Denouement Renouement

Category: Hooptober

  • Hooptober 12: Вий (Viy) (1967)

    Film #7 — 1/1 Former Soviet Film; 1/6 Countries (USSR)

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    One of the few feature-length horror films from the USSR, sometimes argued to be the only true title in the category, Viy is a morality tale wrapped in folk horror. Beginning with three seminary students who find themselves lost in the country after trying to make it home for vacation, they eventually find a farm and rudely demand shelter and food from a witch in the form of an old woman. Khoma is the most egregiously demanding of the three, earning him interest from the witch, though all the students are completely uninterested in the praxis of their doctrine and are shown to be disruptive to everything and everyone around them. None seem to practice earnestly, and Khoma repeatedly uses his ties to piety as a way to conceal his wrongdoings, at no point showing any actual selfless consideration for those around him or the harm he causes. 

    The film builds tension through the quickening of cuts and increasing the speed of camera movements, using lots of playful handheld camerawork to add a fluidity to much of the motion that becomes jarring when it suddenly stops. The viewer is told exactly how to feel and when to feel it, but there’s such a strong comedic tone throughout that this approach adds to the absurd surrealist ride rather than feeling like the audience is being spoon-fed. Blending with beautiful imagery, Viy becomes nightmarish in its repetitions and in the length that some sequences carry on for, eliciting the same feelings of frustration from not being able to run properly in a bad dream. The use of diegetic music in one scene, too, adds to the absurdity faced by the protagonist, and to the joy the people he is staying with glean from his terror. It’s notable that Khoma is drunk, drugged, sleep deprived, or some combination of the three, for practically every supernatural event he witnesses, raising questions about what his actual experiences are, though they have the same effect whether in his head or in front of him.

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  • Hooptober 12: La frusta e il corpo (The Whip and the Body) (1963)

    Film #6 — 1/1 Film Written by Ernesto Gastaldi

    By C. Ramsay

    A gothic, psychosexual melodrama that uses the story of a disowned nobleman suddenly returning to his family estate after years away as a backdrop to deeper explorations of the self. Bava seems to tie the inner workings of his characters, how they are moulded and what inspires their wants, to being inseparable from the physical environment as an influence. Using some truly stunning locations, the environment and how it moves in the frame is treated with equal interest to the characters present, showing a respect for the agency of the elements in impressing those wading through them. Gorgeous mood lighting is prominent and is also used in many ways as its own character, completely free of the constraints of natural lumination, often imposing rather than enlightening. Imposition is then laced through the film’s composition, with angular or tilted shots periodically breaking up the flow of a sequence. In these, both three-dimensional objects and their two-dimensional shadows end up blending to the point where it’s not always noticeable at first glance which is which, leading to a degree of unsettling abstractness to scenes which are otherwise understandable. Nature, lighting, and shadows all act as components of influence that aren’t always recognizable, notably when they aren’t physical, yet they function as complementary to, or extensions of, the supernatural elements persistent throughout the film.

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  • Hooptober 12: Panic in Year Zero! (1962)

    Film #5 — 1/2 Post-Apocalyptic Films; 4/9 Decades

    By C. Ramsay

    Commercializing the nuclear paranoia of the 1960s, Panic in Year Zero! centres on married couple Harry and Ann, as well as their two teenage children, as they witness the start of nuclear war while embarking on a family road trip outside of suburban Los Angeles. Fear of the Other, of societal fracturing, and of isolation are pivotal to the film’s interests, which are also aimed at highlighting the specifics of how these fears can so quickly come to fruition. Before the day is out for the Baldwin family, disaster capitalism is on the rise, individualistic attitudes are rampant, and panic is unavoidable. 

    The hypocrisy of American values is underscored fairly early on, with a radio broadcast reporting that “the president has called upon every American to do his duty in reestablishing law and order,” followed quickly by the completely contradictory statement that “there are no civilians. We are all at war.” The public’s understandable large-scale panic, resulting in mass migration and the frenzied purchasing of necessary supplies, is frequently disharmonized by the smaller, more individual instances of panic that typically culminate in dangerous speeding, theft and looting, and violent altercations. The inevitable death of the nuclear family at the advent of nuclear holocaust, along with its corresponding familial expectations, is briefly acknowledged when Ann Baldwin voices concern for her mother’s well-being back in Los Angeles and is promptly stymied by her husband triaging their own safety above his mother-in-law’s. Though he’s right in his priorities, he shuts down any word of his wife’s mother with such carelessness and lack of emotion, with her never being brought up again past an attempted phone call, that she reads more as a dead-end plot point than an exemplary subject of the film’s philosophy. Regrettably, any interest the film evokes from the audience in terms of what’s considered justified under extreme circumstances and where the line of no return is is never really explored more deeply than simply introducing the concepts as a means to progress the plot.

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  • Hooptober 12: Cat People (1942)

    Film #4 — 1/1 Most Popular Film from the 1940s I Hadn’t Seen; 3/9 Decades

    By C. Ramsay

    Although the pacing is a little slow during the first half, the characters are so endearing that it’s worthwhile spending time with them. Irena, originally from Serbia and still mostly askew in New York, is especially sympathetic as a protagonist experiencing isolation from her country, culture, friends, and family, as well as through the gendered expectations placed on her. She spends most of her time desperately trying to fit into a box that was never sized for her, fearing the consequences of not being able to do so, and performing for the satisfaction of the people around her to her own detriment. 

    Irena’s arc is resonant for the same reasons as Medea’s in the play of the same name—a woman capable and established in her own right is seen as different in an unfamiliar society and is betrayed by a husband she thought she could trust, leading to a compulsion to commit acts of violence as her only means of escape. The caged panther that Irena regularly visits reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of the creature she projects herself onto, even if she means well, which is paralleled by how the people in her life treat her and her reactions in turn. Neither she nor the panther are innately evil, but when pressured and lacking alternatives both will escalate in accordance with what is assumed of them by the masses, fitting in only in how they were expected not to. “I love silence, I love loneliness,” is uttered by Irena in despair at the eventual realization that she cannot pretend herself into someone she isn’t for people who claim to care about her but never really change their own behaviours in meaningful ways. Isolation at least provides the opportunity for a less challenged understanding of oneself.

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  • Hooptober 12: The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

    Film #2 — 1/1 Film from 1932; 2/9 Decades

    By C. Ramsay

    On the brink of the official implementation of the Hays Code, the Most Dangerous Game does not shy away from the gruesomeness of its subject matter of hunting people for sport, or from any other accompanying violence extended from the elements of the setting. The film opens with an impressive shipwreck sequence which includes miniatures, some enjoyable stunt work, men being boiled alive before they can even run, and a shark attack that finishes off the crew save for experienced hunter Bob Rainsford. He manages to swim ashore where he stumbles upon a castle and its residents: a count who is also an experienced hunter, some of his servants, and the survivors of another shipwreck. Each character has unique personality traits that the actors play up without becoming complete stereotypes of their characteristics.

    The film builds tension at a good pace and manages to maintain it. The viewer knows what’s coming but not how or when, as any sense of adventure or whimsy is periodically disturbed by horrific moments. All space is used extensively no matter the setting, making it feel lived in and tying the viewer to the same level as the hunted byway of learning the landscape with them. No space is off limits in helping to create atmosphere—it is entirely imposing around anyone unfamiliar. The occasional pointed use of certain sound effects also help reinforce the sustained tension, such as when the blow of a horn chillingly rises to the sound of dogs howling to inform the viewer, and the hunted, that escape is about to become necessary from multiple hunters rather than one. 

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  • Hooptober 12: Wolf Blood (1925)

    Film #1 — 1/1 Silent Film; 1/9 Decades

    By C. Ramsay

    One of the earliest werewolf films, and possibly the oldest still surviving, Wolf Blood opens on rival logging companies, the physical harm one is committing against the employees of the other in order to slow their work and profits, and a young boss who comes to inspect the camp, becoming torn between her commitment to her surgeon fiancé who accompanied her there and her newfound love for the manager of her company. The details of this opening, however, take approximately two thirds of the film’s runtime to establish, leaving next to no time for any events to play out before a swift climax instantly ushers in the final shots.

    The shooting locations offer some beautiful scenery, but feel underexplored. While there are a couple of impressive set pieces, the editing is choppy and the sets are used more for brief establishing shots than to extensively contextualize the setting of the story and convey atmosphere through visual immersion. The best lighting and shot composition appear in the interior cabin scene immediately after the injury of the logging manager, Bannister, that leads to him requiring a blood transfusion that under the circumstances can only be completed using wolf blood. The sequence at first seems like it might go the route of early body horror, but cuts away before anything more than the unattached transfusion tubes can be shown. The pacing of the film—bogged down by its pervasive opening—suffers from its slowness, especially when factoring in the intertitles constantly breaking up any tension before it can begin to build. Wolf Blood is more interested in framing its humour and sense of adventure than it is any of its horror elements, so much so that the latter are practically non-existent.

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