All posts by Louis Fowler

Horror

Tenebrae (1982)

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Apparently, Tenebrae is a religious service right before Easter where candles are extinguished in total darkness, or something to that effect. I guess that is a complacent title for Dario Argento’s return to the giallo realm of demonic horror after both Suspiria and Inferno … but I am bad with comparisons. Sorry.

Tenebrae has some serial strangeness coupled with a somewhat meandering plot but, thank heavens, Argento has a keen eye for engaging set pieces and the right amount of gore for the Fangoria crowd — original incarnation — that makes it a real-gone crowd-pleaser and a small-time chunk-blower.

Novelist Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa, who has a strong Christopher George vibe, if you know what I mean) comes to Italy to promote his bloody novel, Tenebrae. He is the type of guy who pedals to La Guida Airport to an international flight with several sexy sirens following in tandem.

Meanwhile, a heavy CPAP-breather is stalking nubile vixens in the Walmarts of Rome; eventually, he murders a petty shoplifter with pages of a book stuffed in her mouth and, of course, takes pictures for additional sleaze. I guess that kind of stuff makes him a bad dude.

Soon, the police partner with Neal after he starts receiving taunting phone calls. His handler (?) and her assistant (?) help him solve the crimes, which is both baffling and ridiculous. But with the sweeping crane shot in the pre-crime scene — you know the one — all is forgiven and the mystery is (somewhat) solved.

Of course, the glassy atmosphere is beautifully stilted, and it gives Argento’s productions that Technicolor shimmer that pops off the screen, better than a 3D movie (but not his Dracula 3D movie). With a menacing tone, while truly silly in some parts, is ultimately one of spaghetti-covered dread that really earns the wholly ludicrous ending.

And what can I say about the phenomenal score of Goblin, Argento’s house band (actually Claudio Simonetti), except that I truly rate it better than the actual movie? Check it out!

While some people say that Tenebrae is that last gasp of this horror master, at the time he had a real death grip on his audience and this film proves that even after Suspiria, he can still slay with the best of them. —Louis Fowler

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Action

Natural Born Killers (1994)

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When Natural Born Killers came upon the scene in ’94, I was all for it, mostly for the Quentin Tarantino connection, but, even with the travesty of The Doors, director Oliver Stone was no slouch. I haven’t viewed it since late that decade, so I thought it was high-time time to reconnect. Sadly, I should have let it stay buried in Hollywood’s mass grave of pretentious cinematic outings.

What once was a kinetic path to demonic satire, is now a try-hard commentary on the beguiling mass-media pandering while exploiting its audience for Hot Topic-heavy merchandise like wall posters in this pre-Boondocks Saints era.

In other words, it had a lot to say about nothing much.

Of course, Tarantino disowned this “story by” script as Stone does what he does best: overstuffing a film with overblown, artificial characters and set pieces, veering the classic convertible to total immolation. Sure, U-Turn was terrible, but NBK made it a special viewing party for the latent arsonist in next bedroom.

With a mixtape-like soundtrack — starting with languid Leonard Cohen’s “Waiting for the Miracle” before double-timing into L7’s “Shitlist” — we start with a diner massacre with all the cartoon buffoons the law allows. Great?

I see what Stone does here — brutal violence with white payback, right? — but it seems too close to caustic lampoonery to take it very seriously, which I did for most of 1994. “It’s art, man!” I’d say defending it, as I would scream until I was hoarse until I became nearly mute.

Wish massive cellblock Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and dreamy nightmare girl Mallory (Juliette Lewis) as our guides, we take on criminal culture with wide-angled lenses, fish-eye perspectives, stock-footage immolation, dark parody slayings and plenty of Stone’s well-worked trampling of the Indigenous people for shock value.

Playing to crowds of preening disciples in fake blood, both Harrelson and Lewis are in a LSD trip to hell, but the acid is bits of paper to look like drugs; the psychotic conventions are too cold-blooded for the stars of White Men Can’t Jump and The Other Sister.

Even then, most of this hollow body count is on Stone’s Karo-splattered shoulders, with too much of Mickey and Mallory’s shocking exploits coming to no rhyme and no reason, with none of the characters, motivations or camera angles to justify the whole thing and its furor.

Or maybe that’s the whole joke?   —Louis Fowler

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Thriller

Don’t Look Now (1973)

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Clearly, Don’t Look Now is a brilliant film in the annals of mind-bending suspense, but also one that is very bizarre and outré, something that sets it apart. Even more so, this giallo precursor was the type of film you could release in the ’70s and win all the awards while being a critical darling. The last movie Nicolas Roeg directed that was a tasteful piece of erotic art was Mimi Rogers’ Full Body Massage. While it doesn’t reach the highs of Don’t Look Now, it’s a classic in its own way.

The older I get, the more Don’t Look Now confounds me and astounds me, leaving me internally terrified that the dreamlike atmosphere and disjointed pieces are so broken, similarly distorted by the sheer realism and tragic finale. And, of course, that ending is a total shocker, even by today’s exacting standards, both graphically and creepily.

Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play John and Laura, a married couple dealing with their daughter’s recent fatal accident. A few months pass, we find them in Venice, restoring an old church. Suddenly, strange occurrences take place, with troubling doppelgangers, blind mediums and, of course, the horrific killer.

An extension of the traumatic loss of the emotionally stunted characters, it plays with the conventions of the stages of grief and mourning, given a paranormal twist by Roeg. With the natural movements in an alien culture, Roeg gives you that xenophobic feeling walking along the canals.

Adapted from the short story by Daphne du Maurier, the movie finds both Sutherland and Christie remarkable in their roles, although Donald struts around like he’s going to an Italian Doctor Who convention. And with a more than shocking sex scene that feels highly animalistic, Roeg brings back my Mimi Rogers fantasies.

Don’t Look Now needs to be viewed multiple times, because I always find another piece of the puzzle—even if it not supposed to be there. —Louis Fowler

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Horror

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (2023)

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I truly liked the 1989 adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, not to mention the rocking theme song by the Ramones. And I kinda liked the 1992 sequel, even if it shouldn’t have been made, but I dug its early ’90s atmosphere, even it if was a broken fog machine with too much dry ice. I was not enthused by the 2019 remake, with good reason: It was a broad, cynical movie that played like I was trapped in a Spirit Halloween shop on the grounds of an abandoned CVS drugstore. Spooky!

And, in the undead spirit of nonliterary gravedigging, the new prequel, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, is more of the rotting same, with 50% more David Duchovny. Thank you? (It’s presented by the Paramount Players, a production company which sounds like an ensemble cast of stage and screen actors brought to you by the DuMont Television Network, but not as sociable or talented. Discuss…)

Set in 1969, the film follows Jud Crandall (originally played by Fred Gwynne, then John Lithgow, but here essayed by Jackson White with no Maine accent) and his girlfriend as they leave town to join the Peace Corps. That seems like a good deal until a bird flies into their car window — and, into the front, a growling, disheveled dog on the road.

Taking the dog to his former friend’s house who just came back from the war, where, apparently, a Miꞌkmaq demon possesses you and turns you into a clinically depressed jerk with a chronically bad attitude. Following a pro-war speech, the dog mauls the girlfriend furiously, or as much as the budget will allow.

Meanwhile, Jud’s friend Manny (Forrest Goodluck) — here they insert some Indigenous teachings that are half-baked, for the most part — finds his sister murdered, then resurrected, albeit zombified. In a series of flashbacks, we learn it’s due to an ancient curse. You should know the one. 

Either way, the last 15 minutes are so badly, lit I couldn’t tell what was happening. Sometimes, dead is better than an unlit film, even if it premieres on a streaming service?

Sure, it seems like these movies are part of some Injun sideshow, featuring stereotypical use of the Indigenous tribe; once again, the Miꞌkmaq tribe and their stories are used in a degrading way. But what about how Samantha Mathis, who I thought had been dead for years, is wasted in a nearly wordless role.

Sometimes, with Bloodlines … ah, never mind. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Documentary

Moonage Daydream (2022)

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Of all the notable deaths in the past decade, I still haven’t got over the demise of David Bowie. Even though his corporal body was given to a higher power — whatever that power is — his true testament is the art he created for the world, be it music, film or, as we soon learn, paintings.

A cinematic obituary wasn’t enough for Bowie, but director Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream deliberately tries and, in the end, virtually succeeds in giving the world a succinct portrait of the man and the many different masks he wore, starting with a true space oddity.

Bowie’s sound and vision collide in the electronic dirge of “Hallo Spaceboy” and working from here, there and anywhere; apparently, there is no linear time in this cinematic pool. With beakers and test tubes swirling around him, the androgynous facade makes its way into the dawn of Ziggy Stardust and beyond. And like an ever-changing spider from Mars, he slithers and recoils past the Thin White Duke, later emboldened with the junkie Kraftwerk periods, with a little man who fell to Earth in between. Blue, blue, electric blue, surrounded with his coke spoons and heroin drips, the late ’70s are a complete haze of sobriety.

With his schizophrenic brother and sleepy mother in their well-tooled coffins, riffs of lilting heroes (we can be them, you know) placate the creation of plastic pop that devolved into the 1980s and the great isolation that same with it. But, after a few years of intense solitude, he became an industrial icon and well-rounded artist well into his death in 2016.

I have purchased this documentary on two separate occasions: once, after my debilitating stroke, and now, as part of the Criterion Collection. After each and every screening, it plays more like a masterwork of one man’s life, with layers of complexity that take the good and the bad, with no narration or talking heads. Even though we will never truly know Bowie, Morgen gives us the whole kinetic picture, albeit covered in spacey debris.

Truly remarkable in its dreamlike way, Moonage Daydream is an open-curtain, open-air market to the life of this artist, with every persona, character and alter ego cataloged for further inspection. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.