Halloween 2020: October 13th

The Hands of Orlac (1924)

Upon release in 1920, Maurice Renard's novel “The Hands of Orlac” immediately resonated with people. It's easy to figure out why. It's not just because transplants and grafting were hot button science topics of the day. “Hands of Orlac” is a story about the human body no longer being able to do the things it once did easily. Instead, the hands – the parts of this wide human organ that we perhaps use the most in our everyday lives – long to do something else, something horrible, instead. This is a rich metaphor, that can be interpreted as about aging, cancer, political revolution, or any number of other things. We know Renard's book was popular because it was adapted to film only five years after its publication. The film would be directed by Robert Wiene and would be his first collaboration with Conrad Veidt since their landmark, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”

Paul Orlac is a wildly popular and successful concert pianist in Austria. On the way home to meet his wife Yvonne, he's caught in a train crash. He lives through the wreck but his hands are horribly crushed. At his wife's insistence, Orlac's doctor goes through with an experimental transplant procedure that grafts new hands onto Orlac's wrists. While going through the recovery process, wondering if he'll ever play piano again, Paul receives some upsetting news. His hands came from an executed murderer named Vasseur. His mind is obsessed with the fear that his new hands will drive him to kill. Moreover, he begins to see evidence that suggest he might have already.

Wiene's “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” brought expressionism to cinema and, in the process, completely changed the horror genre forever. You could make the argument that “Caligari” essentially birthed the horror movie. With “The Hands of Orlac,” Wiene would fuses the naturalistic approach with the expressionism that made him famous. This is, in fact, a theme of the film. Orlac feels overwhelmed with the idea that something strange and macabre is happening to him, that his hands are driving him to kill. This stands in contrast to those around him, who assure him that this is impossible. This is visually displayed by the nightmare images we see clouding Orlac's mundane world. He has a nightmare of Vasseur's face glaring at him, of a huge hand grasping at him. In the scene where he reads the old newspaper confirming Vasseur's crimes, we see the entire world around him grow blurry. The director cooked his style into the plot of the film.

The expressionistic touches are cool and grow as the film goes on. Unfortunately, the naturalistic touches dominate “The Hands of Orlac.” After the train crash, we get a long montage of people rushing around the ruined trains. We see almost every step of Orlac's recovery, with many scenes of him sitting in his hospital bed or moping around his home, depressed and overcome by his fears. There's even a very meandering subplot centered around the Orlac family running out of money, and Paul and his wife forced to beg for cash from his hateful father. This results in glacial pacing. “The Hands of Orlac” is honestly boring for most of its 112 minute runtime, events grinding by as slowly as possible. The realistic side triumphs in the end too, every strange thing that happens having a perfectly reasonable explanation.

“The Hands of Orlac” is so uneventful for most of its runtime, that it's hard for me to find too much I like about it. However, the expressionistic scenes are really cool. There are a number of very fascinating images, such as Orlac's hands leading him in a trance through a hallway, approaching the camera more and more. Mostly, the film is worth seeing because Conrad Veidt gives a fantastic performance. As always, his eyes and body language convey every necessary emotion. We can see the despair, anxiety, and horror in his eyes, in how he moves his arms and legs. The scene where he collapses after rising out of bed, after getting the news of where his hands came from, is a masterclass in mime. And, yes, there is a lot of hand acting in the film, as you'd probably expect.

There's fantastic material inside “The Hands of Orlac.” A scene where Paul sits down at his piano and attempts to play but finds his hands literally unable to do so is quietly affecting. So is a similar moment, where the family maid attempts to seduce Paul – there's a plot reason for that – but is disgusting by how “wrong” his hands feel. There's a hundred feelings and meanings you can read into these scenes. However, far too much of “The Hands of Orlac” resides solely in the waking world. The movie needed more of the nightmare logic that made “Caligari” a masterpiece. Ultimately, there's not much material in the story of a man afraid of his own hands. No wonder the superior remake, “Mad Love,” would center the story on the villain engineering the plot. (I haven't seen the 1960 version but hear it did something similar.) [5/10]

Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled (2002)

It's unlikely anyone looks back on the direct-to-video horror scene of the early 2000s with much fondness. Video stores were still hanging around and DVD was exploding in popularity. The release of “The Blair Witch Project” opened the floodgates for low-budget, digitally-shot trash. Companies like Lionsgates and Artisan Entertainment – who distributed “Blair Witch” – were more than willing to capitalize on these trends. Artisan was so confident in the the popularity of the “Wishmaster” series that they shot the third and fourth films back-to-back. Apparently, the crew took all of a week off in-between production of the sequels. “Wishmaster 4,” given the lofty subtitle of “The Prophecy Fulfilled,” would roll out almost exactly a year after “Wishmaster 3.”

Lisa and Sam are totally in love when he gets in a motorcycle accident, becoming paralyzed below the waist. In the year after the crash, Lisa is working with lawyer Stephen to get a settlement... But the relationship is also on the rocks. Stephen, meanwhile, is attempting to seduce Lisa. He buys her a fancy box, which contains a red opal. Yes, once again a woman accidentally unleashes the Djinn. Assuming the form of Stephen, the Djinn cruelly grants wishes on random people while tricking Lisa into the fulfilling the prophecy of three wishes. However, her third wish becomes harder to satisfy once the Djinn starts to fall in love with her.

Here's the brass tacks: “Wishmaster 4” is garbage. The script copies most of the story beats of the last film. The acting is uniformly terrible. Tara Spencer-Nairn, as Lisa, goes through the whole movie seeming annoyed or confused. Michael Trucco, as Stephen, leaps between bland and obnoxiously over-the-top. John Novak has his voice digitally deepened as the Djinn, which only makes his verbose dialogue more awkward. Many of the supporting characters – all of whom exist just to pad out the body count – are cartoonish. The make-up effects are overly rubbery and lacking in detail, while the digital effects are embarrassing. Chris Angel's direction is especially bad. A slow-motion shot of a truck jumping into the air is hilarious. The camera sloppily spins around when characters are fighting or fucking. The presentation is always as flat and colorless as possible. There's even a visible lens-flare in one scene and I'm certain that wasn't on purpose.

More attention is drawn to the film's lack of professionalism because of how unconscionably horny it is. The movie establishes Lisa and Sam's relationship with a lengthy, steamy sex scene. After his accident, Sam becomes obsessed with sex and his inability to have it with his girlfriend. (Though this doesn't stop him from looking at porn.) He believes his girlfriend is sleeping with his lawyer. This eventually happens, Lisa and Stephen stripping down and enthusiastically banging. The camera lingers on the actress' ass. There's a lengthy sequence in a strip club, the topless dancer receiving a lot of attention from the camera. One character is even orgasmed to death. For extra perv points, there are several scenes set in a lingerie shop. The movie's horniness does not overcome how unlikable the characters, Sam especially, is.

For what it's worth, “The Prophecy Fulfilled” does add an unexpected plot twist. The Djinn intentionally holds back on fulfilling Lisa's last wish, and freeing the other djinn from Hell, because he falls in love with her. And he wants her to love him in his true, scaly, demonic form. The Djinn even gets a semi-graphic humping scene of his own! Ultimately, this plot point only ends up as another way for the writer to recycle elements from the third film. Another magical entity appears with a sword, much like in part three. This leads to an extended and underwhelming fight scene, like something out of a shitty episode of “Highlander: The Series.” Whether the Djinn is suppose to be a romantic lead or not, the gory death scenes he engineers are still the highlight of the sequel. He commands a rival lawyer to mutilate himself and impales a bouncer before dropping him in a dumpster, while cracking the most obvious one-liners possible.

“Wishmaster 4: The Prophecy Fulfilled” is a bad movie, which should be self-evident. The softcore sleaziness, mediocre writing, disconnect from the earlier films, crappy production values, and dreadful acting makes this the weakest film in a largely piss-poor franchise. For what its worth, “Wishmaster 4” is one of those bad movies that are easy to watch. It has enough amusingly bad dialogue – “I didn't fall in love with you for your legs!” “The prophecy will be fulfilled!” – to produce some chuckles. And there's enough dumb-ass choices, like a bartender's death scene obviously being set-up but never paid off, to baffle. The “Wishmaster” series concludes on a note that I cannot recommend and didn't really enjoy but shitty movies like this are at least pretty easy to watch. [4/10]

Nightmare Classics: Carmilla

An early hit for Showtime was Shelly Duvall’s “Faerie Tale Theatre,” in which the actress would present adaptations of classic fairy tales. Though somewhat low budget, the show featured many notable names behind and in front of the cameras. It remains something of a nostalgic favorite for people who watched it as kids. Duvall’s series was successful enough that it led to several spin-offs. While “Tall Tales and Legends” and “Bedtime Stories” were aimed at kids, “Nightmare Classics” veered towards an older audience by adapting classic horror literature. The series only ran for four episodes but each hour-long installment was released to VHS. The most intriguing of these episodes was an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu’s influential vampire novella, “Carmilla.”

“Nightmare Classics” follows the general outline of Le Fanu’s text, though greatly abbreviating the end and switching many character roles. The biggest difference is the setting, changed from the Austrian countryside to the reconstruction-era American South. Marie, the teenage daughter of a rich landowner, has been so lonely since her mother died. That changes when a carriage wrecks outside the family property. The only survivor is a girl Marie’s age named Carmilla. The two soon becomes close friends but strange deaths, of a beggar boy and a maid, seem to follow Carmilla. As Marie starts to grow oddly sick, her father begins to fear that his new houseguest may be a vampire.

Le Fanu’s story was, of course, motivated by the sexual hang-ups of the Victorian era. Carmilla’s more-than-implied lesbianism is a perverse intrusion into the heteronormative society of the time. At first, “Nightmare Classics” seems to flip the book’s intention on its head. Marie’s dad is a prick. He cloisters his daughter up in the home. He says he wants to keep her safe after loosing her mother but that reads like manipulative bullshit to me. Carmilla is the first real friend Marie has ever had and the only person who wants her to be free of her dad’s control. Carmilla’s predatory nature is a symbolic rebellion against the societal norms of the time that constricted young girls. Sadly, “Nightmare Classics” snaps back in a big way at the end. Marie’s dad and the other male authority figures rescue the girl by killing the vampires, all of whom are notably female. Marie then rejects Carmilla’s love by staking her personally. The final images of the episode are of the father/daughter bond being renewed. Lame. 

Despite squandering this subversive streak, “Carmilla” is still an easily watched hour. Ione Skye has a fittingly innocent quality as Marie. Meg Tilly, with those enchanting eyes, provides the right mixture of mysteriously alluring and threateningly otherworldly as Carmilla. (Though I question her decision to say every line in a breathy whisper.) I also enjoyed the Southern dandy accent Rodney McDowell adapts. His fate provides one of the episode's gorier moments. Carmilla and Marie's midnight romp around the foggy, blue-tinted forest is a highlight of the episode. An image of the vampire draining Marie's blood, while hanging upside down from a tree, is nicely dreamy. The change in location was presumably because plantation houses were much more readily available to the producers than Victorian mansions. Despite Carmilla preying on two black servants – recently freed but still working for white people – there's no commentary on race or anything. Also, I'm a little disappointed that “Nightmare Classics” doesn't feature Shelly Duvall introducing herself and the story, like she did on “Faerie Tale Theatre.” [6/10]

Tea Time (2007)

Here's an obscure but very creepy short that was introduced to me by Youtube channel Nexpo. Erik Deutschman's “Tea Time” is only three minutes long and totally without dialogue. As a pastoral piece of piano music plays, we see grainy footage of an old woman preparing a cup of tea. Slowly, subtle signs that something is wrong reveal themselves. She nearly cries at the sight of an askew spoon. She refills a cat dish that is already overflowing with food. She steps into the bathroom, blood visible on the wall behind her. To describe more is to ruin the unnerving surprises of “Tea Time” but, needless to say, this is far from a normal tea time for this little old lady. 

Most Youtube horror shorts are garbage but “Tea Time” caught me totally off-guard. The use of music – the repetitive piano notes slowly growing more distorted – and sound design – a screeching tea kettle – puts the audience on-edge as more disturbing sights unfold. It soon becomes apparent that “Tea Time” is taking us inside the mind of an old woman with dementia, her memory coming and going, events floating back to her in uncertain ways. A “ghost” appears, in a beautifully lo-fi but deeply spooky manner, but it's really just the ghost of a mind that has betrayed its owner. She is going through her normal, daily routine, unaware that she's done something terrible, that her life has been disrupted irrevocably. Which is the real horror of dementia: The afflicted don't know that they are loosing their mind. “Tea Time” leaves us on a totally unresolved note, because it's not like the little old woman is anymore aware of the exact details of what happened than we are. “Tea Time” is a chilling three minutes, saying so much without uttering a single word. [9/10]