Denouement Renouement

Tag: 5 stars

  • Hooptober 13: White Zombie (1932)

    Film #2 — 1/2 Bela Lugosi Films; 2/9 Decades

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    With film quality that constantly flickers through a rainbow of colours and has elements seeping in and back out of the depth of shadows, White Zombie, widely considered to be the first zombie movie, is dreamlike in how its horror washes over you. Eerie sound effects at poignant but unexpected moments, dirge-style music flowing through the background, and beautiful gothic sets blend as the film runs, yet each has a knack for standing out after the fact, seeming at times like the only remaining pieces of a fading reverie.

    Central to the story is Vodou, a syncretic religion that was initially developed among the African diaspora in Haiti from which the original concept of the zombie began. Typically, a living person would create a zombie from a corpse using Vodou practices, and the corpse would then be physically enslaved without self-determination to the re-animator. Zombie folklore in Haiti was often used by white slave traders and plantation owners to try to prevent enslaved people from committing suicide, which was sometimes seen as the only means to escape enslavement, by threatening perpetual servility even in death. Bela Lugosi’s character of ‘Murder’ Legendre, a white man living in Haiti, adopts Vodou practices to zombify different types of people for different reasons. A few choice white men, considered to be Legendre’s enemies on the island, are zombified for the purposes of providing physical protection and to eliminate any social, economic, and juridical consequences that they may have previously had the means to enact against him. Madeline, a white woman visiting Haiti with her fiancé, Neil, ahead of their wedding is zombified to be romantically and sexually exploited by Charles Beaumont, a plantation owner who becomes obsessed with her and seeks Legendre’s help in making her his. Beaumont in turn is made into another white zombie by Legendre for the overt reasons of keeping Madeline for himself and tying up the erratic loose ends that a criminal partner can bring, though there’s a hint of homoeroticism behind the decision as well.

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  • Hooptober 12: The Devils (1971)

    Film #10 — 1/4 Films Based on Novels (or Books); 5/9 Decades

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    Though it might be cliché to quote Shakespeare’s “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here” as the truest sentiment this film embodies, there’s no closer description of the nearly two-hour frenzied descent into sacrilegious hedonism that it presents. Set in 1634 France and following Urbain Grandier, a priest who has temporarily inherited control of the fortified city of Loudun from its deceased Governor, as well as Sister Jeanne des Agnes of the city’s Ursuline convent, the film intertwines the country’s conflicting religious fanaticism with an outburst of mass sexual deviancy.

    Featured throughout are colossal but stark sets, their architecture illustrative of the people most commonly frequenting them—rounded and enveloping for Sister Jeanne, jagged and commanding for Father Grandier, all of it cavernous and empty. The streets of Loudon, the space of the masses, are where the excesses are found: an orgiastic cacophony of visual opulence that in detail is built of disease, rot, and poverty, swelling to consume all who wade through it. 

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  • Hooptober 12: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

    Film #8 — 1/3 Cult or Conspiracy Films

    Also filed under: A-One

    By C. Ramsay

    A reverie of dread that’s a much more difficult watch than it first appears. While in no way uninteresting, the first thirty minutes begin slowly, the true degree of escalation only noticeable in retrospect once things have already begun to surge out of control. With the film being highly reliant on visual storytelling, the set design and costumes are well curated, allowing the viewer to quickly assess married couple Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse before getting to know them better through conversation. Since we originally see the apartment that much of the film takes place in when it’s still furnished from the previous tenant—who happens to be one of the cult members—the audience is further able to learn about some of their characterization, as well as some of the cult practices through context clues, without ever meeting the deceased occupant. 

    Ruth Gordon gives a phenomenal performance as Minnie Castevet, one of the Woodhouse’s neighbours and a key cult member. Her apathy for Rosemary, concealed only through a caricature of temperament that’s barely interested in feigning authenticity, is replicated by Guy in a moment that is such a sudden pivot in behaviour from him that it’s sickening. The tragedy surrounding Rosemary is reinforced through her perpetually heightening fear and lack of ability to do anything about it, though she tries desperately to. At first, she’s trusting and accepts the explanations she’s given, preferring to assume she’s misunderstood something than to advocate for herself at the risk of offending others and realizing she’s wrong in her accusations. Rosemary is not meek, though, and speaks up regularly. The problem is that everyone capable of helping her is either only pretending to or helps with an immediate issue without following up in addressing the larger problem. Any support she does receive stops at being verbal when it needs to also be material.

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  • 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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  • A-One: The Parallax View (1974)

    By C. Ramsay

    Spoilers!

    An incredibly stylish overview of individualistic American exceptionalism and the paranoia of established institutions. Beginning with the assassination of a U.S. senator with presidential aspirations, an event witnessed by numerous people including Warren Beatty’s investigative reporter Joseph Frady, the film builds to getting so swept up in its dualities that it begs the viewer to question their own complicity.

    After the opening events of the film, Frady is shown to have had to re-attain his position of employment after having previously faced repercussions for a drinking problem, evoking the American ethos of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. That with enough introspection, application, and grind, self-actualization will be achieved—but with previous faults rendered inconsequential. The emphasis is not on the growth of a person, but their supposed reinvention. It is on their ability to adjust not because of a catalyst, but in spite of it. With any prolonged bout of introspection, though, is the risk of aggrandized self-assurance, something Frady exhibits from the start of the film to its bitter end. 

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