Are You Sure?

DILLINGER IS DEAD-1969-Bored industrialist (Michel Piccoli) comes home as usual to find his wife (Anita Pallenberg) in bed with a headache and his dinner cold. While preparing his own meal he stumbles across a mysterious package wrapped in newspaper. The newspaper bares a headline about the death of American gangster John Dillinger and the contents is a gun. While preparing his dinner he becomes intrigued with the gun, examining it, taking it apart and cleaning it. Even using it to enact suicide. Later after finishing his meal he paints the gun red, hangs it to dry and watches home movies. After having sex with his house maid (Anne Giradot) he retrieves the gun, puts a pillow over his wife's head and shoots her to death. He then goes and gets a job as a cook on a yacht. The End. 

This dark little film from Italy was directed by Marco Ferrari and caused quite a stir upon it's initial release. What you make of it is your own business. It was very rarely screened for along time but now many critics think it's Ferrari's best. No stranger to controversy, a few years later Ferrari made the infamous LE GRANDE BOUFFE (also with Piccoli).

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Possession from the '80's

POSSESSION-1981-This is a crazy kind of horror movie that starts out like a Bergman film with lots of soul searching dialogue and over acting. 

Sam Neill (talking like James Mason; it might be his real voice) is Mark, a businessman who returns early from a trip and learns that his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani, who was in Herzoz's NOSFERATU remake 2 years before) is having an affair. At first Mark seems to be the only one who is unable to cope. He rants and attacks Anna in a restaurant where 2 waiters and 2 cooks have to subdue him. Later he grows a beard and has convulsions. He visits their son and acts weird while rocking in a rocking chair. He very aggressively tries to make her stay with him but that fails. 

When he drops his son off at school he meets the teacher Helen who resembles Anna (Adjani in a dual role). He later confronts her German lover Heinrich (Heinz Bennent, also in films by Truffaut and Bergman), a touchy-feely oddball who won't button up his shirt but he bloodily beats up Mark. Later Anna cracks up, screams, laughs and Mark beats her up! 

She runs out in the street with blood dripping from her mouth and causes an accident. After Anna's dopey friend Margit (Margit Carstensen) shows up and says things like “I love seeing you miserable”, Mark visits a private investigator. It's obvious something is going on with Anna that doesn't involve Mark or her lover. Anna and Mark have a weird discussion in the kitchen while Anna is grinding meat. 

Meanwhile the detective trails Anna to a seemingly abandoned building but Anna kills him when he discovers something strange in the bathroom. Amid more talking, soul searching and fighting it seems Anna is the possessed lover of a slimy tentacled demon (created by Carlo Rambaldi). 

Some might call POSSESSION an art house horror film and go crazy for the over the top acting and Bergman like close-ups and dialogue (I've also read it's an allegory for divorce) but personally I think the director Andrezj Zulawski was having fun with the “art house crowd” and this is a horror parody. The characters act too strange to be taken seriously (especially Adjani's stand-out freak out scene in the subway where she vomits and menstruates and the scene where a demon actually screws her) and most of the killings are comical. 

Neill was the grown up Damien in OMEN lll: THE FINAL CONFLICT the same year. The Polish born Zulawski's next film THE DEVILS (not a horror film) was banned in his homeland. On the commentary for the DVD of POSSESSION he claims Adjani (who won France's equivalent of an Academy Award for her performance) tried to commit suicide after watching the film (I couldn't blame her actually...).

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A Puzzle

MARATHON-2002-This arty filmed in black and white story concerns a young woman (Sara Paul) as she tries to solve over 70 crossword puzzles in 24 hours. The burning question is: why??

Most of it takes place on various NYC subway lines but later she returns to her apartment and seems to lose it big time! It’s fairly interesting at first but loses steam, as the story has nowhere to go.

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Great Eyes!

EYES WITHOUT A FACE-1960-It’s cool to see this intriguing French art film with horror trappings restored to it’s original version with English sub-titles, after only seeing it cut and dubbed on late night TV in the early ‘70’s.

A plastic surgeon tries to repair his daughter’s disfigured face (described by one character as “an open wound”). Unfortunately he must kill unsuspecting women to achieve this. The daughter (Edith Scob) usually wears a white faceless mask and doesn’t want her father to continue his “cure”. She only seems happy with the dogs her father keeps locked in the basement for experimental use. Alda Valdi (from THE THIRD MAN) plays the doctor’s assistant.

The director Georges Franju made other feature length films after this but at the time was known for a controversial short. He was known in France for co-founding the film archive Cinematheque Française.

EYES was released in the US (and on TV) under the more exploitable title THE HORROR CHAMBER OF DR. FAUSTUS which probably disappointed a lot of horror fans who saw it.

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."-George Washington

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