It took me a couple of viewings to really warm up to Robert Egger's “The Witch.” Even then, the minute I heard about his follow-up I was immediately excited. A lighthouse is always an excellent setting for a horror story, especially if you're going back into the past. Eggers was also going to shoot the film entirely in black-and-white, making this project even more like my personal catnip. When I caught up with “The Lighthouse” late last year, I was not surprised to find it was one of my favorite films of the year. Since I want to stay abreast on our latest wave of horror auteurs, I figured I better review “The Lighthouse” before it gets too far in the past.
As with “The Witch,” Robert Eggers creates a multi-layered film. On one level, the story is simple: Two 19th century wickies – newcomer Winslow and veteran Wick – are left stranded by a storm in their lighthouse, the two quickly starting to loose their minds and turn on each. Yet Eggers' influences are varied. Much how “The Witch” drew on puritan accounts of witchcraft, “The Lighthouse” is inspired by sailor shanties and seafaring tales. Of horny mermaids and dead sailors' souls. Eggers would be inspired by a true, strange event from the late 1800s and a short story by Poe. Into this mix, he would also add elements of Promethean mythology. It all piles up to make “The Lighthouse” a film that can be read from any number of angles.
There's a reason lighthouses make such good settings for horror stories. The unending howl of the sea outside provides a disquieting sense of isolation. “The Lighthouse's” amazing sound design gives a viewer a keen understanding of how cloistered off the two men feel. The other noises we hear – the bellowing fog horn, the cackling seagulls – only adds to that feeling. Eggers' film is as visually chilling as it is aurally. “The Lighthouse” is shot in Academy ratio, the tight frame emphasizing how cramped the locations are. The shadowy, black-and-white cinematography continues that stark, isolated atmosphere. As in his debut, Eggers' keen camera manages to make totally benign animals, like a staring seagull, uncomfortable to be around. In its visuals and audios, “The Lighthouse” is a triumph.
“The Lighthouse” is essentially a two-hander, more-or-less all the scenes revolving around Winslow and Wick. While I'm fairly indifferent to Robert Pattinson, and he makes some interesting accent decisions here, he is fittingly high-strung as Winslow. Glowering with his beady eyes as he takes constant abuse, you can see the frustration and discontent simmering within him. Until it finally snaps, Pattinson bellowing with colorfully profane, manic rage in several scenes. Even a strong performance like this pales in comparison to the titanic acting Willem DaFoe does here. Speaking with an old-time-y sea captain voice, DaFoe is equal parts hilarious and terrifying. His grave warnings stand alongside belching of meaningless anecdotes. This combination is most apparent in maybe the best cinematic moment of 2019, a spellbinding monologue in which DaFoe summons all his power as an actor to deliver the gravest condemnation imaginable... Because his feelings got hurt. It's amazing and hysterical.
Inferno Carnal
After playing the character almost yearly since 1968, I guess Jose Mojica Marins was a little bored with Coffin Joe. He'd take a brief break from the character in 1977. Which isn't to say he stepped away from the horror genre in general. In-between a crime drama and another sex comedy, the ever-prolific Marins would direct “Hellish Flesh.” By stepping away from the Coffin Joe character, Marins would also step away from the surreal, spiritualism-driven style of horror associated with him. The result is a seemingly more mainstream type of exploitation film from the director.
Dr. Jorge Medeiros is a very successful - and very rich - chemist, whose research into various acids and corrosives is well known. He is so devoted to his work that it leaves him little time for his wife, Raquel. She has taken a lover, his best friend Oliver. Together, the two plot to murder Jorge and live off his millions. Raquel splashes her husband's face with acid while Oliver sets the lab on fire. Jorge lives but is left hideously deformed. Raquel and Oliver continue with their scheme but are caught up in another fiendish plan.
While a story of this type might've easily occupied a half-hour of television, a feature film — even a relatively short, 85-minute one — stretches the material a bit thin. As in “The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures,” Marins falls back on repetition to pad the movie out. So we get many scenes of Marins playing around with a chemistry set, while stock “mad scientist”music plays in the background. Or, in the latter half of the film, numerous scenes of a now-scarred Jorge meeting with a mysterious partner. Being an exploitation filmmaker, the director makes sure to include multiple scenes of nudity and sex. The cheap thrills quickly ware off and you soon start to wonder who some of these naked women are and how their nakedness relates to the plot. Ultimately, “Hellish Flesh” is just wasting time until it can unleash the gory comeuppance.
While outwardly less sleazy than his older films, the sheer amount of contempt "Hellish Flesh" has for its female villain makes it more sexist than the director's other work up to this point. Looking at "Hellish Flesh's" Letterboxd page, people seem to like this one alright. I'm of the opinion that the director reeling in his wilder instincts resulted in more typical, kind of boring exploitation flick. By the way, even though he's playing a more virtuous character than Coffin Joe in this film, Jose didn't clip his notoriously long fingernails. Nobody comments on this, adding to the unintentional humor that unfortunately characterizes far too much of "Hellish Flesh." [5/10]
I have no idea if this is true but it feels like “Tales from the Darkside” was not a show people discussed much when it was originally airing. There was no critical praise at the time. I can find few contemporary magazines discussing it. “Darkside” must've been somewhat popular, as it ran for four seasons and spun-off a movie. Yet its syndicated, late night showtimes kept it strictly under the radar. It wasn't until years later, with the raise of the internet – with reruns still on TV occasionally – that a serious cult following emerged. That revealed the truth: That “Tales from the Darkside's” audience was made up of kids who stayed up late to watch it, frequently getting traumatized for their efforts. And no episode seems to have traumatized more youngsters than “Inside the Closest,” the show's seventh installment.
Gail is an art history student who moves into the upstairs bedroom in the home of Dr. Fenner. He is a veterinarian professor, whose daughter ran away from home and whose wife died of breast cancer, and he demands absolute quiet. Gail is fine with everything in the room except for the small closest next to the floor. She hears rats behind the door. Fenner insists the closest has been locked for years. The door opens mysteriously on its own, she finds dolls clothes inside, and the mouse trap she laid out is moved around. Though the professor continues to deny anything, it becomes increasingly clear to Gail that something is living inside the closest...
What makes “Inside the Closest” unnerving is not just the way it plays on common, childhood fears or some clever direction and effects. The episode's complete refusal to explain what the hell is happening hits harder. Fenner's motivations, what he's hiding and what he knows, are never clarified. How he's connected to the closest monster, or if his dead wife and missing daughter have anything to do with it, are never detailed. This is further muddied by the final scene, which is equal parts brilliant, hilarious, and disquieting. “Inside the Closest” leaves us with more questions than answers. And that's exactly what good horror does sometimes. “Inside the Closest” is super creepy all the more because of its denial to flesh its premise out. Real life sometimes doesn't provide answers and nightmares almost never do. “Inside the Closest's” potency is more than enough to overcome the cheap production values and cheesy music of your typical “Tales from the Darkside” episode. [9/10]
Season three of “Forever Knight” seems to be wildly pinballing between more supernatural themed episode and scripts tackling real world issues. “Avenging Angel” is one of the later. A mother of a teenage girl is brutally stabbed to death at a battered woman's shelter. Her piece-of-shit husband is the prime suspect. Nick and Tracy soon learn that, in addition to beating his wife, the scumbag also raped his daughter. However, evidence implicating the dad is hard to find, much to the chagrin of the woman running the halfway home. The thorny situation reminds Nick of a time he defended an abused wife in 1800s China. The trauma also comes home for Tracy, who is currently dealing with the fallout of her parent's divorce.
“Avenging Angel” deals with the kind of subject matter that must be handled with utmost sensitivity. You don't want to seem like you're trivializing a serious topic or patronizing real life survivors of abuse. Sadly, the “Forever Knight” writers are trying to be too clever. The final reveal – quite literally, as it happens right before the credits – suggest surviving trauma makes you a killer. Which isn't, ya know, a great look. At least the show doesn't let the abusive rapist off-the-hook. He gets gunned down in a half-decent sequence set to a sparse synth score the show hasn't used before. There might also be a narrative fumble, in that Nick and Tracy have almost nothing to do with this mystery. The episode would've played out almost identically without them. Diane Cary, who previously appeared in the season one episode “Dead Air,” certainly gives an intense performance, as the operator of the halfway house. Otherwise, “Avenging Angel” is in no way prepared to tackle its heavy subject matter. [5/10]
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