They don't write like that anymore

With HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2008), Ti West does so many things right that it's a hell of a shame he can't marshal these elements into something like an effective movie. Presented by Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix, the film is a throwback to a variety of late 70s, early 80s non-franchise horror and its title montage sets a definite nostalgic tone, freeze framing heroine Joceline Donahue (seen briefly in THE BURROWERS, another interesting indie horror pic that doesn't work) as she plods innocently towards her ghastly fate.

Set in a New England college town where all the pizza tastes like ass but which is purported to have the most perfect view of an impending lunar eclipse, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is deliberately paced and directed throughout with an impressive modesty... one might almost say humility... that is growing exceedingly rare in these hyperbolic days. An early camera move into the back of a character as she stares passively out a window reminds us of how much the genre has lost to shock cuts and shakycam and recalls a time when filmmakers attempted to describe in visual terms the air around their characters, encouraging viewers to vicariously enjoy smells, textures, seasons of the year. Set during the 1980s (acid-washed jeans, Swatches and a Sony Walkman are our spirit guides), the film is rooted in an era before technology undermined our collective attention span, before social networking supplanted friendship, back when 90% of living was (as the old jokes goes) just showing up.

If HOUSE OF THE DEVIL had something to say about human connections and presence, about responsibility or accountability, it would be quite a little gem of a horror film and goddamnit it would have taken so little to put these themes across. Sadly, Ti West flits between ideas noncommittally, suggesting at one point it's all a lark, then implying elsewhere that this is hard rock horror, with no quarter given and no prisoners taken. While I admire the patience of Ti West's slow burn approach, the point of a slow burn approach shouldn't be to do a slow burn approach.

Even the film's fans will admit that the last ten minutes are HOUSE OF THE DEVIL's weakest, trading in as they do all that incremental build-up for some sub-ROSEMARY'S BABY style blood and thunder with the pentagrams on the floor and the people in hoods and the hoo and the ha and the blib-blab. (The movie reminded me less of the Polanski film than of Michele Soavi's THE SECT, aka THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER, which is the way to do a Bride of Satan story right.) Are West's Satanists good at what they do? Are they bumblers? Have they done this before or is this the first time? These unanswered questions become the pull pieces in the game of Jenga that is HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, and which result in its ultimate collapse.

If you really care about the genre as something more than eye candy then it's dispiriting to hear so many of HOUSE OF THE DEVIL's fans wax rhapsodically about how it evokes the 80s. Have we sunk so low as a fanbase that we're willing to elevate pandering to an artform? West incorporates 80s music and Reagan era signifiers the way The Gap pumps Dido into its stores, so that it's customers feel sexy and contemporary while they fill their carts with khakis, v-necks and roll top socks. As an artifice, West's approach is perfectly fine, there's no shame in that game, but what bites is that he fails consistently to marry that ambiance to anything substantive or even lasting. He's got no ideas. He's got nothing to say.

It is great to see Dee Wallace and Mary Woronov with proper supporting roles and if you have to see HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, see it for them. Wallace brings her trademark warmth to an early bit as a sympathetic landlord and Woronov (who is pushing 70) gets to rock her sinister side to considerable effect, even when sidelined in favor of onscreen husband Tom Noonan ( much scarier as a regular person than he is as a devil worshiper). BAGHEAD's Greta Gerwig has some brief face time as the concerned best friend and Jeff Grace's festering orchestral score deserves a CD release.

At the end of the day...

... there's nothing quite like a girl in a bloody wifebeater. I normally don't follow up on 90% of the EPK stuff that comes my way because frankly most of it looks awful and I don't want to either waste my time or piss on somebody's parade. However, something about Gustavo Hernandez's THE SILENT HOUSE (2010, presumably... it's not listed on the IMDb) appealed to me... and that something was, of course, the aforementioned churra in the soiled tanktop. I like her. She's modestly endowed, athletic looking and not conventionally attractive. And she carries a lantern - that shows class. And, if you watch the trailer, a sickle.



I can't endorse the film as I haven't seen it. Some of the imagery is shopworn (the Polaroids, in particular) but if it cooks then all is forgiven. THE SILENT HOUSE was supposedly done in a single take, which doesn't sway my vote one way or another. I'll take a good story and persuasive performances over that kind of gimmickry any old day but I'll have a look at this when it crosses my path.

Mini Arbo Pop-ups for Groundhog Day

It has been almost 15 years since CURDLED (1996) so I guess it was time for another crime scene clean-up comedy. Instead of a murder mystery, this time we get Christine Jeffs' SUNSHINE CLEANING (2009), whose boil-a-pouch wisdom is twice warmed over but filling enough to kill a snack pang. Amy Adams plays yet another naif lost in the world until she hits on the business plan of providing forensic mop-up services for the local PD and drags wayward sister Emily Blunt into the mix. The unflappably amusing Alan Arkin breezes through the film as if were on his way to the can while Steve Zahn, Marylynn Rajskub, and Clifton Collins, Jr., provide reliable support. Plus, it's always great to see Paul Dooley even when he isn't selling used cars.

A mechanical thriller more impressed with its cleverness than you will ever be, A PERFECT GETAWAY (2009) is one of those Figure Me Out movies made in the wake of THE USUAL SUSPECTS (1995), in which acting, direction, cinematography and all other aesthetic questions are tabled in favor of figuring out the twist. The hyperbolic ads for this David Twohy joint let the cat out of the bag last year but if you come to this cold you might enjoy it. Timothy Olyphant has a fun supporting role as either an ex-black op or the world's most comprehensive liar and Steve Zahn brings his usual funk to a rare leading man assignment. Gorgeous locations in Hawaii, Jamaica and Puerto Rico sprinkle some sweet sugar on an otherwise lackluster pill.

There was a lot of positive word of mouth about TRUCKER (2008) back when it was "the greatest movie you will never see" (I'm paraphrasing) but now that it's available on DVD here's the truth: it's a triple axle KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979) with a grilled cheese scene instead of a French toast scene. I loves me some Michelle Monaghan and really wanted to see her in a movie about trucking but she spends about 5 minutes driving her rig and the remaining 85 fighting with or coming to terms with the 10 year old son (ORPHAN's Jimmy Bennett, who's very good with some unsurprising material) she gave up 10 years ago. Benjamin Bratt does what he can as Monaghan's (handsomely) dying baby daddy while Nathan Fillion plays the Hunky Next Door Neighbor Who Doesn't Know How Hunky He Really Is. I knew I was in trouble when the film opened with Monaghan engaged in a zipless motel fuck (no nudity, sorry) with a Really Handsome Guy (are you sensing a pattern here? Ugly sucks!) and the rest just never came to life for me no matter how thick writer-director James Mottern troweled on the alt-country. TRUCKER just doesn't deliver.

What EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS (2002) has going for it is a no prisoners attitude, so when the eponymous creepy crawlies take over a small desert town there's some top notch carnage - adults and kids, men and women, young and old are fair game and these bits have an intoxicatingly anarchic edge. And yet, and yet, it doesn't quite hit the expected note and I don't know why that is. David Arquette is less offensive here than in most of his idiot savant roles and it's great to see Kari Wuhrer in a sheriff's uniform; a pre-superstardom Scarlett Johansson (above, being slimed) is a serviceable pretty young thing, Tom Noonan turns up (and bows out) early as a nice guy bug collector and Rick Overton's dumbass deputy actually exceeds survival expectations... and yet the sum total is a bit of a shrug. Writer-director Ellory Elkayem was plucked from the minors by Warner Brothers to helm this feature on the strength of his short film LARGER THAN LIFE (1997); three years later was directing RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) sequels in Bulgaria, which proves that not every brash young upstart has legs.

Robert Downey, Sr.'s Madison Avenue lampoon PUTNEY SWOPE (1969) toggles between timeless, merciless satire and feeling very much a product of the 60s... and I guess that's not such a bad thing. I love the free-range, unconstructed feel of the film, which gives you a sense that the filmmakers were just making it all up as they went along (they weren't) and actually communicates a pre-Sundance sense of independent film, back when indie flicks were associated with directors rather than actors. A big hit (relative to cost) in its day, this will never again be as popular as it was 40 years ago and rare is the contemporary viewer who will even get 10 minutes in. But you could be that exception, couldn't you?

I guess it really is true

What goes around...

... really does come around. And I don't mean that in a snarky, HOLLYWOOD BABYLON, see-how-the-mighty-have-fallen way but looking at these two photos, taken decades apart, I can't help but feel some kind of karmic muscle memory was at work. Assuming the photographer of the latter didn't purposely set out to recreate the basic composition of the former. I prefer to chalk it up to coincidence. But either way... wow, right?

I hate death sometimes...

... especially when the news is slow. I only found out today that character actor J. C. Quinn died in Mexico almost 6 years ago. You may remember the Philadelphia-born actor as the pesky (ill-fated) tabloid journalist of C.H.U.D. (1984) or the prison barber in BRUBAKER (1980) or as one of Tim Curry's writers in TIMES SQUARE (1980) or as the philosophical fry cook of VISION QUEST (1985) or as one of Ed Harris' crew in THE ABYSS (1989) or as the guy who kills Tom Hanks' partner in TURNER AND HOOCH (1989) or as -- well, you get the point. He worked a lot and he was memorable. Quinn was a good American actor of the John Cazale/Walter McGuinn school, which is to say he was rarely flashy but always a welcome addition to any ensemble. One of my favorite actor stories was told to me by the owner of an actor bar in New York: Quinn was doing regional theatre in some provincial backwater and rolled into the local watering hole one night after the last curtain call. He stepped up to the bar and asked the bartender "Where's the excitement?" The barkeep sized up the obvious outsider and said "You're it." J. C. Quinn died from injuries sustained in a car accident in Ciudad Juárez on February 10, 2004. He is survived by his wife Yolande (whom he met and married while shooting CRISSCROSS in Key West with Goldie Hawn) and two daughters. I'm sorry he's gone and it took me so long to find out.

Not calm. So not calm.

I am a member of that most lonesome of movie minorities - the defenders of SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1974). The film never caught on with the rank and file of horror fans (despite being the first holiday-themed fright flick of the 70s, predating BLACK CHRISTMAS by a year or so and the rush of killer Santa movies of the early 80s by a decade) and even those who participated in the production (Mary Woronov, in particular) have little love for it. Nonetheless, I have a host of reasons for loving the movie but I'm sure an essential component of my devotion eludes even my highly-evolved brain and exists purely on the atomic level.

I love SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT's bleak, unforgiving winter setting (fairly common now in the genre but much less so in 1972 when the film was shot in and around chilly Oyster Bay, Long Island) and the cast of older actors (ROSEMARY'S BABY had opened up a veritable Pandora's Box of evil possibilities for the elderly, echoed by THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN), and the brief but integral cameo contributed by Patrick O'Neal, whom I knew when I first saw this from his bravura turn as a vengeful hook-handed killer in CHAMBER OF HORRORS (1966). These elements all made an impression on me when I first espied SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT on late night TV. As I caught broadcasts of the film over the ensuing years, as my knowledge of cinema and the arts grew and my aesthetic evolved, I came to appreciate the debt to Luis Buñuel, the participation of performers from Andy Warhol's "Factory," the carryover of three actors from another childhood favorite, Sydney Pollack's CASTLE KEEP (1969), and the pervasive aura of sorrow and loneliness that hags the film from end to end. And then there's the music.

If you're familiar with the synthesizer work of Moog pioneer Gershon Kingsley (born Götz Gustav Ksinski in Westphalia, Germany, 1922), then his score for SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT will surprise you. (Kingsley's most enduring claim to fame is the instrumental pop sensation "Popcorn," covered by the one-hit-wonder band Hot Butter in 1972.) Entirely symphonic, his film music is lush, magisterial, complex and at times even surprisingly passionate. Reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's all-string arrangements for PSYCHO (1960), the score folds in a plaintive piano to underscore the screenplay's preoccupation with solitude and suffering. Growing up with the film as a staple of late night TV, I had always assumed much of the music - which employs the classic Austrian carol Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht (popularized in 1819 by John Freeman Young, who slowed down the uptempo original to the more solemn Silent Night) - to have been preexisting or public domain. In the liner notes for Howlin' Wolf Records' limited edition (1,000 copies) OST CD, we learn that not only did Kingsley compose all of the music but that's his own daughter singing the haunting a capella rendering of "Silent Night" which becomes a motif in the theme to SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT heard over the opening credits.


Production of Howlin' Wolf's SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT soundtrack CD was blessed and overseen by Gershon Kingsley himself. The composer had been unhappy with the finished film back in 1972, which he felt diced up his compositions and rode roughshod over their fluidity. Kingsley had arranged and conducted the score in Munich in 1972 and the OST is culled from those original quarter-inch tapes, remastered into thirteen movements of two suites. While one can't begrudge the composer his dissatisfaction with the finished film (which arose from the ashes of a stillborn Cannon Films project called ZORA, written over a hasty weekend by Ira Teller and initially titled HOUSE OF BUTCHERS), his music has always been a crucial component of this queer, beguiling, and confounding film. These compositions stand up very well on their own, from the affecting/disturbing "Track 2" (which seems to be an arrangement of C. Austin Miles' hymn "In the Garden" for church organ and band saw) to the anxious shift from frenzied ostinato to melodic legato in "Track 8" to the soaring, almost heroic middle strings of "Track 13," which brings the score to a close on a disarmingly romantic note that will only strike you as deliciously incongruous if you're familiar with SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT's grim fade-out.

Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Howlin' Wolf Records is an independent record label devoted to rescuing lost/neglected/forgotten film scores and returning them to the public in the form of limited release CDs. Founded by life-long record collector/soundtrack enthusiast/score hunter/sound engineer Wall Crumpler, who has partnered in this endeavor with media designer/screenwriter Paul Hilberger, Howlin' Wolf is currently focused on horror and suspense films. Also in the HWR catalog is and also offers the score for Stevan Mena's MALEVOLENCE (2006). Visit the Howlin' Wolf Records store and avail yourself of this unjustly neglected score, whose stringy high tension serves as a linchpin between the work of Krzysztof Komeda and both Jack Nitzsche's fearful film music for THE EXORCIST (1973) and Wendy Carlos' trippy, descent into the maelstrony arrangements for THE SHINING (1980).

Remember this one now that it's Rondo time again.

Dumb stuff I gotta do

Oh, it's killin' me that I'm otherwise engaged can't be here with you. It's been days and days of me not even being at the computer, let alone blogging as I should be, as I was born to. (I was also born to end sentences on a preposition. Well, except that one. And that one. Oh, never mind!) Mind you, I'm still thinking about stuff really hard and that's more than half of blogging, so have faith that I'll be back, probably no earlier than next week, and full of piss and vinegar. Unless I'm unaccountably delayed, and then I'll just be full of vinegar. In the meantime, in between time, let me point you elsewhere, so that you're not just sitting here waiting for me to come back.

Unexplained Cinema has undergone a sea change and it's become one of my first stops every live-long day. We all spend so much time talking about movies that it's always nice when we can step back and let the movies speak for themselves, without all the jibber-jabber.

Over to Ferdy on Films, Rod's been on a tear with some great reviews of Hayley Mills and Jean Rollin movies (two great tastes that taste great together) and Marilyn reasserts her awesomeness by being the only other person in the world besides me who is into Joseph Cornell. Way to think inside the box, Mare!

Bill R. has posted a picture of a dog sniffing a guy's butt over at The Kind of Face You Hate.

At Kindertrauma, there are several foxy pictures of known-Communist-but-who-cares-she's-foxy Gale Sondergaard in THE BLUE BIRD (1940) but even more intriguing, in a or an horrific way is the sidebar about the death of child actress Caryll Ann Ekelund during filming. Why have I never heard this terrible story before? Anyway...

At Final Girl, Stacie is almost as negligent as I am.

Up the coast at Cinebeats, Kimberly is feeling out Jerzy Skolimowski and going deep into the Universal Vault series.

That ought to keep you busy for a while.