Lisa and the Devil

Year of Release:  1973
Director:  Mario Bava
Screenplay:  Mario Bava and Alfred Leone
Starring:  Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas, Sylva Koscina, Alessio Orano, Alida Valli
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror, fantasy

Lisa Reiner (Sommer), an American tourist visiting Spain, sees a fresco in a church depicting a bald Devil hauling away human souls.  Wandering away from the tour group she winds up in a little antique store where she encounters a man named Leandro (Savalas), who looks identical to the Devil in the fresco. Unable to find her way back to the tour group, Lisa finds herself at a palatial villa owned by a strange young man (Orano) and his mother, a blind countess (Valli) and where Leandro appears to work as a butler.

This is only the beginning of Lisa's descent into a surreal nightmare.  This is a film with only the vaguest plot, and is kind of what you might come up with in a nightmare after reading too much Gothic horror stories and eating  a lot of very strong cheese.  Following the success of Baron Blood (1972), director Mario Bava was given a free hand to do whatever he wanted with this film.  The movie features some striking images, and it really is a beautiful film, full of offbeat camera angles, and it works if you see it as working with a kind of dream logic.  Elke Sommer walks through the film in a kind of sleepwalking daze, which actually works for the material.  Telly Savalas has a lot of presence, and is often quite sardonically funny as the mysterious Devil, whose fondness for lollipops was carried over to Savalas' most famous role in the TV show Kojak (1973-1978).  Following a disastrous premiere screening at the Cannes Film Market in 1973, the film was drastically re-edited and was further edited for its US release, with some additional exorcism scenes as well as additional nudity and gore, and was released under the title House of Exorcism, to cash in on the success of The Exorcist (1973).

Elke Sommers, Telly Savalas and Alida Valli in Lisa and the Devil   

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Year of Release:  1970
Director:  Jaromil Jires
Screenplay:  Jaromil Jires, Ester Krumbachova and Jiri Musil, based on the novel Valerie and Her Week of Wonders by Vitezslav Nezval
Starring:  Jaroslava Schallerova, Helena Anyzova, Karel Engel, Jan Klusak, Petr Kopriva
Running Time:  73 minutes
Genre:  Surrealism, horror, fantasy

This virtually plotless film centres around 13 year old Valerie (Schallerova) and her surreal dreamlike adventures involving vampires, predatory priests and her mysterious family.

This is a beautiful film featuring a succession of stunning images.  Virtually unclassifiable,  it has elements of horror, fantasy, fairy-tales, however it makes a kind of dreamlike sense, you can see it as a girl's fears of and attraction to the adult world filtered through her subconscious, as she enters puberty.  Sensual, and ethereal, it's a unique film and one that you really have to experience for yourself.  It's a world where horror and beauty coexist and is full of life and energy.  It's a film that some will find pretentious and wilfully obscure, but others will find it mesmerising. 

    Jaroslava Schallerova in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

"Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami

Year of Publication: 2002
Length:  505 pages
Genre:  Fiction, fantasy, surreal

In present day Japan, fifteen year old Kafka Tamura runs away from home, under the shadow of his father's dark prophecy, in order to find his mother and sister, and finds refuge in a small-town library, with a mysterious boy and a beautiful middle-aged librarian, with a dark past.  Meanwhile, gentle elderly Nakata, who has never recovered fully form a bizarre incident in his childhood, supplements his disability allowance by tracking down lost cats, until a brutal murder sends him off on his own bizarre odyssey.  In this world cats can talk to people, fish and leeches rain from the sky, a forest hides soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II, the identity of a murder victim, as well as the killer, is unclear, people are haunted by the ghosts of the living, the boundaries between past and present, life and death, and parallel worlds blur and collapse.

This is a beguiling, surreal, dreamlike novel.  Often baffling, sometimes frustrating, occasionally funny, sometimes sexy, frequently infuriating and also heart-breakingly beautiful at times.   This is not a book that gives up it's secrets willingly, and it offers very few answers to it's many questions.   Reading it is at times like falling into a dream,  and it requires a lot of concentration from the reader.  It moves at a sedate pace, particularly the Kafka storyline.  Murakami fans will immediately recognise many of his hallmarks: cats, books, music (particularly classical and jazz) and food all appear frequently and prominently in the novel, as well as the typical Murakami protagonist, who drifts through the story, letting events transpire around them.

Murakami is, in my opinion, one of the greatest novelists around, and, while this may not be one of his best books, it is still heavily touched by his unique genius.  It's worth surrendering to this frustrating dream, to experience the uniqueness of his imagination and, most of all, for passages that will lodge in your mind and heart.

    

Kaboom

Year:  2010
Director:  Gregg Araki
Screenplay:  Gregg Araki
Starring:  Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Juno Temple, Roxane Mesquida, Brennan Mejida, James Duval
Running Time:  83 minutes
Genre:   Science-fiction, comedy, surreal

This bizarre science-fiction comedy centres on 18 year old sexually "undeclared" college student Smith (Dekker) who, when he is not lusting after guys and girls, spends his time hanging out with his best friend Stella (Bennett) who is involved in a difficult relationship with the beautiful but unstable Lorelei (Mesquida) who has bizarre psychic powers.  Smith strikes up a friendship with British student, London (Temple).  He also finds himself plagued by bizarre dreams, and becomes preoccupied with a mysterious red-haired girl (Nicole LaLiberte) who appears to be threatened by mysterious figures wearing animal masks.  Smith becomes convinced that the masked figures are also targeting him.  However Smith, Stella and London soon find out that there is far more going on then they could ever have imagined.

Gregg Araki's films tend to be very much love them or hate them.  He is a good director with a strong visual sense and a distinctive take on the world.  This film treads very familiar Araki territory being a surreal, teenage sex comedy.  It has a very distinctive visual style of lurid, bright colours and  bizarre transition effects between scenes.  The attractive, and never knowingly over-dressed, cast are engaging and seem to be having a great time throughout.  Coming across at times like an episode of Dawson's Creek if it was written by Bret Easton Ellis, if you can tune into Araki's wavelength and enjoy his particular brand of sexy, camp surreal take on teen angst you can have a great time with this movie. 

It is entertaining and frequently very funny, however it does have the problem of trying too hard to be hip.  However even if you don't like it, it is too startling and strange to get dull.  

Juno Temple, Thomas Dekker and Haley Bennett in Kaboom           

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Year:  1992
Director:  David Lynch
Screenplay:  David Lynch and Robert Engels, based on the television series Twin Peaks created by David Lynch and Mark Frost
Starring:  Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Moira Kelly, Chris Isaak, Kiefer Sutherland, Kyle MacLachlan
Running Time:  134 minutes
Genre:  Drama, horror, crime, surreal

The television series Twin Peaks ran to thirty episodes between 1989 and 1991, and at it's height was pretty much a cultural phenomenon with buckets of merchandise and endless references, parodies and homages throughout popular media.  The show centred on the investigation into the murder of small town high-school girl Laura Palmer (Lee) and the dark underbelly of American small town life which is stirred up by the murder.  With it's blend of crime drama, soap opera, comedy, surrealism and horror it was groundbreaking TV.  However the show suffered from steeply declining ratings and a drop in quality during it's second season, and was cancelled.  The show had been officially cancelled for less than a month when co-creator David Lynch announced the feature film.

The film serves as a prequel to the series.  The movie opens with the investigation into the murder of seventeen year old Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) by FBI agents Chester Desmond (Isaak) and Sam Stanley (Sutherland).  The murder is not solved and during the investigation Desmond mysteriously disappears.  The strange circumstances surrounding the case, including the bizarre reappearance of eccentric agent Philip Jeffries (David Bowie) and subsequent disappearance, lead Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) to believe that the killer will strike again.  The film moves forward a year to the small rural town of Twin Peaks, and focuses on Laura Palmer during her last seven days alive.  On the surface Laura is the all-American Homecoming Queen, but in reality she has a severe drug habit, occasionally works as a prostitute and is threatened by an evil, abusive entity called "BOB" (Frank Silvera) who she fears has some link with her father, Leland (Wise).

The film was  ahuge commercial failure on it's original release, except, interestingly enough, in Japan where it was a box office hit playing to packed cinemas of mostly female audiences.  With it's complex narrative constantly referencing the series and obscure aspects of the show's mythology, it is very difficult for those unfamiliar with Twin Peaks to understand the movie, the film even has some references to the show's bizarre ending.  However, many fans of the series were very upset by the film, partly because many of the characters from the show were either barely glimpsed or completely absent from the film, and partly because the film lacks the series trademark warmth and humour which was always a counterbalance to the horror and darkness.  In this film, the horror and darkness is central and it plunges into areas of bleakness which the TV series could only hint at.  The original cut of the film was about five hours, and Lynch understandably had to cut a lot of material, and most of what was cut was the humour and warmth, and characters which Lynch felt were extraneous to the Laura Palmer story.  Also a number of the actors from the TV series did not want to appear in the film, due to the fact that many of them felt abandoned during the show's second season when Lynch's commitment to Wild at Heart (1990) meant that he had to take a much less hands-on role in the series.  As a result Lara Flynn Boyle declined to return as Donna Hayward, Laura's best friend, and her part was played by Moira Kelly in the film.  The series' star Kyle MacLachlan originally declined to take part in the film, but changed his mind on condition that his role was substantially reduced, as a result, Dale Cooper, who was the lead character in the show, only appears briefly in a few scenes.

Watching the film, you get the feeling, that this is Twin Peaks, as David Lynch would have liked it to have been.  Despite working in the confines of a prequel and thereby having to stick to the series continuity and mythology, the film is pure David Lynch.  The film is a dark and savage look at the heart of darkness in the neatly manicured lawns and white picket fences of small town America.  It also deserves points for turning the feature film spin-off of a TV show into an experimental, surrealistic nightmare which makes little concession to viewer's expectations.  This is a powerful and gruelling film, even though it does bear scars from the heavy editing - hopefully at some point an extended cut will be released.  Whatever, this is one of David Lynch's best.  The first time I saw it I had never seen any of the TV series, and so a lot of it completely went over my head, however I still loved it because it is so powerful and disturbing and so deeply strange.  By the way, David Lynch does make an acting appearance in the film as hard of hearing FBI chief Gordon Cole.

"Faster and faster... until after a while you wouldn't feel anything... and then your body would just burst into fire. And the angels wouldn't help you, 'cause they've all gone away..."
- Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) speculates on falling into space

Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) sees the light in Twin Peaks:  Fire Walk with Me          

Eraserhead

Year:  1977
Director:  David Lynch
Screenplay:  David Lynch
Starring:  Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates, Allen Joseph
Running Time:   89 minutes
Genre:  Surreal, horror, science-fiction

This film, which was produced over a period of five years, marked the feature debut of director David Lynch, and is now an acknowledged cult classic due to it finding an audience on the midnight movie circuit int he late 70s and 80s.  It's difficult to describe the film's plot, because there really isn't much of one, and that which there is doesn't really make a lot of sense.  Set largely in a run-down, industrial area of a nameless city, the film reolves around Henry Spencer (Nance), a quiet young man with very big hair, who is invited out to dinner at the home of his girlfriend, Mary X (Stewart), and her parents.  During the nightmarish evening, Henry is informed that Mary has given birth to a child ("Mom!  They're not even sure that it's a baby!" Mary wails).  The baby is a bizarre creature with no limbs, a long pencil-thin neck, and a head shaped like a embryonic sheep's head.  It's body is perpetually swathed in bandages and it cries constantly, refusing to feed.  With the small unhappy family lving in Henry's tiny, one-room apartment, Mary is driven to destraction by the baby's crying.  Eventually she storms out and returns to her parent's, claiming she just needs one good night's sleep.  Left with the baby, Henry experiences a variety of surreal events which may or may not be really happening.  Among other things he dreams that his head is being turned into pencil erasers, and he becomes fascinated by a female singer, with huge cheeks, performing on a stage behind his radiator.  Meanwhile, on a desolate planet, a badly scarred man wrestles with heavy levers.

Lynch had a grant from the American Film Institute to make the film, howeve the grant was not enough to complete the project and so Lynch worked on the movie intermittently using whatever money he could scrape together from various odd jobs and family and friends (including actress Sissy Spacek whose husband, Jack Fisk, was a childhood friend of Lynch's and appeared in the film as "The Man in the Planet").  The film is beautifully shot in black-and-white, and really has not dated at all partly because it seems to take place in a weird "no-time" and "no-space".  The sound design is also striking, with strange rumbling sounds constantly being heard in the background as well as strains of fairground style organ music (by Fats Waller).

I have to say that I love Eraserhead, and I have seen it many times before.  I think it is one of the most startling films ever made and there are images from it that will haunt you for the rest of your life.  However, as many people hate it as love it, and I can very easily understand that.  The film is so bizarre, with no real storyline to it, and no explanation for any of the events that occur.  It is also very slow-moving, and as such alienates many audiences and critics.  A friend of mine once told me that he fell asleep once with the TV on and when he woke up Eraserhead was playing, and he thought that he was still asleep and dreaming.  That is the perfect recommendation for me for the film.  It is one of the closest that cinema has ever got to recreating a genuine nightmare.  Nightmare in it's truest sense of those strange inexplicable images that flicker through the brain in the dead watches of the night, like broken transmissions broadcast from another planet.

You might love it.  You might hate it.  You will never forget it.

"We've got chicken tonight. Strangest damn things. They're man-made. Little damn things, smaller than my fist - but they're new!"
- Bleeding, moving roast chicken, it's what's for dinner at the X house.

Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) has a hair-raising experience in Eraserhead



         

The Blood of a Poet

Year: 1930
Director: Jean Cocteau
Screenplay: Jean Cocteau
Starring: Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller, Pauline Carton, Odette Talazacuez, Feral Benga, Enrique Rivero, Jean Desbordes
Running Time: 55 minutes
Genre: Surreal, experimental, fantasy

Summary: An artist (Rivero) paints a picture of a face and is startled when the painting's mouth starts moving, and frantically erases it. He is shocked when the mouth appears on the palm of his hand and begins moving. On the advice of a talking statue (Miller), the artist enters a mirror and finds himself in the "Hotel of Dramatic Lunacies" where he is forced to crawl along a gravity-defying, dreamlike corridor and peer through the keyholes of the doors that he passes at various bizarre tableaux.

Opinions: This was the debut film from French poet, artist, writer and film-maker Jean Cocteau and forms the first part of a trilogy loosely based on the Greek legend of Orpheus which continued with Orphee (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960). This is very much an experimental film and has very little in the way of a plot, instead it's a succession of various strange and surreal images and scenes which are sometimes striking, but how you feel about it will definitely depend on whether or not you can get onto Cocteau's wavelength. Although if you are interested in surrealist art and cinema, then you will probably want to check this out. It is not an enjoyable movie, but it is a powerful one and quite fascinating. It's pretty much as close as cinema could ever get to filming a dream. Due to rumours about an anti-Christian message in the film, and the furore over the Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali film L'Age d'Or the movie was hugely controversial in France and it's release was delayed for over a year.
This is strange, powerful, sometimes boring and frequently intriguing.



A typically strange image from The Blood of a Poet