Acidemic Best Films of the 1980s

Ugh, February, the month of hassles and cold and weariness. Slogging towards March like a slouchy Bethlehem that evaporates on clammy handed contact. Another March 2nd means another year older for your humble narrator, another step closer to the grave. I've been looking for a way out, and I found one --the past.

In fact, goin' back thirty very odd years ago, to the 80s! NatGeo is showing their entire 80s series today - Sat. March 1st -- right now they're saluting Reagan. And now skate parks...

To me, it begins and ends with the VCR.

I had to assemble this list to combat the best of the 80s lists on the web that all either include nostalgia-invoking propaganda like Ferris Bueller (which I loathe on principle) and Raiders of the Lost Ark or acts of admittedly brilliant pop like Tootsie and Terms of Endearment.  Don't think I don't love some of them too, in my fashion and can quote them endlessly (because of the VCR), namely, Tootsie and Raiders: Was ist los? Warum schläfst du!? Nobody cared... nobody showed. Blow it up! Blow it back to God! That is one nutty hospital. Too bad you don't speak Hovito, you might have warned them! I could have done without the dancing. Truth is... truth is you were okay company. Why don't you tell me...eh... where the ark is, right now? Michael, I begged you to get some therapy. The charmer's name was Gaffe... I'd seen him around. Wait, that's Blade Runner's now excised voice over, and thank god - how we hated it. Much like most of that decade, at least until 1987 when we discovered we didn't have to live in it at all. We could hide in the 60s.

10. PASSION (1982)Directed by Jean Luc Godard

We invariably come to any film with pre-set responses to cinematic iconography. Godard assumes this and intentionally screws with our narrative-based expectations. We're made aware of how dogmatically we're conditioned by a lifetime of filmgoing and story hearing. When a film adheres too closely to predetermined narrative formulations, we have cliche; when a film deliberately screws with them we have Godard: a medieval knight on a horse is seen trying to scoop up a naked, running maiden while racing a horse around a circular spinning scenery wheel --thunderous classical music on the soundtrack, hoofbeats, her frightened panting and shrieks--this generates a certain preconditioned response: will we see this chick being carried off? Will we see the hero ride to her rescue? Where is this hero? Your stomach might clamp in suspense, used to a thousand permutations of the same violation. Suddenly the horse pulls up short so it doesn't bump into a moving camera; the naked maiden runs off set and hides behind the cameraman; he rides after her; she climbs up into the lighting rigging to escape; the knight dismounts and goes to have a smoke... (more)

9. AKIRA (1988)

Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo

The quintessential cyber punk anime, Akira occurs in a riot-scarred "Neo-Tokyo" on the verge of some massive unnamed catastrophe and peppered with amok biker gangs, conspiratorial cops, cute anarchists, flying vehicles, telekenetic mutants, and teddy bear hallucinations, all so gorgeously illustrated that time melts and even the tear gas flows gorgeous enough to leave your already-dropped jaw so low it distends off your skull and HDMI-ready flesh tendrils reach out, connecting your tongue directly to the screen.

The plot may hinge in the end on one of those typical Asian male friendships between misfits, one of whom goes crazy, but there's a cataclysmic beer-after-liquor-never-sicker sort of apocalypse as government-sponsored Methuselah syndrome psionics try to reign in the crazy friend who's become godlike and fallen in love with smashing half the city. When things get quiet enough you can hear Walt Disney's frozen head explode.

8. MOONSTRUCK (1987)

Directed by Norman Jewison

Does a mainstream film like this really belong on a disreputable site like mine, you ask? How dare you. What would you put instead, Tootsie? I thought about it, but seeing it on TCM a few weeks ago showed me it hasn't aged well. We've grown hipper about patriarchal subtext, thanks in large part to Molly Haskell. Dustin Hoffman's whole schtick, that he's a better mother than Meryl Streep in Kramer Vs. Kramer and that that he knows more about feminism than all women in Tootsie; and also that awful Stephen Bishop song ("It Might Be You") by itself is enough to keep it off this list. But Moonstruck looks to the great Italian operas for its soundtrack, and it's the best Cher role ever; her chemistry with Nicolas Cage sizzles. He was a relative unknown at the time but brings such mushmouth ferocity to lines like "Gimme da knife so I can cut my froat!" and "I'm going to take you to da bed" that we all would have fallen off a cliff for him if he asked. Between this and Raising Arizona (also 1987) and The Vampire's Kiss (1988), Cage's effect on us was akin to what Brando in Streetcar must have been 30 years before, same mix of madness, heat, wit, beauty, and ferocity all unleashed at the right time to electrify an entire generation. Interestingly enough, all three are dark comedies, though Jewison's is dark literally, a beautiful palette of black clothes and nights, which makes overflowing with color and character balanced without need for animosity, climaxing in a family breakfast where all grievances are aired, love declared, and Olympia Dukakis steals the film with little more than exasperated but resigned sighs. Forget Scorsese, it was this film that made me proud to be dating back-to-back Italian-American chicks at the time. If you have to hate a sweet optimistic comedy from the 80s, hate Tootsie! Telling me it must be you / telling me it must be you / all of my life / RIFFS! / YEAH, RIGHT!

7. MATADOR (1986)

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

His fifth film, Matador marks the turning point of Spain's beloved Pedro Almodóvar from post-Franco celebratory punk shock cinema anarchist to something infinitely darker, yet more tender and compassionate as well. After a disturbing credit sequence involving masturbation to a slasher film highlight reel, we find gored ex-toreador Diego (Nacho Martinez) lecturing a class on the proper way to kill a bull in the ring intercut with a strange woman (Assumpta Serna) killing her lover in just such a way. A disturbing juxtaposition of imagery to be sure, but then as it plays out Almodóvar adds a small minor key piano motif and it becomes an almost Sleepless in Seattle-level melancholy reverie. These two sick fucks need each other in ways that make the suicide pact of Romeo and Juliet seem a second tier booty call. Hitchcock / Wellesian / Bunuelian homage, death drive-to-the-floor Freudian psycho-savvy, color-coded symbolism, a theater playing King Vidor's Duel in the Sun, a solar eclipse, and oblique fashion show commentary on Spain's post-Franco identify crisis all pave the way forward to a romantic lover's climax so free of the usual last-second morality and phony sentiment it restores your faith in cinema. Dub it downer if you want but then you'd best run back under the censor's skirts for protection, puta madre, because cinema's true heart is darkness, not sentimentality. With: a jovenes Antonio Banderas as Diego's repressed, psychic, vertigo-stricken protege; Eva Cobo as the model girlfriend who dresses like a red cape men follow to the sword; Almodóvar regulars Carmen Maura, Veronica Forque, Chuz Lampreave; and the astonishing Bibi Andersen as a Titania-esque flower girl. Almodóvar himself cameos as a fashion designer. They're all great but the film belongs to Martinez's cobra-hooded toreador and Serna's luxuriantly bloodthirsty femme fatale (Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct is but an ice tray-cracking naif by contrast). Most American fans of Almodóvar came around with the 1988 hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (or Todos Sobre Mi Madre in 2000) but rich, hilarious and subversively life-affirming as those films are, I'll take Matador, to the bloody grave.

 6. EXCALIBUR (1981)

Directed by John Boorman

Time has been kind to this deeply Jungian retelling of the Arthur legend. It takes a few dozen viewings to really understand what's going on, especially if you see it on a pan and scan. Thanks to the beautiful blu-ray I have finally figured out most of it, but even if incomprehensible there's the beauty and the Wagner and the natural magic, and inklings of how desire and jealousy can wreck the noblest intentions, and the stirring manly grace that only loyalty to a worthy king can provide. See it again and bask in its Jungian archetypal richnesss. Director John Boorman stocks the film with an array of dreamy class-A Brit thespians players (incl. Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Nicol Williamson, Gabriel Byrne, Patrick Stewart, Nigel Terry) all drinking the same Wolfram von Eisenbach-laced Kool-Aid through glistening lenses that make the armor gleam like mirrors. See it again and become a fan of "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Wagner's Ring cycle, which I love so much because of this movie it made it onto the climax of my own Arthurian retelling, Queen of Disks (2005).

5. L'AMOR BRAQUE (1985)

Directed by Andrzej Zulawski

L'amour braque is a 1985 gloss punk-style French action movie of sorts, falling between Subway (1985) and La Femme Nikita (1990 (with which it shares the amazing Tcheky Karyo) while helping itself to Dostoevsky, Chekhov, cocaine snorted off the legs of whores, Brecht-fast emotional eleven scale butoh Panic Theater frothing at the mouth, and smashing of stuff, all in all a high-octane end game for the entirety of the European nouvelle vague, with actors raving and cavorting, trashing the sets and badmouthing the bourgeoisie while rolling around in the street, twitching herky jerky. Typically 80s synth stabs invoke Hong Kong and Mondo Vision's subtitles keep up brilliantly with Zulawski's poetic post-structural dialogue. For relatively un-intoxicated bros expecting Luc Besson-ish linearity, finding the end frenzy of Antichrist stretched to feature length. Action fans who wondered -- as I did -- if Karyo was just a dud actor after his stone-faced blank of a performance in Nikita will cry for joy as the man tears it up like a dozen Oscar Jaffes on a cocaine and whiskey bender one minute and care about his suffering, on the next. 

The story finds easygoing Czech refugee Leon (Francis Huster) spontaneously adopted by an insane bank robber (presumably) Mickey (Karyo) and his gang of gibbering, joking, Shakespeare-quoting Arab terrorists. The beautiful Sophie Marceau is their mutual obsession, yet another Lynch pin in Zulawski's string of love triangles. She's rich, damaged, nymphomaniacally insane, and proceeds to destroy half of France while pursuing her ancient vengeance against a ritzy conglomerate. Meanwhile Leon's hot cousin Aglae (Christiane Jean) competes for his attention while performing in a version of Chekhov's "The Seagull". (more)

4. BLUE VELVET (1986)
Directed by David Lynch

I'll confess it took me a long way to come around to this movie. I found it disturbing and without a cathartic resolution. After a few decades of film theory and great books by Todd McGowan and Zizek that helped me unravel my private relationship to its Freudian subconscious Oedipal separation trauma, the purple and blue velvet apartment where Kyle McLachlan spies through the closet blinds isn't mere anger/anxiety over a woman being hurt, but a primal scene as understood through the mind of a child who mistrusts the animal grunts of sex and seethes with resentment over the dad's power to occupy mom's breathing rate on a whim.

Highlights include of course the beautiful Dean Stockwell lip syncing Roy Orbison while Kyle behaves like a frightened kid hanging out with his drug dealer to score coke in order to impress some girl. The initiation these terrifying people provide him is invaluable, and eventually he becomes a mature man through their abuse. Lynch's subsequent works would all point back to this key moment, some improving on it (Mulholland Dr.) some not so much (Wild at Heart). But Blue Velvet is Lynch's first great 'cracking it wide open,' his Picasso's "Demoiselles d'avignon" his Pollock's 1947 drip stick moment.

3. THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)
Directed by Ron Clements

If The Shining set the uncertain scary tone at the start of the 80s, then The Little Mermaid signaled the glorious start of the ending. Tapping deeply into the Jungian dream core of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, it reinvigorated Disney and sent them scrambling back to animation full time. Voiceover work is uniformly strong (the congested kid bad-acting the voice of Flounder being the only exception) espcially the glorious Ursula the Sea Witch, luxuriantly voiced by Pat Caroll like a zaftig, tentacled hybrid of Elaine Stritch, Margo Channing and Ethel Mermen. And what's most impressive, Ariel (Jodi Benson) breathes and her eyes dilate when she's turned on. Not to mention the prince is named Erich, all of which make Little Mermaid the best example of resonant Jungian archetypal myth since The Wizard of Oz. It's universal, yet we all feel it belongs only to us, that it's about us, and that's what myth should be.

2. THE SHINING (1980)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

This is really a 70s movie, or rather the last movie of the 70s, virtually creating the 80s to come in its molten intellectual crucible. It even has a whole documentary to itself discussing the film's myriad meanings (Room 237: See: Ripped Danny's Dopey Decal, baby), and I've got my own each new viewing uncovering new layers of meaning and madness. The film is open to almost anything because the space of the hotel is so vast the Torrance family each falls into a separate madness. With no direct link to the social order present to keep them anchored--whether to each other, the social order or linear time/space--they dissolve into the archetypal time warp created by their own unconscious minds who are, for our purposes, indistinguishable from the ghosts and dark energy of the hotel. They are like an iPod that must erase its current contents to connect with a new hard drive (the family name isn't 'torrents' for nothing!) Danny is erased from his body altogether, to be replaced by his talking finger, Tony. Jack goes off the deep end; in his writerly determination to not be 'a dull boy' he's compelled to literally sever his family ties so he can escape into the past; Shelly's inability to get a 'normal' response from either of the Torrance males drives her into hysterics. There's no new hard drive waiting to fill her memory, the social connection won't erase. With each new viewing she's less annoying and more genuinely heroic. (See: Pupils in the Bathroom Mirror).

1. COME AND SEE (1985)

1985 - Dir. Elem Klimov

A stunning movie that changed me absolutely, left me literally trembling in awe, and yet I never want to see it again. It's just too beautiful and disturbing, taking the Munch-ish scream of Kubrick's Shining, flooring it to the ceiling and exploding through the wall of what is possible in depicting brutality and beauty at once, telling through a child soldier's eyes of Bellarus's suffering at the hands of the Nazis until it becomes a bizarre transhumanist poetry, staggering in the way it encompasses the best of Tarkovsky, Kubrick and even David Lynch and just keeps expanding from there, widening from the unfathomable horror of war wider even than insanity's parameters.

As a side note, one thing that's kind of deeply reassuring about WWII is the way the Nazis bound us to the Russians in a forced realization of our relative humanity. Politics, sides, none of it mattered compared to the horror of the camps, the sheer monstrous scale of it. There was no way not to shudder if you were human, and that bound us non-Nazis together. In Come and See we are as viewers united in a similar way, watching the sparkle in this kid's eyes gradually replaced by a twisted leer of a horrified face, something the boy and girl stars (Aleksey Kravchenko and Olga Mironova) were supposedly hypnotized to be able to provide, something beyond human, a face unseen before or since in any cinema.

2. CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)

Directed by John Milius

Fuck it, I'm putting this in. We now know that 1982 was the single greatest year for sci fi and fantasy, giving us Blade Runner, The Thing, Road Warrior, Cat People, to name just a few. But of them all, for me, Conan has best survived the winds of change and become a classic as enduring as that ancient king's sword. The dead set opposite of many of the artier films in this list, it uses all the narrative tricks modernism eschews but brings such a heady focus, such an enraptured attention to even the smallest details, that repeat viewings just continue to reveal facets--especially in beautiful widescreen anamorphic and with some cut scenes restored. And best of all, surprisingly enough, is the love story between Valeria and Conan, one so touching it's been making fanboys of a certain age weep for the last 30 years. (more)

  3. REPO MAN (1984)

Directed by Alex Cox

Long before there was straight-edge, goth, emo, and granola, we just had the one thing - punk, and the film that defined us was Repo Man. Alien conspiracies, oblique metatextual greek chorus TV commentary, Emilio Estevez in the role for which we still love him (fuck Breakfast Club, man), consumer parody ('generic'), Harry Dean Stanton in the role for which he is now and forever considered cool by those who know, and the Circle Jerks gamely going lounge. Along with Rude Boy, Gimme Shelter, and a Lou Reed Live video I had, this was part of a daily after-school TV party ritual for myself and my suburban punk brethren. We'd all imitate Dick Rude's whiny timbre, "let's just go do the job" when going off to score booze, and "I blame society" when we failed. The Criterion blu-ray finally reveals what we never saw on our ratty pan and scan taped-off-cable version, that director Alex Cox has a modernist knack for capturing not just the sunny desolation of L.A.'s seediest outer fringes, but its natural magic. I still write within its kinetic but forlorn rhythms. And it made me a lifetime fan of the great Fox Harris ("I had a lobotomy, man!") - It's worth having Forbidden World (1982) on blu-ray just because he's in it and it's almost a prequel.

 4. PLATOON (1986)

Directed by Oliver Stone

It's impossible to describe the effect this had on America and me at the time but I'll try: I was a sophomore in college in 1986, in upstate NY, where psychedelic molds and tie-dyes grow wild and free and my hippie-ish posse and I were all in the class America in the 60s (which PS- I failed). We had to see it while it was still in the theater, as homework. We called for a cab, piled in, smoked a joint with the driver at his request -- and the mushrooms we'd taken an hour earlier were kicking in by the time we sat down in the dark - our heightened sense giving the amazing jungle foley work an extra 3-D surround boost: every humming bug and footstep dripping with possible ambush menace; humanity's potential for raw violent evil about to be unleashed palpable in the jungle shimmer. We howled with relief when Sheen finally finds some a tent where everyone's smoking weed. Later, my buddy Jason had to leave for awhile when Bunny says those immortal words, "Sarge, did you see the way his head busted open like that?" But I was enthralled, the psilocybin in my brain giving me rare access to the feeling of "hell yeah kill 'em all!" like I was channeling the madness of Mai Lai, the mushrooms short-circuiting my pre-set empathic response, making everything I saw seem brand new and sans social sermon. The soul fear terror of the jungle was so palpable to me that the soldiers' level of sociopathic anger and violence seemed the only way any kind of courage might manifest. If you ever took 'too much' of anything maybe you know the feeling: without a warrior howl, a game face, courage screwed sticky side-down, you'd wind up strapped down to a gurney, or freaking out your parents.

and his hair was perfect.

Seeing it later, on VHS, over and over, zonked out on whiskey and 3' graphix, was never quite the same as that magical afternoon in 1986, but I still have sympathy for the hardened Tom Berenger character and think Dafoe's hippy sarge is way too naive. Some elements are downright racist, (the Asian characters are all extra-alien and inscrutable, though that works for creating paranoia there's no excuse for making the black soldiers mostly cowardly and the first to fall asleep on guard duty) and Sheen's tacky voiceover ("They're the best I've ever seen, grandma") is almost as bad as the one, now excised, from Blade Runner.

But I'd heard of vet's cathartic reaction to the film, and I actually saw a sobbing vet-age man in the audience on the way out of the theater that afternoon, and even in the low house lights I could see he'd been crying, a cathartic wave of inky aura was fizzling around him like a fading wall of gnats, replaced by a pink light. He'd clearly been keeping a dark secret venom up in his nervous system for the last 15 years, and it was now broken open, leaking all over the floor. I must have been staring as he looked up, but the shrooms saved it from being awkward. I gave him a small salute he nodded, and I walked out on rubber legs. I'd know that feeling too, in about 10 years, being able to admit I had a drinking problem, and feeling the black iceberg within my soul melt and drain all over the floor. With Platoon, the horrible secrets of a nation seemed at last exposed to light as if some glorious combination award ceremony and drug intervention. This wasn't some dumb Russian roulette gambit, or Hearts of Darkness, or a hippie Jon Voight. this was what it was like being in, as they say, the shit. The kind of low-to-the-ground pulp story only a writer-director who was there at the time could tell. The last time we were graced with such a survivor's eye view was the 50s, with Sam Fuller's Fixed Bayonets and Steel Helmet. --each of which made a comparable, if less publicized, mark on a generation of vets struggling to unpack their collective traumas. But those boys had been heroes; before Platoon, these guys had been outcasts. Now, at last, we could begin to welcome them home.

5.  RAGING BULL (1980)
Directed by Martin Scorsese

I remember hearing a WBNC talk radio review of this film (I would have been 13) on my dad's clock radio one morning while he was in the shower and I was trying to think of a good illness to feign so I could stay home from school. The way the announcer went on I thought this landmark movie was going to crack open the world. I felt like wow, this movie sounds soooo adult and dangerous. It's sad that you don't hear that kind of literally unrestrained enthusiasm anymore, as if critics no longer trust their own instincts, or is it the pictures that got small? Maybe Raging Bull was the last time they really knew a masterpiece had landed brand new in front of their eyes. Yeah, maybe.

Flash forward a decade, Seattle, 1990: my girlfriend coming home from a traumatic day of work with a bad headache; me loafing in front of our tiny TV, drunk; LaMotta in a Florida jail pounding the wall shoitng "Dummy! DUMMY!" over and over while I drank; her raincoat angrily dropping onto the floor; I was hoping La Motta would stop beating the wall soon, as I could see what the misery of that scene was doing to her. But he kept pounding and screaming, and our apartment was too small to escape it. On and on the pounding went, breaking our relationship apart. I was to drunk to defend Scorsese's choice, or to find the remote and press stop, or remember how long that scene dragged on from past (also drunk) viewings.

We broke up. I drove to Syracuse in time for the block parties. When I came back to get my shit she was already dating a jackass hippie whose claim to fame was that he curated an open mic at the O.K. Hotel. He whinnied like a horse when he laughed and danced arms akimbo when he walked. But he was so terrified of me he ran literally the other way when he saw me comin' - I'm not gonna hurt ya! I shouted. Come 'eah!

Sure, despite it breaking up my relationship, Bull is a towering masterpiece but it's not fun, or perfect. And after the string of Leo-starring bros-behaving-badly films Marty's given us this past fifteen or so years, Scorsese's inability to depict a strong female character (even Alice should have just whacked Harvey Keitel over the head with a frying pan instead of running away) and his over-reliance on manly violence rather than exploring his castration anxiety head on and cutting through, if you'll forgive the expression, the bullshit, shows a willingness to use flashy editing and resonant masculine humor to avoid using the mirror for anything except lines, coke or poetry - makes no difference; they're the same, ain't they? Come 'eah!

The result is that now Jake LaMotta seems an odd choice for such artful storytelling. He's a thug, a bruiser, and might be suffering from paranoid derangement brought on by consistent head trauma. One last thing I remember from that relationship: trying to sleep at her place while I was in the midst of a terrible fever (Syracuse = always sick). She was in the other room, painting (VPA). I got up and in my delerium accused her of having a lover in the closet - then after I looked, I knew he was under the bed, I looked there too, nothing, but then I knew he was back in the closet. I kept looking in the closet over and over. I knew he was there even if he wasn't. Even while she was all alone in the other room I could hear her conspiring whispers and a man's voice, even though it was just a Billie Holiday album. I heard males whispering about me, laughing quietly with her about how easily they could snow me.  So when I see LaMotta all supernaturally jealous I wonder if head trauma would be the same thing as my fever.

That's no excuse though, and either way, the film is certainly rich enough with the language and pulsing rhythmic emotion of Little Italy it doesn't need great psychological insight, and yet... there's Cathy Moriarty laying out by a sparking community pool, being lured over to the wire fence by LaMotta (and in some senses the most courageous thing he does in the film) and in her breathy agreement, as much worldly romantic poetry as in any other movie on this list, .

Aside from Valeria's of course. DUMMY! 

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Zombie Apes, West is True: LORDS OF SALEM (2012), HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2008) + My own Salem Witch Connections

"Only bad witches are ugly." - Glenda

Much as I love WIZARD OF OZ there's something messed up about Glenda's shallowness. Look at these bangin' old broads (above) bringing tea and cookies, and hell yeah the tea's probably spiked with tannis root but when these sexy evil bitches show up at your door you should be fucking honored. They're not there to get all petty on you with who's good and who's bad in the witch department. Glenda's the ugly one for perpetuating a stereotype started by the church to keep a sister down. In Salem, for example, a horde of hot witches were hung for presumed evil, including some of my ancestors.

If they weren't evil before you hung them, they are now, o paranoid projector of your own subconscious devils!

Now they're coming back, in my DNA, arm in arm with every kid whose life was ruined for getting caught expanding his mind in the Reagan-era 80s. Fear us, then, o descendants of the evil and corrupt Salem and Texas judges, all smug in your hypocrite robes and stetsons. We are watching you as you sleep, through Meg Foster's crystal blue orbs. And your time shall be soon.

In other words, sons of sinuses blocked and lungs a-resinated, hail the new flesh and toad of newt, hail MacBeth, Vane of Cawdor! All hail Val Lewton, the Cramps, Bob Dobbs, Nic Cage, Sammy Davis Jr., Lamont Cranston, D.H. Lawrence, and Mike Watt.

LORDS OF SALEM (2012), Rob Zombie's nearly abstract, post-vaguely-modern 70s devil film, tosses cauldron-ward the old 'conspiracy to impregnate unwitting chick with the devil's child' thing already tossed a few years earlier by Ti West (HOUSE OF THE DEVIL - 2009), adds the actual Salem and spoon of film references, heats to overflowing, goes in the other room to change the record, and never comes back (1). Does it work? Well, what is it trying to do? If it was trying to do for devil movies what SCREAM did for slashers, then it failed. If it wasn't trying to do that, if it was trying to be a SHINING for New England instead, then why the tattoo parlor ambiance, the vintage punk thrift store symbolism, the EXORCIST-cycled dialogue, (they're bringing "cunting" back here), why the carny ride haunted house tableaux that go nowhere, as if we're meant to see them and walk on through to the next ghastly static scene? Aside from the goofball cranberry juice elevator flood, and the climactic gold room of dusty corpses, Kubrick would never be so obvious. So what is this film trying to do? It's being Rob Zombie, the Kubrick of the Daytona trailer park, the neo-pagan who goes on a killing spree at Burning Man, and everyone mistakes it for performance art. Dude, they were so high. But is that even a real movie?

Left to its own devices, without all the post-modernist jazz, the film does generate some great hypnotic power. The opening witch ceremony builds brilliantly to a palpable abandon, the psychic force of the gathered actresses, heavily and picturesquely filth-encrusted, creates a combined psychic release. Compare this with most lame attempts to create a Satanic ceremony, where snarky directors and half asleep actors gather in black robes, read Latin, light candles and splay a virgin on the dais, all because they haven't done research on altered states of consciousness. Or like Ken Russell they just show flashes of weird sick images and Jesus mixed with a dosed pupil...

Only bad witches are ugly...

Zombie does well in portraying this ugly, but for ugliness to have any shock value we need a stark contrast of beauty. In THE SHINING, the movie Zombie apes, the beauty comes from the devouring omniscient ambivalence of the Colorado Rockies, they loom around like the Overlook is in the mouth of a giant arctic Venus flytrap, and from the awesome geometric splendor and unfathomable coldness of the cavernous hotel interiors. A gold-flecked theater shows up at the end or SALEM, referencing Overlook's 'Gold Room' and MULHOLLAND DR.'s Club Silencio. And though it's quite a show it conforms always to images of evil that are speckled with the cruel dust of the demonization process begun a thousand years ago by the Catholics. As Moncure Daniel Conway's Devil Lore book notes:

The great representations of evil, whether imagined by the speculative or the religious sense, have never been, originally, ugly. The gods might be described as falling swiftly like lightning out of heaven, but in the popular imagination they retained for a long time much of their splendour. The very ingenuity with which they were afterwards invested with ugliness in religious art, attests that there were certain popular sentiments about them which had to be distinctly reversed. It was because they were thought beautiful that they must be painted ugly; it was because they were—even among converts to the new religion—still secretly believed to be kind and helpful, that there was employed such elaboration of hideous designs to deform them. (c. 1879)

Of course that damnation is applied equally to the hideous Puritan torturers, re-imagined with big pointy caps and excessive facial hair, but the judge's descendent Sherri Moon bears no ethical resemblance, we have to believe these torturers of witches were genuinely under psychic attack. There's no clear 'side' you necessarily want to be on in LORDS, so you're just admiring all the artsy detail of the tableaux. It might keep our interest if the lead actress is stunningly beautiful, like Jocelin Donahue in HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, or Mia Farrow in ROSEMARY'S BABY, but the leading actress in Zombie's film is of course his wife, Sherri Moon Zombie. And she's gettin' too old for this shit, as the Glenda might say.

Decked out like a Williamsburg hipster, Moon's character, Heidi Hawthorne is an enigma, and way too old to either believe in the supernatural or stop dressing like an extra in ALMOST FAMOUS. She considers herself a badass, clearly, and has a good job as a Salem DJ, but still snickers like a dirt bag middle schooler at any hint of genuine insanity, balls, magic and/or evil--such as when the metalhead from the band Lords of Salem is a guest on her show.

And of course we know why we're supposed to be so intrigued by Heidi: the director still loves her, and presumes us as bewitched as he is. Well we were, Rob, ten years ago she was freakin' sexy as all hell, but we're fickle. And that's part of the problem when you cast your wife in everything you do: sooner or later she's going to be too long in the tooth to play the babe and you're going to be the one to have to tell her, and then you'll have to start auditioning younger leading ladies, and dodging hurled frying pans.

The films Zombie likes--the devil movies and Kubrick's work-- are present in the style, tone, and look of SALEM, but he doesn't seem to know how to read deeply into them, to figure out why he likes them, so he imitates the surface and adds his tattoo parlor aesthetic and crosses his fingers. He goes for an Antonioni/Miike vibe in longly held static long shots of Heidi walking her dog on a lonely street or in a park in late afternoon or playing records with her bearded buddy, but fails to inject genuine observation and complexity into these long looks, or even killer POV unease, rendering them little more than attempts to make Salem the goth Austin with just a hint of Detroit decay. He misses the chance for some great 70s-80s Italian synths in the score, and instead goes for an annoyingly minor key two-note piano. He misses the chance to make Heidi interesting, to make her recovering drug addict persona resonate. She even drinks at one point, super dangerous from any kind of addict. And her apartment is way too clean for someone in recovery, and why isn't she smoking or chugging coffee? I got a headache just watching her get up and walk her dog without a coffee first. If Heidi's an addict I'm John Paul Jones (the Zeppelin bassist, not the seaman, you got a dirty mind).

 Moon Ages: From top: 1000 Corpses, Rejects, Salem

I mean no disrespect to Sherri Moon. I love her in DEVIL'S REJECTS, like a sister. Her line after bluffing a room of hostages with an empty gun ("it's all mental!") is my personal mantra. There she displayed a great relish in evil and had great stringy-sexy hair and a flash of eye and nice curves and an ease with using them to drive a man so crazy he forgets to defend himself. You could see why Zombie married her. Her thin lips weren't even an issue then, but looking at them now, they're even thinner, and she seems tired, and way too old to be riding on a goat in neon flames, or going down on strange priests in the midday pew. She seems to be a middle-aged woman trapped in a tricked-up spiral of horror iconography, like her next stop is working a booth at a Philadelphia monster convention. Man, I know how that feels. I've made out with lipless women before, and it was like kissing a skull. You think I'm fucking lippist now, but if not me, whom? I'm no fan of collagen or botox, but just cuz some girls overdo it out of insecurity doesn't mean it should be shunned by those who need it, even if only to get back to their former level of lip fullness. Her later skull make-up helps, making her look like some death metal kid who got caught in the rain on his way home from the Stockholm punk club.

Problem 3: Pastiche Without Purpose

Maybe SCREAM auteur Wes Craven had it easier since he focused on 80s slasher films, so ignored horror history prior to HALLOWEEN and after SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Zombie goes back to the silent era's HAXAN through to the occult crazy 70s, Kenneth Anger's LUCIFER RISING, ALUCARDA, every Spanish and Italian Exorcist rip-off ever made, then buzzes THE HOWLING, and various old films Heidi watches while asleep in her apartment like KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL and CAPTAIN KIDD.

Burnin' down the Streets of Everyone

There are a million ways these textual links could have been made to resonate, such as having Heidi actually evince some knowledge of classic film trivia, to be able to quote them or talk about them, to fold quotes into her lexicon. Instead they seem like they were all left behind by an ex-boyfriend.

That's what made SCREAM so unnerving; these characters knew what was coming, like we all did who were kept awake at night after scary movies all through the 80s, vowing in our anxiety that we would never drop the knife by the killer's prone body. SCREAM used the dread inspired by earlier movies, which had by now settled in our collective dream unconscious, and re-activated it.

Zombie can only admire that unconscious from a safe distance. He's a fan not a player, the R-rated Tim Burton, i.e. for a director he makes a good set designer. They both gravitate towards familiar narratives-remakes because they have no gift for story structure or pacing -- they just want to create their fantasy bedroom. Luckily Zombie is free of the awful whimsy-packed orchestral pomp of those Danny Elfman scores Burton uses. Now you think I'm whimsist!? Fuck yeah, because it pollutes the real madness. Whimsy is the way an insecure artist of the macabre chews your food for you.

Oddities / seems such a lonely world

Sadly, what the mise-en-scene of Heidi going through her day most resembles is the Science Channel's ODDITIES. I've got nothing against the Oddities store but the customers and employees all seem too desperate to be genuinely abnormal. They cover themselves with tattoos and piercings and wear red white and blue dreadlocks and tall stovepipe hats and fang implants but when push comes to shove perhaps some of them might be overcompensating for an inner lack of... what? balls? crazy madmen nastiness? True insanity? Nic Cage only needed one symbol of his individuality in WILD AT HEART, but he's 'really' a badass. Some people choke themselves with symbols of badassedness and yet run when they encounter the real thing. They would have freaked out going to CBGBs when they saw the filth and smelled the smells and viddied the icky crustpunks, and been too scared to use the bathroom, but then they'd be wearing the T-shirt proudly for the next 20 years, nodd knowingly when the bathroom shows up at the Met, and recall the good old days when music mattered... man. Now you think I'm a faddist. It's just that I'm really crazy. And I don't trust carnies, even though I love their haunted house rides.

CBGB's: What... a dump.

Rob Zombie's clearly a real wild man, but he covers every inch of the territory with his signature hillbilly blood chic until you wonder what lack of true insanity he's hiding.  None of it looks like a real place, with age and use proper to an old city like Salem, the way the sticky thickness of 30 years of rock band promo stickers and graffiti are layered like redwood rings at CBGB's. And that much detail all 'of a piece' as they say, isn't scary. Carpenter created the first HALLOWEEN with a blank white mask, a trash bag full of painted leaves, "a couple of knives" and a few suburban houses.  Zombie had carny parents. He lived on the road. Carnies are excused from needing to vouchsafe their authenticity, and their oddities pay the bills, a carny's oddities are excused for that reason, like sheepdogs for a sheepherder. And who cares if the more obnoxious gawkers get sewed screaming into the next exhibit? They are the artists Zombie understands, ala the Firefly films. But Heidi is a tourist.

There some indications here that Zombie can make the post-modern jump, and that's what's frustrating. He jumps but doesn't stay on the other side long enough. He just decorates the jump-off point in a real punk rock black and gestures off into the fog. But in one great scene, Heidi is chilling at her friend's house and suddenly she's coughing up blood, and faceless doctors appear in the room and Charles Laughton's voice on the TV jibes with the demons almost as effectively as in MYRA BRECKINRIDGE or the films of Nicolas Roeg or Alex Cox. "This just may be to your benefit," Laughton says, as the merciless CAPTAIN KIDD (above).  Later her bonding with the weird fat devil baby whose lopsy-topsy mutatedness is a perfect dark evil mirror to Laughton's leering image onscreen, mirrors that of TV and viewer, umbilical extension cords plugged right into us and hell, and with its embryonic red eyes and slit middle you'll wonder if he's a metaphor for an abortion or if his froggy face is supposed to be the ski mask in TORSO, and the priest looks like he might be a reference to the stitched-into-eternity Dr. Freudstein in Lucio Fulci's HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981)... but we have no clear idea why or if it's conscious.

Top: Salem / Bottom: House by the Cemetery

My Mary Easty/ Rebecca Towne Nurse Connective Genealogy 

(on my Dad's Mother's Mother's Side)

I have to mention, as always when discussing Salem and genealogy (characters here are descendants of the hung witches and/or judges and executioners) that it's fascinating on a personal level for me because the one side of my family tree that kept immaculate records is from Salem, having arrived in Boston in 1631 (with fellow passenger Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island):

The family of John Perkins 1583-1654 - freeman 18th May 1631
Married Judith Gates, born Newent, Gloucestershire, England
Children:
1. "Quartermaster" John - b. 1614 0 d. Dec, 14, 1686
2. "Deacon" Thomas 1616-1686 (not the witch hunter, he died before that)
3.  Elizabeth 1618-1700 / married William Sargent (5 children)
4. Mary 1620-1700 - "She was accused of witchcraft, sentenced, but the execution delayed and the citizens recovered from the delusion." (+5 more)

The Family of Elisha Perkins (born - 1656 - Topfield) died - 1741 in Methuen
Married Catherine Towne - 1680
--
Children:
(9 total), including: John (third son) born Aug. 12, 1685 - died June 22, 1750
married Mary Easty (whose mother Mary Easty and Aunt Rebecca Towne Nurse were hanged for witchcraft)

I have other relatives farther up the years worth mentioning: Joseph and Ichabod Perkins, who "were in Capt. James Jones' Company which marched to Concord at the alarm of Paul Revere in 1775. And 34 other Perkins of Topsfield and Ipswich and cousins of Goulds fought in Revolution (MP)." Etc. I didn't even know Ipswich was a real place! I wish there was a reason for me to research a paper there, and find the population to be a hideous bunch of fish god cult worshippers.

This branch of my family tree owned a lot of property and decent fortune up in the Boston area, but lost it all when it was inherited by two brothers who whored, gambled, and drank away in a few years what it had taken their forefathers five generations to accrue. If women had been allowed to inherit property, I might be a rich scion making my own damned horror movies today! The same streak of olde Enlgish alcoholic mysticism that would help me be a 'good' horror auteur prevents my actually getting it together to do so. My whole freaking life is jerry-rigged in this fashion.... how is that, o Rationalization Guru?

Top: Horror Hotel / Bottom: Alucarda

I know that in all likelihood these ancient aunts of mine were not really witches, but falsely accused by the children of a family wishing to possess the Perkins' wooded bordering acres. But like most Fordians I say "Print the Legend." Maybe my ancestors and the other witches were likely just sexually repressed settlers who found an outlet for their pains outside in the darkness at night, dancing and humping trees. But that's not fun to imagine, and what else gives history any interest aside from the possibility for something still unknown, something still hidden from us by the dry, dusty historians who get to mould our past? We wouldn't even care today if they were just falsely accused of, say, adultery. So if they weren't necessarily witches back in the day, time has made them so, time and three dozen and one horror movies, everything from crisp little low budget Brit thrillers like HORROR HOTEL (1959) to bombastic nonsense like Ken Russell's THE DEVILS.

From top: THE DEVILS, SALEM, SHINING, SHINING, SALEM, SALEM, ROSEMARY'S BABY, Ruth Gordon publicity shot.

Another redeeming trait of the film is just how GILF-ish are the three witch sisters (see CinemArchetype #20): Judy Geeson (GOODBYE GEMINI) has still got it and delivers her bloodthirsty lines with relish, as only a saucy older Brit lady can -- you should check out her amazing half-forgotten 70s sci fi TV series, STAR MAIDENS (my analysis here); also slamming it home with crisp hot fire, Dee Wallace (THE HOWLING) and Patricia Quinn (ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) as the irresistible palm-reading sister Megan. And as the dirtiest and most evil witch coming back from the past, Meg Foster. As we've seen them in younger incarnations their aged state seems temporary, as soon they may drink the blood of the young and become their former celluloid selves. As a great writer once said, "film is black magic."

WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH, 

I also like that Zombie's main idea of 'a devil' seems to be the aforementioned Baby Bok Choi, a two umbilical cord-cabled Weeblo of the highest order, cunting up the idea that Satan is the original Nephilim rebel, the James Dean of our ancient creators, Lord Enki to some, maybe Merlin, maybe Im-Ho-Tep or Amon Ra or Set or Odin, to others. Hey his mother still lives up on the moon! Don't believe me,  feast your ears and eyes here!

From top: Moon Maiden Mummy Mother of Lucifer; alien grey, LUCIFER RISING, 2001, LORDS OF SALEM, TWILIGHT, Aborigine drawing, 2001, SALEM

Also, check out my review of the History Channel's documentary, The Gates of Hell, which I loaded with pretty intense photographs from the 70s occult revival.

As for actual Hell, Zombie does well imagining the way our own death is linked to rebirth and transfiguration instead of just the same old Heaven/Hell polarity. In Buddhist mythology, Hell is the place the dirtied souls go to be cleansed by fire. It's not permanent. Submit to the scraping with compassionate non-attachment and soon you will be clean for admission into paradise. There's a little of that concept floating through Zombie's film, but it would have been better if he'd bothered to have one unsoiled image, aside from the scholar and his wife, living in an apartment that looks like it will resume being a Brentano's as soon as filming is finished.  I'm jealous of course, it's beautiful...

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I'm no fan of Ti West after he subjected me to the awful hipster hair and cheap shocks of THE INNKEEPERS (2011), but HOUSE OF THE DEVIL has a few things going for it which Zombie might have gleaned but didn't. The main thing is tick-tock momentum, wherein dread builds through the careful setup of a particular place over a single evening, in linear time with no flashbacks or disorienting cuts across time and characters. The momentum usually starts in late afternoon as the sun begins to wane and cast ominous shadows and the editing seems to slow the progression of time down. Rather than the constant flashing back and forth and sudden wake-ups from nightmares that 'cheat' on situations, tick-tock momentum is a style of storytelling most horror filmmakers never pick up on when they rip off HALLOWEEN but West does and Zombie doesn't. Their films have such similar plots they warrant close comparison. They should get together and compare notes as each has flaws the other doesn't share.

For example, in HOUSE the places seem normal in that sickly unironic way (dig the couch and painting below), all the believable little early 80s-late 70s details, and are twice as creepy because of it. In SALEM by contrast there's something a little too lush, too big to believably be part of a quaint boarding house and unless she has a maid, there's no way a recovering junky like Heidi's character should have such clean floors. And she would smoke cigarettes and drink a ton of coffee, or something other than booze. The girls in HOUSE by contrast are believably tied up in petty matters that seem huge to them because they're poor and/or just starting out taking care of their own finances.

The girls in HOUSE rule: Gerwig sports some great feathered hair and a cozy college sports shirt and in her late afternoon fast food joint scene with Samantha (Donahue) you feel the ache of an upstate New York fall winter in your bones and want to be able to curl up with her in a fire-lit dorm room and not have to go anywhere, so you feel the sense of desolation creeping up like tendrils of cold around her broke buddy Samantha for needing to take this babysitter job so badly. I went to school in Syracuse, so maybe I relate. The evenings there are so oppressively gray they don't need Satan lingering in the edges to be mega ominous. Mary Woronov and Dee Wallace are on point of course, they were born to this, but the 70s-80s Satanic panic tick-tock momentum vibe of DEVIL is undone with the sudden arrival of a distinctly modern crustpunk (A.J. Bowen), who comes rolling up Gerwig's car like an angry Williamsburg hipster fresh from teeth gnashing class. And another blow follows with the old man played by Tom Noonan who is just way too mumblecore, too naturalistic, with that 'gentle' voice no actor in the 70s or 80s would ever use. Add the boys up alongside the insufferable twerp in THE INNKEEPERS and you get the feeling that Ti West has a stand offish relationship to his male actors. They seem like they didn't get the memo of whatever the film is about, or acting really, about projecting themselves into a room or situation. Ti West should just keep all men out of his films, like I do, until he's emotionally a man himself. (I'm still not, but hey).

The Right: Greta Gerwig 

The wrong: A.J. Bowen

Both the scores do well, though LORDS has moments with kind of making like a Morricone and other times of just sucking with a banal two-note minor key piano. But the hypnotic devil album they play is pretty interesting, it sounds almost like it's trying to break your sound system and leap through the room and crack open a cold-brewed abyss. And a whole slew of great ideas that could be played off the radio as a way to impregnate listeners' minds with Satanic brainwashing come washing across us like a growling Juno synth wipe, but then Zombie shuts that aside, too. Maybe he presumes we've already seen PONTYPOOL? I would love the HOUSE OF THE DEVIL twice as much if it had some Goblin-style synths instead of its creepy but familiar orchestral passages but they're not too bad...

In the end, West may be too cool for his own good, and Zombie is still a music video maker who hasn't yet figured out the rhythms of narrative, but hey, kudos to both for their subject matter and attention to detail, which is impressive in each. West of course wins handily as the post-modern devil pastiche of choice, though LORDS is solid and gorgeous to look at with more consistency in the performances. These old Brit ladies give it their all and make us gradually lose all interest in the by-then scabby and deranged Heidi as she moves forward into the Satanic mass as via airport moving walkway. Indeed I can see this film ruling like hell if 40 minutes were cut out, and the whole thing was timed to the complete Velvet Undergound and Nico like LUCIFER RISING is timed to Bobby Beausoleil's masterfully celebratory soundtrack. But otherwise, what are you left with, in either film, besides admiring Zombie for finding the true Satanic Mass sturm und drang of "All Tomorrow's Parties" and admiring West for his loving recreation of a time and genre and being able to plunge deep and impressively into tick-tock momentum?

West, don't be afraid to put some real men in your films once in awhile, and Rob, that narrative momentum thing will come your way yet. You're already better than the late great Ken Russell. Almost. At any rate, you're already way better at mix-tape movies than Cameron Crowe (see my rant on mix tape movies, Aural Drag). And West, you're the only guy doing tick-tock momentum these days, period. Not even Carpenter still does it. Be proud, as the shrouding darkness crowds the grave mound and the score carpets and the sisters all wake and bait, be proud. Your heritage is ours, brother in the cauldron of Satanic panic culture and 70s-80s homage cinema. So boil the newts and stir that literal baby! Your witches are proof of the black secret by which no witch or cultist ever ages, except between shoots (or after shots).

The problem with it all is, of course, that video itself prevents Satanic magic from actually happening. What soul is worth stealing once its stolen a million times over by the spectral reduction of the camera? Only one place is left where the black arts still occur, the wet hot jungle corridor deep within each of us, as long as we're women.

PS - The dog lives!

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NOTES:
1.  A descendent of mine, a Boston seaman in the War of 1812, was also almost eaten 'first, due to his young tender flesh' when he and his crew were shipwrecked on a foodless island. Apparently that's what one did back then, ala the Donners. Luckily they were rescued almost at the last minute before they killed him. I'm sure the rest of the trip was plenty awkward. Anyway, I can joke about it now.... because my family lived through it. 

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