Halloween 2023: October 20th

Parents (1989)

Back in August, I drove up to New Jersey to visit a Monster-Mania convention. I did this mostly so my Mom could meet Ron Perlman. Yet Randy Quaid was also there, which surprised me. I was under the impression that he was still on the lam in Canada, running from the Star Whackers. But I had to take this chance as I'm a huge fan of Quaid's work in “Freaked.” I figured I could sneak that movie into the Halloween Blog-a-thon but, while at the con, I impulsively bought a Blu-Ray of “Parents.” I saw it years back and remember it being nothing like I expected. However, knowing that Bob Balaban's sole horror credit as a director has a cult following, I decided to give it another chance. 

Ten year old Michael moves with his parents, father Nick and mother Lily, to the suburbs. His mom is a housewife, an accomplished cook, while dad designs herbicides. Michael is a odd child, probably because he suspects his parents of doing terrible things. They are obsessed with eating meat. He walks in on them in some sort of bloody sexual roleplay, causing the boy's nightmares to intensify. As Michael begins a friendship with a rambunctious girl next door, his father begins to discipline him more. Soon, Michael grows frightened of his increasingly controlling father, afraid that his parents are secretly cannibals... And that he might end up on the menu next.

The key moment in “Parents” occurs when little Michael awakens in the middle of the night and walks into the living room. He's met with the sight of his parents rolling around, in their underwear, with blood on their mouths. The simple truth is, there are things about the adult world that children aren't able to understand. “Parents” is all about the primordial trauma of a kid stumbling upon this fact, that his parents are not perfect heroes but mere human beings, weak to the impulses of the flesh. And this realization leads to the inevitable conclusion that your parents are also capable of being actively bad people. The cannibalism in the movie is literal but it's also a metaphor for that loss of innocence. As little Michael learns more and more about his mom and dad, he is exposed to the darkest version of this truth possible. 

If “Parents” is a feature length expansion of this primal realization, that means it's a movie about a kid attempting to understand sex. Though both are young and chaste, his little friend next door seems to be slowly leading Michael down a romantic path. Sex, of course, is a matter of the flesh... And so is meat. That is a topic “Parents' is very concerned with, the film filled with images of red meat, sometimes raw, sometimes cooked, but always being consumed. It seems that his parents' lust for each other is keenly connected with their lust for meat. They are never seen eating any vegetables. Michael seems to swear off being a carnivore as the movie goes on, which amounts to rejecting his parents' life style. The film is so intensely focused on the consumption of sinew that it honestly made me – a guy who loves being a meat-eater – reconsider my diet for a minute.

Yet the most potent idea inside “Parents” is a lot simpler than all of this. Dads just suck sometimes. Early on in the film, Nick tries to be warm to his son. He carries him to bed and tells him not to be afraid of the dark. Yet even then, he's a glowering, stern-faced mountain of a man who seems both tightly wound and barely containing a burning rage. Randy Quaid could not be better cast in this role, his face almost always locked in a glare and his skin frequently wet with perspiration. He strikes the viewer as in a perpetual state of disapproval of his son. Once his status as a cannibal is slowly teased out, “Parents” becomes a disturbingly tense thriller about how far will this go. Will Nick attack his own son? It's hard to imagine a parent killing and eating his own child but... Well, we all know that it's all too plausible. With a father like Nick, it seems all but expected.

The first time I saw “Parents,” it was sold to me as a horror/comedy subverting fifties nostalgia. This doesn't really begin to describe the film's menacing, unnerving tone but it's not entirely wrong either. Balaban's film contrasts the squeaky clean wholesomeness of a “Leave it To Beaver” suburban existence with its much darker impulses. This means meticulously designed sets, with clashing wall paper and hideous color schemes, are filmed with very dark, noir-influenced lighting. Balaban then fills the film with increasingly bizarre, morbid nightmare sequences. Maybe the best of which is Michael hiding in a closet and being attacked by hands made of sausages. Yet there's a lot of images of blood, meat, shadows, and dead bodies floating around, often paired with a soundtrack that switches between discordant strings and retro jazz.

Really, the only thing that keeps me from loving “Parents” is its lead performance. Bryan Madorsky plays Michael as a perpetually sleepy kid, who is always dead-eyed and seemingly in a trance of some sort. He's weird from the get-go, never believable as a normal child, which makes his descent into this nightmarish scenario a lot harder to buy. Nevertheless, Balaban – who I think of more for his avuncular presence as an actor in Wes Anderson and Christopher Guest movies – really tapped into something here. There's even a sequence that wouldn't be out of place in a top tier Argento wannabe, of a knife slicing through a cabinet door. “Parents" is odd, disturbing, and hypnotic. Vestron sold it as a ribald horror comedy back in the eighties, which is what I expected on my first viewing. This is something altogether weirder and darker, a fascinating trip into fraught child/parent relationships. [8/10]

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

In the early sixties, Osamu Tezuka – without question the most influential man in the medium of animation and comics in Japan – started his own studio, Mushi Production. While the studio made television series based on popular Tezuka manga, like “Astro Boy” and “Kimba the White Lion,” it also made feature films. Starting in 1969, the studio would launch the ambitious Animerama trilogy. This was a trilogy of animated films, based on classical source material, and aimed squarely at adults with explicit content. The series concluded in 1973 with “Belladonna of Sadness,” the most graphic and experimental of the three. The films were all a huge financial failure, leading the studio to bankruptcy and Tezuka to go elsewhere. Yet, in time, “Belladonna” would be re-evaluate as a lost masterpiece of animation. 

In medieval France, peasant woman Jeanne marries Jean, the man she loves. When Jean's offering of a single cow does not please the local lord, he enacts the right of prima nocta instead. Raped and humiliated, Jeanne cries out in agony. Her tears are answered by the devil himself, who promises to help her. Soon, Jeanne and Jean grow rich and prosperous. Yet their relationship sours and Jeanne becomes hated by the villagers. Satan returns to Jeanne, demanding her body and soul, but she refuses. Only after being driven out of town does Jeanne relent. She returns as a powerful witch, bringing the wrath of the Black Plague and the pleasure of Satanic lust down on the village. 

To describe “Belladonna of Sadness” as an anime is technically correct but doesn't give you a good idea of what this movie looks like. Much of “Belladonna” is made of still images, slightly abstract and at times minimalist watercolor paintings that the camera pans over. Other times, the film becomes an overwhelming kaleidoscope of psychedelic imagery. When Jeanne accepts the devil's offer, we're greeted to an acid trip of pop-art that's like a more aggressive version of “Yellow Submarine.” As wild as that moment is, it's simply a precursor to the animal-transformation orgy and the depiction of the black plague. Yet even the quieter moments of “Belladonna” feature penis-shaped devils and flowery vulva imagery. This is that kind of movie, giving us not merely one sight we've never seen before but roughly a hundred every other minute.

Yes, “Belladonna of Sadness” is not going to win any points with the easily offended. The movie begins with Jeanne being assaulted, which is depicted in artistic but graphic ways. This is only the beginning of her agony, as she spends more-or-less the entire movie being abused and betrayed by men. The film is a relentlessly artistic but unavoidably downbeat depiction of how women are commodified, brutalized, and discarded by men. I don't blame anyone for opting out of such a film. Yet there is something undeniably tragic about Jeanne existing in a time when women exist only to be extensions of the men around them. This is the world she lives in and it's why she pursues men, whether it be her husband or the devil. That submitting herself to the devil is what ultimately makes Jeanne a sexually liberated women will definitely rub many the wrong way.

Despite its less than sensitive portrayal of sexual assault and the ensuing trauma, “Belladonna of Sadness” is nevertheless an effecting portrayal of womanhood in the age of witchcraft. Jeanne being a sexually free woman is directly linked with Satanism. She defies the Christian world and the traditional values associated with her. As she introduces this way of life to the rest of the village, it outrages those in power. This makes a clear point: That witches, those burned at the stake in historical times, where always just powerful women that threatened men's status as those in control. Whether you think its final moments are earned or not, I couldn't help but find “Belladonna of Sadness” to be a powerful depiction of witchcraft through the ages and how women specifically where targeted and punished for these infractions. 

Truthfully, I'm inclined to give “Belladonna of Sadness” the biggest recommendation possible simply because it's unlike anything else I've ever seen. It's aggressively the product of the seventies, with its acid rock soundtrack that bends in directions both groovy and mournful and its somewhat antiquated sexual politics. The psychedelic animation is mind-blowing, sometimes hilarious, frequently explicit, but always amazing to look at. The mythic story reflects on culture and history in ways that I can't help but find fascinating. Obscure for years, the film would immediately become a cult favorite upon its rediscovery. I can't help but feel like I've discovered a new favorite, the kind of exciting motion picture that reminds me why I love horror, movies, and animation in the first place. [9/10]

The Twilight Zone (2002): The Pharaoh’s Curse

Compared to the other two revivals of “The Twilight Zone,” the often overlooked and rarely well-liked 2002 iteration had few well known directors behind the camera. You know things are dire when David R. Ellis and Jonathan Frakes are the most acclaimed directors on the docket. But there was one exception. That being Bob Balaban, who directed two episodes. Since I just watched “Parents,” I decided “The Pharaoh's Curse” – the higher rated of his two installments – would be a good chaser. 

The episode follows Mario Devlin, a hot shot stage illusionist known for stunts like walking through the Great Wall of China or leaping into an active jet turbine. Devlin is obsessed with the Pharaoh's Curse, a legendary magic trick that involves two men switching places while inside spinning, glass caskets. The trick is performed once a generation, when the great illusionist of the last era passes it on to the next. The last man to do the Curse was Harry Kellogg, Devlin's hero. Upon news of the magician's retirement, Mario tracks down Kellogg at his mansion. Though reluctant at first, the ailing Kellogg eventually agrees to show Mario the secret of the Pharaoh's Curse... And it's no simple magic trick.

"The Pharaoh's Curse" does have a couple of things going for it. The world of stage magic, and when it interacts with actual magik, is a fruitful setting for a tale of hubris and legacy. Like nearly every episode of 2002's "Zone," you figure out very quickly where this is headed. The supernatural twist is telegraphed far in advance and the final scene gets a little goofy. Yet the premise here does touch on a handful of tropes I enjoy and does have the classical structure of a young, proud asshole sealing his own doom.

There's also some decent casting here. Xander Berkeley plays Kellogg, limping around with a cane through the whole half-hour. Berkeley does a good job of showing his disgust at Devlin and intoning gravely about the seriousness of performing the Curse. I also enjoyed seeing Lindy Booth as Kellogg's assistant/lover, even if she is more quirky girl-next-door than femme fatale. On the other hand, Shawn Hatosy does too good of a job of making Devlin a smug, haughty jerk. He just radiates dude-bro energy and spending time with him is more irritating than interesting. That ultimately makes "The Pharaoh's Curse" more tedious than its predictable writing. Balaban does include one decent visual trick, a POV shot from Devlin's perspective as he steps out of the casket. This is one of the better episodes of the Forest Whitaker-hosted “Zone” I've seen, which says a lot more about the quality of that series overall than this particular half-hour. [5/10]

The Black Tower (1987)

Say what you will about Letterboxd but it has become a great way for me to discover things I might not have heard of otherwise. Such as “The Black Tower,” an example of architectural horror from avant-garde filmmaker John Smith. The twenty minute film concerns a man who, one day, sees a black tower in the distance from his home that he's never noticed before. He doesn't think about it much for a few days until he notices that the tower has vanished... And reappeared in a new location. Soon, the man realizes that, no matter where he goes, the tower is looming behind him. He starts to grow so fearful of the tower, that he won't even leave his house. 

Smith claims he didn't set out to make a horror movie with “The Black Tower,” saying he intended to make a comedy. Certainly nothing about the way the film is presented suggest either horror or humor. Much of the short is made up of a black screen, stationary shots of buildings in the distance, or close-up of dark walls that appear to be nothing at all, at first. The entire film is narrated by an unseen protagonist, who describes his thoughts and feelings about the tower in a very dry, detached manner. Eventually, the film starts to cut back and forth between different shots of trees and buildings, each edit accompanied by a loud noise on the soundtrack. Yes, this is another artsy-fartsy short film that delights in playing with the form and structure of cinema itself, often to the point of annoying or confusing the average viewer. 

Yet “The Black Tower's” premise inevitably bends towards psychological horror. How else would you describe the idea of being doggedly pursued by a far-away building, no matter where you go, which no one else can see? That the narrator is so calm only contributes to the assumption that “The Black Tower” depicts someone going through a mental health crisis. That he eventually ends up in a hospital certainly supports that suggestion. The ending and final scene bends even further in the direction of psychic-horror, with the feeling that the tower is some sort of malevolent entity looking to claim its victims and then moving on to its next target. 

Truthfully, “The Black Tower's” premise is loose enough that it can be interpreted as being about a wide number of things. People have seen metaphors for depression, the surveillance state, or gentrification in this short film. The former most reading makes the most sense to me but clearly “The Black Tower” is malleable. I wish it focused more on the unnerving qualities inherent in its premise and less on fucking with the cinematic art form but I think I did like this. [7/10]