Halloween 2024: October 17th

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2015)

Certainly, when I was a kid, the only thing I knew about Romania is that it's where Transylvania was and that's where Dracula came from. I have no doubt this was true for a lot of young horror nerds. It's an association the country has been happy to play up in recent years, turning Castle Bran and the surrounding area essentially into an entire Dracula-themed tourist attraction. Despite the country having a global association with the macabre and spooky, there haven't been that many horror films made in Romania. The country's first horror movie was made in the thirties but, as far as I can tell, only about a dozen have followed. It says a lot about Romania's lack of a genre scene that the most acclaimed horror project the country has produced in recent years is a micro-budget found footage movie, shot mostly in English and about an American actress. "Be My Cat: A Film for Anne" has been talked up enough to intrigue me though, so let's give it a shot. 

The Anne referenced in the title is Anne Hathaway. The narrator, protagonist, and man behind the camera is Adrian. A would-be filmmaker, Adrian has become obsessed with Hathaway after seeing her as Catwoman in "The Dark Knight Rises." He begins recording messages to the actress while shooting a prototype for a film called "Be My Cat." He plans to send the footage to Anne, in hopes of attracting her to his small town in Romania and getting her to start in his movie. He hires three actresses to be his stand-in Hathaways as he shoots a demo reel for the grander film. Adrian seems eccentric and delusional at first but it soon becomes apparent that he's making no ordinary movie here. He harasses his actresses, kidnaps them, forces them into cat-suits, and murders them on camera. It's a process the constantly chattering Adrian refers to as a transformation and one he dreams of inflicting on the real Anne Hathaway. 

The found footage format is one explicitly concerned with blurring the line between fiction and reality. The point is to make the fictional movie look as much like an uncovered document as possible. Essentially, the filmmaker in this case is asking the audience to buy into the gimmick of the narrative, that what we are seeing is "real." "Be My Anne" does this two-fold, as a large part of the runtime is made up of the raw footage of Adrian's movie-within-the-movie. We are forced to ask what is real (in the sense of objective reality) and what is fake (as in knowing we're watching a movie) versus what's "real" (the reality the film presents) and what is "fake." (The fictional narrative Adrian is making within the film.) Adrian Țofei is almost the sole author of "Be My Cat." He wrote it, directed it, produced it, and stars in it as a fictionalized version of himself. The format he uses directly asks us to consider how much of Țofei's actual personality is reflected in the awkward, delusional, and ultimately murderous Adrian we see. He's playing himself playing himself as he walks down the street, harassing the actress who is playing the object of his obsession. When she starts speaking Romanian – which Adrian has instructed her not to do – and calls the police, you have to wonder what level of reality what we're watching is operating on. This uncertainty over what is happening produces a fair amount of tension in the early half and feeds into the central thesis of "Be My Cat:" That the video we are seeing is the modern Romanian equivalent to the Bjork stalker tapes that somehow got edited, released, and distributed to Tubi without anyone noticing it's the actual video diary of an obsessive fan making a snuff movie. 

That ambiguity is fascinating and raises some interesting questions about the nature of cinema and the found footage idea itself. Unfortunately, Țofei more-or-less abandons this idea early on when we see the fictional Adrian claiming his first victim. I kept waiting for a swerve, that the murder we saw is part of Adrian's "movie" and that multiple layers of reality are interacting here. That the question – of whether he's a serial killer or simply a very convincing actor making a home-made horror film – would linger in the air. This is not the case, Țofei continuing on with a repetitive structure of recruiting two more actresses and convincing them he's director and not a serial killer, before he tries to kill them too. That's a lot less interesting to me, especially once the murders start as obviously they are not real. The small bit of gore we see is not convincing, looking like the strawberry syrup Adrian held up in the scene before. The script is often hard to swallow, as Adrian is so clearly unprofessional and so obviously a creep that it's difficult to believe three actresses would fall for his bait each time. Especially when one of the actresses expresses a desire to sleep with him, right after he called her fat for not being as skinny as Anne Hathaway. What was the point of that scene, other than to stroke Țofei's ego that sexy women are throwing themselves at him? 

As disappointing as this is, it's not what bugged me the most about "Be My Cat." Films like this, that put us into the perspective of murderous lunatics, presumably exist to reflect the psychology of their twisted antiheroes. Both versions of "Maniac," "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," "Excision," and the earlier reviewed "Der Fan" are great examples of films that take us inside the unsettling worlds of these disturbed minds. It allows us to explore the isolation and wounds that turns someone into a killer, perhaps making them sympathetic to a degree, without robbing what they do of its horrific power. Despite functioning as a manifesto for its murderous protagonist, "Be My Cat" frustratingly keeps Adrian's inner life away from us. He mentions briefly about being bullied as a boy, about disliking other men and dogs, and an incident in which he killed his cat. (Accidentally or not, it's never specified.) Adrian lives at home with his mother and, near the end, expresses a desire to murder her, painting a picture of him as a shut-in incel weirdo with mommy issues. That is, frustratingly, the only insight we get into his past and his life, the world he lives in, and what made him this way. Țofei plays the character as extremely socially awkward, blunt, and off-putting in a way that makes him seem like a genuine creepy nutcase. Adrian is also always depicted as weirdly upbeat, talking to the camera as if it's Anne. I believe monsters are made, not born. Nobody does things like this unless they have something in their past or mind that drives them to obsess over a fantasy until they must make it real. "Be My Cat" frustratingly refuses to show us that side of Adrian, as he's always performing for Anne. 

That begs another question: Why Anne Hathaway? That Adrian is so fixated on this celebrity in particular makes it tempting to read "Be My Cat" as a commentary on the collective fascination with celebrity, especially in our modern era of hyper-fixated online fandom. Adrian is always talking about his need to transform Anne and his love and devotion to her. Strangely, he never talks about why he loves Anne Hathaway. He has a fetishistic desire to dress his victims in skintight cat suits, reflecting the psycho-sexual elements that drives many killers. We never see him talking about Anne Hathaway's career, what she means to him, why it's so important that he transforms her. This psycho filmmaker could've been obsessed with any actress or star. "Be My Cat" presents the suggestion that it's about how the non-famous latch into the famous and how men see women, as objectified accessories for their own journey. The text stubbornly refuses to engage in these ideas in any way, leaving "Be My Cat" feeling like a frustratingly empty affair.

The finale of "Be My Cat" is a heart-to-heart conversation between Adrian and his latest victim that repeatedly reinforce the idea that this story is about "love." The sequence comes off as such a vague attempt to sum up some sort of connecting idea that it is inevitably pretentious and unsatisfying. Since "Be My Cat" doesn't engage with its ideas around how men see women in any meaningful way, the extended sequences of women being killed – a choking and a dissection behind a sheet – feel like toothless provocations. What value is there in a held shot of a bound woman screaming and crying as a man cuts her up off-screen if the film has so little to say about relations between the gender. Adrian Țofei is clearly a talented filmmaker, obviously making this movie with little resources or help. If nothing else, he creates a character that is uncomfortable to be around, making "Be My Cat" an effectively unsettling at times. Films like "Creep" do more by interrogating the relationship between the film and the viewer. Every "Taxi Driver" wannabe has more to say about obsession and delusional "love" between lonely men and their objects of affection. (This also isn't the only Eastern European found footage movie inspired by the Bjork stalker.) With so little to latch onto, the only question "Be My Cat" truly leaves us with is... Has Anne Hathaway seen this? Imagining her reaction to the film is probably more entertaining than anything else it does. Ultimately, "A Film for Anne" has potential that is left unfulfilled. [5/10]

Saturday the 14th (1981)

When I was about eleven or twelve years old, I loved Mel Brooks. “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” and “The Producers” were all favories of mine but I liked the lesser works too. If you get a couple drinks in me, I might be found defending the honor of “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and “Dracula: Dead and Loving It.” Around that same age is also when I began my slow, steady move towards becoming a total horror nerd. As is often the case for many young fans, the “Friday the 13th” movies would be how I got into gorier stuff. These two obsessions met in the number of bizarre horror parodies my extremely understanding and supportive English teacher allowed me to write at that age. A Brooks-ian parody of eighties slasher flicks seemed like a fresh idea but, obviously, it wasn’t. “Student Bodies,” “Hysterical,” “Pandemonium,” and “Wacko” all existed. I simply didn’t know about them at the time. What I did know about was “Saturday the 14th.” Rather, I knew a horror parody with that title existed and imagined many a Jason Voorhees related gag within. Eventually, I would learn that, despite the title, “Saturday the 14th” isn’t actually a parody of slasher flicks at all, much less that particular franchise. (Which was only two entries in by 1981 anyway, not leaving a lot of material to spoof on.) That put me off the movie for years but I recently got the BluRay as a gift so I guess I better watch it. 

With nary a hockey mask or a summer camp in sight, “Saturday the 14th” is instead an extremely loose spoof of various classic horror tropes. When their eccentric uncle dies, John and Mary Hyatt inherit his supposedly cursed mansion. They quickly move into the dilapidated home, with their teenage daughter Debbie and young son Billy in tow. The kids immediately notice that the house is weird and spooky, while the parents remain in denial. Billy uncovers a magical book said to contain all the evil in the world, accidentally releasing a series of monsters from it. This same book has attracted a bickering vampire couple, Waldemar and Yolanda, to the house. After a bat attack in the attic, Mary calls an exterminator who turns out to be Dr. Van Helsing. A party is assembled on Saturday the 14th, with the hopes of finding the book and vanquishing the monsters. Things get weird quickly. 

“Saturday the 14th” is the directorial debut of Howard R. Cohen, a frequent writer for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. Many of the previous films Cohen authored were also broad comedies but titles like “The Young Nurses,” “Cover Girl Models,” and “Vampire Hookers” also had copious nudity to keep the audience interested. Despite a rather sketchy scene devoted to the teenage daughter stripping down for a bath, “Saturday the 14th” is rated PG. This suggests that the movie was aiming for an audience of mostly kids, which would certainly explain the quality of jokes. “Saturday the 14th’s” humor is composed almost entirely of limp wordplay and the mildest of goofy horror/comedy schtick. One of the most annoying things about the film is its tendency to endlessly repeat its gags, as if hoping that will make them funny eventually. A “Twilight Zone” parody, in which a Rod Serling soundalike repeatedly describes what’s happening on-screen or other mundane activities, is revisited over and over again. At least that’s a joke though. Most of the things Cohen’s film find funny seem to barely classify as gags. There’s a fixation on electric can openers, a real estate agent referring to the home as “a fixer-upper,” Mary insisting new curtains will make the house sound less creepy and calling all bats “owls.” These bits aren’t amusing the first time, much less the third. 

This repetitive structure means that, the few times the movie does touch on an amusing line, it needlessly repeats it. John’s morning coffee having some eyeballs floating in or Yolanda being annoyed with Waldemar over “that Harker girl” a hundred years ago produced a tiny chuckle on the first go-around. Not so much on subsequent ones. You can see the cast desperately trying to make something amusing out of this dire material. Jeffrey Tambor plays our Dracula stand-in and his perpetually frustrated, put-upon persona makes for an amusing vampire. Severn Darden does adopt a decent Peter Lorre accent as Van Helsing and almost manages to wring laughs out of the absurd – but not clever or novel – dialogue he’s given. The subplot of Mary becoming a vampire too, much to her husband’s ignorance, could’ve been amusing if the film further played up the weirdness of the central couple. Instead, Richard Benjamin and Paul Prentiss – married in real life – mostly play it straight. Which isn’t a great instinct when everything happening around them is so unfunny.

Truthfully, “Saturday the 14th” strikes me as a horror parody written by someone who hasn’t actually seen that many horror movies. All of its jokes are unspecific, not targeting any known tropes or narrative but simply a vague notion. There are vampires and they act goofy, instead of sinister. The monsters summoned from the book are all generic bugbear types, covered in hair with big eyes, that clearly aren’t based on any specific creatures from film or literature. However, “Saturday the 14th” was made during an all-together more charming time for special effects. Which means the monsters are still fun looking. The scenes of the hairy, bug-eyed, scaled beasties vamping around a fog-filled old house resembles a vintage commercial for a Halloween costume shop. That’s a comforting vibe that I enjoy, despite the lack of otherwise amusing quantities. A moment where a shark-finned fish man emerges from the bath tub is never all that funny or scary, and goes on way too long, but at least it has the charm of an actor in a physical suit made by a make-up artist. A person put effort and imagination into that make-up, which is more than I can say for the writing and directing.  

Further suggesting its status as a rickety sketch comedy show segment, “Saturday the 14th” also only runs for 76 minutes. It feels longer than that but the lameness is, thankfully, over quickly enough. Cohen would go on to write for fangless kids show like “Care Bears” and “Rainbow Brite.” The syrupy ending for this film suggests that was exactly the kind of fare that suited him the best. Probably owing to its bitchin’ VHS box art, the film was successful on video. This led to Cohen making a sequel in 1986, “Saturday the 14th Strikes Back.” By that point, there were far more “Friday the 13th” movies to parody but, judging from the plot synopsis, the sequel is more of the same. One unintentional moment in the film is that the Hyatt mansion is said to be on Elm Street, across from a home with a visible red door. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” wouldn’t come out for three more years, meaning the movie is utterly sincere when describing that as a nice sounding street for a wholesome family to live on. In the realm of middling monster movie spoofs that include “Transylvania 6-5000” and “Haunted Honeymoon,” “Saturday the 14th” manages to out-mid them all. Anyway, does somebody want a Blu-Ray of this? [4/10]

Femme Fatales: Angel & Demons

Starting in 1984, premium cable channel Cinemax began airing softcore smut in late night timeslots. The copious nudity and simulated humping scenes, carefully choreographed as to prevent a clear view of genitalia, earned the network the nickname "Skinnemax." You'd think the internet becoming a household presence, giving everyone access to whatever depraved pornography they desire, would kill off Cinemax's tamer offerings. Yet, like a compulsive masturbator, the channel was still at it as late as 2011. That's when "Femme Fatales," an anthology series focused on deadly women, started airing. Like many "erotic thrillers" before it, the series often crossed over into horror and suspense. It also featured a Cryptkeeper-style host in the form of a sarcastic temptress named Lilith. 

"Angel & Demons" is a typical episode. Detective Janet Wright returns to police work after a long break. She's hot on the trail of a serial killer dubbed the Grim Reaper, who has been slicing up the city's sex workers. After one of these victims died in her arms, Detective Wright has become obsessed with the case. Meanwhile, a novice courtesan calling herself Angelina is picked up by a creepy john named Charles. Taking her back to his hotel room, he tells her a story of how his college girlfriend broke his heart and awoke a passionate misogyny within him. Wright and her partner, thinking Charles might be the Reaper, track the two down. Not everything is as it seems. 

As if to dismiss any other notions about why someone might be watching "Femme Fatales," this episode begins with a lengthy sex scene between the suspected killer and his lady of that particular evening. It's the first of many such moments. Later scenes are devoted to nude dancers in a strip club and Charles' memory of watching his girlfriend get it on with his roommate. (In front of, for whatever reason, a "Free Enterprise" movie poster.) As the performers bounce and jiggle and cycle through all the standard positions, you kind of wonder if this show has anything else to offer. I mean, I like looking at boobs as much as the next guy. I don't dismiss erotica as a genre, as noted by me reviewing a hardcore porno earlier in the season. However, there sure is a lot of humping and exposed rumps here, to the point of distraction. It's not presented with much style or intent, beyond the desire to give insomniac horn-dogs a peek at some exposed flesh.

Looking a little deeper, I do think "Angel & Demons" is trying to say something about the how and why behind misogyny. Charles claims his violent tendencies were spurned by his girlfriend, who only wanted vanilla sex with him, while getting wild with his nerdy friend. His hatred is rooted in women having the choice to do whatever, or whoever, they want. The only particularly tense moment in the episode concerns Angelina doing a strip tease for him and slowly stopping as he rants more and more viciously. I, sadly, assume this is not an uncommon experience for sex workers, forced to listen to embittered whinging from entitled, troubled men in order to earn a dollar. 

Unfortunately, that's about the only intellectually stimulating moment here. The subplot about Detective Wright being traumatized over another woman's murder never feels like it really connects with the A-plot. (Beyond being an excuse to throw another dead hooker into the narrative.) There's an easily predictable twist ending that does nothing but muddle the thematic waters of the script. Is this killer a brutal madman or a justified vigilante? Despite its salacious content, "Femme Fatales" did regularly feature recognizable actors. Ellie Cornell – Rachel from "Halloween 4" – plays Detective Wright while Stephen Macht appears as the owner of the club. Neither give especially notable performance, though Tanit Phoenix as Lilith at least has a charming delivery. There's some flashy editing in the montages and some decent lighting at times but "Angel & Demons" is ultimately not that distinctive looking. When people have tried to reclaim premium cable erotica as art, I'm doubtful shows like this are what they are talking about. The girls are hot, if that kind of thing matters to you, but the writing, acting, and direction left me limp. [5/10]

The Dumb Waiter (1979)

It has been said – by someone, probably not Jean-Luc Godard – that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. Perhaps that statement can be elaborated upon further. All you need to make a horror movie is a girl and a creepy location. Before blessing the world with “Vampire’s Kiss,” director Robert Bierman would create a seventeen minute short in 1979 called “The Dumb Waiter.” The premise is simple as can be. A woman, who lives alone in an apartment with a dumb waiter, has been receiving threatening phone calls. While driving home one night, a man in a car pursues her before attempting to pry open her door. She makes it back home and tries to relax, calling a friend over. Little does she know that the stalker has followed her to her abode as well… And that there’s more than one way to sneak inside. 

“The Dumb Waiter” is a great example of how much technique can elevate the simplest of stories. On a narrative level, there’s nothing much to the film. We learn almost nothing about the woman and her life, much less why this strange man is after her. However, Bierman and his team show themselves to be experts in building suspense strictly through visuals. The opening phone call – played over footage of the isolated home’s hallway – sets everything we need to know up. When the protagonist sees a man in a car behind her, we already know that’s the creep after her. Bierman’s camera focuses in on the mechanical details: The wheels of the car, the headlights, the man’s black gloves. This continues as he arrives at her home, the way he pries open a window with a knife or sneaks into the basement show in meticulous detail. That alone is enough to build suspense. We know the heroine is vulnerable – she takes a dip in the tub, making herself more vulnerable – and we know that this guy is determined to get inside. Watching it unfold is all we need to get a proper chill.

The way “The Dumb Waiter” refuses to elaborate any beyond the bare bones of its premise is almost admirable. It’s a case study in simplicity, managing to build and build towards a shocking finale without reams of story or character development. In other words, it’s the ideal calling card for a director eager to break into the industry. Based on the strength of this, Bierman probably could’ve made a hell of a slasher flick but I’m glad he gifted us with the aggressively weird “Vampire’s Kiss” instead. Still, if you’ve got seventeen minutes to kill, “The Dumb Waiter” is a fine way to spend it. [7/10]