In popular culture, serial killers are usually depicted as cunning, hyper intelligent individuals that plan out elaborate rituals of murder, with well understood motivations, who enjoy playing complex cat-and-mouse games with the cops. Hannibal Lecter is the apotheosis of this idea, of the serial killer as urbane anti-hero, and this led to imitators like John Doe, Jigsaw, and whoever the reoccurring bad guy is on whatever cop show your mom watches. In real life, it should go without saying, this is not the case. Actual experts point out that serial killers and mass murderers are, typically, unintelligent and impulsive people who usually kill to fulfil long-standing fantasies. They go undetected for so long more often due to the incompetence of police, not because they're geniuses. Rarely, a more true-to-life murderer will appear on-screen. Films like "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" or "The Golden Glove" seek to paint the life of the obsessive killer as the squalid, pathetic existence it is. An early example of this comes from Austria, the sole feature credit of director Gerald Kargl, in the form of "Angst." (Which means "Fear" or "Dread" in Austrian German but the title still works in English.) Controversial and frequently banned in 1983, the film has slowly earned a reputation as an influential and shocking counter to the slasher flicks of the early eighties.
"Angst" is based on the true story of Werner Kniesek, an Austrian criminal who, shortly after being paroled in 1980, impulsively broke into a home and brutally murdered a family of three. The film follows "K.," an otherwise unnamed man with a deeply troubled past who is released from a mental institute early for good behavior. He is immediately swarmed with thoughts of wanting to kill, of fulfilling his sexual fantasies of murder. After stopping at a diner and spying on a pair of teenage girls, he finds a seemingly empty home. He breaks in and discovers a mentally disabled man confined to a wheelchair. Shortly afterwards, the mother and teenage sister arrive at the house. K. can only hide for a short while before he's discovered. Afterwards, he chases the family down and ties up the mother and daughter. Over the course of the day, he murders them while continuing to think constantly about his past and the obsessive thoughts that brought him to this point.
Erwin Leders plays the killer and it is, to say the least, an unglamorous performance. Leders is emaciated and seemingly always coated with a shiny layer of sweat. His uncombed hair sticks to his forehead in greasy locks. His bulging, sunken eyes always stare ahead with shifty fascination while his frog-like mouth is usually half-open. As to avoid any of the mystique we associate with fictional killers, “K.” is stripped nude by prison guards early on. A sickening scene has him glaring at the girls in the diner, while he munches away at a sausage in close-ups. Leders plays the murderer as much like a bumbling idiot as an unhinged lunatic. He reveals himself early to his chosen victims through sheer incompetence, often fumbling his way through the home invasion. More than anything else, it's made apparent that his need to kill is rooted in perverse sexual pleasure. A brutal stabbing becomes a post-mortem rape. While moving the corpses around, simply thinking about the negrophilic acts he'll perform in the future, he falls to his knees with a shuddering orgasm. At one point, he attempts to keep someone alive a little longer so they can experience the torture he plans to inflict on them but he screws that up too. This man is a sweaty, desperate, gasping, drooling madman with no grand plans and little control over his own unhinged desires.
“Angst” is clearly meant to be a disturbing and disorientating experience. Beyond the content and blunt approach to the carnage, this is largely achieved through the swirling cinematography. The camera does not stand still for long in “Angst.” Cinematographer Zbigniew Rybczyński utilizes long takes throughout, often tracking “K.” as he lurks outside the home, hides from the family, or disposes of their bodies. The camera often spins around the killer and his victims, a seasick sense of movement that successfully mirrors the scattered, unfocused mind of the protagonist. These long takes and tracking shots are contrasted with graphic close-ups or sudden edits, that bring the impact of these violent acts home. The far shots reflect a cold indifference, giving an almost documentary-like feel to the film as we watch these events unfold. At the same time, “Angst” is also all-but panic attack inducing for its frenzied movements and brutally direct depiction of murder. The film is designed to make us feel both the psychopath's lack of remorse for his actions and the out-of-control lust that drives him to kill.
Malls are emptied out husks, dead structures dotted all over the United States these days. I've still got one near-by though. There's an F.Y.E. inside, one of the few physical locations around town I can physically browse Blu-Rays and DVDs. A while back, my buddy and I were killing some time in this way when I came across a bizarre DVD case. “Shadow Zone: The Undead Express,” it was called. It had oversized title font badly cropped onto the cheesy cover art, with a big credit boasting “Featuring Wes Craven.” Not directed, written, produced, or presented by Wes Craven. Featuring. It was also all of three dollars, plastered with so many “USED” stickers, that I simply couldn't resist bringing home whatever the hell this thing was. Turns out, “Shadow Zone” was a short lived series of horror books for kids published in the nineties. In hopes of riding “Goosebumps'” coat-tails, Hallmark and Showtime would adapt two of these books into TV movies. That's how I got roped into writing about a duology of incredibly obscure, nearly thirty years old kid-friendly horror movies that absolutely nobody remembers.
Zach, a horror movie obsessed pre-teen, is troubled by his parents' recent divorce. His mom works all the time and his dad is always starting arguments. He has begun to tell elaborate lies as a defense mechanism. His best friends, Gabe and J.T., have noticed his fibs and are getting annoyed by them. While wandering around the New York subway one night, he stumbles into an obscure part of the underground station. That's when he meets Valentine, a refined older man in evening wear. Valentine quickly reveals himself to be a vampire and the leader of a lost colony of bloodsuckers that hang out on a subway train, riding the abandoned rails. He claims to only feed on rats – a “vegetarian” vampire, as he calls it – and quickly introduces Zach to multiple wonders. His friends and family don't believe him but it soon becomes apparent that Valentine is not as trustworthy as Zach thinks he is.
This does not mean that “Shadow Zone” is in the same league as proper kid-friendly horror classics like “Gremlins” or “Coraline.” “The Undead Express” is about vampires but its horrors are mostly defanged. Valentine, as played by a slumming Ron Silver, always keeps the other vampires from getting out of line anytime they are extra bite-y. A sequence where he rumbles with another vamp in a snow-covered cemetery is painfully cheesy and ultimately goes nowhere. That's a big problem “The Undead Express” has. Unlike “Goosebumps” or “Are You Afraid of the Dark?,” this runs for ninety-seven minutes and not thirty. The result is that the plot circles back around on itself numerous times, Zach having underwhelming nighttime adventures with Valentine, ignoring his school work, and disappointing his bickering parents. This repetitive structure leads to numerous unnecessary or deeply cheesy scenes, like Valentine leaping off a wall with the boy or the boy trying to worm his way out of a classroom.
Not that “The Undead Express” is especially daring in any other way. Silver seems quite bored by most of the dialogue, only coming alive at the end when the character gets more blatantly villainous. Chauncey Leopardi, a regular of nineties kidslop, is mostly annoying as Zach. Wes Craven, by the way, has a cameo as the kid's therapist, appearing in exactly two scenes. I suppose that is technically a “featured” role. Vampires hanging out in the subway tunnels under New York is a enjoyably pulpy premise wasted on a stretched-out and somewhat confused children's movie. The shots of Manhattan in the mid-90s have some historical value. This is also probably the only kid's movie to reference “Freaks” and “Eraserhead” by name and feature posters of “Sssssss,” “The Head Hunter,” and “Evil Dead II.” Was the novelty of that enough to justify the three bucks I spent on this DVD? I am forced to admit that the answer to that question is “yes.” [5/10]
Considering the type of socially conscious horror Jordan Peele would become acclaimed for, it shouldn't be surprising that his version of “The Twilight Zone” would foreground similar issues. “Among the Untrodden” would be the show's take on high school bullying. Weird girl Irene arrives at an all-girls academy. With her social awkwardness and interest in psychic powers, she immediately comes under the target of Madison, leader of the school's mean girl clique. After performing a test on psychic powers for the whole class, Irene is surprised to see that Madison had a perfect score. Though reluctant to accept it at first, Madison starts to believe this might be true. The two start to meet in secret, honing their powers together, and slowly becoming friends. Madison's cruel, status-obsessed friends have a hard time accepting the strange new girl, leading to tension between them. This peaks at the school science fair, where Madison's friends present a “project” solely designed to mock and expose Irene's darkest secrets.
Taken on its own, “Among the Untrodden” plays like a modern update of “Carrie” with heavy cross-pollination from “Mean Girls.” Irene is relentlessly bullied by Madison and her clique, who are so viciously horrible in that way teenage girls can be. This keen observation on how girls that age zero in on their own insecurities to lambast people lower on the social totem pole than them is probably the best thing about “Among the Untrodden.” Because it's certainly not the way the narrative progresses. The way Madison and Irene slowly form a friendship, in spite of their social differences, is easy to predict. There's the expected scene of the cool girl showing the outcast how to do her make-up and hair, a cliché that's been discredited since the days of “The Breakfast Club.” This obviously leads to a confrontation with Madison's other, more shallow friends. When she gets drunk and reveals a bunch of embarrassing secrets, obviously that's going to become important later. This leads towards the climax at the science fair. It's a scene that moves towards melodramatic ridiculousness in a way that feels, if not hard to believe, then at least hard to accept. That the episode backs away from a full-on “Carrie” style telekinetic rampage seems like a deliberate move on the writers' behalf, as if they realized they were coming awfully close to imitating a beloved classic and changed directions suddenly at the last minute.
Earlier this year, the Xbox 360 digital store was shut down, casting a number of projects into the void of nonexistence. That got me thinking about an early, peculiar attempt by Microsoft's console to get into original programming. In 2008, Peter Safran and James Gunn would create a handful of bizarre shorts, such as “PG Porn” and “Humanzee.” The duo would team with Xbox and, bizarrely, the U.S. Airforce for the “Horror Meets Comedy” series. Seven up-and-coming horror filmmakers were invited to make comedic shorts. Gunn, James Wan, Adam Green, David Slade, “Haunting in Connecticut's” Peter Cornwell, and “The Amityville Horror” remake guy each contributed bizarre and mostly unfunny films. The best of the lot was Lucky McKee's “Blue Like You.” Being a huge McKee fan, I've been meaning to write about this one for years. The shorts disappeared off the Xbox years ago but survive thanks to YouTube.
“Blue Like You” is about Patrick, an unassuming man who has been set up on a date with a lovely but strange girl named Blue. The more time Patrick spends with Blue, the more he learns about her disturbing background. Seemingly, she has spent her entire life locked inside a single room, eating nothing but Hot Pockets. Despite her bizarre behavior, the two do have a lovely evening together... Until things take an unexpectedly gory turn.
No comments:
Post a Comment