364. La Maschera Del Demonio (Revenge of the Vampire / Black Sunday) (1960)

Directed By Mario Bava

Synopsis

A vampire/witch and her vampire lover get killed by the Inquisition in medieval times. Centuries later a doctor and his student do enough stupid things to allow the vampires to take their revenge.

Review

The plot of the film is pretty beside the point, it is traditional horror fare. What is not traditional for 1960 is just how gruesome the whole thing is. Watching this right after Psycho puts Hitchcock's violence in perspective. At this time European cinema had the edge.

It starts off with a great scene where the convicted lady gets a mask with nails stuck to her face with a mallet, to the point you see blood actually spurting from her head. This is something completely new, the level of gore here is just so far ahead that it makes the film compelling.

If gore and the visual horror of the bodies regenerating in their tombs was all there was to the film it would still be revolutionary and only comparable to Eyes Without a Face before it, but the film is also beautifully shot, with the director Mario Bava doubling as cinematographer. The acting is pretty terrible all around, and the best version is the English one with the Italian soundtrack, as the main actors were English-speakers the usual doubling from Italian films is less noticeable and they are using their own voices... even that doesn't save the acting... but bad acting is part of the film's charm. Definitely one for Halloween.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, of American International Pictures, were screened the Italian language version of the film when they were visiting Rome in search of viable, inexpensive European made films to act as second features for their double-bills. They immediately recognized the film as a potential hit, and bought the U.S. rights for $100,000, reportedly more than the movie’s budget.

In order to make the film more accessible to American audiences, AIP trimmed over three minutes’ worth of violence and objectionable content. Sequences excised or shortened included the burning "S" branded into Asa's flesh and the blood spewing from the mask after it was hammered into her face, the moist eyeball impalement of Kruvajan, and the flesh peeling off Vajda's face as he burned to death in the fireplace. In the original version of the film, Asa and Javuto were brother and sister; in the AIP version, Javuto became Asa's servant. In addition, some dialogue was "softened", including Asa's line, "You too can find the joy and happiness of Hades!"; AIP modified it to "You too can find the joy and happiness of hating!"


First part of the film:

363. Psycho (1960)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

A series of people get disappeared at a roadside motel where a young man lives with his "mother".

Review

Well you really don't need much more than that for a synopsis... of course it's more complicated than that, but if you've seen the film you know what happens and if you haven't more than that would ruin it for you.

This is the Hitchcock film that has been on the list that plays most with his macabre sense of humour. In fact the film, for all its fame as a thriller works mostly as a humorous piece... of course it is a very particular kind of humour, but it is humour nonetheless.

So it is the funniest Hitchcock film we've had up until now. Is it his best? No, not really I'd still put Rear Window and Rope up there above this. It is, however, thoroughly entertaining and a joy to watch, full of misdirection and mischievousness it is a great pleasure to see a master at work.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Psycho is a prime example of the type of film that appeared in the 1960s after the erosion of the Production Code. It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right from the opening scene where Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing the same bed. In the Production Code standards of that time, unmarried couples shown in the same bed would be taboo. In addition, the censors were upset by the shot of a flushing toilet; at that time, the idea of seeing a toilet onscreen - let alone being flushed - was taboo in American movies and TV shows. According to Entertainment Weekly, "The Production Code censors... had no objection to the bloodletting, the Oedipal murder theme, or even the shower scene—but did ask that Hitchcock remove the word transvestite from the film. He didn't." At one point, Hitchcock actually considered releasing the film without censorial approval. Its box office success helped propel Hollywood toward more graphic displays of previously-censored themes.

Psycho is widely considered to be the first film in the slasher film genre.


Trailer with Hitchcock giving a tour of the set:

362. Hayno (The Housemaid) (1960)

Directed By Kim Ki-young

Synopsis

A family decides to hire a housemaid as they have a new bigger house and the wife has to work. The husband is kind of forced to shag her after she catches him in a compromising situation with a student and threatens to tell his wife. She gets preggers, wife tells her to jump down the stairs to get an abortion, she does it! To get even though she kills the family's son, by giving him rat poison and then telling him which makes him run off and fall down the same stairs! Then threatening to go to the police and tell them the wife made her have an abortion, she convinces the husband to take some rat poison with her. They both die. It all seems to happen within some stupid framing story where the husband is telling his wife this delightful tale with the warning: "It could happen to anyone, don't shag your housemaid". No it couldn't!

Review

So! I've finally managed to watch the film, thanks to Scorcese and his restoration efforts and it was worth waiting for. Thanks for the comments suggesting where I could get it! This is a strange film indeed.

In a way it feels of its time, particularly in its use of a framing story which is actually a bit of a throwback, possibly to allay censorship fears. Mostly the film feels about 30 years ahead of its time, in the late 80s/early 90s we had a spate of "crazy bitch from hell" films like Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Single White Female just to give three examples, and this film is very much in that style.

Both a freaky thriller with a murderous housemaid making a family's life absolute hell it is also an extremely strong indictment of South Korean culture. The attachment to material goods and money-making is so important to all characters here that it leads to the death of four people and an abortion. Basically the whole plot could have ended as soon as the housemaid started acting up by going to the police, but the scandal would have lost them money! Fascinating weird shit, why are all the best Korean films such murder fests?

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 2003, Jean-Michel Frodon, editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma, wrote that the discovery of The Housemaid by the West, over forty years after the film's debut, was a "marvelous feeling– marvelous not just because one finds in writer-director Kim Ki-young a truly extraordinary image maker, but in his film such an utterly unpredictable work."

Comparing the director to Luis Buñuel, Frodon wrote Kim is "capable of probing deep into the human mind, its desires and impulses, while paying sarcastic attention to the details..." He called The Housemaid "shocking", noting that "...the shocking nature of the film is both disturbing and pleasurable..." Frodon pointed out that The Housemaid was only one early major film in the director's career, and that Kim Ki-young would continue "running wild through obsessions and rebellion" with his films for decades to come.

The housemaid sees the husband in the compromising situation: