León Klimovsky's Night of the Walking Dead (1977)

Argentinian-born filmmaker León Klimovsky made eight films with Paul Naschy, ne Jacinto Molina Álvarez, for which he is probably best known. The Werewolf's Shadow (1971), the giallo with Erika Blanc, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1974), and the surreal The People Who Own the Dark (1979) are just a few of the highlights of these two's collaboration. Klimovsky also has made a number of Westerns and War films. In 1973, Klimovsky made one of my personal favorites, with Jack Taylor and Helga Liné, entitled The Vampires' Night Orgy, which didn't really have an orgy but a busload of tourists who visit a very strange country town. One of Klimovsky's last films was another stab at the heart of vampires in the country without Naschy, Blanc, Taylor, or Liné entitled Night of the Walking Dead (1977).

Pretty young maiden Marian is dead. Alas, her younger sister, Catherine, is withering away as well and does not have much longer before she joins her sister. The new town doctor at the local tavern pounds a jug of wine and he's off to the burial. The doc should have pounded a barrel of vino, because the locals are tripping him out. You people are truly barbarians, the doc says. You are new here and do not know our customs. This must be done. A wooden stake is driven through young Marian's corpse and she is buried. As night falls, the locals in a hurry barricade their doors and hide inside, while strings of garlic hang above the threshold. A fog rolls into the cemetery, well after night has fallen, and Marian's corpse is dug up and the stake removed. Marian rises from the grave and is escorted from the cemetery by a sinister pair.

Pretty young maiden Marian is pretty much forgotten for the remainder of Night of the Walking Dead, although she makes a Danny Glickish appearance at Catherine's window one evening. Klimovsky continues the Hammer atmospherics, as in a fantastic scene where the doc is treated to the view outside the window of the tavern, where an old castle sits. "It's empty," says the barkeep. "We've been there several times." Catherine becomes the focus of the story and with her illness, she refuses to eat and is withering away. Around the halfway mark of Night of the Walking Dead, Catherine, alone in the house while her parents are away, is visited by a noble stranger seeking shelter for the evening. The stranger is Count Rudolf, and being a Count in a vampire movie pretty much means that the stranger is a vampire. The Count is totally enchanted by Catherine's beauty, and he spends the night in her home and comes calling for her later from the castle. The final third is the union of the Count and Catherine amongst the backdrop of a vampire party at the castle, where the legend of the vampires is explained, tied to the English-language title. Visually, vampire parties are pretty cool in cinema, and Klimovsky creates a sombre palate, going for surreal touches and dreamy images. By 1977, this plot line was pretty tired in vampire cinema but culturally, the Sexual Revolution was in swing, baby, so some of the ladies could get out of their corsets and fall out of their tops for moviegoers. Peppered liberally throughout Night of the Walking Dead are the ladies topless, often with willing suitors, who are quite eager to touch these new breasts and give them a squeeze. Even Count Rudolph, after he conveys his tragic circumstances and love for Catherine, goes not for her neck first but for the top of her negligee. I don't remember whether he even went for her neck. I enjoyed Night of the Walking Dead as much as I enjoyed The Vampires' Night Orgy. When I stopped to think about it, I've seen well over ten of Klimovsky's films and I rarely ask myself if he is a favorite. More than likely, it is because Klimovsky's cinema is strictly bound by the conventions of the genre, and a genre-producer, or star like Naschy, would be grateful to have him at the helm. Films like Walking Dead, Vampires' Night, and The People Who Own the Dark show Klimovsky stepping out, even if just slightly, of the conventions and it is welcomed. Klimovsky might be a crafty artisan of cinema but often, maybe subtly, he is also an artful craftsman of images. Often neglected and overshadowed, Klimovsky's cinema deserves wider praise and obscurities like Night of the Walking Dead deserve viewings by curious fans.

Tonino Ricci's Panic (1976)

Jane (Janet Agren) is working in her lab, when she notices two caged rats going at each other and an alarm goes off. The alarm signals a breach in the lab's security of a possible viral contagion. Her chemical company and the local government near London want to keep the breach hush-hush to prevent a public panic. Meanwhile, a cute young couple are shagging in their automobile. The couple is attacked, mutilated, and killed. The cops investigate the murder and call in Captain Kirk: no, not William Shatner but my main man, David Warbeck. Kirk learns of the breach in the lab and when he follows up with Jane, he learns that Professor Adams is missing, the brilliant scientist who was working on a new project. Is there any link between the contagion, the murders, and the recently-missing Professor Adams in Tonino Ricci's Panic (1976)? Panic is a patchwork quilt of would-be plotlines. For example, when Kirk visits Jane on his initial investigation and learns that Professor Adams is missing, the two go to Adams's retreat out in the country to search for clues. Finding the professor's dead bodyguard at his hideaway, the sequence, at first blush, looks like the beginning of a mystery and blossoming romance between Kirk and Jane, as the two exchange jokes and stumble upon clues. The murder scenes are shot like a slasher flick: Ricci uses the camera's p.o.v. to mimic the monster stalking, slowly and creepily upon his victims. Around the end of the first act, the film kicks into panic mode, as scenes are shown of soldiers in trucks roaming the streets in their gas masks and hazmat outfits. Kirk, however, donning a tan raincoat is still investigating the murders, like a old-time private eye. He and a police officer head underground to look for clues of the monster; while above ground, in a fantastic sequence, the monster attacks in a full movie theatre. Grabbing a young lady and throwing her over its shoulder, the monster finds solace in the projection room where his dinner can be eaten. By the time the final act begins, the government has quarantined the English town and the citizens have moved into the titular panic and begin rioting.Ricci has seemingly never had a fondness or a patience for plotlines. Ricci loves the action sequences and the more the merrier. For example, his best film, The Big Family (1973) is really a series of exciting mob hits tied together with the most perfunctory plot line. When he tackles tiburons and aliens in The Shark's Cave (1978) or aliens in an underground kingdom in Encounters in the Deep (1979), Ricci could care less why his characters are in the water, just as long as the sharks are in a willing frenzy or the aliens are ready to take over the world. I love the man's cinema, so if Ricci can give me some seriously enthusiastic sequences, I'm sold. Yes, I'm a cheap date, and Ricci delivers. The monster in the movie theatre is standout: to watch the rubber-suited monster writhe in pain as the awful film plays on the screen, only to claw through the screen and scare the hell out of the patrons is true B-movie gold. When the monster attacks in two sequences unsuspecting families, the viewer thinks that it's Ricci in the monster suit, because there is so much enthusiasm. To his credit, Ricci actually links all of these disparate scenes together with a very thin visual cue but linked nonetheless. Janet Agren's Jane is sorely underused. Agren as an actress has been underused in her career. Often just eye candy, as in Giuseppe Bennati's underrated giallo, The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974), or as a collateral character, as in Carlo Vanzina's Mystère (1983), as Carole Bouquet's friend, Agren briefly gets to show her charisma and range. When Agren is given a substantial role, for example, as the pretty lady who runs the truckstop in Sergio Martino's Hands of Steel (1986), she often steals her scenes and shines brightly. This is the second film that I can recall where Ricci doesn't use Agren enough, and I wish there were more scenes with her.

David Warbeck, like Agren, is a Eurocult legend. Warbeck made some phenomenal flicks with Antonio Margheriti, such as The Last Hunter (1980), The Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982), Tiger Joe (1982), and Ark of the Sun God (1983), which really defined and shaped Italian 80s action movies. Warbeck also appeared in a little-known film by an obscure director during this period, Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981) that's really popular with the young folks. Warbeck's good in this role. He can smoke a cigarette and wield a gun with the best of them.I've probably had more fun with Panic than would most viewers. I absolutely love films that coast on fumes financially but are guzzling an endless supply of enthusiasm and fun. By no means a cinema classic, Panic is a Ricci classic, which is quite all right with me.

John Landis's Into the Night (1985)

I must have first seen John Landis's Into the Night (1985) around twenty or so years ago, and undoubtedly, it was a late-nite cable viewing. I certainly was a night owl and loved spending my evenings in front of the tube watching the cable movie channels, which the old man was shelling out the bucks for. I grew up in a quiet coastal community, and when the sun went down about all there was to hear was the sound of the waves hitting the shore or the occasional car passing by. I had a serious attraction to city life, and when I was eighteen, I took out for the city and haven't really looked back. My night owl habits and fascination for city life would make films like Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985) (New York) and Landis's Into the Night (Los Angeles) essential films. Being an adolescent, getting to see Michelle Pfeiffer butt naked was added attraction and also, undoubtedly, the strongest memory that I had of the film. Anyway, Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) cannot sleep, his beautiful wife is cheating on him, and his job, as an aerospace engineer, is a dead end. His commuter and work buddy, Herb (Dan Aykroyd), tells him one morning--since you're not sleeping, just drive to the airport, hop on a plane to Vegas, have a good time, and pop back in the morning. Although Ed's at the early stages of sleep-deprived psychosis, he knows that this idea is ridiculous. After a poor performance at a work meeting, he goes home early to catch a nap only to hear the sounds of his wife in sexual bliss, coming from their bedroom. That evening, unable to sleep again, Ed hops in his car and heads for the airport. While parked in the airport garage, a beautiful and well-dressed blonde, jumps into his vehicle and asks Ed to drive away quickly. Before Ed can even react, a well-dressed man with a large pistol hops onto his car's hood, and without thinking, Ed drives off with the young woman.What follows in Into the Night is a series of episodes, sometimes funny, sometimes kind of disturbing, and often strange, involving the reluctant Ed and beautiful and charismatic Diana, like "Princess Diana," played by Michelle Pfeiffer. International intrigue, Hollywood insiders, and jewel thievery are the main ingredients to this mix, while Landis litters his film with a litany of cameos from Hollywood players, mainly directors. Landis, himself, plays one of the four thugs out to get Ed and Diana. While his three cohorts will often yell at each other in a language other than English, Landis's character never says a word. In fact, the four are more about action, and one of the film's running jokes is their quick propensity to destroy just about anything in their path. In one of the film's most bizarre scenes, Landis and crew visit Diana's friend and budding actress, Christie (Kathryn Harrold), and her Hollywood heavyweight boyfriend, Bud Herman (Paul Mazursky). The crew, in their usual fashion, begin tearing up the place, while holding Christie and Bud at gunpoint. Christie escapes out of house and onto the beach. In slapstick fashion, Landis's character smacks himself in the face with the door only then to fire about six bullets in the doorknob and then reopen the door. In a static wide shot, the four chase down Christie and hold her down and drown her in the ocean. The killing is cold and is shot by Landis in the same fashion.

The best scenes of Into the Night involve only Goldblum and Pfeiffer during downtime from one of the action sequences. In fact the best scene occurs with the two sitting in a diner, having ice cream and getting to know each other. Tall and skinny Jeff Goldblum is quite charming with his endearing and nerdish manner. When he opens up to Pfeiffer, it's one of the only real glimpses into his character. It is, however, fun to watch his character almost sleepwalk through the film: the absurdity of the film's events don't really faze him as he is already slipping over the edge. As for Michelle Pfeiffer, her performance gives no doubt as to her subsequent rise as a true Hollywood superstar. Her previous films, two genuine cult classics, Patricia Birch's Grease 2 (1982) and Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983), showed an actress with an incredible amount of range emotionally and dramatically, from smart and sassy to cold and icy, always sexy and radiant. Pfeiffer would finish the eighties in Hollywood hits such as George Miller's Witches of Eastwick (1987), Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise (1988), Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liasons (1988), and culminating in her best performance of the eighties in Steve Kloves's Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). By the time the nineties dawned, Pfeiffer was one of the elite in Hollywood. She is completely magnetic in Into the Night and while I don't believe this film is a cult classic in the same league as her two previous films, her performance makes the film essential viewing for Pfeiffer fans and of course, for those fans looking for a fix of the unsual.

I quite admire John Landis's decision to direct Into the Night. A lover of horror cinema whose work is often synonymous with comedy, Landis has directed some bona fide classics (Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), and An American Werewolf in London (1981)). The single attribute of Landis which I most admire, regardless if I like one of his films, is his total persistence on diversity in his filmography, and of all the things that can be said of his work, predictable is not one of the words. Unfortunately, Into the Night looks like a film which was a lot of fun to make: I can only speculate the nights this crew had together. However, as a lasting film, Into the Night falls short: spots of magic, here and there, but overall, an admirable attempt at something offbeat which doesn't quite gel. However, Pfeiffer's performance makes Into the Night worth a peek, and I probably will revisit it again, if only for nostalgia's sake.

Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi's Summertime Killer (1972)

The golden blonde locks of the little boy, who from the catwalk is watching an older man getting beaten and killed below, are shown later in a black-and-white photo being caressed by a woman, accompanied by a woman's voice over narration who tells the police: "We don't need your help. We take care of our own." The golden blonde locks now belong to a young man, flowing in the wind, as the young man is on a motorbike, having a good time with the same eyes as Robert Mitchum. It must be summer, because the same young fella, with the same golden blonde locks, wearing some groovy sunglasses, on his motorbike, shoots a shady-looking older man in the back of his car at point-blank range and in cold blood. The blonde is Christopher Mitchum in Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi's Summertime Killer (1972).

Summertime Killer is another amoral Spanish co-production and hit starring Christopher Mitchum. Snubbed in Hollywood in the 1970s, Mitchum made several Eurocult favorites, such as Eloy de la Iglesia's Clockwork Terror (1973) and a film eerily similar in story to Summertime Killer but a lot nastier, violent, and sexual, Tulio Demicheli's unbelievable Ricco the Mean Machine (1973). After Mitchum's Ray Castor shoots another chump in a New York City subway car in broad daylight with a smirk on his face, Castor's off to Rome. Castor interrupts a don trying to get some loving under the moonlight at his posh villa by giving him a marksman shot to the chest. By now the underworld is a little worried and Captain John Kiley (Karl Malden) is brought in to help. Kiley might be a New York cop, but with a little reluctance and a little more willingness, he takes the mob's offer of ten-thousand bucks to find the killer. What if I don't find him? asks Kiley. Just find him, period. Kiley's off to Europe after he gets a hunch. Meanwhile, in Portugal, Castor's having a little trouble with his final mark, Lazaro Alfredi (Raf Vallone), the final underworld figure who killed his old man. After a botched hit attempt, Castor tries another approach in his quest for revenge: kidnap his daughter, Tania Scarlotti (Olivia Hussey), and hold her for ransom until a forced meeting with Alfredi to pay up comes about. When the day comes to confront Alfredi, Castor can kill the bastard and put his past behind him, unless in the interim, the mob boss's daughter and the would-be killer fall in love. Tsk, tsk.

Summertime Killer is certainly PG in its content: there's no nudity, no profanity, and the violence is more-or-less quick and anemic. However, the film has that rare undercurrent of "WTF? That's kind of disturbing" to accompany its relatively light tone. The wonderful Luis Bacalov provided the score (and provided myriad excellent ones, some of my all-time favorites, for genre legend Fernando di Leo's crime flicks), which is fairly light and airy, save the rhythmic and percussion-heavy bits during the action sequences. Bacalov's score accompanies Mitchum in one of the earlier sequences while he's riding his motorbike, being chased by his dog, in an idyllic scene of youth in the middle of the summer. The feeling of innocence is immediately apparent but violently undercut by Mitchum's cold killing in the subsequent scene. In another, Alfredi's secretary, Michèle (Claudine Auger) exits Alfredi's villa in her sweet-looking, now-vintage Porsche. Mitchum chases after her on his motorbike. While the chase takes on its high speed, jumps, and drifts, the chase is really an elaborate act of flirting, ending not in a crash but with the two in bed. Auger's Michèle does not initially appear to be an inside connection to Alfredi (although later revealed to be). She's more like a sexy diversion for Ray Castor, and Michèle falls hard for him. A montage sequence is Isasi-Isasmendi's method of rendering their brief affair and it's as sweet-looking as cotton candy. When Mitchum's Castor sets his sights on Hussey's Tania, he forgoes the vehicular flirting, as she buzzes by on her cute scooter. He violently grabs her in the nighttime and forces her down into his car. Pulling a syringe, he incapacitates the poor woman. WTF? The smirk on Mitchum's face and the camera-eye of Mitchum's scope on his rifle really take Summertime Killer completely out of the light and airy-zone. This hybrid of tones, light and disturbing, is rare and makes Summertime Killer worth seeing alone. Other examples of this type of cinema are Fernando di Leo's Mr. Scarface (1976) and (although far more extreme) Herman Yau's The Untold Story (1993). Summertime Killer is not without its other charms. While Mitchum doesn't have the charisma of his pops, his performance is endearing and competent. Ex-Bond girl (Terence Young's Thunderball (1965)), Claudine Auger is strikingly beautiful and shines with what's she is given in her small role. Auger would make other notable appearances in genre cinema, such as Paolo Cavara's standout giallo, Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971) and Mario Bava's seminal Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971). Olivia Hussey will forever be legendary for her performance as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968). Soft-spoken and softly beautiful, Hussey's scenes with Mitchum are comical, intense, and when the romance begins to blossom, endearing and sweet. No stranger either to genre cinema, Hussey teamed previously with Mitchum in Philip Chalong's H-Bomb (1971) only to go on to appear in Bob Clark's killer classic, Black Christmas (1974), Kinji Fukasaku's Virus (1980), and Brian Trenchard-Smith's WTF-wonder, Turkey Shoot (1982). Finally, a true Hollywood legend, Karl Malden (R.I.P.), who forever will be to me the sweet suitor in Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) gives the best performance of Summertime Killer and is also rewarded with the film's most interesting character. Malden's Kiley is a pre-cursor to Harry Dean Stanton's Johnnie Farragut in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990): Kiley's an excellent detective and is going to find his man; however, along the way, he makes a couple of revelations and choices with serious results. Also not a stranger to genre cinema, Malden appeared in little-known director, Dario Argento's The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971).While not a Eurocrime classic, Summertime Killer is certainly fun. A teen-idol romance movie combined with a searing hitman portrait is a film that is going to get a lot of love here. I've seen it now three or four times, and any serious fan of Eurocult cinema should give it a peek.

Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly (2006)

"This has been a story about people who were punished entirely too much for what they did." These are the epilogue words of Philip K. Dick whose novel, A Scanner Darkly, was adapted by Richard Linklater in his 2006 film of the same name who uses these same words to conclude his film. It's a powerful and telling statement. When I initially viewed the film back around the time of its premiere, I was affected by its unexpected plot, its visual style, and extremely sympathetic characters. I didn't revisit the film again until this month but for whatever reason I did. The first time I watched A Scanner Darkly this month, I watched it passively to refresh my memory and enjoy it again. The second time I watched it with more of a critical eye yet this time I was actually listening and really hearing what was said. The third and final viewing of the film this month had me crying like a baby. Keanu Reeves is Bob Arctor, an undercover police officer and drug addict. He lives with James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) and Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson) who are also addicts. Arctor is friends with addict, Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), and Arctor's girlfriend is an addict also named Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder). Reeves's Arctor gives one speech and two monologues in A Scanner Darkly, all three are powerful.

"There goes a total dope fiend." How true. Arctor is giving a speech to a club meeting in his "scramble suit," a suit which an undercover officer wears when not working that shifts his identity and scrambles his voice to prevent real identity detection. Reeves's Arctor begins by giving his prepared speech: "Calculatedly addicted to Substance D for profit by drug terrorists." He stops in the middle of the speech and the unknown voice coaching him tells him to stick to the script. Dejected, Arctor begins making up his own text: "D is for dumbness and despair and desertion. The desertion of your friends from you, you from your friends. Everyone from everyone. Isolation and loneliness and hating and suspecting each other. D is, finally, death. Slow death. From the head down." How true. Arctor in his only public speech describes the rest of his life for A Scanner Darkly. Downey's Barris might be hooked on his vocabulary flash cards as much as Substance D but he's an idiot. He's visiting the police and accusing Arctor of drug conspiracy, even terrorism, in order to get the police heat off him. Arctor watches Barris accuse him from behind his scramble suit. Arctor eventually starts suspecting Barris of wrongdoing, especially in a scene where via remote scanner Arctor witnesses Luckman choking on some food. Barris, sitting in front of Luckman, picks up the phone to call the paramedics but he might as well be talking into a dead line. Barris fumbles with the address on the phone with physical movement that is the very opposite of immediate. Arctor, in his driveway, with Luckman and Barris cannot even enjoy beers in the middle of the afternoon without Luckman and Barris fighting over some inane crap. Poor Freck is even scared off by the two's shenanigans. Incidentally, it's the chatty scenes with Barris, Luckman, and Freck that will be the most divisive in A Scanner Darkly: viewers will either find them funny, relate to them, be bored by them, or feel better about themselves because they're not like them. However, these scenes are the most "objective" in A Scanner Darkly: this is their life, take it or leave it. Some of the saddest and funniest moments involve poor Freck, such as the opening sequence where Freck is trying to bathe off the bugs which he is hallucinating, his paranoia-induced car trip to the diner to meet Barris, where he imagines a police officer killing him on the spot, or finally, in the saddest, where Freck tries to kill himself, only to eff up his dosage to induce an alien hallucination and not death. Watching it subjectively through Freck's eyes is humorous but watching it "objectively" is really very sad, as Freck is very lonely and desperate.

"What happened? How did I get here?" Arctor wakes up from the sound of Barris playing with a gun outside with Luckman and Freck and begins his first monologue. A flashback scene shows Arctor in his house, now tidy and Arctor well-groomed. There are two children and a young woman with him. "The pain so unexpected and undeserved had, for some reason, cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door. I hated my life, my house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change. Nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell ugly things and surprising things and sometimes little wondrous things spill out at me constantly and I can count on nothing." Arctor is succumbing to effects of Substance D over the course of A Scanner Darkly, and it really alters his perception. Whether Arctor's altered perception of the world is any less closer to the truth is unknown. Interestingly, the police often refer to Arctor, especially to his blurred face behind the suit, as a big criminal, clearly up to no good. However, despite all of the accusations, the film offers almost no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing by Arctor, save his using. In one of my favorite scenes, and really the only scene where Arctor and Donna are alone, Arctor tries to hug Donna and give her some affection. Donna pushes him away, and angrily, Arctor leaves. Arctor tries to reach out to her in the parking lot, telling her, "I think it's starting to get bad." Donna doesn't think Arctor's a bad person but she's not going to get too close to him. Ironically, she grabs his hand to pull him back towards her apartment. With the police telling him that he's a big, bad criminal, Donna pushing him away, and and his own altered drug-induced perception, Arctor soon makes his saddest and final monologue:

"Crazy job they gave me. But if I wasn't doing it, someone else would be. And they might get it wrong. They might set Arctor up, plant drugs on him and collect a reward. Better it be me, despite the disadvantages. Just protecting everyone from Barris is justification in itself. What the hell am I talking about? I must be nuts. I know Bob Arctor. He's a good person. He's up to nothing. At least, nothing too bad. In fact, he works for the Orange County Sheriff's Office covertly which is probably why Barris is after him. But that wouldn't explain why the Orange County Sheriff's Office is after him. Something big is definitely going down in this house. This rundown, rubble-filled house with its weed-patch yard and cat box that never gets emptied. What a waste of a truly good house. So much could be done with it. A family and children could live here. It was designed for that. Such a waste. They ought to confiscate it and put it to better use. I'm supposed to act like they aren't here. Assuming there's a "they" at all. It may just be my imagination. Whatever it is that's watching it's not human unlike little dark-eyed Donna. It doesn't ever blink. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do then I'm cursed and cursed again. And we'll only wind up dead this way knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too." This was the speech that moved me to tears. Arctor is a person who thought he hated his life but really never loved himself, was never able to see himself clearly. Police are telling him he's a bad person; and Donna's not saying that he's a good person or someone that she wants to be with. It was really only during my final viewing of A Scanner Darkly that I really listened to Arctor's words and felt their feelings. Subsequently, when Arctor tells the doctors that he's never using again, it's a genuine admission. Substance D really taken too much from his life, and he can't grasp on to anything real, clearly or darkly. A Scanner Darkly is one of the most sympathetic portraits of drug addicts that I've ever seen. I remember feeling those same feelings in Arctor's final speech at one time in my life and thinking the same thoughts. Whether a scanner is able to capture anything, clearly or darkly, Linklater and Dick certainly captured the feelings that I had felt at one time.

Tae-yong Kim & Kyu-dong Min's Memento Mori (1999)

Opening imagery, accompanied by a nostalgic tune, of some candle-burning and intricate scrapbooking, accompanied also by a voice-over narration of a young woman, telling a cryptic poem of young women and their relationship to the truth and injuries suffered because of truth, ends with two young women, bound at their ankles by a red sash, both underwater, one having to free herself to come up for air, while the other closes her eyes and descends to the bottom. Very powerful. The two young women are Hyo-shin (Yeh-jin Park) and Shi-eun (Young-jin Lee) in Tae-yong Kim & Kyu-dong Min's Memento Mori (1999) whose tale is told through the eyes of Min-ah (Min-sun Kim) after she spies the two's diary, sitting above a row of spouts, unknown as to how it ever got there. The trio are schoolgirls, in an all-girls' school, as Hyo-shin, smart and artistic and disliked by others for her attributes, Shi-eun, an athlete and loner, who's a runner and competes alone, and Min-ah, who's very typical and sweet with accompanying similar friends. Perhaps because of her normalcy, Min-ah develops, seemingly over the course of the day, a growing obsession with the pair of Hyo-shin and Shi-eun as she reads the diary. Through a series of flashbacks, as Min-ah takes every opportunity to read the diary throughout the school day, the viewer is shown the origins of the two's relationship and its growth, as the two become closer. Min-ah eventually feels some regret for even opening the book, and during the school day, one of the trio dies, so Min-ah, with her willing curiosity leading her into the tryst, reluctantly must confront the duo's dark secrets and end the mystery.

Memento Mori is interesting in several ways: an intriguing mystery, rich characterizations, wonderful and heartfelt and convincing performances, and perhaps the most interesting, the narrative and visual style. Visually, Memento Mori seems initially to adhere to modern cinema's current style: natural lighting, handheld camera, arbitrary compositions, and realistic costumes, make-up, and locations. However, the film incorporates a sentimental classical style: tracking shots, orchestrated compositions and set pieces, and a beautiful (in less adept hands, possibly trite or campy) accompanying music score. The blend of the two styles becomes an extremely effective hybrid, enhancing the intensity of the viewing. The use of the modern style brings a real intimacy to the locations and the characters, while the sentimental and classical style gives Memento Mori a very ethereal feel, keeping the viewer only slightly (and appropriately) outside. The narrative technique, rarely used and rarely used effectively, is akin to the third-person subjective (its literary analogue would be, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby). The credibility of Min-ah's subjective rendering is really not in doubt, and even if it was, Memento Mori is far more interesting to view through her eyes, if not just for her reactions and emotions and her own character arc. As for the performances, all three actresses are really something else (even the collateral characters feel so very real and well-drawn and are equally well-performed): Yeh-jin Park's Hyo-shin is wonderfully seductive and mysterious; Young-jin Lee's Shi-eun is effectively distant, endearing, and emotional; and Min-sun Kim's Min-ah is totally likable, obsessive and curious, and quite often, very funny. There is nothing fly-by-night about this screenplay, its characters, or the production in Memento Mori. Well-crafted and focused, the film appears totally organic and spontaneous. I must have owned this disc for almost a decade and had not visited the film for quite a while. Unknowingly drawn to it, I hope other folks will be also. See it.

Nimród Antal's Kontroll (2003)

Bulcsú lives underground and avoids the world topside. The folks in the underground are often mean and hassle him when he's just trying to do his job. His cohorts are a newbie, a narcoleptic, a combative old man, and a regular chum. Bulcsú does have competitors in the underground and he plays a dangerous game, called "railing" with them. Competition, however, from the world topside is what drove him into the underground. There's also a killer on the loose, and Bulcsú meets a cute teddy bear, one day, who changes his life completely.

Nimród Antal's Kontroll (2003) begins with a prologue by someone looking official and addressing the viewer that the film he/she is about to witness is not a realistic depiction of subway workers (the "Control") in Budapest, Hungary but rather a symbolic depiction of life. Antal, however, gives a very realistic depiction of his story of "control," or rather the illusion of it, set completely in the underground subway lines of Budapest. Kontroll is wonderfully absurd while also being quite relevant and beautiful-looking as it is thematically rich.Beyond the prologue and at first blush, Kontroll begins looking like a giallo, as a tipsy young woman is making the long descent into the subway via escalator. Standing at the platform in her red high heels, a figure steps out of the shadows and pushes the woman right out of those red high heels and onto to the tracks, as the train rattles and rushes by. The lights of the platform illuminate, after a period of darkness, to reveal Bulcsú, sleeping alone on the cold, bare floor. An old man tells Bulcsú that his nose is bleeding, and Bulcsú hurriedly chases him down. Bulcsú pulls his armband from his pocket, revealing that he is a member of the "control," and asks to see the old man's ticket or pass. Apparently, very few people actually purchase or possess one.In an abrupt shift in tone, Kontroll becomes comical. An old man smoking a cigarette is commenting on his table partner's breakfast cuisine: why are you having french fries for breakfast? You know all of that grease will clog your arteries. Then...if you're going to have french fries why are you drowning them in all that ketchup? The young man eating cannot put a fry into his mouth without a comment from the old man and becomes angry that he cannot eat in peace. Stress induces a narcoleptic fit and he passes out face first into his ketchup-soaked plate. Leave him be, says the old man to the crew's newbie, he'll be fine. Bulcsú meets up with his crew, and the viewer is treated to a series of comedic sequences involving mishaps with ticketless passengers. The newbie attempts to coerce tickets from foreign tourists; a transvestite attempts to seduce one ticket-checker; and the old man gets into a semantic argument with someone as cantankerous as him. Bulcsú is calm and collected and doesn't let the absurd people and excuses faze him; that is however, until a beautiful absurdity sitting on the train, makes him speechless.Not all is happy or lite in Kontroll. One worker, who remained sitting unusually silent and sad after the Control crew morning meeting, is lent a very sympathetic ear by Bulcsú. The worker refused to to talk about what's going on inside of him but later he explains to Bulcsú very powerfully the emotions within him. Accompanying his powerful emotions, the worker is bleeding profusely from his nose, the wound given to him by a rude passenger's punch, who is now in the worker's clutches with a knife at his throat. I was just doing my job, the worker says, and just asked him for his ticket. In another, which is a very succinct and compact rendering of Bulcsú's topside life, Bulcsú meets an old colleague on the platform and quickly hides his armband. His colleague asks him where's he been and what has he been up to. Bulcsú gives evasive answers. Eventually, his friend with a surprising amount of candor says simply that he was the best and most creative in his business and the topside misses him. Bulcsú replies that having to live everyday trying to be the best brought him down and he couldn't keep that pace up. Sound familiar?With Kontroll, Nimród Antal shows himself as a very creative and talented filmmaker. Antal would subsequently make his U.S. debut with Vacancy (2007), a horror/thriller well-above the dreck in the genre, highlighted by a very sensitive portrayal of a couple in the waning days in their relationship (Kate Beckinsdale and Luke Wilson) who are forced to unite with the horrific circumstances. Like Vacancy, Kontroll has some fantastic visual sequences, like the "railing" game which Bulcsú plays, a surreal sequence from one of Bulcsú's platform dreams, Bulcsú's first encounter with the killer, and the opening sequence with the tipsy young woman, for example. The authentic location looks as real as real can get but the situations within are totally from a creative mind. The human touches have a resonance when they're in the foreground of an absurdist background. I cannot find fault anywhere in this production, and all of the performances are terrific.Finally, Kontroll is about control. The idea that he has a pre-determined fate or a free will, Bulcsú abandons. He knows that it is better to just to surrender to his life as it is, in front of him. See it.