Is It Monday Yet?

In case my eagerness to insert Frogs or Empire of the Ants into any unrelated conversation has gotten past you, I really, really really, really really really, and did I mention really? love the strange pocket of genre cinema known as Nature Strikes Back. Whether we’re dealing with two-story high chickens or Leslie Nielson wrestling a bear bare-chested, there’s just something about animals banding together to take us silly opposable thumb wielders down that never fails to make me smile.

Colin Eggleston’s Long Weekend (with a script from Patrick scribe Everett de Roche) is best described as the arthouse interpretation of what is otherwise considered a fairly silly (yet incredibly enjoyable) batch of films. Think of it as Day of the Animals That Are Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Quick Plot: Marcia and Peter are an incredibly unhappy married couple with some disposable income and a lot of harmful secrets. To maybe mend some of their troubles, they begrudgingly embark upon a small road trip to what they expect to be a secluded beach located deep into the forests of Australia. Though Marcia would rather be basking in the comfort of a five-star hotel, Peter insists on lugging his expensive camping gear and chubby dog Cricket for one of those manly back-to-nature vacations that only rich people can actually take.

The ride there is not without its difficulty. Peter receives some strangely contradictory information at a local gas station that seems to be urging him away from his destination, although it’s the brutal running-over-of-a-kangaroo that sets an eerie tone. As news reports drop hints about bird attacks and Eggleston’s camera glares ominously at wayward wombats (band name trademark pending), we get the increasing sensation that nature isn’t crazy about these bickering humans.

Neither are we. Ever so slowly, Marcia and Peter reveal some of the reasons for their coldness towards each other, including infidelity and unwanted abortion. Throughout it all, Marcia seems to share our sentiment that something in this natural paradise wants them out. A sea cow (yes, it’s apparently a thing) washes up onshore. Peter gets Fabio’d by a giant seagull. 

Harpoons shoot on their own. A grime coated Barbie doll with Marcia’s haircut ominously shows up naked as Marcia sunbathes a few feet away. 

Something is off, and perhaps, the film surmises, deservedly so, as we witness Peter litter and nonchalantly chop down a tree while Marcia sprays pesticide at innocent ants. Their disregard for the outdoors is noted.

Long Weekend is a supremely strange film, one that sort of uses the guise of Nature Strikes Back to serve up a far more haunting story about a toxic relationship. Although we do get hints that animals are misbehaving elsewhere in the country, the two-character thrust of the film could almost lead you to believe all these seemingly ‘unnatural’ natural acts are actually part of our leads’ unraveling psyches. Certainly the fate of one character seems, albeit unclearly, to be more an act of human than god or goose. 

Some might find it pretentious, especially since the film is often categorized alongside much lighter fare like Food of the Gods. This is a horror movie in the way that Picnic At Hanging Rock is a horror movie: something supernatural is at work, but that’s ultimately just an excuse. The horror exists between a man and woman who seem to derive more pleasure in hurting their partner than loving them, and yet, as Peter points out so pointedly to Marcia, as clear as it is that the love is gone, the need for one another will probably never die. These people have ruined each other, and therefore, who else can take them?

Long Weekend isn’t shy about its metaphors (re: broken egg), but Eggleston makes them work by creating such a haunting and unusual mood through his depiction of nature. From both an audio and visual point of view, Long Weekend is incredibly atmospheric. Once you plop the saga of Peter and Marcia inside such a landscape, the results are bound to be intense.

High Points
Enough can’t be said about the look of the film, lovingly captured by director of photography Vincent Monton. In an age of forced perspective effects or artful editing around ever putting an animal in the same frame as a human, Monton finds ways to use close shots of creatures to hauntingly brilliant effect

John Hargreaves and Briony Behets have an uphill battle in playing two extremely unlikable characters, and credit must go to both for making such strong commitments 

Without spoiling, let me say that I adored everything about the ending of this film

Low Points
Well, the thing is that the very nature of Long Weekend feels like an uncomfortably long weekend where you ended up stuck tagging along as a third wheel to the most miserably married couple in Australia. So this isn’t exactly a fun romp, which can, you know, be a bit of a drag

Lessons Learned
A domesticated pet is, to the natural animals of the wildness, something of an uncle tom

Whatever you do, do not feed the possums

It’s not smart to leave your dog home alone unsupervised for three days, but when all is said and done, it might be preferable to spending a dreadful weekend in your company

Rent/Bury/Buy
Remade in 2008, Long Weekend is something truly unusual and well worth a quiet night of watching. The Synapse released DVD includes a fascinating commentary track and photo still gallery with an audio interview of the late Hargreaves (which comes with a spoiler warning, something I find endearingly adorable). White it won’t give you that fun beer & friends party night feeling like Frogs, Long Weekend is an eerie descent into marital hell that just so happens to be spoken in the language of animals amuck. Give it a try.

And watch your back. A koala might be doing the same.

Stalk Like a Man

While researching titles for last week’s column on Valentines-appropriate genre flicks, several films kept appearing with alarming frequency: Fatal Attraction, The Phantom of the Opera, High Tension, to name a few. Now these luscious journeys through cinematic lust are certainly romantic in nature, but to call a tale about unhealthy obsession a “love story” seems creepy and wrong.

Naturally, creepy and wrong is what we do best at this little corner of the interwebs and thusly do I present 8 Tales of Unrequited (and Obsessive) Romance:

1. May

It's not easy being May, even if you are played by the adorable and genre-friendly Angela Bettis. A lazy eye and awkward demeanor makes socializing a challenge and dating nearly impossible. Fortunately, some corrective surgery brings out May’s beauty and before long, she’s the excitable girlfriend of indie moviemaker Jeremy Sisto. Unfortunately, this skinny vet's assistant is not so sharp when it comes to detecting social cues and quickly misinterprets his cinematic passion for cannibalims as a genuine fetish. The relationship may be short-lived, but a little taxidermy and May gets to enjoy the best parts, consent or no consent.

Basis of Obsession: Soft hands

Warning Signs: Chick’s best friend is a porcelain doll; chick not disturbed by violence to animals

2. Phantom of the Opera

Many a list dubs this 1925 silent classic a love story, but while many a lass would willingly surrender to the tortured musician of the title, wimpy Christine Deae has her heart set on a rich and handsome dullard with better wedding photo potential. Hence, it's not so cute when a malformed, musically gifted cellar dweller makes it his mission to train and kidnap the young diva-in-the-making. Some women are just more ungrateful than others.

Basis of Attraction: Soprano voice, prone to fainting

Warning Signs: Dude gives free opera lessons

3. Misery

People respond to their celebrity crushes in many ways: fan letters, Twitter follows, locker photos, locks of hair collecting. Some, like Kathy Bates’ Annie Wilkes, take a more extreme route. In the case of this 1990 Stephen King adaptation, such a method involves rescuing a literary hero, nursing him back to health, then breaking his ankles in a bid to force the just-retired novelist to resurrect his recently killed heroine. It's not romance per say, but Annie is clearly enamored--no, infatuated beyond control--with the character Paul Sheldon has created. When given the opportunity to direct his next literary pursuit, she's simply doing what her heart--and most likely, millions of fellow readers--demand. 

Basis of Attraction: Better writer than Nicolas Sparks

Warning Signs: Chick’s mouth is cleaner than Howie Mandel’s toilet

4. The Collector


Not to be confused with the recent Saw-like horror, this 1965 chiller (based on a controversial novel of the same name by John Fowls) epitomizes the dark and tragically wasteful nature of unrequited love. The icy Terrance Stamp is Frederick Clegg, a bland banker who wins the lottery and celebrates by buying a secluded estate and kidnapping Miranda (Samantha Eggar), a pretty art student he’s declared ideal. What follows is a fascinating interplay between two mismatched people and a true tour de force by Eggar (giving an Oscar nominated performance) as she tries every trick in the Intelligent Hostage Handbook to escape her captor. Indifference, seduction, insult, resignation...nothing can penetrate Stamp’s cold and self-declared adoration. His steely resolve is terrifying in its quiet persistence and how it demonstrates the true irony of obsession: Clegg knows deep down that the liberal-minded, college educated beauty will never really give in and even if she did, such an act would yield her disappointingly mortal. It's a tragedy for both characters and a haunting ride for the audience.

Basis of Attraction: Red hair, artistic ability

Warning Signs: Poor Miranda never gets the chance to detect them, as Clegg’s blank nature means she, like most of her town, simply doesn't him before her basement enslavement. I reckon then that the moral is to simply be aware of windowless vans.

5. High Tension

What’s scarier than a killer trucker with necrophiliac leanings? How about a manic pixie nightmare girl with inexplicable strength, uninhibited obsession, and a complete lack of mercy? While the twist ending (which actually equates to a completely different film than what you see on first viewing) continues to fuel high spirited film geek debate, High Tension maintains a special place as the film that helped and put modern French horror on the map. For most of its brutal running time, High Tension is a terrifying experience in new slasherdom. When we discover the killer's identity and motivation--sheer passion and impossible love--it takes on a different type of horror. Yes, it's Alex who loses her entire family and probably future sense of safety, but poor Marie is forever trapped wanting something she could never honestly have.

Basis of Attraction: Flirty brunette

Warning Signs: Your college roommate seems to be spending a lot of time practicing chainsaw and shotgun skills and judging your sex life

6. Fear

It scares me how much teenage girls are riveted by tales of obsessive and underage romance. I have vivid memories of my fellow 8th graders rushing home to tape (ahh, pre-DVR days) the made-for-TV movie No One Would Tell, wherein a weirdly grown-up Fred Savage abuses insecure girlfriend Candace “DJ Tanner” Cameron to the point of hilarious death. That was kid stuff compared to Fear, Mark Wahlberg’s big break-through thriller about a charming drifter becoming violently infatuated with 16 year old Reese Witherspoon. Classic cars are trashed, dogs decapitated, and Alyssa Milano gets smacked. On her butt cheek. And yet, every Titanic-seeing classmate I knew was smitten. If only Wahlberg had aimed his doorbell shout at them.

Basis of Attraction: Witherspoon’s innocence, even if it gets questioned in one of the most memorable roller coaster sequences since National Lampoon's Vacation

Warning Signs: Soft-spoken Boston accent, subtle flirtation with stepmom

7. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

I imagine nanny screening is an intense pursuit more difficult than shoe shopping or choosing a college major. Hence, it’s easy to forgive Annabella Sciorra’s Claire Bartel for eagerly hiring Rebecca DeMornay’s Petyon Flanders when she appears to saves Baby Joey from a (staged) choking. For a while, Petyon seems like the best thing in babysitting since Mary Poppins. Too bad she’s actually harnessing a jealous rage towards Claire for destroying the perfect life Peyton almost had with her successful--and perverted--gynecologist husband. Like Annie Wilkes, Petyon isn’t romantically  obsessed with the heroine (or even her dense husband) but when it comes to getting what she wants, that icy blond charmer is one productive go-getter. What is it she covets? How about Claire’‘s identity and all that comes with it: beautiful house, successful husband, adorable/thirsty baby, and decent child actor of a daughter. Good thing picket fences are pointy.

Basis of Attraction: Living the perfect life after causing another woman's naughty Hippocratic oath-abusing husband to kill himself, greenhouse skills

Warning Signs: Chick has better breast milk, clumsy near perfume

8. Patrick</b>

Clara Barton Syndrome strikes with full force in this 1978 Aussie thriller. Three years in a coma, what else can a bug-eyed young chap do but fall in love with the smart and sassy nurse assigned to change his diaper, well-played by Susan Penhaligon (the nurse, not the diaper, cursed dangling modifiers). Gifted with telekinesis but restricted by body and basic ugliness, Patrick attempts to woo the young woman with an unorthodox approach: nearly drowning a suitor, burning her estranged husband, and writing her letters as so:

Surprisingly, the feelings aren’t reciprocated.

Basis of Attraction: Top bedpan skills, good listener

Warning Signs: Inappropriate spitting, Dude causes inconvenient blackouts 

Obviously, I may have missed a few. Already names likeThe Crush, Obsessed, and Fatal Attraction pop up, although --hold her monocles--I've never seen these titles which explains their omission. Add your own and remember: secret admirers may seem romantic, but you never know what that mysterious paramour wants in return for a few overpriced Godiva chocolates.

Patrick Still Lives...in a different continent, body, language, and movie

Pop Quiz: What’s the best way to make a sequel?

1. Retain as much of the talent from the film’s original source and continue to develop the story in a linear and sensical fashion
2. Multiply the budget and retell your story TO THE EXTREME!!!
3. Don’t do it.
4. Sell the rights to another country and let new hands do what they want, including transforming the tale into a trashtastic good time and increasing the amount of nudity and slapping by 189% 

If you selected D, the Patrick Still Lives!* is the movie for you. 

Oh boy. Is it ever.

Quick Plot: A young man and his father are standing on the side of a quiet country road when a passing vehicle hurls a bottle(? Three rewinds and I still couldn’t confidently identify the object) out the window. While the assailant is never fully identified, I’ll assume it’s someone along the lines of Roger Clemens or Johann Santana, as this one toss sends the son (a revamped, straight-haired Patrick) into a coma.

Fast forward some unidentified amount of time later, when Patrick Hershell is under the care of his slightly mad scientist dad in a secluded private hospital with a luxury resort connected to its backyard. Papa Hershell has invited a few mystery guests to spend a few days bathing, dining, lounging in the nude, being blackmailed, and eventually, murdered.

There’s a stiff Parliamentarian and his horny wife, a single young rich fellow wonderfully named David Davis, a hairy-chested playboy and his not girlfriend played by Burial Ground ’s boob-bitten mother Mariangela Giordano (and, it should be noted, her bare breasts). Also on the grounds is a pretty young secretary, two German Shepherds, and a maid/world’s worst dog trainer and bad omen warner. Everything’s all fun and Italian until Lyndon, the asexual politician, takes a morning swim and ends up a steamed and skinned corpse.

This somehow inspires Giordano's character to drink like Margot Kidder at a wedding and crash dinner naked. If that weren’t enough, she proceeds to pick a catfight with the grieving widow, then attempt to seduce David Davis (I have no plans to stop writing out his entire name). Shocking enough, not all men dig plastered middle aged women who spend 71% of their day in the nude. Instead of sweaty Euro sex, David Davis and Giordano's breasts engage in a three minute slap fight. It’s even more incredible than I can possibly explain.

Oh wait! But where did Patrick go? Not very far, since he’s comatose and only able to communicate via typewriter (the budget has clearly increased; note that this time, the keys move themselves) and once again, harnessing a crush on the attractive clinic employee. It’s a tad hard to even remember the title character amongst the sleazy joy of our soon-to-be victims, but in case you hadn’t figured it out, this is a sequel in name only. The concept remains while the tone and essentially, the genre get a turn of the decade makeover. Patrick keeps his telekinetic homicidal tendencies to kill his way through the (possibly responsible for his condition) party guests but that almost seems secondary to watching amusingly unlikable rich Italians embarrass themselves. It’s certainly more fun than Patrick, albeit a whole lot less classy. 

Depending on your mood, that can be a wonderful thing.

High Points

One death-by-car-window is pretty damn memorable and makes Rose McGowan’s garage door demise in Scream look a little less impressive

I’m not normally one to recommend a film based on its abundance of female nudity and women being slapped silly, but the ridiculousness of how both are featured in every other scene is rather amusing in itself

Low Points

At around 100 minutes, the running time isn’t unreasonable, but with such poorly paced and drawn out “chase” scenes, Patrick Still Lives (!) drags like a paraplegic learning how to walk

The death by dogs is possibly the tamest animal attack put on film since pipe cleaner spiders and drugged up toads were placed atop people pretending to be actors in Frogs

Lessons Learned

Italian women really don’t like to wear clothes or undergarments. Similarly, everybody in Europe sleeps buck naked

If a very menacing sharp object is aimed your way, it’s probably wise to close your legs

Denying your wife sex for months at at time may cause her to develop a serious case of nymphomania 

Syphilis can be transmitted through catfighting

Googly eyes floating over a green tinted set may resemble some of the baddies in Super Mario World, but they are also quite difficult to survive

Winning Line

“His death was due to a fatality.”

Is it me, or is this like saying a puppy is due to a baby dog?

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you loved the slow buildup and haunting atmosphere of Patrick, you may very well despise this film. HOWEVER, if exploitation is your cheese, melt this movie over nachos and feast like you’re the dude from Stephen King’s Thinner. This is the kind of film where the lead female, after discovering a second dead body, flees the scene shrieking, stops at a fountain to splash some water over her conveniently thin white dress, and resumes her escape. It’s a blast, but only if your definition of party involves ‘70s style Eurotrash. The DVD includes interviews with a producer and title star Gianni Dei, which are informative in a casual we-knew-what-we-were-making kind of way. I don't really see myself rewatching Patrick Still Lives(!) anytime soon, but it sure did brighten my evening.

*Since these filmmakers took liberties with the story of Patrick, I give myself the permission to adjust the title. There is no exclamation point, but doesn’t it sound better with one?

Veggie Tales

You know what used to be big? Telekinesis. Why, back slightly before I was born, all the cool kids were being filmed in closeup as they stared intently to make objects dart across the room. It was like texting. But awesome.

Or something, and that's the best lead-in I've got for today's review of Patrick, a 1978 Australian thriller directed by Richard Franklin.

Quick Plot: Twentysomething Patrick (the bug-eyed Robert Thompson) is not too happy hearing his mother and her boyfriend fornicate behind his walls. Instead of lashing out with heavy metal or totaling the family Toyota, this curly haired monster decides to drop an electric heater in their bathtub as the giggling lovebirds soap each other with annoying enthusiasm.

Three years later, we meet Kathy (Susan Penhaligon), a nurse in the middle of a trial separation from her workaholic/drinkaholic husband Ed. While setting up her new life, Kathy gets employed at a private psychiatric clinic in Melbourne where her chief responsibility (aside from not offending the humorless Matron Cassidy) is to watch over the now comatose Patrick. Lubricate his eyeballs, change his sheets...there’s not much else Kathy is expected to do, but how many crossword puzzles can a gal conquer before she starts to inevitably bond with the seemingly helpless man under her care?

Slowly--quite slowly--strange things start to happen to Kathy and the men around her. While attending a swinging pool party, Kathy’s not-date nearly drowns for no apparent reason. After a somewhat romantic afternoon with said poor swimmer, Kathy returns home to find her apartment ransacked. The clinic’s typewriter can’t seem to function more than one line without breaking into gibberish, and Patrick’s windows refuse to close. All harmless spooks, right?

Naturally, no. Kathy carefully draws her own connections between some of the mystery and Patrick’s not-so-meaningless spit communication. Of course, none of the men she seeks out offer any actual help, partly because her story is unbelievable and partly because her sex seems to keep her from ever being taken seriously. This was, for me, one of the most interesting aspects of Patrick. Although this is a film known for its unusual story and creepy leadup, I found the chauvinistic undertones to be the most fascinating plot piece. Matron Cassidy, for example, initially comes off as a rigid stock villain, but there’s something to be said for how her knowledge and opinions have no weight against the supervising doctor. 

Sexism aside, Patrick is a slow burning film that somehow reminds me of why I don’t really like to cook. It takes a lot of time, involves a whole lot of ingredients, and seems a rich and rewarding experience throughout its process until you get the end, where the final product is never quite as rich as the work put into it. I was pretty taken with Patrick’s build-up, mostly due to Penhaligon’s sympathetic and smart performance and the strength of Everett De Roche’s script. The problem comes at the very end, when all that careful development and subtle creepiness just...puffs away with less energy than one of Patrick’s unconscious spits. 

High Points

Penhaligon has a great presence and wise take on Kathy’s confusion that probably makes the film far better than it may have been with the wrong lead. I’ll also give a shoutout to Robert Helmann’s eccentric and rather ridiculous mad doctor and Julia Blake’s strict nurse--a creation two steps away from caricature but carefully grounded in her own beliefs

Low Points

I’ll blame the era, but the final scene is scored with such an overdone electrical score that it’s hard to take seriously

The dissenting opinions over what should actually be done with the comatose Patrick help to build an intriguing power dynamic among the medical staff, but the film doesn’t quite allow its characters to play enough with their relationships to make any sort of actual statement about ethics or philosophy

Lessons Learned

Yellow telephones were quite popular in 1970s Australia

People with taboo sexual fetishes often work in the nursing field

Tuna casserole can be a dangerous meal in the hands of estranged husbands

Literally

Rape fantasies aren’t quite as popular as you may think, particularly when you lazily try to force one upon your estranged wife

Rent/Bury/Buy

My copy of Patrick is nestled comfortably in the Aussie Horror Collection triple pack along with Strange Behavior (a spoofish slasher) and a vampire film called Thirst. I’ve yet to watch the other two, but if you can find this set at a decent price (I won’t brag about the mere $5 sale I grabbed mine...or will I?) then it’s worth checking out, especially as all three films include a few special features. As far as Patrick goes, it’s certainly something different and well-made, a unique thriller that defies common expectation but still knows how to have some fun. I was a little let down by the anticlimactic ending, but this is still a neat enough oddball of underground cinema that deserves a watch on a quiet afternoon. Or hey, Valentine's Day is fast approaching, so why not save it a special midnight showing with your sweetheart? It does features one of the best love letters ever put onscreen:

What I wouldn't do to find this note in a box of chocolates.