miller's RoboCop is that we finally get to see just how bad it is out there. I mean, the police force had to be co-opted, and a fucking actual robot police officer had to literally be invented just to control the rising rate of crime. Why on earth wouldn't it be grungy and violent on page? Juan Jose Ryp's gruesome art is at the top of it's game in this one. Human faces are deliriously distorted and pock-marked. Blood flies in ribbons across panels. Fires and explosions are rich in texture. And, most importantly, RoboCop himself appears as a battle damaged piece of living machinery, the logical conclusion to days spent battling violent criminals with no rest or repair.

Variant cover for issue #3 by Juan Jose Ryp.

I won't spoil any of the highlights of this excellent comic series here, but if you're a true RoboCop fan, I advise you to get out and get a hold of the recently released trade paperback from BOOM! Studios as quickly as you can. I'd by that for a dollar (though it'll actually cost you closer to 20).

AND, if all of this excitement isn't enough for you, BOOM! Studios just wrapped up an 8 issue run adapted from Miller's original idea for the third RoboCop film, RoboCop: The Last Stand. That's right. You can finally stop having nightmares about a non-Peter Weller RoboCop flying around on a jetpack. BOOM! calls it the final chapter in (Miller's) RoboCop saga, and, having just finished it, let me tell you: it's freaking epic. I expect they'll release this one as a trade paperback as well.

So what are you still doing here reading? Go out and buy the book! YOU HAVE 15 SECONDS TO COMPLY.

There's Just One Story: On the Finale of True Detective

I'm being completely frank when I say that I've never been more excited about the finale of a television series as I was about True Detective's. And I'm sure many can relate to that. Not only was I excited, I was worried. Worried that the whole thing might fall apart; that it might disappoint; that it might not do justice to the fascinatingly complex narrative that Nic Pizzolatto was able to spin. Countless people tuned in, HBO GO crashed, and the world was finally allowed to see the complete picture, the whole act. And then came the fallout.


Well, fallout is being a bit dramatic. Rather, it was a kind of non-reaction in general that seemed to hover around the conversations and internet chatter after the finale aired. There were some that praised it, others that said it disappointed, but the majority, it would seem, just felt, well, lukewarm. There was no big reveal, so the speak -- indeed, we knew the identity of the killer in the final moments of the previous episode. And as far as I was concerned, there was no final plunge into depravity like many expected. Marty didn't turn out to be "in on it." Nor was Rust involved in the Lake Charles murder, after-all. Though the "love scenes" between Errol and his half-sister were especially icky, I don't think we saw anything that "topped" some of the more horrific imagery of the series. So while many cannot articulate just what it was about True Detective that didn't quite do it for them (the general sentiment on my Facebook feed the follow morning was "Weird, but interesting"), one can't help but feel like it didn't meet certain expectations.

The "climax of action" occurs with 20 minutes remaining in the episode.

I propose that it has a lot less to do with the structure (and, of course, the ending) of True Detective, but rather a way in which we are subconsciously reading the show and projecting our desires in the process. From the very start, True Detective was praised for its duplicitous nature -- literary in scope, but utilizing the conventions of hard pulp. As readers and viewers of the 20th and 21st centuries, we are in love with anything that tries to take seriously what was never intended to be taken too seriously. And the best examples of these step beyond ironic re-appropriation and utilize something like genre tropes and archetypes in a way through which we see them overlaid with their counterpart figures rendered with a sense of realism. For example, here we have Rustin Cohle: a man with an almost superhuman sense of perception, who, in fact, experiences episodes of insightful synesthesia which boarder on the supernatural, and who appears also to have superhuman strength (he's never defeated in hand to hand combat except when he wants to be, he's been shot in the chest at least 3 times, and was later ripped open by an 8-inch blade). And yet we know that he is realistically tortured in the way that any subject of a realist novel would be after the death of his daughter and the collapse of his marriage. He has vices and, in his own words, fucks-up regularly. His airtight philosophical stance has just enough cracks to remind of us of our own spiritual doubts. In many ways, he reminds us of us.


True Detective is among these best examples, and may indeed be the best of the new wave of "literary television." It's so seamless in its insistence on a singularity built from the realist and genre "others" that we feel we are watching something entirely unique. Not quite television and not quite film, not quite paperback pulp and not quite literature. But as these kinds of hybrids become more and more common in literary conversations, I think it only makes sense to approach True Detective with the same mindset that we would have going into a reading of a film, novel, or poem. The major difference as it relates to the way we interpret (read: accept) the ending is that we typically afford works we can fit comfortably in the category of Capital-L Literature a certain kind of agency that we don't give to different forms of entertainment, either consciously or (more likely) unconsciously. We tend to read things in terms of their selves when approaching literary works, in that we are willing to more seriously contemplate how an unexpected change of pace (for example) works to retroactively change the way we perceive the work as a whole. I don't think we are quite as willing to do the same for a television series.


Sure, we all praised True Detective for its uncanny ability to transform the hard-boiled detective and procedural conventions into something intellectually engaging. It's intertextual, philosophical, and visually handled with more prowess than many big-budget Hollywood pictures. But I believe that unconsciously we weren't entirely willing to let True Detective grow beyond the rather rigid expectations we have for televised entertainment. We want catharsis. We want a twist. We want something explosively convoluted like Lost, or to see Walter White rigging a homemade automated machine-gun to kill a bunch of Neo Nazis, or the Governor sawing off Herschel's head. The point is, we feel we're owed excitement that tops every other minute of the show simply because of the way we are conditioned to read and interpret the experience of television. So when something as quiet as the ending of True Detective happens, we (again, mostly unconsciously) have a hard time just letting it be what it wants to be. We wanted True Detective to be more than the average T.V. show, but at the same time we didn't. We liked the idea that Rust Cohle was human, but when Nic Pizzolatto showed us in the final moments of the series just how human Rust is, and allowed that to be the moment that seals the series, we felt let down.

The final moments of True Detective reveal the true nature of the narrative.

But have no illusions: at no moment during the series was Pizzolatto not entirely in control of the narrative, and in the end, he decided to show us what True Detective was all along: a story about two men who change places, and, to an extent, exchange identities. The murder-mystery aspect of the show, no matter how engrossing, was only the backdrop to the larger, more human narrative. It provided the frame, but was never the boundary. "There's just one story," Rust says. And in many ways, that sums up the point of the show from both a philosophical perspective and the standpoint of a determined story teller.


It was always this, no matter how much you thought it was that.

Punk Rock Horror Show: Five Films from the 80's that Comment on Punk Culture

As punk rock blossomed from a garage movement and into a veritable way of life in the US, UK, and beyond, the production of films by young independents was becoming more accessible than ever. The late 70's and early 80's were a time of unparalleled DIY attitude. Anyone with a guitar and a garage could have a following, and, more and more, anyone with a crazy idea, a typewriter, and access to a camera could create a cult film. For someone like myself who is very interested in 80's counterculture, especially in music and film, it's a great pleasure when these two things run together.

I've always felt that horror flicks and punk rock share a lot of common ground. It's something about the intensity of approach and the expectation of visceral outcome. It's more often than not a high energy affair with the end result hopefully being whipping the crowd into some kind of frenzy. I remember hearing a story when I was a kid about a screening of Craven's The Last House on the Left where an angry and terrified mob broke into the projection booth, confiscated the reel, and burned the damn thing. "What a fucking movie!" I thought. And I'm sure Wes Craven had similar thoughts when these stories/rumors came drifting in. Like punk rock, horror is something raw. It's best experienced in a public venue. It draws energy from the reactions of the audience. It wants to make us do something.

Here is my list of five films that not only recognize the shared blood between punk and horror, but seem to comment on it in some way as well.


1. Return of the Living Dead (1985)


With its ironic selection of punk rock anthems as a soundtrack (The Damned's "Dead Beat Dance" and The Cramps' "The Surfing Dead," among others) and its delightful cast of leather and patches clad punks, Return of the Living Dead is nothing short of the shining example of when punk and horror collides on the screen. It's brilliant because it plays on the themes and tropes that, by the mid-80's, had already becomes stereotypes of both punk culture and the zombie attack subgenre. It's a movie that is so self-aware that it refers to Night of the Living Dead, the grandfather film which arguably made pictures like Return possible almost two decades later, as "just a movie," with Romero having "changed all the facts around" in order to take attention off the real government coverup involving re-animated corpses.

"You think this is a fucking costume? It's a way of life!"

The band of survivors are made up of two distinct groups, the punks and the non-punks. The stark divide of character types, though largely unacknowledged by the film (what the hell was Tina with the bouncy hair and pearls doing hanging around Suicide and Spider?), leads us to question not only the differences between the living and the living dead, but the differences between two distinctly different aesthetic cultures. And ultimately, it offers up a grim assessment of how much our cultivation of identity really matters in light of "national security" and keeping secrets. 


2. Repo Man (1984)


Though not a horror movie, per se, no retrospective of punks in film would be complete without mentioning Repo Man. It's a smorgasbord of cultural throwbacks, jabs at consumerism, and high energy story telling. In other words, it's very punk rock. For anyone who hasn't seen this masterpiece of cult cinema, it's the story of Otto, a gutterpunk turned repo man, and his quest for the white whale: a 1964 Chevy Malibu with the radioactive remains of crash-landed aliens in the trunk.

Otto's too cool to stock cans.

  
Repo Man stands out to me because of its level of awareness. Even though it's considered a low-budget film of cult status, it has a sophisticated level of introspection and investigation not found in many movies. Sure, it's suspect of main stream America and all complacency it tries to sell us (the title and brand of all products sold in Repo Man are one in the same: cans of beer labeled BEER, and so on), but it's also very weary of the other side of things as well. The punk rock movement is held to no lower standard of suspect of its faults and shortcomings. After listening to his dying former friend blame his criminal actions as a punk on society, Otto tells him bluntly that's all bullshit, and that "You're a white suburban punk, just like me."


3. The Lost Boys (1987)


Kieffer Sutherland! Coreys both Feldman and Haim! Vampire punks! Joel Shumacher's The Lost Boys is set in Santa Clara, California, which, despite an ominous sign claiming it to be "the murder capitol of the world," seems peaceful enough. Sleepy residents and boardwalk games. Calm beaches and mild days. That is until we're introduced to Sutherland's gang of vampiric punk youths. There are two things that interest me about The Lost Boys when discussing its connection to punk.

One is the way in which vampirism and punk aesthetic are conflated. Any fan of the genre knows that even in its earliest iterations, the vampiric condition has been represented as an invasive outside element. It's like a disease. Think of Nosferatu bringing the plague rats when he descends on Wisborg. It makes one begin to think about how the eccentricities of punk rock fashion and behavior must've been perceived by the rest of society as more and more young people began to embrace it.

You can't have your pudding until you eat your meat.

The other is the selection of music. While there's no doubt that the vampires are punks, the soundtrack is largely made up of new wave and post punk selections. This leads me to begin thinking about time: both the hyper time-sensitive nature of a "movement" like punk rock, and the timelessness of existence when talking about vampires. It seems a very subtle nuance that Sutherland's gang of vampires would hold onto the last vestiges of punk, a counterculture which in my mind seems perfectly suited to the needs of a vampire, even when their surroundings, and indeed the film itself, suggests the world has moved on. What is time to a vampire? How can something as short as a cultural movement even be comprehensible to a creature who is conceivably harboring eons of memories? 


4. Demons (1985)


Interesting connections concerning time and culture can be made from Lamerbto Bava's Demons as well. At its height, punk rock culture was largely perceived as a threat to our precious youths, our infrastructure, and the status quo. In an endless cycle of future telling, the adults of any given generation see the unusual behaviors of youth cultures as worse than anything that ever happened "back in their day." Lamberto Bava, son of landmark horror director Mario Bava, shows us in Demons that the real threats are those that emanate not from the future but  from the past. True evil is ancient born, and the things about modern culture that we see as threats are little more than passing storms. The film opens as the decidedly clean cut protagonist rides the subway with several of the blue haired and nose pieced loonies we stereotypically associate with punk rock. She is noticeably put off, and, at first, seems to associate the menacing "man in the mask" with the other punks--although he is, as we find out later, an agent of much older and more extreme terror.

Demons are so punk rock.

As if to drive this point home, once all the demonic shit gets going full blast in the theater, a gang of criminal punks enter the scene. Although we get several shots them riding around and acting like hard asses--snorting coke, playing with knives, and acting generally "edgy"--it takes no time at all for them to be put in place by the glowing eyed monsters which stalk the Metropol. So much for the dangers of youth. 


5. Brain Damage (1988)


To round out this essay, I'd like to bring our attention to Frank Henenlotter's contribution to punk in horror: Brain Damage. I'm still hoping for a Blu-ray release of this sometime in the future, as it's one of the craziest films I've ever seen. Almyr is a phallic shaped, smooth talking, brain munching slug. If you want, he can supply you with a blue liquid which gets you higher than you ever imagined, sending you on a technicolor trip of epic proportions. The only cost? Human brains. And lots of 'em.

 

Hi there, Brian!

Brian, a good kid with a nice girlfriend and an interesting haircut, gets caught up in Almyr's brains for good-times cycle, and decides that one of the best places to seek live brains is New York's then thriving underground punk scene. I think this film draws a lot of energy from punk rock's "party all night and sleep all day" attitude, and then parallels it with Brain's disconcerting situation. Couple this with Henenlotter's penchant for on location filming in the grimiest corners of New York City, and we end up with lovely portrait of punk in the late 80's. The ending, to this day, remains one of the most perfectly inexplicable things I've seen in film. Check it out.

"The Pit Wants What it Wants" - A Review of Jug Face (2013)

Jug Face was recently recommended to me by my brother, and based on the title alone I had to check it out. Of course, in my mind, it was going to be the story of the titular character Jug Face, a deformed creature who runs around wearing some kind of milk jug mask. It wasn't, and that's OK. The point being, I went into it completely blind and with no expectation whatsoever.

So what is Jug Face all about? Well, in a word, faith. Absolute blind faith.

A clan of backwoods dwellers worship and answer to a cylindrical pit in the forest. The pit demands blood, and the "seer" (Sean Bridgers) unconsciously conjures the next victim by sculpting his or her likeness out of clay and baking it into a jug in the kiln, thus the "jug face." All's well in the world of the pit bleeders until a young woman named Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter), who's pregnant with her brother's child (another weird and icky touch), finds out she's next to be sacrificed to the pit. Then things go all to hell.

The pit claims another.

It's a cool concept, for sure. The whole thing felt something like Pumpkin Head meets The Wicker Man. The title sequence, which presents the history of the pit and its sacrifices through child like chalk images, had me pretty much sold from the beginning. Plus, I'll hand it to the writer/director, a guy I've never heard of named Chad Crawford Kinkle, for being able to create and maintain a creepy atmosphere surrounding the bizarre family dynamic at play. But, the film had a couple of shortcomings that, unfortunately, keep it from being wholly immersing and living up to its full potential.

It's the effects. Specifically two things: the appearance of the "shunned boy," a wraith of sorts that Ada can see and who warns her of the pit's intentions, and the "trance" like state that Ada goes into, during which she can see the creature from the pit tearing its victims to shreds. These both rely heavily on CGI, which is something the rest of the film succeeds marvelously in forgoing. And... it's kind of, like, crappy CGI. I understand that this was probably filmed on a shoestring budget, but even cheap make-up effects would've been preferable to the cheesy "aura of black" that floats around the shunned boy. Not to mention his digitally altered spooky ghost voice. It came off as a half-hearted throwback to the imagery of movies like The Ring and The Grudge, which I'll admit were never my cup of tea anyway. As such, it just made many of the sequences seem incongruous, and, frankly, outside the world Jug Face had created.

Eh, kinda weak. Plus he looks like Michael Cera.

There's a fantastically low-key ending that, I predict, as many viewers will love as will hate. I personally thought it was great. It's not quite enough to make us forget being pulled out of the experience by certain sequences throughout, but I'd say it's enough to make me want to keep an eye out for Chad Crawford Kinkle in the future. Besides having a pretty kick-ass name, he obviously has a talent for crafting a good horror story. I'm interested in where he'll go next.