IN THIS

CANADIAN VIRUS vs. EYE

CRONENBERG'S N
SEVENTIES GIALLI S
DIRECTOR PROFILE/FILMOGRA
KIM NEWMAN AT THE
THROUGH A BROKEN MIRROR - ARG
McDONAGH S BO
PLUS REVI
TRAS EL CRISTAL - FREAK ORLANDO
PIERROT LE FOU - THE SADIST OF NO
DELICATESSEN - BABY BLOOD
SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS
LES MINETS SAUVAG
Dislocation...violence...Uyper-reality - TENEBRAE
By Dario Argento.

2
 What are you looking at...?
- Time's running out - no time to waste on wretched movies. USEFULNESS...Are they useful
in any way? Remember that pleasure can be useless...hollow, pacifying...think of factoids
grubbing through their Aurums. Isn 't that what you used to do, when it came out? What yea ■
was HELL PRISON made? 76 or 77? Ha! Come on, Mr. fucking Eyeball!
...Perhaps there's hope after all -1 haven't got a clue when the stinking thing xoas made. What
year were you admitted? Can't remember that either...How many of these movies are
favourites because they remind you of adolescence? That's when you started seeing them, isn't
it? Nostalgic recollection....No time for that any more. Drop it. Nobody's a child any more.
Must we prove it? Same goes for sentimental attachment to pet auteurs - back to the pound
with those mangy strays!

Recognize this condition?

You're jaded. Bored. Sick to death of your lousy video collection, sick to death of
watching 'sleazy' movies. You're even more tired of reading about them - not even the
bonus of narcolepsy there. What's worse, you recognize this condition as a cliche -
Chas Baiun has written about it in Gorezone. Stefan Jaworzyn's first contribution to
EYEBALL ended in an (unpublished) bilious attack on Italian horror. I didn't want to
inaugurate #1 of EYEBALL with such an attitude, but that was in 1989...Three years
and countless 'lost classics’, 'neglected minor gems' and 'tolerably entertaining gialli'
later. I'm tempted to spew my own bile into this editorial. For 'lost classic' read
'sluggardly anachronism'; for 'neglected minor gem', read 'talentless tosspot effort';
for all three categories read 'empty, vapid, vacuous shit.' But I feel inclined to stop
that sort of kindergarten raving... It’s so much easier to slip into 'hate' mode, isn't it?
Even carries with it a sort of glamour, if you can 'keep it up' - But maintaining that full¬
time loathing persona wastes so much energy - starts to feel more like sulking than
angst. Certainly sounds like it to everyone else, so maybe it's time for a rethink?
That said, there's no disputing that the complexion of European genre cinema has
changed for the worse - has in fact become very spotty indeed. The photo-caption
above is far from just a joke. Faced with this tawdry state, a magazine like EYEBALL
can either turn its back on the present and chase the diminishing returns of a '70's
'golden age' perspective (interview with Irwin C. Dietrich, in-depth analysis of THE
SEXORCIST etc) - or re-focus to take in a fully international range. Poring over the
shabby efforts ground out by Rino de Silvestre, Umberto Lenzi et al.,becomes an
exercise in futility, especially when they reveal themselves in interviews as a bunch
of dazed copyists with zero integrity.
Other magazines, other writers exist, whose fascination with the area is undimin¬
ished. Some are friends, correspondents, contributors to 'EYEBALL'. No doubt they
get restless too. Each of us is on a seperate personal cycle, and I've got no desire to
insist that my disaffection need be anyone else’s. But perhaps it is anyway. So how can
we stop moaning about it and actually hit some fresh ground?
One tactic has been to geographically re-locate, re-fixate - witness the swell of
interest in films from Japan, Hong-Kong, China. Indeed, EYEBALL'S Euro-focus was

3
 From THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE to OPERA and
TWO EVIL EYES certain themes pervade all of Argento's films. In his
weakest films (CAT-'O'-NINE TAILS and PHENOMENA), it is the
disinterested, dogmatic and prosaic incorporation of such themes which
weakens them.
DEEP RED is the most consistent and accessible film to search for
Argento's thematic concerns. Indeed it is precisely the process of search,
research and interpretation that is the key to all of Argento’s films. DEEP
RED is analogous in this way to Hitchcock's VERTIGO, but most imme¬
diately to Antonioni's BLOW UP. The conceptual and stylistic similarities
were further emphasised by the casting of David Hemmings as star of
DEEP RED. The full-length Italian version introduces Hemmings by
showing him engaged in a jazz session with other musicians. (Sadly, the
scene is cut from the British print). This would remind one of the opening
scenes in BLOW UP, in which Hemmings is first seen with a group of
workers from a factory production line - before driving off in his Rolls-
Royce convertible. Both openings create an immediate ambiguity in
construct character development. They also ask questions about the rela¬
tionships between work and leisure, and production and consumption,
which allude to Sartre's Marxist/Existentialist critique of social alienation,
(see Sartre's "Critique of Dialectical Reason").
In DEEP RED, Hemmings is a wealthy, affluent bourgeois, with an
ingenuous, apparently innocuous nature. Though attempting to tran¬
scend his condition towards a wider social homogeneity, he succeeds only
in showing his naivete and ineptitude. (Although there is also a suggestion
that group/serial unity is an illusion, and social reality is an inescapable
heterogeneity). His first conversation is with another, very drunk pianist
(Gabriele La via). His unruly behaviour embarrasses Hemmings, as does
his insistence that he is a proletarian pianist, while Hemmings plays the
piano for pleasure. Later, Hemmings repeats his closeted naivety when he
visits this colleague and is confronted by his homosexual partner. This
character trait is most amusing in his encounters with Daria Nicolodi,
which force him to come to terms with a strong, independent woman.
Early feelings that the lead character lacks confidence and assertiveness
are akin to the Cary Grant persona in Hitchcock films like NOTORIOUS
and TO CATCH A THIEF. (In TWO EVIL EYES, a biography on Cary
Grant is seen on the killer's bookshelf - the books hide the victim’s corpse).
The audience is thus alienated from and unable to identify with the lead

4
However, as in Ibsen's "Peer Gynt", the heroic archetype is deconstructed.
Such pedantic considerations aside, INFERNO is one of the greatest
aesthetic experiences that cinema has to offer. It's climactic end - death;
may leave a sense of lack (likewise McCloskey's unscathed escape) with
the viewer. But it is death as the real, inevitable and inescapable finale;
whilst the total inability of any of the film's individual characters to
communicate authentically with any other, captures Sartre's paradoxical
metaphor that, "Hell is other people".
TENEBRAE, by contrast, is the structural and stylistic antithesis to
INFERNO. But it develops many of the same concerns in a different
format, and is another masterpiece. Probably the best psycho movie ever,
TENEBRAE stretches well beyond the boundaries of this sub-genre. It
replaces the earlier, very literal depiction of the Freudian Oedipus com¬
plex and confrontation with the incest taboo (DEEP RED) - a veritable
tradition in post-Pasolini Italian cinema. Instead, surrealist dream symbol¬
ism and subtle metaphors and metonyms in the script suggest a more
Lacanian perspective. (Jacques Lacan was a post-Freudian psychoanalyst.
He uses the structuralist paradigms founded by Ferdinand de Saussure to
examine difference in meaning based on the relativity of language. This
approach is very rewarding when used to decode films. Since this article
concentrates on auteurism (recurrent thematic and formalistic details), a
follow-up article will fully outline a semiotic approach.)
Here the writer/artist himself is put on trial for crimes perpetrated in his
name. Peter Neal, the writer, searches for and soon finds the murderer. He
is the critic/censor, whose ignorance and moral hypocrisy leave him
impotent and inept in his social relations. Having found and disposed of
the critic with a spectacularly drole axe-in-the-head stunt, the supressed
and repressed return with a vengeance... Peter Neal takes up the killing
spree.
TENEBRAE is given a rigidly structured narrative, essential to such a
convoluted plot. The brazen impertinence with which Argento plays tricks
with the audience pushes credulity to the limits - but it works. "When you
have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable
- must be the truth", as Neal quotes from Conan Doyle. In this respect, it is
a film on a par with Hitchcock's VERTIGO.
Sunny outdoor locations and brightly lit, hi-tech interiors provide unu¬
sual and surprisingly assuaging environments for the beautifully convinc¬
ing, aesthetically staged, and excessively violent murders. Victims scream

5
side of narrative space. Yet the music played by Mark comes from that
world, inside the piano. His increasingly troubled face appears to recog¬
nise not simply the lurking presence of an intruder but also the intrusion
by that world into his rational space.
The camera then creeps up on him, tracking along the skylights above

What mysterious presence is sending sick, hoisted thoughts to psychic Macha Merit?

6
The apparent mastery of truth places the reader in a curiously passive
relation to the text since it leads to only one solution which the reader can
only accept or reject.
McDonagh argues that THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE
is the most readerly of Argento's films, since its disruption of the moral,
legal and sexual order is neatly restored in the plot. The spectator is led on
a rollercoaster of narrative twists and loops, safe-in the knowledge that it
will all end safely contained and explained. In Argento's two other early
gialli, CAT O'NINE TAILS and FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (1971
and '72 respectively), McDonagh detects an increasing concern with the
formal mechanisms of narrative.
After a brief discussion of the "extraordinarily awkward" LA CINQUE
GIORNATE (1973), she invokes the second part of Barthes' textual tax¬
onomy - the writerly text - in her analysis of Argento's fourth giallo, DEEP
RED (1976). The writerly text does not offer the simple pleasure of
narrative resolution. Signs within the text do not denote meaning, but
rather connote them outside the text. The reader has to create his/her own
meanings. Linear narrative is subordinated to the proliferation of points of
view.
For McDonagh, DEEP RED marks the emergence of Argento as a true
auteur. It is writerly in its excesses. The camera moves frequently and is
often distant from the action (as in the piano scene discussed earlier), the
colours are intense and vibrant and at crucial points the music no longer
accompanies the action but becomes an "aural component of the imagery".
It is these techniques of excess that have characterised all Argento's
subsequent films, from SUSPIRIA (1977) and INFERNO (1980) (part of a
horror trilogy yet to be completed), to the weirdly wonderful TENEBRAE
(1982) and the woefully weird CREEPERS (1985), both examples of the
giallo genre. OPERA (1987) and TWO EVIL EYES (1990) area continuation
and development of Argento's techniques of "operatic" excess, confirming
his individual creative vision and therefore marking him as a true auteur.
"Broken Mirrors" is organised, detailed and well researched and throws
considerable light on the creative process of Argento. Nevertheless, there
are some serious problems with the methodology, in part due to the
problems of auteurism itself. McDonagh's recurrent use of Jungian termi¬
nology such as "archetypes" and "collective dreams" contrast unfavour¬
ably with the application of Barthes' semiotics. Jung's ahistorical theory of

7
Directed by Agostin Villaronga. Screenplay by Villaronga, scripted by
Cristine Soler. Director of photography - Jaume Peracaula. Art direction by
Cesc Candina. Edited by Raul Roman. Music by Javier Navarrete. Special
effects by Reyes Abades. Produced by Teresa Enrich for TEM Productores
Asociados S.A. Spain, 1986.

Cast: Gunter Meisner, David Sust, Marisa Paredes, Gisela Echevarria,

Imma Colomer, Josue Guasch, Alberto Manzano, Ricart Carcelero, David
Cuspinera.

TRAS EL CRISTAL achieves its disturbing quality without extreme

goriness or carnage, but instead performs a chilling float between forbid¬
den sexual fantasy and the extremes of fascism. Whilst Cronenberg's
NAKED LUNCH, informed by the director's heterosexuality, forsakes
Burroughs' favoured erotica (sexual seduction, and sometimes sexual
violence, involving adolescent boys), Villaronga dwells on the unnerving
details of such activity in a way no other film has. It is unique - TRAS EL
CRISTAL obsessively charts a taboo considered by many to be just too
offensive to serve as subject matter for a film. As if this were not enough,
the story also examines the fetishistic allure of the Nazi period. The result
is a perilous knot of desire and hate, explored with a dexterity which, in a
couple of instances, skates to the edge of the pornographic - without losing
sight of the dangers and responsibilities inherent in such extreme material.
In a grim, isolated barn, Klaus (Meisner), ex-doctor of a Nazi concentra¬
tion camp, contemplates a nude, badly bruised boy who hangs, barely
conscious, by his wrists from the ceiling. Kneeling before his victim, he
caresses the boy in obscure anguish. Then standing, hefting a large piece
of wood, he viciously beats the boy across his back and buttocks...
Some years later, Klaus is near death after a major accident, suspended
in a huge old iron lung - a glass and metal cylinder - in which he lays with
only his head protruding. A mirror attached and angled above his face
shows him the rest of the room. He is upstairs in a large, luxurious Spanish
villa where he is ministered to by his wife Griselda (Paredes) and her
daughter Rena (Echevarria). Into this environment comes Angelo (Sust), a
strange, handsome young man who virtually forces his way into the
household. He 'offers' his services as a nurse, claiming to have worked at
a hospital. Against Griselda's judgement, and without explanation, Klaus

8
9
10
crotch of a lecher's Y-fronts, an ambulance attendant being blown up and
exploded with oxygen, a tentacled creature ripping apart a bus-driver's
head, multiple head crushings, and a trip inside the heroine’s body to peek
at her beating heart. While most American splatter movies make sacrifices
at the altar of misguided realism, Robak here enthusiastically embraces the
rubber-and-ketchup school of ridiculousness, concentrating on achieving
a weird and unsettling effect, rather than blowing the whole special effects
budget on lighting a few production stills well enough to get them on the
cover of Fangoria - then neglecting to photograph the effects properly when
it comes to getting the footage for use in the film.
The circus sequence, with its moth-eaten animals and grimy cages, could
be read as a tatty parody of Jean-Jacques Beneix's glitzy ROSELYNE AND
THE LIONS (1988) and the passionate but grubby Escourrou is vaguely in
the same tradition as the same director's BETTY BLUE (1986), but Robak
is notably uninterested in (or financially unable to join) the style-as-
substance young French cinema typified by bandes-dessinees buffs Beneix,
Luc Besson or Leos Carax. He neglects the Parisien poverty-chic that has
typified French bizarro cinema from Franju and Godard onwards in
favour of smelly provincial settings, where squalid and teeming apart¬
ments are not lit with an ethereal blue, and the brutal sex is not air-brushed
into magazine lay-out glossiness. BABY BLOOD ends too abruptly, with
the engaging Escourrou, whose committed performance anchors the
wildness to a potent human story, simply killing off herself on the spur of
the moment, and not all of the cast are up to the demands of the darkly
witty script. Nevertheless, this is a relishably grotty trifle, flamboyantly
mean-spirited with a sly and sneaky Gallic trace of wit.

Kim Newman.

11
 Ennio Morricone contributes a sparse musical score that never overpow¬
ers the proceedings. The romantic leitmotifs play off the atonal suspense
themes without calling attention to themselves. Lado truly deserves the
lion's share of the credit as he both scripted and directed. LA CORTE
NOTTE... builds to a surprise twist that may not be an audience pleaser,
but within the film's setting makes perfect sense. Highly recommended to
even the most jaded 90's burn-out.

Craig Ledbetter.

DELICATESSEN

Directed and co-written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro. Co- written
with Gilles Adrien. Director of photography - Darius Khondji. Special
effects by Olivier Gleyze, Jean-Baptiste Bonetto, Yves Domenjoud. Pro¬
duced by Claudie Ossard for Constellation UGC. France, 1992.

Cast: Dominique Pinon, Julie Clapet, Jean Claude Drefus, Karin Viard,
Ticky Holgado, Anne Marie Pisani, Jacques Mathou, Rufus, Howard
Vernon.

In a ravaged city - possibly a post-holocaust future but probably an

alternate 1950's - a very French group of apartment tenants concentrate on
a very French set of concerns: adultery, suicide, music and, most of all,
food. The butcher (Dreyfus) who owns the block has developed a system
to support his tenants by hiring odd-job men who he fattens up and finally
turns into tasty meats, usefully supplementing the lentils that have taken
over as hard currency in the starving city. The only people who remain
untouched by this meat-eater’s corruption are the butcher's saintly daugh¬
ter (Clapet), a wistful but myopic cellist, and an old man (Vernon) in the
cellar who has turned his home into a watery swamp to support the two
essentials of French cuisine, frogs and snails. Into this tidily unhappy
world comes Louison (Pinon), an ex-clown grieving over the death of his
monkey, whose good-natured decency moves Clapet to betray the canni¬
bals to a cadre of geeky subterranean vegetarian revolutionaries in water¬
proof coats.
DELICATESSEN has bizarro precedents - ERASERHEAD, BRAZIL,

12
 Later, after some obscure goings-on at the grey, chilly-looking beach, a
Distressed Woman realizes that her elaborate costume is in fact a device for
restraining her. Tied to a wall, she is rescued by two monks who promptly
cover her head with a bin-liner. Joining up with a tiny bell-shaped woman
and the amazing 'Dalmation Liberation Front' (see still in colour section of
the "Shock Xpress" book), they come upon a terrible place. Giant vats
contain torture victims tied in horrible positions and left to suffer. The
monks and the bell-shaped woman turn suddenly nasty and hand over the
Distressed Woman to a squad of leather-clad goons (a la DESPERATE
LIVING), who take her away on a train made of old hospital beds on
wheels, which trundles noisily down a deserted suburban street. A variety
of other odd creatures are also rounded up.
After a visual tribute to PINK FLAMINGOS and a gaudy production
number for people on crutches, the film 'climaxes' with a sort of vaudeville
contest held in a big ornamental garden. Then it's back off to the beach
location that opened the film, and goodbye to Freak City.
FREAK ORLANDO reads like a good idea on paper, doesn't it? The
above synopsis should alert most lovers of gratuitous weirdness to a
veritable feast. Sadly, what meal there is here is served up to us by a cast
of amateurish pseudo-loons, apparently instructed by the director to act
like a nauseating 'experimental'Dance troupe. 1 need only add the four
letters M.I.M.E to describe how teeth-grindingly annoying this movie gets.
And, although some of the trouble I had with the film may be due to
watching it without subtitles, it seems obvious that the film is meant to
work principally on the visual level, so...
FREAK ORLANDO invokes the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky in its
densely packed visual excess and relentless obscurantism. But Jodorowsky's
movies are souped up with his obsessive love of violence and multi-
levelled depictions of conflict. His grotesque visual carnivals are never left
to wander aimlessly into whimsy. FREAK ORLANDO's mood is often
whimsical in the extreme, robbing what I would tentatively guess is its
'Odyssey' structure of any forward energy. It is also terribly pleased with
itself, the camera often lingering unneccesarily on some bloated eccentric¬
ity of design. Jodorowsky's HOLY MOUNTAIN is persistently bizarre
scene-by-scene but one never feels him lingering over his astounding
tableaux seeking the audience's admiration. FREAK ORLANDO gives
this impression constantly, which inspires more derision than awe. That

13
other main characters, left as merely an adjunct to the central action. The
film really belongs to Assumpta Serna and Nacho Martinez as the murder¬
ous lovers, managing to reach their sexual climax whilst killing one
another, a final act timed to perfection, as the sky is darkened by an eclipse
of the sun.

Stephen Thrower. S'Jnch 'inS "P the coup-de-grace

14
sex with a strange man. This is one of Odile's many fantasies - both sexual
and homicidal - and it isn't long before dream and reality are merged into
one. Whether this merging is Andersen's intention is somewhat question¬
able, particularly when the viewer is presented with narrative cards that
read "After a car-crash", (off-screen), "Arthur and Franz are looking for a
helping hand." The fact that the viewer has had no introduction to Arthur
and Franz doesn't seem to enter into it.
Arthur and Franz go to a house for help. One gives the other a blow-job,
and in an intangible shift of location, Odile is seen wandering through a
public toilets where she encounters a guy jerking off and a woman taking
a leak. The sight causes our girl to throw up in a urinal.
About half-way through MONDO WEIRDO, an up to now anonymous
young lady is suddenly revealed to be the blood-bathing Transylvanian
countess, Elizabeth Bathory (spot David Pirie's book "The Vampire Cinema"
being used as a source of reference by Odile).
"Elizabeth Bathory invites Odile to a strange dinner with strange people
and very strange things going on!" another notice reads, and Odile sits
alone at a dinner table. In an upstairs room however, Ilona - whoever she
might be - is to be found helping Elizabeth put a condom on Franz. The
three engage in sexual intercourse, after which the two girls hack at Franz
with a cut throat razor and then drink his blood. One of the girls is pissing
over Franz when Odile interrupts. A number of unsavoury acts follow
including Odile getting her neck bitten by Bathory, and Arthur being given
a hand-job then castrated upon climax. The sex fun is brought to an abrupt
end for Elizabeth and Ilona however when they manage to somehow
impale themselves on a pair of antlers. (?)! The movie closes with Odile
apparently back at the beginning of the picture in the club where the band
is playing. She sees the lesbian couple making out, and instead of running
away decides to join in.
The trouble with most 'underground' films is that they tend to dilute their
own shock value. This they do by revealing themselves as an underground
film - expect underground film-type shocks! - by having everyone walk
around dressed in regulation post-punk skin-tight pants, and trenchcoats.
Kind of like glimpsing the closing paragraphs at the end of a book then
expecting to be surprised by the ending. MONDO WEIRDO is full of skin¬
tight jeans, jack-boots and trenchcoats, but fortunately it's also crazy
enough to hold the viewer's attention throughout.
MONDO WEIRDO is Andersen's second feature film. His first was I

15
film, drawing alienated characters whose very experiences are displaced;
experience not in itself but as an elusive 'other'. Franco's images share this
allusive quality, as Lorna languidly rests her face on a mirror in reference
to Cocteau's magical ORPHEE, or visits a party populated by jaded, acid¬
dropping sophisticates whose decadent antics are reminiscent of the final
party in Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA. Most amusingly. Franco injects a
scene where Jack Taylor quizzes Reynaud about her identity (in the style
of a Mickey Spillane novel) with an unmistakeable air of Godardian irony.
The actors deliver their lines and gestures (a brief embrace for instance,
which parodies romance between detective and female suspect) in the
clipped, amused/detached fashion characteristic of Godard's early sixties
films. This parody of a parody, and reference to a further reference may
imply a critique of 'art' cinema and 'Modem Art' in general, reliant as it
often is on densely layered allusions to other Great Works. Franco's
insistence on the ultimately arbitrary nature of these referential games is
captured in the ironic enactment of the (cinema) psychoanalyst's favourite
ritual; word-association...
Lorna hurries to a hazy appointment with a man called 'The Admiral'
(Howard Vernon). "Have you brought The Symbols?", he asks dryly,
holding out a top hat into which she drops a handful of (heavily echoed)
pebbles. A kind of subdued seduction begins, as The Admiral gradually
draws Lorna into his embrace whilst murmuring associative
triggers...Tarzan, Godard, Faulkner, Henry Miller, Capote, Charlie Mingus,
"The Story of 'O'", "Justine", Camus, 'the unconscious'; the latter eliciting
Lorna's response of "Marquis de Sade", perhaps in deference to Sade's
pre-empting of Freud. "Religion" from Vernon provokes
"Gomorrha...Goethe... Sade...Gomorrha" from Reynaud, pointing for¬
ward to the movie's end where 'Lorna' is renamed 'Faustine' by a valedic¬
tory voice-over which accompanies the final image. This condensation of
'Faust' and 'Justine', of profane seeker and holy innocent, into a single
figure of desire may well be as far as Franco can ever go towards finding
peace with his own 'demons'.
Elsewhere, a psychiatrist figure uses word association in a thrusting,
aggressive manner, intimidating Lorna with rapid-fire demands;
"Birds...pachyderms... knives, pencils, bells, CANNON!", he rants, a scene
designed to put 'the rapist' in 'therapist'! In a later session he tries to
disorientate her (and the audience) by making obtuse, non sequitur state-

16
mutual, obsessive love, they beg, steal and kill for what they need - he only
slightly assailed by any guilt, her not at all. For they have consumed each
other's passions and only scarcity threatens their happiness.
Of course, this period of happiness must be curtailed. His self-doubt and
intellectual romanticism leads to inertia. Her intellectual inferiority and
desire to consume leads to negation. She ventures off alone to meet her
brother - a gun-runner. She phones Belmondo - her Pierrot - saying she’s
in danger and pleading for help. He runs to her rescue but she has already
left, leaving a corpse stabbed in the neck. Before he can assess his situation,
he is captured and tortured by her brother. However, he is soon released.
Unable to find her, he begins to rebuild his life alone.
Unexpectedly she shows up again, asking him to help her and her
brother steal some cash from the gun-running network. He has begun to
realise that she is a femme fatale , entangling him in a web of lies and
intrigue. But he is still too in love to escape the destiny she has carved for
him. He plays his part in the violent subterfuge and hands her the money.
She betrays him and runs (or rather, cruises) off with the cash. He pursues
and kills her, and wraps dynamite around his head to commit suicide.
Having ignited the fuse, he realises the incongruity of the situation. "How
stupid", he cries as he grabs the fuse to dowse it. These are his last words
as the film reaches its explosive climax.
Pierrot was the archaic popular tragi-com. figure, or fool for love, of
French theatre and pantomime. PIERROT LE FOU is Godard's most
consciously existential film. Beautifully photographed, it uses locations
imaginatively to create an air of classical simplicity.
Life is a metaphysical journey - "...to the end of the night", says Belmondo,
recalling Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night" - that only ends in death.
In this movie, as in life, you must think on your feet while being bom¬
barded /bombasted by a series of philosophical, political and psychologi¬
cal diatribes. But there is never a prolix. The disjuncture between sound
and vision at certain moments thrusts you into a state of epistemological
awareness.
PIERROT is mid-'60s Godard. Belmondo, the romantic victim of be¬
trayal by the woman he loves, looks back to A BOUT DE SOUFFLE/
BREATHLESS (1959). The remnants of bodies and wrecked cars from a
motorway accident (the violence inherent in the system) look forward to
WEEKEND (1967). Belmondo tortured by having a rag wrapped around
his head and repeatedly soaked in water (simulated drowning) reflects

17
match. And the female liberation angle is unusual for this type of bland
programmer. If anything LA PORTIERA NUDA is just too good for the
rough trade grindhouse circuit. Sure it's crass, but not in the leering way
this type of movie often mistakes for eroticism. Cozzi takes too much care
in setting up the woefully thin material and two-dimensional characteri¬
sations for it to be dismissed as just another sex comedy targeted at the
randy ragazzi demographic. The reason why the movie flopped was that
it wasn’t ordinary enough for the auditorium jerk-off brigade. And Irene
Miracle might just as well have sleep-walked throughout the whole affair
for all the oozing sexuality she doesn't bring to her role.
LA PORTIERA NUDA is worth catching if you can with major reserva¬
tions. It was released on video in Italy in the early eighties,but now seems
impossible to find. The copy under review was Cozzi's own and if he's got
anything to do with it that's exactly the way it's going to stay!

Alan Jones.

THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME

aka LA SADIQUE DE NOTRE DAME/EL SADICO DE NOTRE DAME/L'EVENTREUR DE
NOTRE DAME/THE RIPPER OF NOTRE DAME/ DEMONIAC

Directed by Jesus Franco. Screenplay by Ilona Kunesova, from a story by

A.L. Mariaux (Jesus Franco) and Jeff Maner. Director of Photography -
Raymond Heil. Chief cameraman - M. Zaldy. Special effects by A. Molin.
Music by Daniel White. Assistant director - Jean-Pierre Ducroux. Produc¬
tion manager - Marius Lesoeur. Executive manager - Daniel Lesoeur. Co¬
produced by Eurocine/Triton P.C. France/Spain, 1980.

Cast: Rosa Almiral ("Lina Romay"), Nadine Pascal, Franco Nicolas, Jess
Franck (Jesus Franco), Pierre Taylou, Olivier Mathot, Francoise Goussard,
Yul Sanders, Monica Swinne, Caroline Riviere.

Spanish horror - and Franco product in particular - seems dogged by the

clamour for the 'original' film from which this or that version may have
been culled. This ever-present irritation is not aided by paella-practition¬
ers' (paella's something like Spanish spaghetti, so I believe) different deal
of sex and violence to their Italian counterparts. For whatever clutch of
reasons (including censorship hangovers and Spain's more rigid and

18
become essential. "Dagger and Garter co-eds talk so casually about sexy
sacrifice that the viewer is not really certain if they mean to actually kill the
hired virgins/prostitutes (for the permissive procurers of Paris there is no
distinction) or not. In one hotel-room discussion between lesbian-loving
Ann and Rosie, the sacrificial stabs they predict for the session could either
be knife-thrusts or penile-lusts, and we're never quite sure whether the
Countess of Decamps herself wishes to stage a real Black Mass or just a
bourgeois pretence for the sake of a trembling turn-on (when Vogel does
her in, it finally appears that he is the most committedly perverse). When
they do come, the ritual scenes are edited in an exaggeratedly Iberian
manner, retaining all the bound actress's fleshy appeal whilst she has just,
apparently, been stabbed in the vagina (the only real sign of death is the
blood trickling down her breasts). These scenes recall the humid imaginings
of the Marquis de Sade from the marvellous pre-credits sequence of
Franco's JUSTINE (1968). Unlike some of the Vogel killings, we are
deprived the sexually chastening shock of seeing blade into flesh, and a
dangerously necrophiliac pulse results, offered in a far more direct and
dirtied up way than in Jesus' earlier and more poetic image-incarnations
of erotic death (such as appear in NECRONOMICON (1967) and VENUS
IN FURS (1969). The necrophiliac urge is not simply sensationalism or the
final logic of anonymous sexual encounter (a corpse has no character, the
ideal one-night-stand), but is also a moment of great troublesome truth.
Ask any for whom hunger or pain are everyday experiences, and they'll be
the first to tell you that our frail and ever-decaying body is more
excrutiatingly part of us than we'd care to realise (patronising? I know...)
This begs the question of what are we really besides flesh, or is there any
spiritual life beyond the body at all? The only time we healthy modern folk
have cause to pay our meat much attention is at moments of sensual
pleasure, where desire is so strong that our bodies are at one with
ourselves. Suddenly, our crotch-gazing daze can break down into a notion
of pain and death as our only end. Sex and annihilation join, something the
Church, with its manipulations of chastity and marriage, seeks to bypass.
The seeds of religion's sexual insanity are there to be nurtured by such as
Mathis, and in the crazily perverse manner that marks Franco's work,
Vogel's greatest crime is a skewed and disconcerting honesty, a church¬
man's revelation of the truth of Catholic fixation, awarding necrophilia an
awful apocalyptic legitimacy.
There is perhaps someone more honest still than Mathis Vogel, one who

19
over her corpse - with the face of the lover scratched away - leading the
detective to suspect the twitchy morgue assistant Gastoni (Avram), who
admits to taking photos of dead women in his care. Professor Cassali, the
pathologist in charge of the case, vouches for his assistant and suggests
that the killer might be a jealous homosexual. Further victims mount up,
including the adulterous wife of a prominent lawyer who, himself pursu¬
ing a relationship with the wife of a neighbouring cripple, describes
himself as "a moral opportunist". Ultimately, the murderer is goaded into
the open when Cappuana arrests a stooge 'killer' and announces that the
murders were the work of an idiot. It transpires that the killer was jilted by
his wife in a case reported extensively in the press, with the humiliation
presumably acting as a spur to his deeds. Cappuana's wife Barbara
(Koscina) is the killer's final victim - the inspector is shocked to learn that
her affair with a younger man, Roberto, was common knowledge to
everyone but him. Cappuana watches impassively through a side window
as his wife is slaughtered before entering and shooting the maniac dead -
none other than Professor Cassali.
There are two ways of watching a film like this - one can either view it
critically, noting its blatantly conservative fantasy of punishment for
adultery visited exclusively on beautiful women; or one can take a more
detached, vaguely amused approach, enjoying its unintentional absurdi¬
ties as they rub shoulders with a full repertoire of giallo cliches. (Actually
it's quite easy to look at Montero's dumb film from both angles at once).
The attacks on women are rather queasily coloured by such details as
Cappuana's cold observation of his wife's death - after shooting the killer,
he kneels at his wife's side and, ignoring her dead body, bitterly screws up
a picture of her in flagrante delicto. No care is taken to distance the viewer
from such vindictive displays of jealousy, although snippets of nonsensi¬
cal dialogue offer up gems of social commentary. "You reactionary - you're
a spoiled bourgeois who skips current events that shape the world",
babbles a girl whose boyfriend is more interested in her tits than her
ravings about politics.
On the other hand, characters like Avram's sleazy, over-enthusiastic
morgue attendant provide less reprehensible distraction. Cappuana quiz¬
zes him about his personal life and asks why he has remained single.
"Girls...sooner or later they find out about...the corpses", he says wistfully
- before displaying his collection of photographs depicting favourite

20
a small, spider-like scar on her wrist, which she explains as resulting from
her failed suicide attempt. When he offers the concept of God and faith as
possible comfort, Mrs. Kuhn replies with the film's best line: bitterly,
spitefully, she retorts, "God? There is no God. There is no light. There is
nothing."
The following day, Genivieve asks Alan to clarify the subject of Roth's
studies; he replies that they revolved around an ancient religion, followed
around the world by isolated, seemingly unconnected groups of people -
connecting "like an enormous cobweb." He asks her if she is familiar with
the name Polgar Moricz, which was written on the back of Roth's photo of
the tablet. She gives him instructions to locate Moricz, revealed to be local
rare antique dealer with whom Roth was involved. Alan attempts to locate
the shop, only to be repeatedly lost amidst the deserted streets, a labyrinth
of tiny alleyways and huge courts, devoid of life. Meanwhile, Moricz is
murdered in his shop by the same female assassin, and when Alan finally
does arrive, he is forced to hide in a closet to escape the same assailant. In
his hiding place, he reacts in terror at the emergence of a large spider
approaching him...
Suddenly, the door opens. The old man who attempted to warn Alan
before guides him away now, telling him there might still be the possibility
of escape. He guides Alan down into a vast underground cavern, all the
while informing him of the nature of his dangerous involvement: "The
Weavers" are the followers of the ancient religion, which still exists today.
Its numbers are increasing, none of whom wish for the tablet to be made
public, and the names of their Gods - who are "not myths, but living
creatures" - to be known. They have exempted Alan from their "labyrinth
of death" so that they may transform him into one of them. As the old man
guides Alan to escape, he tells him to beware of their omniscient presence,
indicating that their followers can be identified by the white, spider scars
on their wrists. Alan navigates his way through the maze of tunnels to
escape.
The black ball rolls to the old man's feet; it hatches open like a mechanical
egg, releasing a large spider. As the old man insists "we will win in the end",
the red-haired murderess regurgitates a thick, slimy web material which
wraps around his neck, hanging him from the top of the cavern. Back at the
hotel, Alan encounters Genivieve, who dreamily undresses him, before
doing the same herself. The two make love; but Genivieve spits up some
odd, slimy substance on Alan's back as he sleeps...

21
as hers!
WIDE-EYED IN THE DARK is unimaginatively shot, poorly written
and packed with stupid, ugly characters - as a thriller it's a non-starter.
Everyone acts suspiciously; a man can't so much as have a shave without
'significantly' fondling his straight razor. The usual police investigation
footage is boring and pointless, as always in Grade-Zgiallo -land; and yet...
Lenzi's ridiculous clunker, if watched in the right mood, can seem
crudely engaging. There's something subliminally hysterical about a plot
which doesn't allow a vicious serial killer to get in the way of its characters'
stolid holiday jaunt. They react with shock and horror to the corpse of each
new victim - yet minutes later they're back on their stunted little bus as it
trundles through Barcelona on its way to the next tourist sight. Perhaps it's
the washed out, dejected theme tune by Morricone's pal Bruno Nicolai that
creates the mood. There's something absurdly loveable in its dreary
persistence, comically limping into 'excitement' mode every time the
coach potters off on the next leg of its daft itinerary.
Elsewhere, it's possible to reflect on the typically Catholic giallo preoc¬
cupation with making every character act as if they harbour terrible guilty
secrets, without coming across any evidence that Lenzi has ever given this
a second thought. Never one to burden his work with numb-skull allegory
or artsy nonsense about themes or ideas, Umberto manfully refuses to play
to the textually minded among us. Anyone who might expect a plot-line
about a killer gouging out eyes to be related thematically to, for instance,
voyeurism - or the act of watching a movie - is given the short shrift they
damn well deserve! Disappointed by Umberto's utterly empty use of the
eye motif? Go and watch some Marguerite Duras films, you freak, and give
us a break! Anyway, seen as a film that is to the giallo cycle what ROBOT
MONSTER was to '50's sci-fi, it's pleasant enough. At the very least it's an
improvement on his wretched SPASMO, a film loveable only for its title!
Finally, those who have been wondering why we named a magazine
after such a wretched movie might bear in mind that we've chosen to
review it as WIDE-EYED IN THE DARK, a less common alternative
title."Eyeball" magazine was certainly not named in praise of this film, or
of its terrible director!

Stephen Thrower.

22
when the ghost cuts off his ear. A catalogue of sleazy subjects, re-using bits
of Freda’s L'ORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK and H.G. Lewis' COLOR ME
BLOOD RED, with Law and Mitchell enthusiastically showing off their
ranting insanity and relishing the opportunity to slobber over starlets. The
finale seems to come out of nowhere, along with the helicopter and the
ghost, and is decidedly skimped, the producers merely having the funds
to set off some smoke pots around their borrowed castle and have a few
stage flats fall over in a weedy inferno. Unmissable, especially for fans of
stripped-to-the-waist, 60-to-70-year-old Mitchell and disposable conti¬
nental starlets who scream and shout during dummy-quartering se¬
quences.

MOONLIGHT SONATA aka KUUTAMOSONATTI

Directed and written by Olli Soinio. Photographed by Kari Sohlberg.

Produced by Heikki Takkinen for Filminor. Finland, 1989.
Cast: Tina Bjorkman, Kari Sorvali, Kim Gunell, Mikko Kivinen, Soli
Labbart, Ville-Veiko Salminen.

Similar in its plotting to American rural horrors like THE TEXAS

CHAINSAW MASSACRE or MOTHER'S DAY, this Finnish suspense
film is nevertheless shot with all the high style expected of the European
art cinema, with lovely snowscapes and carefully selected faces adding to
the visual quality of what is basically a formula lady-in-peril picture.
Gorgeous poting model Bjorkman - as they say in Variety, a looker with
int'l pot'l - is fleeing from a breakdown to a remote cottage, where she gets
pestered by a local family of degenerates. The lead heavy is a disgusting
yokel of the STRAW DOGS variety, who is constantly making lewd
advances and slobbering, but the real menace comes from his hulking,
retarded brother, who is confined by day to a woodshed, but is allowed out
at night to bay at the moon. Early on, the heroine's dog disappears, but
rather than turning up as the expected corpse nailed to a door, the animal
is adopted by the ox-like lunatic, who has been abused by the brothers’
silent old mother until he can only relate to similarly whipped animals. The
heroine's resourceful younger brother turns up and puts his skill with
gadgets to good use as they have to defend their house against an attack

23
incarnation of laid-back evil is persuasive.

Lame-bcrto Bava -Isn't there a contract out on this man i/el?

24
Starring Valerie Kaprisky, Francis Hunter, Lambert Wilson. From a
novel by Dominique Granier.

1985 L'AMOUR BRAQUE

1990 MES NUITS SONT PLUS BELLES QUE VOS JOURS

"My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days"

Starring Sophie Marceau, Jacques Dutronc.

OTHER WORK
Short novels "Casanova" (1973), "Bluebeard" (1975). "Kalkin" (unfin¬
ished), begun in 1978. Has also written an Epic history of the Paris 1870
Commune, of 900+ pages.

COMMENTS

10 years after Zulawski's astonishing POSSESSION was released on

video in this country, to a generally ignorant reception, the English-
speaking world remains deprived of the rest of this unique director's work.
On a recent visit to Amsterdam, I was fortunate enough to see his recent
film, MES NUITS SONT PLUS BELLES QUE VOS JOURS (on my
birthday, too!). My grasp of French is terrible, and the print was in French
with Dutch subtitles; which is why I have not attempted to review it in this
issue. As anyone who has seen POSSESSION will understand, a Zulawski
film is unlikely to yield up its subtleties under such conditions. It appears
to be a 1'amour fan tale - of the relationship between a man with a brain-
tumour and a woman whose night-club stage-act of telepathy masks
genuine psychic powers. This information is hardly enough to count as a
review, but in the meantime a profile of this talented director seems long
overdue.
On the evidence of POSSESSION at least, Zulawski is a director who -
like the great Jodorowsky - seems to make films asif each were to be his last
chance to work in the cinema. Consequently, his approach to plotting is to

25
Don't distract me, I'm creating...

26
comparable to VIDEODROME, it differs from the earlier film in a crucial
respect, and in a way that exemplifies one of NAKED LUNCH’S major
flaws. The concept of 'first-person narrative' which informs
VIDEODROME is 'opened up’ to another equally ’first person' participant
- the viewer. Indeed, it actively implicates the viewer in its unfolding
It
scenario. The entire story is about visual perception and the relationships
between viewer, the look itself, and that which is seen, perceived. (That's
why you' re with me ...because you say 'I'for 'Me' ...because you say 'Eye'for 'Me':
Isabelle Adjani, direct address to camera, in POSSESSION). When Max
Renn begins to hallucinate VIDEODROME's mutant technology - puls¬
ing, breathing TV sets and literal software' - we can accept these meta¬
phorical conceits and plastic puns because we are involved personally,
they occur as something shared in the dialectic between ourselves and the
screen. (Who hasn't succumbed to the urge to touch the TV and its screen
during those key VIDEODROME scenes of Max doing likewise?). The
film allows both audience-and-image and artist-and-image the space to
engage as equal parts of a complex whole.
In NAKED LUNCH, Cronenberg once again embarks on a 'first-person'
trajectory, and attempts to use William Lee's hallucinations to elaborate
and throw light on the Creative Spirit (his capitals, it's fair to say...).
However, this time Cronenberg's devices, like the Bug-writer, are at best
an opaque and introverted indulgence; at worst they seem like superficial
gestures to maintain his 'auteur' consistency. Because there is no room for
audience in the relationship between a writer and his wretched typewriter.
The bug-writer functions as a self-interrogation device for the person
'using' it. In other words, Cronenberg asks us to look over his shoulder
whilst he wrangles with himself about the source of his creative spirit, or
- if you will - urge. VIDEODROME, strange though it may seem consid¬
ering its' gradually increasing gloom, is a film exciting in its desire to "get
you involved...expose you to the Videodrome signal." (Harlan's words -
paranoia is part of the 'fun' after all...). NAKED LUNCH arrogantly
excludes the viewer from anything more involved than the role of silent
admirer; gee, Mr Cronenberg, what a bizarre and brilliant imagination you
must have, to be sure! NAKED LUNCH s P.O.V. is almost myopic, and its
character quite selfish - watching it is akin to being grudgingly allowed a
walk-on role in a film where one person hogs all the parts. There is a hubris,
an egotism to Cronenberg's approach which is very off-putting, especially
since all this monomaniac wants to do is, essentially, co-opt our eyes to

27
humour that informed his 1970's work. NAKED LUNCH would have
benefitted more from the attentions of a director fresh off the sets of
SHIVERS and RABID than the claustrophobically miserable (though
brilliant) DEAD RINGERS.

28
WOMEN

Cronenberg's treatment of women has provoked controversy from femi¬

nist critics in the past. Here though, he seems to have been inspired against
Burroughs' misogyny ("Man cannot take Woman into space". Uncle Bill
exclaims) into imbuing definite strengths and attributes to Joan Lee/Frost
to offset her biographically determined role of doomed victim. Joan is
depicted as highly articulate and intellectually the equal of William Lee.
Her drug habit is also self-determined, based on autonomous action away
from the male protagonist. Hackles on the more touchy feminist necks may
rise when Lee's 'case-worker' tells him that Joan was not human, but an
agent of Elite Corp centipedes. But the bug-writer Clark Nova's assertion
that women are "a different species to men, with different needs and
purposes on Earth" need not offend feminist critics; indeed radical femi¬
nists might well agree.
More dubious is the character Fadela, whose role is initially one of
repressive, sexually disapproving menace. The scene in which she attacks
the 'sex-blob' with a riding whip teeters precariously on the brink of
unintentional comedyHer lesbianism seems at first glance a highly trou¬
blesome element of the film, allied as it is to such an entirely negative
character. A curious aspect of Burroughs attitude to lesbians is that in "The
Naked Lunch" they are drawn as power-seeking rivals to male control
organisations, rather than a potentially destabilising threat to them. Ho¬
mosexual sex is used by Burroughs as much for its socially antagonistic
power as for celebrative 'Orgone'-bathed purposes. Lesbianism, though
less abrasively offensive to conservative minds, nonetheless insults the
dominant Western social system too. (Or rather, both can ideally function
as irritant and challenge to social power systems; though the 'gay scene' in
reality contains high numbers of utterly frictionless drones, assimilable
units whose sole desire is to be 'accepted' by the straight world). Fadela's
lesbian/witch configuration is a condensed male panic at the prospect of
autonomous female power, plain and simple. To show her as a sexually
repressive "Bitch-queen" (!) seems to suggest a Cronenberg almost looking
for trouble. By an audacious (or perhaps desperate?) twist of the narrative,
however, Cronenberg has Fadela exposed as a disguise for Benway. This
would seem to imply that the dangerous-female-as-control-agent concept
is merely a male construct.

29
the only magazine you could consider swapping with this one. I said
consider! Hey...

Further copies of #3 are available for the same price plus 50p. #2 is
available in limited numbers for £2 plus 50p. Sorry, but #1 is most
definitely SOLD OUT. Send cheques or postal orders (foreign currency is
OK, but not cheques, please), made payable to S. Thrower, to:
20, Kintyre Court,
New Park Road,
Brixton Hill,
LONDON SW2 4DY.

Thanks to: Marc Morris (access), Paul McEvoy (encouragement), Alan

Jones (stills, attitude), Carl Ford (printing), Metro Pictures (stills).
Special thanks to Geff & Sleazy for computer access and tolerance of the
endless fucking schedule! Final thanks to the Jeff with fronds,tentacles
paws,crustacean pincers, batwings, a Godzilla tail and whiskers!

30
Violence in impossible spaces - DEEP RED
Sti

31