When the recent Stake Land (2010) was announced with a DVD release, my curiosity was piqued, yet I wasn't interested enough to give it a gander. I gave in when I learned that its director and co-writer was Jim Mickle and its star and co-writer was Nick Damici: the same duo who made Mulberry St. in 2006. Mulberry St. was unique in the fact that it was a modern-horror film which created a real sense of community, buttressed with likable characters with good performances. I have a rule when I watch horror films (really any film but especially horror films): if any character within the first fifteen minutes of the film annoys the shit out of me, I cut it off and go do something else. I didn't even think of my rule while watching Mulberry St. The atmosphere of the film was adeptly-drawn, and the visuals were extremely creative. So with a creative team of filmmakers and a very intriguing premise, I gave Stake Land a spin.At the beginning of Stake Land, the vampires have taken over the world, and survivors are few. Most humans have banded together in makeshift towns, scattered throughout the country side, away from the big cities. One evening, a young man, Martin (Connor Paolo), and his parents and infant sibling, are taking shelter in a farmhouse. The family is attacked by vampires, but Martin is saved by an older man whom he calls "Mister" (Nick Damici). Now alone, Martin accompanies Mister on a trek to a place called "New Eden," a community in Canada where vampires have not been seen. During their journey, Mister teaches Martin how to take care of himself in this new world. The two also make new friends along the way who become traveling companions: a nun (Kelly McGillis), a pregnant young woman (Danielle Harris), and a young marine (Sean Nelson). In addition to the vampires, who are feral and animalistic, there is a violent cult called the Brotherhood who are kidnapping and murdering their fellow survivors. Stake Land is going to be an adventure.
There are grander philosophical ideas within Stake Land about humanity, but they reside in the background and really only take focus in reflection. The human drama is focal in Stake Land, and Mickle and Damici are able to recreate that strong kinship from its characters, so evident in Mulberry St. Dialogue is sparse, and the character motivations are surprisingly simple. Mister and Martin help people without asking for anything in return. It is so refreshing, because the modern character is drawn as if he/she has to earn the audience's trust. It lacks the post-modern irony that every relationship is built around power: you must want something, don't you? Mister and Martin do not. Likewise, the Brotherhood characters appear as despicable characters, especially a leader named Jebediah Loven (Michael Cerveris). Their single motivation is that they are the few to be saved while the other survivors are food for the vamps. With the simplicity of the focus of Stake Land, human drama, and the simplicity of each character motivation, Mickle and Damici can add depth to details. For example, when Danielle Harris's character is introduced (named Belle), she is singing in a bar in one of the makeshift communities. It's a sweet performance and quite endearing. With the subsequent images, not with some trite dialogue, the viewer realizes that her performance bought her a meal that night. There is not a lot that a pregnant young woman can do in this new society to earn her keep. She is going to have to depend on others' kindness, at least a little. Stake Land is full of these enriching yet subtle scenes. 
Visually, the duo of Mickle and Damici top their work from Mulberry St. Ryan Samul, who also lensed Mulberry St., captures some arresting compositions. Post-apocalyptic imagery and images of destruction are often affecting, and Samul makes many of these images beautiful. None are overt and none are designed to be shocking. Later, Martin in voice-over, after a vampire attack, relates his feelings about the carnage. The victims are piled together in the center and covered with blankets. A child victim is amongst their number. Her small feet protrude out from the blanket. It is this image that affects Martin, and he comments upon it. Likewise, there are many such images within Stake Land which have a similar effect upon the viewer. In addition to the visuals Graham Reznick did the sound design. He is responsible for work on Ti West's The House of the Devil and Trigger Man, for example. With his body of work as it stands now, Reznick is one of cinema's finest technicians. The sound design of Stake Land is wonderfully layered from echoing screams to the effective use of music throughout the film. The vampire sequences are particularly intense with a standout sequence occurring at the beginning of the third act. It's survival horror. Period. 
Veteran actress Kelly McGillis gives an outstanding performance. She has such an inherent beauty and vulnerability that is as evident in Stake Land as in say, Witness. Danielle Harris has blossomed into a fine young actress, and it is very easy to fall in love with Belle. Cerveris as Loven almost steals every scene that he is in, and Damici plays Mister as a kind-hearted and wounded warrior. He brings a tragic quality to his role. Connor Paolo has to carry the film as the proverbial heart of Stake Land: wide-eyed and innocent, it is though his eyes that the viewer takes this journey. After Mulberry St. and Stake Land, I'll see anything that the duo of Jim Mickle and Nick Damici make. Like Ti West, the two are clearly superior to their contemporaries in the genre. 
So, Stake Land gets a hearty recommendation, cool cats. See it.
Docteur Jekyll et les femmes is an ambient film, designed to be disorienting. To accompany Borowczyk’s impressive visuals, composer Bernard Parmegiani creates a dissonant score which effectively haunts the film and creates its own moods. As a composer of images, few compare to Walerian Borowczyk. Often his compositions are compared to still paintings in their striking quality. Borowczyk did the set design for Docteur Jekyll et les femmes, and unsurprisingly, the film has myriad beautiful set-pieces. Of specific interest, however, is Borowczyk’s use of point of view with his camerawork in Docteur Jekyll. Borowczyk effectively mixes the subjective and the objective point of view with his camera in both subtle and overt fashion. This style becomes its most affecting (enhanced by Parmegiani’s score) as the film reaches its climax. Let’s start at the beginning first.
The underlying theme of Borowczyk’s take on Stevenson’s story is personified in the relationship between Jekyll and Lanyon. Jekyll is an advocate of transcendental medicine while Lanyon is an empiricist. Lanyon sees life as limited by what is perceived by human senses. Jekyll intends to prove during this evening’s events that there are senses and awareness beyond the scope of human perception. This awareness can be achieved and realized.
What is so interesting about Docteur Jekyll et les femmes is that it is composed primarily of subjective shots. At first glance, I thought that Borowczyk’s style was arbitrary framing, but that thought gave way with subsequent viewings. The reason that I thought the style was arbitrary was that there were myriad shots composed as if they were glances around corners, through doorways, and down hallways. There was an overtly voyeuristic quality to these sequences, yet there was no character to reference these subjective shots. In one sequence, for example, Jekyll has handed his last will and testament to his lawyer in which he disposes all of his property to Edward Hyde. The scene is covered with primarily one composition of Kier standing in his laboratory with the camera from behind a door’s threshold and partially obscured from a corner. This is clearly not a shot from the point of view of Edward Hyde, lurking in the darkness, as the viewer is “looking” at Hyde in his form as Jekyll. This is a subjective shot with no character reference: a subjective shot from no character, subjectivity beyond a human perception...very nice.
I would be remiss to not add how nasty Docteur Jekyll et les femmes is. There are few filmmakers that I can think of who love to upset and disturb conservative viewers more than Borowczyk. In terms of erotic content and flesh display, Docteur Jekyll pales to other Borowczyk cinema (although quite erotic sequences are included). The lack of erotic sequences may make Docteur Jekyll more accessible to conservative viewers, as erotic sequences tend to divide and disturb those viewers more than violent scenes. While Docteur Jekyll has more grisly aftermath scenes of victims than of scenes of graphic violence, they are, in my opinion, equally affecting. So prospective viewers are forewarned. I have never watched Docteur Jekyll et les femmes just once. When I view the film, I have to watch it again. It’s a mesmerizing experience, as it’s just one of those films which takes everything that we hold dear in our culture and turns them on its head. Playful and perverse, beautiful and disturbing, creative and innovative: that’s Docteur Jekyll et les femmes and Walerian Borowczyk cinema.
Pasolini appears as Giotto, an artist painting a fresco upon a cathedral’s wall, during the second half of The Decameron. His appearances, interestingly, segue the episodes of the second half of the film and also serve as commentary. The three-act structure of the traditional narrative for film, which to some viewers wholly defines “film,” is dispensed. The non-classical style of filming, with its photography by Tonino Delli Colli, is far from arbitrary but doesn’t necessarily seem organic. The energy derived from the locations, the performers, and their ancient stories create The Decameron, indisputably, into an affecting and enduring work of art.
In the later sequence, three brothers share a home with their sister. One morning, one of the brothers sees a young man leave their sister’s bedroom. The three brothers ask their sister’s lover to accompany them on a walk into the countryside. They murder their sister’s lover and bury him in the field. The lover appears to the young sister in a dream and reveals the whereabouts of his corpse. The next morning, accompanied by her maid, she finds her lover’s body. Unable to move his body, the maid helps the young woman remove his head, and she takes it home, washes it, and places it in a large pot. The pot is covered in basil and rose water and placed on the window sill of her bedroom. 
In their most comfortable categories, here is comedy, ending in marriage, and here is tragedy, ending in death, respectively. If there is any consistency in Pasolini’s visual style in The Decameron, then it is with powerful use of the close-up on his performers. Uncannily, Pasolini is able to capture (and/or generate) such unforced emotion from his participants. Like his character of Giotto, who finds inspiration for his religious fresco from the faces of the populace, Pasolini sees in his performers’ expressions genuine emotion. The life and energy that Pasolini wanted to capture of a people of his youth (or for a people that never really existed) are translated through The Decameron. It is easy to see that Pasolini’s attempts at “filmic purity” are an attempt at trying to capture something essential in humanity. A bold endeavor, indeed, and at the present moment, I believe that Pasolini comes very close to succeeding.
All parenthetical notations which follow quotes are citations to pages from Pasolini Requiem by Barth David Schwarz, Pantheon Books, New York: 1992.
"Lionel [Wallmann]," says director Jean Rollin, "obliged me to put some sex scenes in Requiem...during that dungeon sequence. I told him that I wasn't too fond of that kind of thing, and he answered: 'But you do that kind of thing very well. If we make an entire film like that, I bet it would be successful. You may not like it, but you know how to do it.'" ¶ I said, 'Okay, I'll do it, but I won't invest any of my own money to do it.' Well, he raised the money, we made the film [Jeunes filles impudiques], and he was right. The two sex films I made, this one and Tout le monde il en a deux (1974) were very successful.” (Virgins and Vampires, editied by Peter Blumenstock, Crippled Publishing, Germany: 1997, p. 148)
Jeunes filles impudiques is a curiosity in Rollin’s curious filmography, of interest for the charismatic presence of Joëlle Coeur and a look into how Rollin would broach the sex-film genre. As to the latter, the first sex scene is revelatory, as is a later scene (which would contain repeated imagery from Rollin’s other cinema.) When Coeur and Arancio arrive at the maison, they find the bedroom upstairs. At a leisurely pace, the two fold down the bed and put slipcovers over the pillows. The two get into bed after undressing and begin cuddling and kissing. The scene never really changes in its energy. Rollin then pans from an ecstatic look from Arancio to a shot near the floor (a finishing or climatic shot, rather than a transition). The scene resumes again, and the sheets are definitely off of the actresses. The flesh is much more on display, and the writhing is pronounced. Seeing the sex scene in two parts, like this, is as if the first wasn’t satisfactory and the second was perfunctory. In a humorous final shot to the scene, Coeur stands at the bedroom door while the camera sits in the hallway. Coeur’s Monica slams the door upon the camera, as if a third scene will play out but not for the viewer. 
In the film’s best visual sequence, a gazebo is located somewhere near the maison. The gazebo is covered with stained-glass windows of varying colors (which Rollin plays with in a voyeuristic sequence later with Marie Hélène Règne). After Braque’s jewel thief captures Monica and Jackie, Jackie is the first to be interrogated. She is located to the gazebo and bound by her wrists to the ceiling. This is clearly an exploitative scene. Little questioning is done, as Braque takes a small whip to Jackie. Arancio’s nudity is focal as is the kinky bit with the bondage and the whipping. These images do not last long. Rollin cuts to the camera’s point of view, substituting for Jackie‘s. Marie Hélène Règne circles her victim as the camera makes a circular pan. Her ultimate act of torture is trimming Jackie’s hair with scissors. However, the scene concludes with a nasty act by Règne, but it just appears as perfunctory exploitation fare.
Monzô Kobayashi (Lily Franky) writes detective stories and one evening, he attends the performance of cabaret singer and star, Ranko Mizuki (Mutsumi Fujita). The audience is quite taken with her performance, but Monzô notices one patron who cannot look at her at all. Later that evening, Monzô takes a stroll in the park and among the prostitutes and peddlers, he sees a diminutive man hurry from the park. Monzô decides to give chase to the man and follow him. Surreptitiously, Monzô sees the diminutive man enter into a temple and he decides to uncover the small man’s identity. The following day Monzô has an encounter with an acquaintance from his small village, Ms. Yurie Yamano (Reika Hashimoto) who asks him to introduce her to famous detective, Kogorô Akechi (Shinya Tsukamoto). Yurie’s step-daughter has gone missing and she would like Akechi’s help. Monzô approaches his friend Akechi and pleads with him to help Yurie. Akechi reluctantly agrees, because he is more interested in the disappearance of cabaret singer, Ranko Mizuki for whose final performance Monzô was in attendance. 
I have quite a fondness for the cinema of Teruo Ishii. I’m a huge fan of his later work, specifically, for example, 
The English title of Môjû tai Issunbôshi is Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf who are the two antagonists of the two mysteries within the film. In the film’s opening sequence, hands are seen feeling an art sculpture while Mutsumi Fujita, as Ranko Mizuki, screams at the person touching the sculpture. She is the model for the sculpture and believes that anyone fondling the sculpture is like fondling her. The person touching the sculpture is a blind man, and the only way for him to appreciate and understand the sculpture is to feel it. When he learns that the flesh-and-blood model is standing in front of him, he becomes animated. When Ranko is kidnapped, the film reveals that the blind man is her kidnapper. In his home, the “Blind Beast” has a lair where he houses Ranko. His lair is comprised of constructed body parts made seemingly from poor plaster casings. Arms, legs, torsos, and faces protrude from the walls. At nearly every bit of space, one could reach out and touch and feel one of the objects. The blind man sees Ranko as living art and with his perverted sensibilities, he wants to capture her essence and make her his. Ishii’s style compliments this wildly and literally theatrical scene. He shoots actress Fujita in a completely sensational fashion. She’s very attractive, and Ishii cannot resist more than one audacious composition while she scrambles around the lair solely in her panties. Ranko and her captive’s relationship becomes closer as the film progresses, and Ishii pushes both his visual content and style. There are a few sequences which are jaw-dropping-ly amazing occurring in the “Blind Beast’s” lair, and it would be a disservice to describe them here. They are moments where instant rewind is necessary, because believing they were seen has to be confirmed. The lair sequences are just an example, as Môjû tai Issunbôshi has many of them. 
Despite the fact that Môjû tai Issunbôshi has a very creative visual style and a traditional narrative, there is sensitivity. However, this sensitivity comes at the cost of contradiction. Môjû tai Issunbôshi (and the other Ishii cinema that I’ve seen) can be comfortably labeled as sensational or exploitation cinema. If the viewer believes there is nothing behind the sensational veneer, then he/she will find nothing. However, really interesting cinema, like Môjû tai Issunbôshi, will challenge that belief. For example, the two antagonists, the “Blind Beast” and the “Killer Dwarf” can be understood in two ways: one can look at these two characters’ rendition and see them as freakish, grotesque, and other. Ishii does not deter this mode of viewing: they are perverts, kidnappers, and deviants with their criminal behavior. However, Ishii also affords the opportunity to see his antagonists as physically-disabled people who have been, as a result of their disabilities, treated poorly by others. Ishii shows two scenes, one a flashback and one in the present, involving the diminutive man and the blind man, respectively. They are both scenes of degradation and ridicule at the expense of the antagonists, and each scene ends with revenge. Each scene of course is visually-creative, sensational, and ridiculous, but the emotions within each scene are genuine. A viewer can continue to laugh at these characters or see them in another perspective...take your pick. 
I can find no fault with any of the performances within Môjû tai Issunbôshi. In addition to the titular characters, writer Lily Franky deserves mention as Monzô; drop-dead gorgeous Reika Hashimoto is very good as Yukie; and filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, as the detective Akechi, is always fun to watch. Môjû tai Issunbôshi shows a veteran filmmaker still being progressive (the film was shot on DV) yet still retaining his visual obsessions which have made his work so unique and interesting. As I have said numerous times here at Quiet Cool, those seeking the offbeat and different will certainly find Môjû tai Issunbôshi of interest. It’s a perfect introduction to Teruo Ishii or a wonderful capping to an amazing career.