The House by the Edge of the Lake (Sensitività) (1979)

Intuitively, one would think that The House by the Edge of the Lake (Sensitività) (1979) was directed by Joe D’Amato: the similar compositions (by Alejandro Ulloa; although not quite as good as D’Amato’s); the antique almost colorless yet quite beautiful medieval village setting, as in Anthropophagus (1980); and finally, an emphasis on atmosphere and softcore sex.  However, no.  The House by the Edge of the Lake was helmed by Enzo G. Castellari, not known for his work in this genre, who responded to the question, “Are there any of your movies which you don’t like?”

“Of course. For example SENSITIVIA (aka KYRA, LAST HOUSE NEAR THE LAKE, 1979). We made that one during my holidays in Spain, it was a completely Spanish production, involving some questionable money that had been left from some other, even more strange production. It was some sort of joke for me but then the producer came and said that there is no more money left to complete the film and that he needs my ‘name’ to raise more from other production companies. I was not very happy to see my name on that picture. However he failed to get more money, I returned to Rome and from what I’ve heard, the Spanish producer finished the picture by himself later on. I’ve never seen it but I’m sure it’s completely unwatchable. However, I had a great time with my friends at the Costa Brava (laughs).” (1)

A notation follows this paragraph in the interview where the interviewers note that, “Castellari has since seen the finished film and was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.” (2)

Lilian (Leonora Fani) returns to her ancestral and familial home from Italy to do college research about the local superstitions.  Her house sits upon a lake that is avoided by the villagers as cursed.  In the opening scene of the film, a young mother is rowing upon it with her child daughter.  She lets her daughter go to shore, and while the young mother paddles to find a navigable path to the main shoreline, a woman’s hand comes from the lake and pulls the young woman from the boat.  En route to her home, Lilian encounters several bad omens:  she almost hits a blind young girl with her motorcycle; inside the home, she hallucinates a hooded figure who attempts to kill her with an axe; and finally, without Lilian’s notice, a young woman about her age spies on Lilian from a distance who seems none too happy that Lilian is home.  Lilian hooks up with the young people in the village, and later in the evening (after drinking), they decide to go to the cemetery.  Lilian notices a unique grave with a bust of a beautiful woman, sitting atop.  Her date for the evening identifies the plot as the resting place for Kyra, a woman suspected by the village as being a witch.  Her date, whose name is Julien (Alberto Squillante), says the woman was not a witch, because she was his ancestor.  Lilian becomes excited and the two start fucking.  The young woman who was spying on Lilian at her home, named Lilith (Patricia Adriani), is again watching Lilian.  Lilith has a vision of Kyra (Caternia Boratto), becomes aroused, and starts masturbating.  Lilian has an orgasm and faints.  Julien loses his shit and flees in his car.  He has an accident when his car goes over a cliff and he dies.

The simultaneous arousal of Lilian and Lilith happens three more times; Lilith masturbates three more times; Lilian has sex three more times; and two of her partners subsequently kill himself after Lilian faints after orgasm in House.  The lone lover to survive is Lilian’s boyfriend, Edoardo (Wolfango Soldati), while the other lovers who meet suicidal ends (one of whom is Michele, played by Antonio Mayans aka Robert Foster) share a strong connection.  Castellari plays the police inspector who suspects that Lilian has something to do with the murders (but has no proof), while the superstitious villagers turn on Lilian after the second death, believing she is a witch.  Wonderful, Italian-American character actor Vincent Gardenia plays an artist in the village.  He doesn’t think that Lilian is a witch: he knows the real secret behind the killings, as he houses a dark secret himself.  The dramatic action and plot of House is quite simple but the odd history driving the action is rather convoluted.

The House by the Edge of the Lake is obscure and rather inconsequential.  The screenplay isn’t completely compelling—the inclusion of the overtly sexual elements raise the eyebrows of the film.  Subsequently, really only the sex scenes receive any creative treatment and are the only memorable moments of the film.  Hence, the overall Joe D’Amato-esque feeling of the production.  The House by the Edge of the Lake is a film on the periphery of the syllabus for serious students of European cult cinema.

1.   Blumenstock, Peter and Christian Kessler.  “Enzo G. Castellari Part. 2 of an Interview.” European Trash Cinema.  Vol.2, No. 10.  Ed. Craig Ledbetter.  Kingwood, TX. 1994: p. 31.

2.  Ibid.

La stanza della fotografia (2000)

La stanza della fotografia (2000) is an Italian made-for-tv film.  I wanted to see it, because it stars Cinzia Monreale.

La stanza opens in Rome where an older man is driving to meet his lover.  He arrives at his lover’s flat and is immediately gunned down in a professional hit.  Cut to Tunisia and Silvia (Lea Karen Gramsdorff) and her husband, Marco (Roberto Farnesi).  A lawyer visits the couple and tells them that Silvia’s father has been murdered.  It appears that it was the work of the mafia, and he recommends Silvia to not return to Rome.  Silvia and Marco conduct tourist tours for a living and are in the middle of a very unhappy marriage—Marco is extremely abusive towards Silvia.  Cut to Denise (Monreale) whose husband attempts to rape her in the kitchen.  Denise kicks him in his groin and escapes.  Her husband calls some thugs to go and beat upon her.  Denise is confronted by three thugs and is about to get raped again when Silvia and Marco’s tour bus happens upon them.  Marco scares off the thugs, and Silvia offers solace to Denise.  The two women feel a strong bond and promise to see each other again.  One evening, Marco becomes angry and locks Silvia outside in a shed.  The following morning she flees to the home of Denise and her husband.  They tell her that she can stay.  When Silvia returns to her home to gather some things, Denise accompanies her.  When Marco becomes violent again, Denise shoots him.  She says it was an accident, as the two ladies dispose of his body…

I have had a huge crush on Cinzia Monreale ever since I first saw her in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (1981).  I will see anything that in which she appears.  Despite the fact that her character really only begins her story arc about midway through La stanza, Monreale is the true attraction of the film.  Her opening scene is sleazy—not necessarily because it is depicting an attempted rape, but rather in how it depicts it:  it is shot in the same manner as a typical, consensual sex scene, despite it being a scene of violence.  It is also an opportunity for Monreale to provide nudity.  Tunisia appears to be a hot country, and this affords an opportunity for its leading ladies to don sundresses and short shorts.  Monreale is enchanting in a bikini.  I enjoyed all of this very much.  However, my attention span is painfully short, and these scenes soon became repetitive.  I was forced to confront the story of La stanza.

While the Italian Wiki entry of La stanza credits Sergio Martino as the producer of the film, I recall seeing only his brother’s name, Luciano, in the credits as producer (he also is credited with the story.).  The director is Antonio Bonifacio.  The crew of La stanza want to fashion their production as a twist on Diabolique (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955); and the story is constructed painfully transparent in its mystery.  Silvia begins to have visions of Marco, supposed to be dead, around the city.  She faints and passes out, and Silvia tells her only confidante, Denise, that she is seeing Marco.  Denise begins giving her pills to help her stress and allow her to rest.  The key scene, about midway through the film that undoes the mystery, is a ridiculously contrived one:  Denise tells Silvia that she has to go to the Italian consulate to renew her visa and will be gone most of the afternoon.  She goes.  The viewer is treated to a scene of Denise calling Silvia from the consulate.  Silvia is attacked by a man whom she believes is Marco and she ends up killing him.  It is not Marco but Denise’s husband.  Doesn’t that trip to the consulate seem a little too convenient?

I possess an average intelligence; apply only rudimentary logic while watching mysteries; and have a high tolerance for ineptitude.  Having admitted this, La stanza della fotografia bored me with its tired story and execution.  The photography and performances are quite good, with especial mention, of course, to Monreale.  However, the world in which these characters populate is far from alluring.  Silvia is being set-up to take a fall—this much is obvious.  From the first act, it is obvious why she is.  The only question remaining is:  why am I watching this?  Cinzia Monreale.  La stanza is recommended only for her die-hard fans.

Eyes Behind the Wall (L’occhio dietro la parete) (1977)

Eyes Behind the Wall (L’occhio dietro la parete) (1977) is a weird Italian film. A giallo?  No.  However, the opening scene certainly suggests so.  A young man (John Phillip Law) shares a train car with an attractive young woman.  His eyes are drawn to her exposed legs, and he becomes aroused while watching her cross and uncross her legs.  His arousal prompts him to strangle the woman (and presumably, because it is not shown) and rape her.  Cut to attractive Olga (Olga Bisera) in a wealthy manor.  She joins Ivano (Fernando Rey) for dinner.  Discussion ensues about their new tenant, as they house a rental cottage on their property.  Ivano has been spying on his new tenant, named Arturo (Law), and is fascinated by his behavior.  Arturo spends all of his days alone listening to only classical and modern, progressive music.  He reads heady tomes, such as major philosophical and science works.  Ivano knows little about him after observation.  Where does he go when he leaves?  How does he produce income?  Olga sees Ivano’s spying as an intrusion upon someone’s private space but she is indulgent of his behavior:  Ivano is a writer, disabled and unable to walk.  He feels unable to move about in polite society to gather experiences to inform his writing.  So Ivano is reduced to spying.  Ivano is so into spying that he has installed a state-of-the-art monitoring device which allows him to view Arturo in his flat with complete discretion.  After dinner, Olga and Ivano go to spy upon Arturo in his apartment.  When Arturo sheds his clothes and engages in his exercises, Ivano prompts Olga to watch.  The old man strokes young Olga while she watches.  After their viewing session, Ivano suggests that Olga follow Arturo when he leaves at night and learn what he does.  Olga reluctantly agrees…

Eyes strives to elevate itself beyond mere sensationalism and cast a drama within the milieu a generation questioning its sexual mores and taboos.  (Although, in the end, I think director and writer Giuliano Petrelli was struggling to balance the sensationalism and his ideals.)  Law’s character, Arturo, is presented as a curious but seriously confused individual (hence, the opening scene).  He seeks solace and knowledge in books, but when confronted with the real world and his emotions, he shuts down.  For example, on the trolley Arturo gets cruised by a dude who invites him to a nightclub for dancing.  Arturo doesn’t participate in the dancing—when an attractive young woman sheds her clothes on the dance floor, it is a little too much for him.  The guy invites himself to Arturo’s flat, and Arturo doesn’t understand his flirty behavior.  (I have to admit that I laughed quite a bit when Arturo was getting buggered and screaming bloody murder).  Eventually, Ivano prods Olga to arrange a meeting with Arturo and get to know him.  She brings Arturo the lease to sign and invites him out for the day.  Arturo is able talk politics and philosophy, but he is as socially-awkward as Travis Bickle when it comes to articulating his feelings.  Olga seduces him that evening in his flat (much to the chagrin of Ivano taking in all of the details via his spy-scope):  Arturo tries to initiate sex by anal penetration, but Olga, like a consoling mother, tells him no and takes over the reins in the lovemaking.  Olga and Arturo also have unique sexual identities vis-à-vis each other, and even their butler, Ottavio (José Quaglio) has his own secret sexual hang-ups and quirks which director Petrelli thinks is worth exploring with some sensitivity.

The premise of Eyes is too incredulous to be taken seriously while simultaneously, the film is too realistic to be arty.  At its end, Eyes is too heady—more anthropology than cinema.  The end result is an average film.  However, beyond its artistic approach to the subject matter, Eyes is entertaining.  There is enough mystery to each character to make viewing compelling.  Fernando Rey is an amazing actor and is able to be quite captivating as Ivano, despite his character really never leaving his study or the dining room.  Beautiful Olga Bisera plays the perfect accompaniment as the curious female to John Phillip Law’s shy Arturo.  The sensational elements of Eyes never take over, but they become focal when on display.  In the end, erotic filmmakers, like Tinto Brass with La chiave (1983), for example, make more compelling films, both artistically and intellectually, when dealing with this subject matter.

The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (La sanguisuga conduce la danza) (1975)

In turn-of-the-twentieth-century Ireland, Count Richard Marnack (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) visits the local theatre and invites its acting troupe to his island/castle home.  The Count is quite taken with ingénue, Evelyn (Patrizia de Rossi), who bears a striking resemblance to his wife, now missing some years.  The rest of the troupe, brazen Cora (Krista Nell), lovers Rosalind (Marzia Damon) and Penny (Lidia Olizzi), and diminutive stage hand, Samuel (Leo Valeriano) accompany the Count and Evelyn to the castle, as their theatre is closing.  Upon arrival at the castle, the group is greeted by stern and comely, Sybil (Femi Benussi), the housekeeper, the holier-than-thou butler, Jeffrey (Mario de Rosa), and lecherous groundskeeper Gregory (Luciano Pigozzi).  None of the latter three are particularly thrilled that the Count has brought guests.  A lavish dinner is prepared, and the Count tells a ghoulish ghost story:  both his grandfather and his father murdered each’s respective lover by beheading each with an ornate dagger, only to then after the act, jump from the top of the castle to his death in the sea.  The dagger is still in the house, and the Count wants to take Evelyn as his new wife.  Spooky.

The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance (La sanguisuga conduce la danza) (1975) feels like it was made by children who have discovered several unique facets of the human psyche and are eager to tell the world about them: 1) men are ineffectual and unnecessary; 2) women have sexual desires and desire to act upon them; and 3) lesbianism actually exists and is awesome.  If the ancient pharaohs made these findings and had inscribed them with detailed hieroglyphics, then maybe they would be provocative.  From the first act of Bloodsucker and from my synopsis above, one would intuitively think that the Count’s story and his bourgeoning relationship with Evelyn would be foreshadowing of the story to come.  Wrong. 

Poor Samuel is the biggest pussy.  The first act devotes itself to a rather lengthy expositional sequence where Samuel visits each of the troupe’s actresses:  Cora asks Samuel to tie her corset, but he cannot do so, because he is distracted by her exposed breasts.  The lovers Rosalind and Penny want to be left alone for love-making but are disturbed by the ogling of Samuel.  Finally, Samuel does nothing but whine and bitch to Evelyn that they should not go to the castle, because he is afraid.  Samuel does little more than bitch and moan after arrival to the castle.  After their first breakfast, Cora is feeling particularly randy and wants a man.  She doesn’t even factor Samuel into her decision.  (The actor’s diminutive stature only magnifies his personality.)  Prior to the discovery of the first victim of Bloodsucker (it is a horror film, by the way), a precious scene plays:  Rosalind and Penny are fucking.  The cute young maid enters their bedroom with a pitcher of water.  She stares at the lovers for an inappropriate amount of time before clearing her throat and announcing she has brought their water.  Rosalind removes her lips from Penny’s nipple to tell the maid thank you and that she should leave.  Back in the maid’s chambers, where she shares a room with the other cute young maid, she stares at herself topless in the mirror.  The other maid asks what she is doing.  She says that she saw two of the lady guests making love in their bedroom.  “How is that?” The other asks.  “But they are two women.”  The maid confirms what she saw is true and asks her chamber mate if she thinks her breasts are beautiful.  Yes, she replies.  Very beautiful. 

Cora finds the most desirable man on the island, save the Count, in a fishing hut and has a shag.  At dusk, her head is found in the courtyard, and the dagger is missing.  Is anyone going to do anything about it? Not really.  Conveniently, a storm rises and keeps the island isolated.  The heads of ladies keep popping up in the second act of Bloodsucker.  The Count can only throw up his hands, and Evelyn can only lose her shit.  The pious butler, Jeffrey, thinks the murders are the work of the punishing hands of God, and angry Sybil seems oddly satisfied.

Bloodsucker Leads the Dance is directed by Alfredo Rizzo and has this odd antiquated feel to it, like the cinema of Amando de Ossorio.  Rizzo, who was in his seventies when he filmed Bloodsucker, seems tripped out at the sexual mores of the young people of his time and was eager and child-like to capture it.  He was also not well-versed in the tropes of modern horror:  all of the killings occur off-screen; the foreshadowing leads nowhere; and Bloodsucker incredulously yet tidily resolves itself with an Agatha-Christie-esque suspect confrontation scene at the end.  The cinema of Amando de Ossorio was odd and antiquated, like Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971), in a surreal, often unintentionally hilarious, atmospheric way.  Bloodsucker just comes off as weird.  The pastel lighting, with an abundance of natural light, makes the nudity and sex, appropriately and ironically, softcore and the rest of the dramatic action, lithe and rather inconsequential.  At any moment in the film, Bloodsucker feels as if it could just stop and not go on at all.  The English dubbing lacks any of the familiar voices of Italian cinema of the period, and it, too, sets the film aside, kind of casting it as foreign and theatrical.  Three lovely beauties of the genre, Benussi, de Rossi, and Nell, each provide nudity in Bloodsucker, and clearly this inclusion was a marketable asset of the film.  Rizzo and company, however, failed to note that each was a competent and charismatic actress, two of whom were underutilized.  Benussi often just stares at the characters like a stern matron while de Rossi really only animates her “flabbergasted” face.  Nell gets to have fun as the sexually adventurous Cora, but Bloodsucker is really only leading her character to its (relatively) lengthy fuck scene and later to her death scene.  Stuart phones in his role, and I do not blame him as his character really has no weight. 

All criticism aside, Bloodsucker Leads the Dance is an old, European genre production with the inherent charms of the production, like authentic settings, cool music, and beautiful actresses.  The lack of irony and the lack of a compelling story or atmosphere will see Bloodsucker viewers seeking de Ossorio cinema for remedies.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

I have never reviewed a Quentin Tarantino film on Quiet Cool, despite being a long-time fan of his work.  I saw Reservoir Dogs (1992) three times during its original theatrical run; Pulp Fiction (1994) five times; Jackie Brown (1997) three times; and Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2 (2003, 2004, respectively) once each.  I saw the QT-penned True Romance (1993) and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) each three times, while seeing Natural Born Killers (1994), where QT receives only a story credit, three times also.  His subsequent three directorial efforts, Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and Django Unchained (2012), I saw each on home video for the first time.  While I have seen Death Proof many times, I have only seen Basterds and Django, once each.  It was obvious with QT’s first three films as a director, especially Pulp Fiction, that he was an important American filmmaker.  I even thought that (at least up until Death Proof) QT was the only American filmmaker whose work was innovative and progressive.  His only real contemporaries were working abroad—Lars Von Trier, Wong kar-wai, Kim ki-duk, Takashi Miike, Emir Kusturica, and Pedro Almodovar, for example.  With Death Proof, QT saw a critical and commercial failure, and it ended a period in his career.  (For what it is worth, I think Death Proof is amazing and is definitely the most “French” film that QT has directed.)  With Basterds and Django, QT appeared a more mature and more conservative filmmaker, one who has definitely lost his edge, however.  This is evident with the appearance of actor Christoph Waltz whose characterizations as Hans Landa and Dr. Schultz (in Basterds and Django, respectively) were mirror images of the other.  QT imbued both characters with a special foreknowledge of events in the story.  Landa knew most everything ahead of time in Basterds—in the opening scene, he knew the owner of the house was hiding Jews (and was taking pleasure watching the owner attempt to maintain his composure), and, also for example, he knew Brad Pitt’s character wasn’t Italian in the final act (and again, took pleasure in watching Pitt painfully annunciate his fake name.)  In Django, for example, Dr. Schultz shoots the sheriff and then makes his big reveal when he is confronted.  This foreknowledge that Waltz’s characters hold becomes so repetitious that it begins to feel like a gimmick.  (Waltz won two Academy Awards for these performances, so obviously the Academy thinks these characterizations and performances are special.  What do I know?)  Finally, Basterds was the first time in the history of viewing QT’s cinema that I actually successfully predicted what would happen twice; and Django had the most tired scene in all of QT’s filmography—an extended joke about why there is not enough sacks to make masks for a lynching.  In any case, I have authored this paragraph prior to seeing The Hateful Eight (2015), so here goes an open mind…

Bounty Hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is escorting his $10K bounty, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) via horse-drawn carriage to Red Rock, Wyoming with an impending blizzard on the horizon.  En route, they meet a fellow bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), stranded on the road with three corpses in tow.  They agree, after some debate, to travel together to Red Rock.  They pick up one more lone soul on the road, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims that he is going to Red Rock to become its new sheriff.  With the blizzard quickly approaching, the group holes up at Minnie’s Haberdashery and encounter a Mexican named Bob (Demián Bichir) who is running the locale in the stead of Minnie, allegedly away visiting relatives.  Inside is Englishman, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), who claims to be the Hangman at Red Rock, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a traveler in Mobray’s stagecoach, and an old Confederate general, Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern).  It immediately appears that the group will have to spend two to three days together in the small locale to weather the storm.  However, it is also immediately apparent that none really trust the other, and cabin fever is about to set in…

The Hateful Eight has to be Tarantino’s weirdest film to date.  To me, that’s a good thing.  I expected this film to be traditional like Basterds and Django, but Tarantino really eschews all audience expectations with this one.  Interesting to note, I perused the IMDb via my smartphone after viewing the film, and in their Trivia section for this film, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) was a major influence on Tarantino during his writing of the screenplay.  I actually thought during the opening twenty minutes or so, Hateful Eight was going to play out like Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959) which inspired John Carpenter to make Assault on Precinct 13 (1976).

The pacing of The Hateful Eight, at a runtime of nearly three hours, is the divisive factor among audience members.  The gruesome violence in the film, of which there is quite a bit, will not deter anyone—it’s commonplace in cinema, now.  (Although Tarantino’s violence has now reached the point of absurdity.  It’s almost as if he views the human body as one big balloon filled with blood that spews geysers when punctured).  Even the film’s more audacious scenes, like Major Warren’s narrative about how he killed General Smithers’s son, are old hat for Tarantino—he’s already filmed a forced homosexual, sexual act with interracial partners before, for example.   With an almost glacial pace, Tarantino forces his viewers to figuratively rub shoulders with his characters during the film’s runtime while its characters very uncomfortably rub shoulders together before an inevitable showdown.

The triumph of The Hateful Eight, like Death Proof, is its subversion.  From the outset of when Samuel Jackson and Kurt Russell’s characters first meet, the tension and the suspicion between the two is apparent.  (The tension between the members of the two sides of the Civil War only heighten the immediate tension between the characters.)  The film’s dialogue (Tarantino’s most lauded attribute) is cryptic.  For example, Mobray gives a speech in the first act about how the act of hanging represents justice in civilized society as opposed to a posse killing a wanted criminal after hunting him down.  Intuitively, one would think that his speech is clever character exposition.  (It is.)  His speech also plays out in powerful irony in the final scene of the film, its resonance really felt after you exit the theatre.  The best scene with the use of dialogue, which really represents the film’s ethos, is when Daisy sings a song while playing the guitar.  The first verse of the song is rather sweet and poetic.  Ruth asks Daisy to sing another verse, and the second one is amazing—it prompts Ruth to snatch the guitar out of her hand and smash it to bits.

Visually, The Hateful Eight has a lot of stuff hidden in its compositions, and when the compositions aren’t being crafty their showing their stunning 70mm ability.  (Robert Richardson gets an Oscar nomination for his cinematography.)  There is a bleakness and hopelessness to Westerns filmed in the snow, like Sergio Corbucci’s masterful Il grande silenzio (The Great Silence) (1968), and The Hateful Eight is able to replicate those sentiments.  Minnie’s Haberdashery looks like a meticulously composed trap for its inhabitants.  The wilderness is perfectly captured.

The Hateful Eight is a weird film.  A truly dark comedy about brutal subjects like murder, the Bounty trade, the Civil War, and plain-old human existence.  All the performances are tops with especial note to Jackson who plays the lead in the film.  He plays a complex character who constantly reveals another side to the audience as the film plays out.  The humor is beyond dark—blowing off someone’s head isn’t funny, and it is even less funny to particular characters when a twelve-thousand-dollar bounty depended on its identity.  Leigh receives an Oscar nomination for her portrayal as Daisy, and she’s incredible—she looks like such a bad-ass in the film, a proper villain.  (I’m a true fanboy for Leigh.  She is one of my favorite actresses, and I love nearly everything she does.  Like most guys, I fell in love with her when I first saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).)  I think what I especially love about The Hateful Eight, although I am still digesting it, is that Tarantino is not going to garner any new fans with this film.  This type of daring and creativity is what I long for in cinema.  Quentin Tarantino is officially back on my radar.