Film Atlas (Belgium): All Night Long

Country: Belgium

Film: All Night Long / Toute Une Nuit (1982)

All Night Long (also known as A Whole Night) is a very unusual film. It is a collection of events and non-events taking place during a single summer's night in Brussels; isolated fragments that sometimes tell us everything we need to know about a character (who will likely be on screen only once and only for a few minutes), but more often gives us only a sliver of their life, chosen perhaps at random. Lovers meet. Others part. Some miss their rendezvous completely. Couples embrace, dance, argue, pack suitcases, sit in silence. Lonely, anxious figures pace back and forth in bedrooms, warm stools in sleepy barrooms or strut down cobblestone streets and into darkness. Phones ring. TVs drone. Radios play. Depending on your mood there is either no story or dozens.

I first saw this film alone and late at night while suffering from insomnia. I can't think of better circumstances for it to work its magic. Few films so perfectly capture the essence of night; its sleepy rhythms and lonely mysteries. Experimental director Chantal Akerman isn't afraid of risking our boredom, but it's just as easy to be mesmerized. In All Night Long the darkness may be heavy and oppressive, but its citizens are restless. The camera is omnivorous: some scenes are dramatic climaxes of relationships piled high with untold baggage while others are just incidental moments, unimportant and quickly forgotten. They are all given equal weight.

I find my attention wandering during most Akerman films, and this is no exception, but here it feels as though that instinct is planned, welcomed, and even thematically integrated. The structure lets your curiosity wax and wane, allowing you to jump back in at any moment, free of confusion or guilt. Akerman's work is often labeled Minimalist or Structuralist (note the scary capital letters), and that aesthetic self-consciousness can be off-putting, but here it works as an advantage. We don’t get too close, too involved. We are simply nightwatchers, disinterested voyeurs. The absence of judgement, names or causality is peaceful. The sound design, perhaps the film’s strongest asset, gracefully assists, conjuring the nighttime's bare-boned staccato from clacking footsteps, humming fans, rolling thunder, purring engines, a door slamming shut a few blocks down. All Night Long is not for everyone, but if you can't sleep anyway, give it a chance.

My Favorites:

Mr. Nobody

Broken Circle Breakdown

All Night Long / Toute une nuit

The Son (2002)

Innocence (2004)

Amer
Loft (2008)

The Child (2005)

A Town Called Panic

Major Directors:

Chantal Akerman, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Jaco Van Dormael

Review of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

For those of you in or around St. Louis, you might check out the Chantal Ackerman exhibit, “Moving Through Time and Space” at the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum. It opens tonight and runs until August 2, 2009. It’s a rare (and free!) opportunity to see the work of one of the great sleeper-hit avant-garde filmmakers. I'll try to be there, but if I’m not I won’t be able to see it for at least a couple of weeks, because I’ll be merrily tromping about in London and Belfast. (So don’t expect any posts for a while!) I’ll try to put up some sort of update after I have a chance to check it out.

The works in this exhibit include “From the East: Bordering on Fiction” (1995), “South” (1999), “From the Other Side” (2002), “Down There” (2006) and “Women of Antwerp in November” (2007). Several of these combine multiple screens at once, like the screening of Andy Warhol’s “Chelsea Girls” (1966) that the contemporary did a while back. Ackerman, by contrast, is much more socially conscious.

The exhibit brochure linked above begins its bio with, “Chantal Akerman is widely regarded as one of the most important directors in film history.” That’s a fairly bold statement that smells to me of museum propaganda, but it’s a shame that there are few chances for cinephiles to decide for themselves. Her work has rarely seen region 1 release (Update, 2010: Thanks to Criterion this is now no longer true. See comments section.) and is most often experienced through museum and university presentations. That said, my single experience with Ackerman’s work, a not-altogether pristine bootleg of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975), impressed me a great deal.

Review

“Jeanne Dielman” is Ackerman’s most famous work and is rightly cited as a landmark of both feminist and experimental cinema. It’s self-assured, challenging, controversial, intimidating and so arty it explodes if brought into contact with summer blockbusters.

The plot, what little there is of it, consists of a day-to-day, often minute-by-minute, visual transcript of a single mother’s life, presumably the Jeanne Dielman of the title (played by the wonderful Delphine Seyrig). The film’s structure is as rigid as its protagonist’s routine, relying on long static takes only occasionally broken by rectilinear editing. We watch Jeanne Dielman cook, clean, shop and prostitute in uninflected, somber semi-silence.

For about three and a half hours…

If you have dabbled in experimental art appreciation at all then you are doubtlessly already familiar with works about nothingness, next-to-nothingness, abstraction, minimalism, meditation, sensory-deprivation, self-conscious boredom and so on. These works of art, while terribly profound in the mind of their creators, tend to strike me and the rest of the ignorant public as dull, lazy, uninspired and, in the age of postmodernism, played out. Nor are our enthusiasms particularly reinvigorated when told that “such is the whole point of the piece.”

So I hope you can appreciate the level of cynicism with which I approached “Jeanne Dielman” and the surprise when I found myself actually drawn into its rhythm. This is a very difficult work and I admit that I found my attention drifting and my opinion wavering throughout; even to the point where at times I started pre-composing the pithy smackdowns I planned to issue should I write a review. Ultimately I came to see its point and, more importantly, to feel that the point was not trivial (as it is in, for instance, Andy Warhol’s 8-hour shot of the Empire States Building).

Yes, “Jeanne Dielman” purposely bores us, intentionally repeats things and stubbornly refuses to give us emotional catharsis or intellectual access with regard to its lone protagonist. But there is something powerful in the way it accomplishes both detachment and intimacy. A certain camaraderie builds up as we share Jeanne’s stifling monotony and one traverses a range of reactions through recognition, resentment and resignation that allows us to empathize with her existence in a way that is not possible in packaged entertainment or even traditional tragedy.

Our ability to distinguish details is, at times, heightened by the length we spend staring at flat mundane slices of her lower-middleclass apartment and at the same time diminished as our vigilance (trained by traditional cinema to expect cues telling us what is important) gradually wanes. Ackerman plays on this softly, by gently introducing glitches into the well-established pattern. These deviations during our third day within Jeanne’s world, at first as minor as dropping a spoon, build towards a brutal climax. It is an ending both unexpected and yet foreshadowed by hours of uncomfortable, almost subconscious, tension.

Far from being lazy, Ackerman’s film is painstakingly crafted to deliver a mixed reaction that is actually insightful, nuanced and just as compassionate as it is cruel. I’m not sure I fully appreciated the film or that I was paying enough attention by the final third to understand the ending or that I’d ever want to see it again. I know that doesn’t sound like a rave review, but if you have the right mix of patience, open-mindedness, curiosity and masochism, then this is a film that may yield unexpected rewards.

Walrus Rating: 3.0 and 8.0 (the two rating existing simultaneously within me)


Note: In case I did not make it clear, “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” is not one of the films showing at the Contemporary. In case the review only scared people off, I’m told the works at the exhibit are shorter, more accessible and more documentary in approach.

Update, later the same day:

So I made it out to the exhibit with my two sisters and a friend. The multi-video displays were definitely the most engaging. "Women of Antwerp in November" features black and white and color screens (1 large and 4 smaller on the opposite wall) depicting scenes of women smoking. It has wonderful atmosphere and texture (like very fashionable vintage noir) with a intuitive feel for mystery and sensuality, but not a great deal of meaning or substance as far as I could tell. It certainly succeeds as a collage of themed images, but I doubt many stay through the full 20 minute loop.

The next two rooms contained "The Other Side" a series of snippet on over a dozen flat-screens that contain a narrated documentary on illegal immigration. The directness of the approach and the experience of walking through film as an actual journey through space was an excellent metaphor and Ackerman makes strong symbolic and literal use of the wall running along the US-Mexico border. The audio, which emanates independently from each TV interferes with itself too much to add much, especially amidst the noise of the opening night crowd. I may have to return to experience "The Other Side" fully, but it definitely worked on a viceral level.

My favorite piece was a similar 24-screen room called "From the East: Bordering on Fiction" which was described as an exploration of Ackerman's East European Jewish identity. It is largely expressed through graceful tracking shots showing crowds of people standing and waiting around on streets, in train stations, etc. The juxtaposition of people, camera movements and old world settings made for arresting combinations, perhaps coincidental, but no less striking for being so, that held me for longer than the other displays. From reading the expressions in the grim crowds to observing the way lighting lends different emotional weights to similar scenes, there was plenty to ponder in the long, spacious gallery.

"South" is a feature length documentary on James Byrd, the victim of a racially motivated hate killing in Jasper, Texas. "Down There" is also feature length and plays on the same screen at different times. These films were a little less appropriate to the museum setting where few attendees will be able to sit and watch through the whole work. The exhibit closed about ten minutes after I arrived at the room. Perhaps another time...

Anyway, it's well worth the visit if you are in the area. Chances to see Ackerman's work are not likely to come this way again anytime soon.

Iceberg Arena: Unofficial Pinocchio Sequels

[Image: I just had to lead with this picture.]

When it comes to adapting classic fairy tales, folk tales and children’s literature there’s a certain burden in knowing you’re not likely the first or the last interpretation that will hit the screen. One has to weigh how true to the original to stick, whether to modernize the setting, if it’s wise to borrow from other adaptations and so on. And then there’s always that nagging half-hope, half-doubt: will this be the definitive version? The one everyone remembers?

Disney has certainly had no end of success winning that debate in the popular conscious. They’ve made highly-praised animated adaptations that have often stood the test of time even when working from source material that had seen plenty of previous versions like “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Jungle Book,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Aladdin.” I’m considering all of these films for potential Iceberg Arena comparisons, since I think some of the rarer alternatives are just as good or outright better, but that’s not quite what I’m up to in this post.

No, today’s focus is on a film that Disney did first, and I think best: “Pinocchio” (1940). Comparing it to any other version (Roberto Benigni’s unbearable live-action adaptation anyone?) would just not be fair without issuing handicaps. I considered featuring only sci-fi adaptations of the 1883 novel including the disastrous CG “P3K: Pinocchio the Robot” (Malcolm McDowell, if you're ever that hard up for money again, please come to me) and the love-it-or-hate-it epic “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.” Finally I decided to stick to refreshingly shameless animated unofficial sequels to the 1940 Disney classic.

Now to count as unofficial sequels these films had to be clearly set after the original story and make references to uniquely Disney elements that do not appear in the original novel. Thus the vaguely-deranged Russian animation “Pinocchio and the Golden Key” (1959) doesn’t count, because it is an original adaptation based on The Adventures of Buratino Buratino. That quasi-spinoff novel was the invention of Aleksey Tolstoy, who tried to tell his children the story of Pinocchio, but couldn’t remember how it went.

So today’s duelers are the Belgian artifact “Pinocchio in Outer Space” (1965) and Filmation’s surprisingly creepy “Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night” (1987), two films that will probably not top very many most-beloved family entertainment lists (one list they did make it onto, purportedly, was Disney’s black one). I was certainly expecting these films to be ill-conceived and bizarre (in fact, I was counting on it), but I was shocked by something else about them: I actually liked them. Seriously! Maybe it’s my love of animation, kitsch, obscurity and strangeness, but I found them to be a lot of fun.

Both films include the device of Pinocchio returning to his wooden puppet form for irresponsible misbehavior (Pinocchio in Outer Space) and taking his freedom for granted (Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night) respectively, only to go on a series of adventures to earn his humanity once again.


Pinocchio in Outer Space:

The film begins with a overdramatic ostentatious documentary-style intro about the possibilities of space, propelled by the type of unqualified optimism towards science that marked the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, complete with a bold declaration that the following story is a reconstruction of what would actually happen if a puppet boy traveled into space. This transitions into an animated sequence where the Blue Fairy and her crotchety mother – who is knitting on a pastoral plot of the Milky Way – are disturbed by the rockets and satellites that are whizzing by.

We eventually get around to the actual story, wherein Geppetto’s workshop is suffering hard times due to its low-tech toy-line (kids want rocket ships). Pinocchio, wooden once again, sees a news report about Monstro (oops, I meant Astro), a space-faring whale that is terrorizing interplanetary traffic. With only a quarter to his name, he decides to pursue the bounty on Astro in the hopes of saving Geppetto’s shop and becoming a hero worthy of being a real boy.

Not far from his home he runs into the wily fox and his feline sidekick, just as in the original. They convince him to buy a pamphlet on hypnosis written by Professor B. A. Fraud, reasoning that he can use this power to ensnare Astro. Soon after leaving his dubious pals, Pinocchio is almost crushed by a spaceship piloted by Nurtle, an alien Twurtle (not to be confused with their terrestrial cousins, turtles) who looks a lot like Jose Carioca and serves as the Jiminy Cricket surrogate.

Pinocchio and Nurtle set off for Mars where they are attacked by gigantic sand crabs and take shelter near the nuclear reactors of a derelict alien metropolis. They find laboratory setups for giantizing a whole host of desert creatures and an underground aquifer where they speculate Astro was raised before mutating and turning on his masters. However, before they can find any real answers a sandstorm nearly buries them alive and they escape mere moments before the city goes nuclear. They have little time to celebrate their escape before Astro appears, leading to a climax where Pinocchio learns that there’s more to hypnosis than shouting “You are a statue. You are a statue” over and over again.

What’s great about the plot of “Pinocchio in Outer Space” is that it seems entirely unselfconscious. There’s no hint of irony or intentional outlandishness while Pinocchio dabbles in hypnosis, traipses about on Mars, flees from alien crabs or battles a space whale. The film virtually bursts with the innocent enthusiasm of an eleven-year-old fascinated by astronomy and smitten with pulp sci-fi adventures, and this whole-hearted zest really cancels out the sickly feeling of watching a cheap rip-off.

The result is fun, kitschy and zany. I even enjoyed the dated edutainment factoids about space that are often, much to my amusement, totally incorrect. There’re also little details that make me think the writers actually enjoyed themselves. Pinocchio tries his “You are a statue” hypnotism on a trio of ducks and is pleased with his 33% success, not realizing that the bird that remained frozen is the wooden decoy of a hunter (a nice parallel to Pinocchio himself). Or take a little exchange where Nurtle expresses some skepticism about the existence of Astro, and Pinocchio argues that you’d know if he were lying because his nose would grow.

The script isn’t exactly brilliant, but it is occasionally rather ballsy and that can be a fair exchange in cult B-movies. I found it especially galling (but maybe in good way) when Nurtle, outpacing the Martian mushroom cloud behind him as they escape the abandoned city, mentions offhand that now they’ll never know who the Martians were or why they bred giant monsters. And he means it. No explanations. I’m not sure if I’m baffled by the haphazard loose-ends or impressed with the beguiling ambiguity. I’m probably happier not knowing how much of this is just poor writing.

Another pleasant surprise was the animation, which is not half-bad. Though it doesn’t really distinguish itself from or live up to the 1940 film, one can actually tell that this is a four-year labor of love. The characters are fleshed out (even Nurtle, who doesn’t have the benefit of a well-established precursor), animated with vigor and verb, and voiced with personality and affection. The backgrounds are often fairly detailed, with some standouts like the Martian metropolis and Geppetto’s workshop.

Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night:

Norm Prescott, co-director on “Pinocchio in Outer Space,” eventually helped found Filmation, a television studio most famous for its low-budget animated series based on Star Trek, He-Man, the Ghostbusters and the like. The studio would eventually venture into feature films that road on the coattails of previous classics (“Journey Back to Oz” and “Happily Ever After” being the other two), including their most ambitious: “Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night.”

The plot, seen from a distance, is really just a convoluted clone of the original set one year later and with some throwaway subplots, a love interest and an evil supervillain. Actually, that does make it pretty different...

Pinocchio and Geppetto are revisited by the Blue Fairy, who lectures about the importance of free will and brings to life Pinocchio’s toy glow worm Gee Willikers to be his conscience. No mention is made of Jiminy Cricket, more likely because of rights issues (Filmation was beleaguered by Disney lawyers throughout the production) than an acknowledgement of crickets’ three-month life spans. Pinocchio then sets out to deliver a valuable jewel box, only to be waylaid and conned by a sly raccoon and his monkey stooge (Honest John and Gideon in the original), getting him grounded that night when Geppetto finds out.

The film really gets going after Pinocchio violates his probation to go set things right, heading off to recover the jewel box. He is drawn to a carnival that enticed him the previous day and falls in love with a marionette named Twinkle who puts on a salacious performance while singing about running away from your parents doing whatever you want (upping the double-layers of the 1940’s “I’ve Got No Strings” with a clever triple-meaning refrain line “No one to hold me”). Afterwards, Pinocchio sneaks backstage and is kidnapped by the organ-grinding puppet-master Puppetino (who acts so much like a rapist that the scene never aired on TV) in what surely ranks amongst the most disturbing scenes in an animated children’s film.

With the help of Gee Willikers and the Blue Fairy, Pinocchio escapes, but learns from the still-scheming con artists that the jewel box is now in the dexterous hands of Puppetino. He riverboats down to find the carnival’s next stop, but is swallowed by a whale and entered the empire of the night, a ghostly world of fantasies and nightmares. There he visits the Land Where Dreams Come True and engages in a showdown with the four-armed demon lord The Emperor of the Night.

Perhaps the film’s most notorious scene is at the Land Where Dreams Come True, which actually exceeds the equivalent Pleasure Island in the original (where Pinocchio is transformed into a Donkey during a night of revelry). “Empire of the Night” goes even further, trippier and more terrifying. After entering a night club called the Neon Cabaret full of unlimited toys, Pinocchio indulges in mugs of absinthe, hallucinates that the leering faces around him are melting and then engages in a psychotropic self-indulgent disco dancing duet with Twinkle that involves spinning around on rainbows discs across abstract lightshow patterns while Playboy silhouettes composed of stars frolic around him.

This surreal euphoric high is followed immediately by the confrontation with the satanic demon villain, in a one-two mood-swing punch that probably spawned a lot of nightmares in young viewers. In the end he must escape the sinking ship (who knew we were on a ship?) through a series of implausible doors. One is so tall he has to tell lies so that his nose grows long enough to pull the handle and soon after he must confess truths to shrink it down enough to pass through a revolving door. Weird, but inspired.

However, counterbalancing the exquisitely overwhelming climax are heavy chunks of wasted time spent following Gee Williker’s subplot. He’s as much of a wet blanket as Jiminy Cricket, but without the charm or tunefulness. He spends most of the film vainly trying to argue with Pinocchio, who rightly ignores him, and then gets lost and has a bunch of lame time-killing adventures with Lt. Grumblebee and a large frog that rampages on an insect village. These scenes ruin the pacing of the film and don’t really belong.

Then there’s the Blue Fairy who keeps telling Pinocchio that free choice is the most powerful thing in the universe, but then admonishing him every time he doesn’t make the choice she wants. I guess that’s like real life.

The character design is more distinctive than “Pinocchio in Outer Space,” but much less appealing and hampered by 80’s-bad voice-acting. The good guys are especially weak: Geppetto looks like a jangly skeleton, Pinocchio’s cheekbones poke out distractingly and Gee Williker’s comes off as a carryover from a bad Fleischer cartoon. The villains, however, are a welcome upgrade. The raccoon/monkey con artist duo actually works and their dialog/performance is a far more convincing version of shifty shysters than other adaptations, even if the accents are rather offensive. Puppetino is almost too creepy and stands far above most henchmen (I hate the slow-witted buffoon variations) while The Empire of the Night makes most Disney nemeses seem like Heidi.

The background art is a notch or so above “Pinocchio in Outer Space” in terms of consistency. It also has better atmosphere, especially the carnival (even when it is seen from a distance) and the Empire of the Night. Yet at the same time it doesn’t have quite the same charm and sincerity.

Conclusion:

Relative to my expectations, both of these films were real winners. If you’re already a disciple of the 1940 version and you’re tolerant towards a little artistic theft, I’d actually say it’s worth indulging any curiosity you might have. I probably wouldn’t show “Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night” to little children and “Pinocchio in Outer Space” might be a little quaint and naïve for adolescents, but I’m sure some kids could latch on to either. Besides, good parenting or not, I’m of the belief that a little outrageous surrealism is a healthy childhood vaccine against conformity indoctrination.

Anyway, I’m giving the gold to “Pinocchio in Outer Space,” but objectively it’s probably the other film that most people would prefer.

Winner: Pinocchio in Outer Space

Vampire Week Part 4

Rank: 20
Title: Hour of the Wolf
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Year: 1968
Review:
Bergman considered this his only true horror film (though much of his work is filled with psychological terror), and though it never uses the word vampire (neither does “Cronos,” “The Hunger” or “Near Dark” for that matter) there is reason to include it on the list. The ambiguity lies in the manifestation of vampirism which may be corporeal, but could just as likely be hallucinogenic or dream-vision.

Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) is a reclusive painter who is tormented by inner demons and apparently outer ones as well. He isn’t sure what to make of his unsettling visions or his fear, insomnia and erratic behavior as time and loneliness erode his sanity. His only comfort is his wife (Liv Ullman) who loyally tries to understand and empathize with her emotionally-distant husband – to the point where she begins to experience his hallucinations. These phantoms take the form of a faceless woman, who instructs Mrs. Borg to read her husband’s diary. The secret she finds inside splits their relationship apart and plunges them both into a deeper circle of hell.

Even by Bergman standards, the first half of “Hour of the Wolf” is pretty slow-moving stuff. The breakdown of marriage and existential crisis themes have been done better by Bergman both before and after, but the horrific visions are definitely worthwhile. They build towards a creepy crescendo in the film’s latter half, particularly when the action shifts to enormous castle. Therein lives an undead family of aristocrats, the only other occupants of the island, and a haunting dread that shatters the souls of our unfortunate protagonists.

The film is deeply personal, with references to Bergman’s youth and own marital difficulties. It’s far from biographical, considering that the tone is so other-worldly and the links to reality so tentative, but one can sense the director’s familiarity with the psychological circumstances. The B/W cinematography is beautiful though depressing. Every character, every prop and every acre of fallow earth seems cruelly blighted by an uncaring god. Don’t expect this film to cheer you up, but it might make you feel thankful you aren’t Borg or his wife.

The hour of the wolf, if you are curious, is the one just before dawn when most deaths occur and phantoms have their strongest hold.


Rank: 19
Title: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary
Director: Guy Maddin
Country: Canada
Year: 2002
Review:
See full review here.


Rank: 18
Title: Versus
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Country: Japan
Year: 2000
Review:
While “Versus” includes vampires and so qualifies as a vampire film, it could equally be counted as a zombie romp, samurai epic, yakuza flick or martial arts opus. In addition to a genre adoration that would do male teen proud, Kitamura demonstrates a hyperactive excitement for comic carnage taken to the nth degree, and his enthusiasm is infectious.

A reincarnated samurai-turned-yakuza thug escapes from jail to meet up with his trigger-happy gang in the aptly named “Forest of Resurrection”. When a dispute breaks out over a recently kidnapped girl, one of the flunkies gets killed and immediately returns as a zombie; that’s when it occurs to the gang that they’ve been burying bodies in these woods for years. The corpses take that reflective moment as their cue to rise from the grave.

An all-out frenetic battle ensues, with expressive, free-flying camerawork and uzi-rate editing. From this point on, the movie is essentially one continuous fight scene with government agents (hot on the heels of the escaped convicts) joining in along with vampires, demon lords and more. Flashbacks invite us to watch the waging of this war in previous centuries (allowing for some samurai showdowns), and the ending gives us a taste of the cyborg-enhanced future hell that awaits in the next iteration.

The outrageous excess and no-holds action is violent enough to offend parents and senators but is treated with an eye-winking nonchalance that makes it more amusing than terrifying. I’m not quite sure whether Kitamura knowingly satirizes low-attention-span action fodder, but he certainly outdoes it and makes us laugh in the process. Most of the shock and humor comes from the jaw-dropping gumption of the director and choreographer, who leave us constantly aghast that they went so far. The lack of realistic grounding does have its downside, though, and neither the characters nor the story pull the audience in. The two-hour running time easily exhausts its welcome, proving that pacing isn’t all about quick cutting and combat.

Best enjoyed with a bowl of popcorn and a group of friends who like kung fu and gunplay at least as much as horror.

[Image: First off, let me apologize for selecting the worst of the several poor DVD versions as my introductory image. I took one look and couldn't resist using it, although the film isn't nearly as cheesy as this cover would imply.]

Rank: 17
Title: Daughters of Darkness
Director: Harry Kumel

Country: Belgium

Year: 1971
Review:
One of the best and earliest of the lesbian exploitation vampire films, “Daughters of Darkness” remains one of the few in its denigrated subgenre to bear redeeming fruit. The plot loosely adapts from Fanu’s “Carmilla,” moving all the action to grandiose hotel eerily empty in the cold non-tourist season. Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig recalling her enigmatic performance in “Last Year in Marienbad”) and her nubile secretary/lover Ilona Harczy are the only guests. Though they look young and beautiful, the aging hotel clerk and a homicide detective recognizes the countess from her last visit, 40 years before.

Stefan and Valerie, a pair of runaway honeymooners whose marriage is already off to a bad start, decide to check into the relic of bygone majesty and try to relax in the dour village. Bored and brooding, Stefan and the three women lounge around in the opulent hotel lobby, where it quickly gets difficult to tell who is seducing who. Kumel languidly brews the tension over a fatally erotic undercurrent. Some dark secrets are exposed and the stage is set for a series of sexual power plays. Hardly any blood is spilt until the last act, when deadly emotions and frustrations boil to the surface and vengeance comes calling.

Kumel proves his superiority to Jean Rollins and Jesus Franco (the two better-known “luminaries” of the lesbian vampire subgenre) by giving audiences plenty of sexually-charged sequences and ample nudity without seeming as sleazy as his rivals. The cinematography is marked by dreary weather, crumbling sumptuousness and an old-world vibe torn by bold scarlet gashes (dresses, lips, blood). The acting is OK, led by the icy, elegant Delphine Seyrig, whose performance is echoed by Catherine Denueve in “The Hunger” (1983). The deep-seated unhappiness of the protagonists is allowed to mire in public view, while the mysterious allure of the countess’s siren beauty serves as a lure driving the others to wreck their lives against her shore.

Audiences expecting purely art-house antics or a maximum of blood and breasts will probably both find stretches of disappointment, but the balance means an arresting vampire film straddled on the art/exploitation borderlands. If you prefer more sex and less moodiness, try “Vampyres” (1974) (also called “Daughters of Dracula”), and for those who prefer the reverse, try the classier “Blood and Roses” (1960) or “The Hunger” (1983).

Rank: 16
Title: The Last Man on Earth
Director: Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow

Country: USA/Italy

Year: 1964
Review:
Vincent Price stars in this adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend,” the first of several versions that would include “Omega Man” (1971) with Charlton Heston and the upcoming “I Am Legend” (2007) with Will Smith. Though far from brilliant, this bargain bin (public domain) low-budget flick is surprisingly entertaining, grim and thoughtful.

Dr. Robert Morgan (Price) is the last man on Earth. He earned that distinction when an epidemic turned the planet’s population into vampire-zombie hybrids. Flashbacks detail the scramble for a cure, the mass burning of bodies and the final descent into post-apocalyptic collapse. Morgan, who is immune to the disease, has spent months foraging and staking by day and holding out in his suburban makeshift fortress by night. The army of undead foes he battles are not much of a serious threat; they shamble with the lethargic gait of brain-dead zombies and suffer the vampiric weaknesses of garlic, fire and light.

Eventually the doctor encounters another human and, lucky for him, it’s an attractive babe. She seems a bit unhealthy and behaves suspiciously, foreshadowing the inevitable catch: she’s actually an agent from a community of infected rebels who use regular serum treatments for temporary resistance to the disease. Her intentions aren’t exactly pure, but he uses his own blood to cure her anyway. The whole ‘flesh and blood granting salvation’ quickly spirals into a weird Jesus metaphor with a fittingly Biblical ending fit for long contemplation.

The empty, bombed-out sets owe their minimalism to budgetary constraints as much as any intentional evocation of an existential wasteland, but the results are powerful nonetheless. Like the monsters, the pacing is slow, but it helps capture the tedious, grinding half-life of the haggard hero. When things pick up in the final act, our patience is repaid with increased action, interest and symbolism.

“The Last Man on Earth” paved the way for many later psychological horror films especially 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead,” which has a similar look and setting. The inner torment of Morgan’s character is fairly severe. For starters, he witnesses his entire family die. Then there’s the former laboratory colleague that leads nightly zombie assault on his modest home; as a nasty reminder of Morgan’s failure to develop a cure. When he finally meets another survivor, he discovers that he’s already murdered some of her people in the past (mistaking them for vampires) and that she intends to kill him. The depressing tone continues into the ending, which holds little hope for humankind. However, a glimmer of redemption may exist for the new breed.