Halloween 2021: October 13th

The Vanishing (1988)

Spoorloos

In the days before streaming services and high-speed Internet made cutting cable the easiest decision ever, I was at the mercy of whatever was on TV. At the time, cable was full of these retrospective clip shows, where comedians and B-list celebs would reminisce about various nostalgic topics. One of the better examples of this genre was Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments." The list was actually much deeper than expected, with a decent grasp of horror history. It even introduced me to a couple of films, like 1988's "The Vanishing." The problem with this is the highlighted moment from the film was its ending. Naturally, when I caught up with the film and knew where everything was going, I was underwhelmed. It's been years since then, so it's probably time for me to revisit this classic of modern Dutch cinema.

Rex and his girlfriend, Saskia, are on a road trip through rural France. Following an incident where they run out of gas and are almost hit by a truck in a tunnel, they arrive at a rest stop. Saskia heads to the bathroom... And Rex never sees her again. He spends the next three years obsessed with her disappearance, plastering the city with missing poster. After appearing on TV, the man who abducted Saskia — an unassuming French family man — approaches him. He agrees to take Rex to Saskia and show him, first hand, what she experienced. Along the way, the two get to know each other. 

"The Vanishing" would not work as well as it does if we didn't care about Rex and Saskia'a relationship. Considering her disappearance is the inciting incident of the entire story, the movie has to work very fast to get us invested in this couple. It pulls it off. Through the early scenes, of the two talking about dreams on the road or goofing around in the gas station parking lot, we quickly grow to like these two. Johanna ter Steege enlivens Saskia with such an infectious energy. She seems real, alive, fully fleshed-out, even if she's only in a few scenes. Moreover, Gene Bervoets makes us believe that Rex is really in love with her. They share a deep, emotional connection and it makes everything that follows far more effecting.

Another element that makes “The Vanishing” a first-rate thriller – and what makes it fitting viewing for a Halloween marathon – is its villain. Raymond Lemorne, played brilliantly by a low-key Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, has to be among cinema's most chilling sociopaths. And it's all because of how ordinary he is. After Saskia's disappearance, the film flashes back and shows Raymond's methodical process. How he went about picking the best place to abduct someone, where he won't be recognized. How he devised a scheme to lure someone back to his car. Yet we also see Raymond with his wife and kids. They bake a birthday cake with him and present him with a scrapbook of his life. He plays with his daughters at his country cabin. He's not a depraved serial killer or a mad genius. He's just... A normal guy. One can't help but imagine that there are actual killers like this out there, men who occasionally, randomly perform hideous acts and then go back to their humdrum lives, no one any the wiser. 

During their long drive together, Rex and Raymond get to know each other. Raymond talks about how he realized he was a sociopath, during an incident where he leapt from a window as a child. How, after heroically saving a child from drowning, he calmly decided he must perform an equally evil act. They discuss their names and their meaning. More than anything else, they discuss the idea of destiny. Of doing unpredictable things to escape their predestined fates, even though these choices inevitably lead them there. In an early scene, Saskia recalls a dream of floating through space in a golden egg. Later on, Rex has the same nightmare. This is the film heavily foreshadowing its ending. Even seemingly innocuous scenes, like Raymond and his family playfully screaming at their country home, predicts the ending. It's all leading towards that grim point. Much the same way everyone's life leads towards unpredictable tragedy sometimes. If these events are unavoidable, do we truly have free will? It's a heavy topic to tackle and one built right into “The Vanishing's” DNA.

And what of that ending? You really can't talk about “The Vanishing” without spoiling it. After promising to show him what Saskia went through, Rex agrees to drink some drugged coffee... And he awakens in a coffin, buried underground. The camera work is intimate and tight in this scene, the viewer seeing only what Rex can see in his darkened, confined prison. As Rex screams, his words degrading into incoherent ranting, you realize his fate is sealed. It's such a grim, unnerving final moment. Everything had been building towards this and yet it's still so damn disturbing. Director George Sluizer directs the denouncement with a certain dispassionate detachment, emphasizing the theme of characters caught in a tragic destiny they can't escape. 

Upon release in 1988, “The Vanishing” was critically acclaimed. It was the Netherland's submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars that year. Which certainly made sense, as it was obviously the most beloved Dutch film of the year. Yet the Academy disqualified it, due to containing just as much French as it does Dutch. Because the Academy is fixated on dumb-ass regulations like that. Like many great foreign language horror movies, it was followed by a mediocre American remake that added a shitty happy ending. Unlike most of those remakes, the original director handled that one himself. Regardless of that, I'm glad I revisited “The Vanishing.” It's actually a pretty brilliant film, beautifully acted and fantastically written in the point of making a chilling point about how much control we have over our fate. [9/10]

Teenage Caveman (2001)

Most of the directors who were hired for the Creature Feature project could be described as “up-and-comers.” The majority had only made one, maybe two, movies before directing their monster flick. Some of them had an indie hit, to one degree or another, but none were really known elements. “Teenage Caveman,” however, was directed by an honest-to-goodness auteur. Larry Clark's “Kids” was a lightning rod of controversy, conversation, and critical praise in 1995. His follow-ups, “Another Day in Paradise” and “Bully,” made less of a splash. Yet Clark was still clearly in a different category than the other Creature Feature directors. (To the point that I've already reviewed his movies before, though it's been a while.) Having a filmmaker with such a distinct style would, it turns out, be more of a challenge than a benefit to “Teenage Caveman.” 

The only thing Clark's “Teenage Caveman” has in common with Roger Corman's “Teenage Caveman” is the idea of mankind retreating back to the caves following a global cataclysm. Here, it's a pandemic, instead of nuclear war, and this information is revealed at the film's beginning, not its end. Otherwise, it's a new story: David's dad, his tribe's religious leader, tries to rape his girlfriend, Sarah. David stabs his father dead and, with a group of friends, flees the community. They wander into the ruins of Seattle and are swallowed up in a sand storm. The teens awaken in a secret laboratory, where they meet Neil and Judith. These two are immortal humans who introduce the teens to fucking, booze, and drugs... As well as a sexually transmitted virus that turns people into mutated monsters. 

“Teenage Caveman” has a message. David's father uses his authority in the cave community to sexually abuse the females around him and manipulate everyone else. While they seem different as can be at first, Judith and Neil are later revealed to be similar. They also lord their authority over the teens, trying to control them. The idea is that all authority, all power, corrupts eventually... Yet you'll be forgiven for missing this theme. Clark cooks up a premise that allows him to indulge his most excessive impulses. “Teenage Caveman” devotes most of its screen time to its youthful characters screaming profanity, doing drugs, drinking, partying, and wearing little or no clothing. There's a full-on orgy scene in the middle, which still only accounts for about half of its non-stop sexual content. 

I have, from time to time in the past, been known to be a Larry Clark apologist. Yet his obsession with getting barely legal performers to bare it all and behave badly has definitely grown more difficult to defend over the years. Clark taking a sci-fi/horror story like “Teenage Caveman” and using it as an excuse to indulge his favorite fascination shows his obsession to be all-consuming. While Clark clearly loves showing these teens fucking and getting fucked-up, he has little interest in generating suspense, fear, or unease. The sequences devoted to one of the girls freaking out, right before the super-STD causes her to explode, is filled with annoying visual quirks. The gore scenes are awkwardly framed and cheesy. The make-up used to bring the monstrous transformation are pretty good – again, you'd expect as much from Stan Winston Studios – but Clark shows no aptitude in making the climatic duel exciting.

It's not just that “Teenage Caveman” is preoccupied with teenage fuckery and fumbles every attempt to be a horror movie. It's that almost everything about the movie is clumsy or incompetent. The acting is mostly flat or embarrassing. Richard Hillman is doing a bad Jason Mewes impersonation as Neil. Tiffany Limos is blandly melodramatic as Judith. Stephen Jasso is broad and gawky as one of the other teens. The script has the characters' motivations, especially those of David and Sarah, changing from scene-to-scene. Much of the dialogue – including lines like “I smell pussy!” – is uproariously bad. Many scenes have a washed-out, gauzy quality to their visuals. The pacing is languid. Even the sound design is bad, as every slap to the face is followed by the same overly loud, artificial sounding smacking noise. 

Clark directed “Teenage Caveman” after making “Ken Park,” though it was released first. Many of the actors reappear. That was the film were Clark abandoned most pretenses and basically began making pornography with a weird moralizing streak. That's about when the critical establishment turned on him. A movie like this really stuck out among the Creature Feature line-up. Unsurprisingly, people expecting a monster movie and getting this instead has left “Teenage Caveman” with a rotten reputation. Maybe even the producers felt the same way, as they didn't release “Teenage Caveman” until six months after the others. There's no doubt that the movie is a fiasco. Though I do think “How to Make a Monster” is slightly worst, if only because Clark owning this material so completely – for better or worst – makes it more interesting. Ultimately, “Teenage Caveman” only being the second worst entry speaks poorly of the entire Creature Feature series, an experiment that failed to live up to its promising idea. [4/10]

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of Laughing in the Dark

I haven't been too impressed with the previous episodes of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” I've reviewed during these Halloween marathons. Nevertheless, the show remains a beloved staple of millennial nostalgia, so I feel compelled to keep giving it a shot. “Tale of Laughing in the Dark” is widely regarded as one of the program's scariest episodes. It tells the story of Josh and Weegee, two young boys at an amusement park. Weegee is too scared to visit the fun house – said to be haunted by the smoke of a cigar-smoking, bank-robbing clown named Zeebo – but Josh isn't frightened. He goes inside and steals the big red nose off the Zeebo the Clown mannequin. Josh brags about his bravery and belittles his friend. But when he's alone at home that night, Zeebo the Clown comes after him and demands the return of his nose.

“Tale of Laughing in the Dark” is, admittedly, more effective than the previous episodes of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” that I've covered. Granted, it still has a ton of kiddie bullshit. There's a heavy-handed moral, Josh being punished for his crime of being an asshole to his friend. (And his petty thievery too, I guess.) The direction is hammy, zooming in on the kid's gasping face. The goofy carnival music on the soundtrack doesn't exactly build dread or tension. Many of Zeebo's antics, meant to cause unease, are instead just goofy. Like leaving a large shoe-print, the letter Z in the middle, in a puddle of spilled chocolate pudding. Or turning a bowl of overcooked spaghetti into a bunch of stinky cigars. Also, the episode has a deeply underwhelming ending.

Still, I have to give this one some credit. Zeebo is pretty creepy, as far as kids show antagonists go. The show makes the smart decision to never actually put the ghostly clown on-screen. Aside from the exaggerated mannequin seen at the fun house, the only sign of Zeebo's presence are clouds of cigar smoke. He makes taunting phone calls, speaking with a raspy voice and cackling in an unhinged manner. I can definitely see a youth with coulrophobia – much like one of the kids in the framing device – being seriously freaked out by this. I'm glad that Zeebo's antics are fittingly clownish while also being exclusively malevolent. The way a creepy clown should be. I would never go so far as to call it scary but, for the five-to-eight-year-old crowd this show was intended for, it's spooky enough. [6/10]

The Big Shave (1967)

After watching some of the early short films of David Cronenberg recently, it got me in the mood to look at an early work from another great North American director. “The Big Shave” was Martin Scorsese's third or fourth short film, made the same year as his non-professional feature debut, “Who's That Knocking at My Door?” The five minute film's premise is simple enough. It concerns a young man who steps up to his sink, while Benny Berigan's “I Can't Get Started” plays. He wets his face, lathers on some shaving cream, and shaves. Then he does it again. He keeps shaving, cutting away the layers of skin, until every corner of his lower face is dripping with blood.

An alternate title for “The Big Shave” is “Viet '67.” This has caused many people to interpret the film as a metaphor for the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam. How the main character's extended act of self-mutilation reflects the United States' self-destructive actions, of sending young men to die for a pointless war overseas. You can also see this reflected in the musical choice, where Berigan sings of traveling the world in a plane, having romantic success all over the planet... Except when he “just can't get started with you.” It's pretty easy to see that as a metaphor for American imperialism, infecting every corner of the globe, but being rebuffed in Vietnam, despite repeated attempts to infect it. 

This is a perfectly acceptable reading of the film but I don't think it explains why “The Big Shave” is so effective. The short is disturbing because of the way it contrasts the mundane with the horrific. Scorsese takes a totally normal, every day action – shaving – and combines it with distressing violence. We've all cut ourselves while shaving. We all know what that feels like. That makes the short's extended, graphic violence all the more relatable. Making this more upsetting is how relaxed the young man is during this. He even smiles near the end as he slashes his throat open. When further contrasted with the upbeat, commonplace music – something Scorsese would master in his features – the violence becomes even more unsettling.

For the work of a film student, “The Big Shave” is especially impressive. It's a short full of striking imagery. The bright red blood, thick and corn syrupy, dripping all over the white sink is immediately memorable. So is a moment where the blood drips down to the young man's feet. The editing is precise and to the point. It's clear, even this early in his career, Scorsese had a keen understanding on how to film cinematic violence and string images together in a way that makes an impact. “The Big Shave,” simple as it is, is still a cringe-inducing and fantastically effective five minutes. [9/10]