Blood for Dracula (1974)

Title: Blood for Dracula (1974)

Director: Paul Morrissey

Cast: Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Vittorio De Sica

During the 60’s and 70’s Andy Warhol was one of the biggest names in pop art, he was a rock start of the art scene. Warhol was a creative tour de force, one of the many offshoots of his art was film, he directed over 60 films and some 500 black and white short films. Some of the more amusing ones I can mention are Vinyl (1965), which was an early adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, and Batman Dracula (1964), a short film Warhol did without the permission of DC Comics which paid tribute to the famous comic book characters! I bet you didn’t know Warhol had done that! Warhol’s films were sexually charged, including graphic sexual acts, drug use, transgender characters, homosexuality; basically, the dude didn’t care for conservative views. He wanted to shake things up! Some of the films were really trippy and experimental stuff like for example his first film was called Sleep (1963), it consisted of six hours of a poet named John Giorno,  sleeping. He also made another film called Blow Job (1964) which consisted of 35 minutes focused on the face of someone receiving oral sex. So anyhow, sometimes he’d show these movies to the world in art exhibits, porn theaters or nightclubs because regular theaters wouldn’t dare show them. Since his films were considered “socially unacceptable” or offensive, well, theaters would get raided, and cast members even arrested!

A pic from Andy Warhol's Batman Dracula

This was a crazy period in Warhol’s life, Warhol and his pals would get together in a studio of his called ‘The Factory’ where they would have orgies, take all sorts of drugs and make films and art together. That all ended on June 3, 1968 when a lady named Valerie Solana attempted to murder Warhol by shooting him in his own studio. After that life changing event, Warhol became more reclusive and entrepreneurial, one of his many business ventures included producing commercial films, two of these Warhol produced films ended up being horror films: Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and the film I’ll be talking about today, Blood for Dracula, also known as Young Dracula. Warhol had nothing to do with the creative side of these films, he only produced them, Paul Morrissey was the guy who directed them. Blood for Dracula is all about Dracula taking a trip to Italy in order to find a virgin he can marry. In a nutshell, Dracula needs to drink the blood of a virgin or he will die! So Count Dracula takes a trip to Italy, because according to Anton, Italians are very religious people and are more inclined to have virgins in their families! Dracula tells his servant: “If you really were clever, Anton, you would bring me a Virgin from Italy and I wouldn’t have to go!” Not a bad idea Dracula, but then we wouldn’t have a movie now would we?

I found Blood for Dracula entertaining for various reasons, number one being that it felt like a Jean Rollin film because it mixes beautiful vistas and locations with nudity and gore. This is something I love about a lot of these low budget vampire films from the 70’s they always shot in beautiful locations and real castles. In the case of Blood for Dracula, director Paul Morrissey decided to shoot in Italy. Since it was Andy Warhol, an artist, who served as producer, the filmmakers were given the freedom to go totally nuts and film whatever the hell they wanted, which was probably the reason Blood for Dracula was given an ‘X’ rating. It was cut down and edited a few times when it was first shown in theaters, but thank the film gods we can now see the complete version of the film in all its sexually charged, blood soaked glory. I recommend the Criterion edition of this film, and the version released by Image films, because they are the most complete versions you can get out there, this way you’ll get all the gory goodness you’re supposed to get with this film.

Now, what makes Blood for Dracula a keeper? Well for starters it’s got this over the top performance from Udo Kier! Both Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula were career defining films for Kier and now I can finally see why, this Dracula looks kind of weak and flimsy, he doesn’t seem to pose much of a threat, yet slowly but surely he finds his way into these girls beds. A huge part of what makes this film entertaining is Kier, he is unintentionally funny. When he doesn’t get his blood fix, he goes into these hilarious fits, where his whole body shakes, you gotta see it to believe it. When he drinks blood from a non-virgin, well, he starts to vomit all the blood he just drank, and well, Kier plays it extremely over the top, it also makes for a cool visual. So yeah, this version of Dracula is kind of funny. You haven’t lived until you hear Udo Kier screaming at the top of his lungs: “The blood of these whores is killing me!” Funnier still is watching Dracula discuss social issues with a communist/farm boy. This film reminded me a bit of Jean Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl (1982) because it saved the best of its gory goodness for the last ten minutes, the gore is pretty impressive. But then again, Udo Kier was no stranger to gore and violence, one of the very first roles to put him on the map was an extremely violent film called Mark of the Devil (1970), that one was so gory they offered you barf bags at the door in case you suddenly wanted to vomit mid picture!

Like a Jean Rollin film, Blood for Dracula has excessive amounts of nudity and erotic scenes. The nudity is gratuitous, but since this film was produced by Andy Warhol an artist known for graphic nudity in his own films, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that Blood for Dracula has lot nudity in it, in fact, I’m sure it was expected from film goers and used as a selling point by the studio. So what we got here is a sexy, erotic version of Dracula, which makes perfect sense; eroticism has always been an element that permeates any good Dracula film. Dracula has always served as an allegory for male sexuality. He is often times played as this incredibly strong sexual presence that will melt the ladies away. With its overt sexuality and communist political views, Blood for Dracula was a film that was fighting the status quo of things, a film tailor made for members of the counter culture. Mario, the strapping young servant of the house, is one of the characters used to push communist political views, he is disgusted by rich people and pretty much does whatever he wants even though he is a servant of the house. He has sex with all the ladies in the film (sometimes two at a time), thinks that rich people are trash and that socialism is the future! Again, the dialog is hilarious, in one scene Mario is having a conversation in which one of the girls tells him that Dracula’s interested in marrying a virgin and then he asks “So what’s he doing with you two whores?” I just couldn’t help laughing at some of the bits of dialog and situations. I guess we could say this is an unintentionally funny version of Dracula, but a lot of it has to do with Udo Kier and his performance, which is very entertaining, he’s like this bitchy whiny version Dracula.  

I see these Paul Morrissey/Andy Warhol horror films as a response to the success that the Hammer horror films were enjoying back in those days. Warhol simply saw a way of making some money. I gotta say the results were pretty entertaining and highly watchable! I have no idea if these films were successful or not, my guess is they weren’t because we didn’t see more of them, but I would’ve loved to see Andy Warhol’s take on other monsters. Imagine Warhol’s take on The Wolfman? With Kier as the Wolfman and Joe Dellesandro as Ben Talbot? Or Kier as The Mummy? Kier and Dellesandro could have easily been to Warhol’s films what Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were to Hammer Films, but alas, we only have the two horror films they produced, which is good enough for me, these films are a fun watch and bonafide cult classics, highly recommended for a night of sexy silliness, Paul Morrissey style!  

Rating: 4 out of 5

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Title: Johnny Mnemonic (1994)

Director: Robert Longo

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Udo Kier, Takeshi Kitano, Dolph Lungdren, Henry Rollins, Ice –T, Dina Meyer

Universally panned by critics and a bonafide box office bomb, Johnny Mnemonic was a disaster financially, it made roughly 19 million on a budget of 26, this even though it starred Keanu Reeves, an actor whose career was smoking red hot at that particular moment in time. You see, Reeves had just finished making Jan De Bont’s Speed (1994) when he decided to jump on the Johnny Mnemonic bandwagon. Speed was an extremely successful film at the box office and a great career move for Keanu; it raised his status as an actor by turning him into box office gold. So considering how popular Reeves was at the time, why did Johnny Mnemonic end up being such an epic fail? It certainly wasn’t because of lack of star power. The film also starred Dolph Lungdren as a crazy homicidal preacher, Udo Kier as a techno agent, Henry Rollins and Ice-T as rebel leaders and Takeshi Kitano (of Sonatine fame) as the head of a an evil corporation. Maybe the film failed because it wasn’t that good? Could it be that it disappointed audiences or hardcore cyberpunk fans somehow?

In the film Johnny Mnemonic is a courier, which is just a fancy word for delivery man. The thing is that the guy is a courier of digital data that he carries somewhere in the back of his mind. Problem is the package he’s just uploaded is huge and exceeding storage capacity can kill you! You see, in this future a big percentage of humanity is suffering from a decease called N.A.S., which stands for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome.  Basically, N.A.S. is a condition that affects the human nervous system and is caused by the onslaught of electronic devices to which humanity is exposed to in a daily basis. Technology is making humanity sick and it’s because of information overload, airwaves poisoned by technological civilization. Humanity just can’t live without their gadgets. Good thing is that there’s a cure, bad thing is that the powers that be don’t want humanity to have it because they’d rather have people as patients, paying for their costly treatments for N.A.S. But wait, there’s hope! A group of rebel scientists are hell bent on releasing the cure for N.A.S. to the free world! These rebels fight against the system and humanities dependency on technology. From time to time they send subversive messages to the masses through television saying things like “Snatch back your brain zombie, and hold it!” To make everything right all they have to do is send the cure from Beijing to New Wark; via courier.  That’s where Johnny Mnemonic comes into play. Will Johnny make it in time before the overload of information in his brain kills him?

This project had many good things going for it, number one, the screenplay was written by the ‘father of cyberpunk’ William Gibson. Who’s William Gibson you say, well, he’s the guy responsible for writing the very first cyberpunk novels, novels about technologically suffocated societies in which people are more mechanical than human, worlds in which people spend more time in the virtual world than in the real world. This is a wing of science fiction that focuses on “high tech, low life”. Gibson wrote ‘Neuromancer’ one of the seminal works of the cyberpunk genre; it’s a story about a hacker who’s hired to pull off the mother of all hacks. The novel takes place in this Blade Runner like world with problems like over population and again, a society over dependent on technology. Neuromancer is so thick I’ve yet to finish reading it! It’s quite dense, a true challenge to read, and this comes from someone who fancies himself a science fiction fan! This fascinating and at times nightmarish book holds some similarities with Johnny Mnemonic; actually it even shares some characters. Johnny Mnemonic in turn is a film that’s based on another one of Gibson’s works; a short story entitled ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ which was first published in Omni magazine, and later re-printed in Gibson’s collection of short fiction stories called ‘Burning Chrome’, a book I will be acquiring soon! Johnny Mnemonic by the way is one of Gibson’s first works, first published way back in 1981, so it’s fitting in a way that one of his earliest works is the first to get the big screen treatment. 

For the longest time (as far back as 1989) Gibson and his pal Robert Lungo (who ended up sitting on the director’s chair) had been trying to get funding for Johnny Mnemonic. In their minds, Johnny Mnemonic was a film that could be pulled off for a mere 1.5 million dollars; in other words, they wanted to take an art house approach to this story; an artsy version of Johnny Mnemonic. A small yet creative film, and I gotta wonder what that film might have turned out like. But it kept getting harder and harder to get any financial backing for the film because studios didn’t like the fact that they were trying to make such a small film. Studios like multimillion dollar productions with big stars attached to them, something big and bombastic, something they can sell. Things finally pulled through when Keanu Reeves read the script (which myth has it was left at his door step!) and decided to do the movie. It was then that the studios started offering the millions to Gibson and Lungo. After much trepidation, the project finally found its funding! So after so many years of trying to get this movie made, was it finally worth it?

Well, first things first, there’s no denying that this film turned out to be a quite influential piece of cinema. The directors behind The Matrix Trilogy; the Wachowski Bros. obviously saw this film and decided they could do something similar, but better. It’s just so obvious, damn, right down to the fact that they also used Keanu Reeves for The Matrix. At one point Johnny says his name is “Mr. Smith”, he plugs himself into a virtual world and travels through it. Keanu dresses with a white shirt, black suit and tie. Johnny is kind of like a Christ figure, same as Neo. And basically, the whole film has a theme about “waking people up”, so yeah, there’s no doubt this one, along with Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995) served as a major influence for The Matrix. Other films that Johnny Mnemonic is similar to? Well, there’s Cyborg (1989) and Babylon A.D. (2008), two films that are also about a courier transporting the cure for a decease that’s threatening the world, and most recently Elysium (2013) played with the same ideas. 

Johnny Mnemonic is a film that science fiction fans will no doubt enjoy because it presents us with this dark, technological world in chaos, kind of like what we saw in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), but with the added element of seeing technology as mankind’s villain, as a detriment to society, a hindrance that disconnects us from our humanity. Which isn’t so farfetched when we consider how connected we all are to our smart phones, I-Pads, I-Pods and laptops;  so in many ways it’s a reflection of our society and how addicted we are to technology, could we live without it nowadays? How lost would we be on this planet without our technological advances? Has humanity separated itself so much from the natural world, that we now don’t even know how to survive in it? I mean we actually live in a time when going out to dinner means telling everybody on the table to turn their phones off so we won’t be distracted by a call, a text message or candy crush. Aside from the films themes, I also enjoy a lot of the visuals that a movie like this one has to offer. I mean, how cool does Johnny Mnemonic look hooked up to that Virtual Reality helmet? Very cool that’s how cool. Like Hackers (1995), The Matrix (1999), this is a movie that hackers no doubt love, because the hacker is the hero. Some of the best moments in the film are those of Johnny, hooking up to the information super highway and just hacking the hell out of it.

But then the movie is hampered by often time’s cheesy dialog and nonsensical shenanigans. Sometimes the film kind of contradicts itself, for example, there’s this dolphin in the movie that is supposed to be the savior of humanity because it’s the dolphin who handles all the data through its brain, but then the rebels, those who would fight for humanity and freedom, have this dolphin confined to this little tank that gives it no space to swim at all. To me, the dolphin looks like its being tortured, trapped in this cage filled with dirty water, then they also have the dolphin strapped to a helmet that forbids it from seeing. So we have a blind dolphin who can’t swim because the good guys need to use him? Peta would have a field day with these guys! Which brings me to another point about the film, at times it feels like the good guys aren’t really all that good, take Johnny for example, sure he’s carrying the cure on his noggin, but does he really have to stop and rant about wanting “room service and 10,000 dollars a night whores”? I guess the point is that Johnny has to learn that it’s not just about him anymore, that he has to learn to do things for others, but damn does he come off as self centered. Then we got the leader of the rebels played by Ice-T, and well, his performance isn’t much of a stretch considering how he played basically the same character in Tank Girl (1995). The most over the top performance has to be Dolph Lundgren as the crazy preacher. He is really crazy, managing to fuse Jesus with the psychotic. He carries a crucifix around that could double as Rambo’s knife! He also spews hilarious one liners like “It’s Jesus Time!” A funny performance and certainly not what you’d expect from Dolph Lundgren.  

And now a word about the computer graphics on this show. There’s this moment in which Johnny enters cyberspace and we see him controlling his journey from the real world (sounds like The Matrix don’t it?), well, the graphics in those scenes are interesting, but unfortunately by today’s standards look outdated, they do their job of telling a story, but feel truly ancient, kind of like the computer generated imagery in Lawnmower Man (1992). They might have been “dazzling!” in their day, but now these graphics seem like child play, still, this didn’t stop my enjoyment of the film. One has to expect fx to outdate, I mean, time passes after all. Final words on Johnny Mnemonic is that it’s a cool little movie, not a masterpiece but at least it has its cool visuals and that delicious cyberpunk feel that I wish Hollywood would exploit just a bit more. In my opinion, there aren’t enough cyberpunk films out there. I can’t comment on how faithful the film is to the short story, but at least we know the film was written by William Gibson himself; if it fails it’s by Johnny Mnemonics creator’s own fault! Then again, this was one of those films that the studio took from the filmmakers and re-edited to their liking, so this might have something to do with certain inconsistencies. But whatever, faithful to the story or not, I think Johnny Mnemonic has a couple of cool things going for it that makes it worth a re-watch. Also, if you ask me, the film remains a seminal work of cyberpunk cinema, that’s gotta count for something.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

Melancholia (2011)

Title: Melancholia (2011)

Director: Lars Von Trier

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, John Hurt, Alexander Skarsgard, Stellan Skarsgard, Udo Kier

Review:

Director Lars Von Trier’s films always have this acid, depressive, sad outlook on life. Ever seen Antichrist (2009)? If you haven’t seen it yet, let me tell you, it’s an overdose of sadness and despair. I mean look at Von Trier’s latest film: Melancholia; the title says it all actually. The word melancholia refers to a form of abnormal sadness, sadness so deep that it can become a form of insanity. And Melancholia is just that; two hours of pure unadulterated sadness, and that’s fine by me because when you really stop to think about it, how sad is life on this planet? How truly sad are the conditions under which our society lives in? I mean, yes, many things can cause us happiness, many moments can bring us joy, but when we look at the big picture, when we look at how the world is being run, it is a sad, depressive state of affairs.

In Melancholia we meet two sisters: Justine and Claire. Justine has just gotten married and she is on her way to her wedding reception. On the surface, she seems happy, the way every bride should be. At first it seems that nothing can destroy the happiness between the happy couple. But as the evening progresses, it becomes quite evident that Justine isn’t happy at all, in fact she is the opposite, depressed beyond belief. Will she be able to go through with this night? With the responsibilities expected of her after marriage? What is really bringing Justine down so much? Claire, Justine’s older sister is trying to keep Justine’s emotions under control, but it seems nothing can control Justine’s gloom and doom. At the same time, a giant planet called Melancholia is headed straight towards us, and apparently will completely obliterate Planet Earth. Will Melancholia destroy us, or will it pass us by?

So yeah, I was blown away by this movie, yeah its constant sadness can be a bit overwhelming at times, but I have to admit there’s a meaning behind the sadness, a reason for it. And when we analyze the root of the sadness, it is completely merited. Let’s see, greed is swallowing humanity whole, children die of hunger every day. There is such a thing as child slavery in our modern world. Most of us think we aren’t slaves, that slavery is something of the past, but is it? The masses are being lied to, and really, when we get down to it, how much of what we hold to be true, really isn’t? How many people live under the assumption that everything they’ve been taught is true, when in fact it isn’t? How unfair and selfish are governments? How selfish are the rich and powerful? How much more could humanity be doing to improve life on this planet so that everyone can be happy? Why must one class rule over the other? Why can’t we all just live happily in this world? Why do we give such importance to trivial things that don’t really matter? How sad is it that we are being programmed to consume by the media? How much of what we see and read on the news is a lie? I mean…so many things can make it sad to live on this planet. The ideas that this film transmits are very true, in general, things on this planet can make anyone extremely sad. Melancholia really explores the idea that when we “wake up”, that when we get to know how this world is really being run, when we truly open our eyes and see how things really are, the truth of it all can make you bitter and sad.

This film sends a big “fuck you” to all the bullshit; and excuse my French, but this is exactly what the film does. This is exactly what Von Trier is saying. The film does this by using marriage as a starting point to analyze humanity and the things we choose to give importance to. In the film, during Justine’s wedding reception, when everyone has to say something nice to the Bride and Groom, Justine’s mother stands up and says “I don’t believe in marriage, so enjoy it while it lasts, which won’t be long”, which is a brutally honest comment on marriage. Why do you need to sign a piece of paper to be in love with someone? Do you really need to go through this whole legal process to bind your life to another especially when it’s supposed to be “forever”? I’ve always thought marriage can be a huge farce because most of the time, five years later, people can’t stand each other. I've always thought that life is so mutable, so ever changing that committing to something "forever" is really saying a lie. Most of the time what happens is that couples get bored with each other. So then they have kids and complicate the inevitable break up that will come anyways. I’ve recorded a couple of weddings (something I do on the side) and every time they get to the part where they promise themselves forever, I think “yeah right”. I mean, yeah it’s a beautiful thought to be able to live through life with the same person forever, and kudos to those who achieve it and are truly happy, but it’s almost a fairy tale like idea, and fairytales are far from reality. The reality is that most couples will end up getting divorced in less than five years. And what about all the rituals you go through during the actual marriage? At one point, Justine’s mother gets away from the reception and when someone tries to find her she tells them to “fuck off with your stupid traditions!” What the film is trying to say is that it’s all insignificant and pointless when we take in consideration the issues that should really matter in life; the bigger issues that we should all be aiming to improve on collectively, instead of worrying about old traditions and trivial things that really don’t matter in the end.

The question the film asks is, would it matter if humanity was suddenly obliterated from existence? Doesn’t humanities evil warrant its destruction? I’m a realist when it comes to things of this nature. I know how evil man can be. I know how evil man is being right now as I type this, but I choose to be hopeful. I choose to be of the ones who holds on to the idea that humanity will one day get past all these age old hang ups and mature. That one day, after all these lessons we’ve learned through the ages, that we will all want the best for all of us. That greed will one day dissipate, that we will find a way for all of us to be happy on this huge spaceship called earth. Wishful thinking? I hope not, because if these ideas are all just wishful thinking, if humanity will stay stuck in a never ending circle of evil, then I will have to be just as sad and melancholic as Kirsten Dunst’s character on this film. Her sadness reaches such lengths that she cant even move her legs to walk, it is so powerful that even her favorite food tastes bad. Her sadness totally engulfs her; melancholic is the perfect way to describe her. Justine, her sister, is the opposite. She tries to see everything in a positive way. She tries to help her sister, aiding her through her despair. I thought it was interesting how both sisters represented different ways of seeing the world. Justine sees things for what they are, and Claire represents the more idealistic way of looking at things, which isn’t always the most realistic way of seeing things.

The cast is a superb one; I was amazed at how much talent was up there on the screen. Kirsten Dunst looks absolutely stunning on this film. I think most guys out there will agree after seeing this film that Kirsten Dunst has one of the most amazing bodies in Hollywood, a true beauty. Her performance bares all, it is a very vulnerable and sincere performance, I loved it. Deep down inside she hates humanity and everything it has come to represent. She feels a greater connection with the universe, which she loves to gaze at, and nature. At one point she simply chooses to sit naked in the middle of the forest and look at the stars. The symbolisms being that she wants to disconnect from everything and just be totally free. Charlote Gainsbourg, who can now be considered a Von Trier regular (she also starred in Von Trier’s Antichrist) plays the idealist, the polar opposite of Justine. In many ways, she’s the kind of person who wants to turn a blind eye to the way things really are and chooses to see things in an idealistic, albeit unrealistic way. Though the are sisters and care for each other, they are really very different people. Kiefer Sutherland also plays the idealist. I was glad to see him in a film that is actually good; and not in crap like Mirrors (2008). John Hurt plays Justine’s father, a playful and happy man who laughs at life and enjoys not taking things too seriously, which I felt a connection with. Udo Kier made me laugh as the wedding planner, a small role, yet Kier is one of the few “funny” things about the film. All in all, an amazing cast.    

      

Some might find this film to be a bit difficult to sit through because of its constant sadness, but hey, what can you expect from a film called Melancholia or for that matter,  a film from director Lars Von Trier? True, the film is filled with gloom and doom, but Von Trier balances it all out with gorgeous visuals, beautiful cinematography and settings. I also enjoyed the fact that even though this is a film about “the end of the world” so to speak, it focuses on a more personal story. If this film had been directed by say Michael Bay, it would have been all about meteorites destroying buildings and cars exploding and chaos on the city streets, but on Von Trier’s hands, this film is about a rich family who lives in an isolated mansion, far away from the masses. The last moments of this film are truly gripping, and the film has one of the best endings I’ve ever seen on any movie, truly gripping. You’ll feel that you got front row sits to the end of the world! Kudos to Von Trier, that ending left me gasping. This film would have certainly been on my “Best of 2011” list had I seen it when I wrote the list, but alas, I saw it after. Still, just make believe I put it on there because it truly was one of the best of the year. 

Rating: 5 out of 5

My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done? (2010)

Title: My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done (2009)

Director: Werner Herzog

Cast: Michael Shannon, Willem Defoe, Brad Dourif, Chloe Sevigny, Grace Zabriskie, Udo Kier

Review:

“Produced by David Lynch, Directed by Werner Herzog” where the only words I needed to read from the box at the video store. I immediately snatched this movie up, I knew I was up for something weird, bizarre, artistic. After all, these two legendary directors have always specialized in the strange and unusual through out their whole cinematic careers. So I immediately knew I was in for something interesting.

My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done is the story of Brad; a man who is near the brink of completely loosing it. And by loosing it I mean going absolutely bonkers. This guy isn’t ‘loosing it’ in the allegorical sense of the world. Nope, this guy is really going crazy! Brad is the quintessential underachiever; both he and his girlfriend are living with his mother, with no plans of moving out any time soon. His mother is driving him crazy. She’s the kind of mother who still treats her full grown son like a 12 year old. In an attempt to find some meaning to his life, Brad enlists in a drama class. Unfortunately, drama class only fuels his hatred for everything, and gives him ideas on how to go about murdering his own mother. Based on a real life story!

The Man, the myth, the legend, Werner Herzog

“Sometimes truth is stranger then fiction” this is a phrase that can aptly be used to describe the films of director Werner Herzog. Herzog has always been a director who enjoys blurring the lines between reality and fiction in his films. He looks for real life stories that are amazing, and then turns them into a film or a documentary. Or both. This was the case with the story of Dieter Dengler, a man who survived the horrors of war and lived to tell the tale. Herzog found the story so interesting that he made a documentary about it called Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997). Years later, Herzog made the film version of that story called Red Dawn (2006) starring Steve Zahn and Christian Bale. But his documentaries aren’t entirely reality; they always have something of fiction in them in a way. Sometimes he uses visuals in his documentaries to manipulate the audiences’ perceptions of what they are seeing. And the same can be said of his films, sometimes they are based on real life stories, but they don’t stick one hundred percent to the real story that they are based on. This blurring of the lines between reality and fiction continues yet again with My Son, My Son, a film which according to Herzog himself is 70 percent false or loosely made up. So we are not getting the story behind Mark Yavorsky’s dementia 100%. It’s a film loosely based on his life.

Mark Yovorsky is a man who murdered his own mother with a sword, he did time in jail for his crime, and now he is out. The writer of this film Herbert Golder had been interested in developing this story into a feature film for many years, interviewing Yovorsky, gathering information and finally, contacting Herzog himself so he could direct the film. Herzog agreed to make the film and at one point decided to visit Yavorsky’s trailer home, just so he could get a more realistic background for the character. Funny thing is that even though Herzog is known for making films filled with weird characters and situations, he was actually freaked out by the real life Yavorsky! He walked into the guys trailer home, and immediately decided to leave, he said to himself that being there just didn’t feel right. The guy freaked Herzog out, that’s how you know the guy has got to be crazy as hell! I mean, if you freak Herzog out, you know there’s something wrong with ya.

So anyhow, in the film, Mark Yavorsky is played by Michael Shannon who seems to be the current go to guy if you want a nutcase in your movie. Check out his performance in Revolutionary Road (2008) to see what I mean. But his performance on My Son, My Son is his most demented yet. He plays a guy who is really disconnected from society; an outcast. Brad is the kind of guy who hates everything he sees in the world, and therefore is always angry or upset. He goes into sudden bursts of anger and violence. He is preoccupied with the existence of god and with religion. He is definitely portrayed as a character whose mind has been distorted and corroded by Christianity. His questioning of reality, and god and the meaning of it all, has driven him to insanity. Shannon does a memorable performance, makes one think of those demented performances that Klaus Kinski used to do for Herzog. One has to wonder how Klaus Kinski would have played this role had he been alive and in his prime.

The definition of a disfunctional family

But Michael Shannon is no stranger to Herzog’s brand of bizarre cinema; he had worked previously with Herzog on Bad Lieutent: Port of Call New Orleans (2009). He isn’t the only Herzog regular on My Son, My Son. This film is filled with many Herzog and Lynch regulars. We have Brad Dourif (who has collaborated with Herzog on three occasions) playing Brads demented homophobic uncle. Dourif’s character lets us see just why Brad is so crazy, I mean with family members like these, who wouldn’t go nuts? The same can be said for Grace Zabriskie who plays Brad’s mom. She freaked me out in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990) and Inland Empire (2006) her effect on this movie is pretty much the same. She still freaks me the hell out! The film is filled with a who’s who of eccentric character actors. Lot’s of odd looking faces. Both Lynch and Herzog enjoy using actors with odd features, which is why we get so many of them on this film. They united forces and gathered strange looking individuals from both of their usual gang of actors. As a result we get Willem Defoe (who’d collaborated with Lynch on Wild at Heart) and Chloe Sevigny, who is no stranger to bizarre cinema. Don’t believe me check her out in Gummo (1997). It’s no surprise she is known as the “queen of independent cinema”. We even have Udo Kier on this movie!

I have always liked Herzog’s attitude towards filmmaking. He doesn’t seem to believe in huge budgets and big stars. Actually, part of Lynch’s and Herzog’s attitude with this project was to make a “return to essential filmmaking”. Filmmaking that focuses on story, performances, and on saying something. Not on how big a budget is, or what big Hollywood star is in it. Both directors aimed to work with a low budget while still producing a high quality film. And I have to say they achieved it. Herzog has never been a director one would associate with horror films, I mean, the closest he ever got to that was when he made his Nosferatu (1979) remake. But with My son, My son, Herzog has made what he calls himself “a horror film without the gore, the chainsaws or the gore” and here comes the good part: “but with a strange anonymous fear creeping up on you” Amen to that Herzog! Amen to that!

Rating: 4 out of 5