Death Falls Lightly (1972)

People love anti-heroes (the archetype, not necessarily the band).  People love regular heroes.  People love superheroes.  But the antihero, at least from my perspective, seems to top most people’s lists.  Folks complain that these protagonists in cinema are often unlikable.  I believe this is a specious criticism.  I believe that what people actually mean when they say this is that they find the characters uncompelling, and since they do things which are immoral, illegal, whatever, they are therefore “unlikable.”  Thing is, anti-heroes are supposed to be unlikable.  Snake Plissken in Escape from New York is not a nice, personable guy.  Leon from The Professional is a hired killer.  Tony Montana in Scarface is a drug dealer and a murderer.  Nevertheless, audiences want to follow what happens to them and even (wrongheadedly) model their lifestyles after them.  In part, this is because the lives of anti-heroes are abnormal to our own experiences.  They are heightened beyond humanity, they are calm under pressure, they are (sometimes) more glamorous than our everyday mundanity.  They are fantasies of how cool we wish we were.  This is despite the very clear drawbacks of their lives (getting shot at, murdered, etcetera).  

The other part, and I think the more important part, is that there is something about them that we do connect to.  This may not be a redemptive value (like Leon’s rule of no women, no kids and his caring for a child in peril), but it has to be a human value.  We get the ultimate emptiness of Montana’s naked ambition, and we sympathize for this man because he got what he wanted but not what he needed.  The best anti-heroes are flawed (often deeply), but there is something of ourselves that we discern in them, an honesty, no matter how oblique.  This is why we want to follow Giorgio (Stelio Candelli) in Leopoldo Savona’s Death Falls Lightly (aka La Morte Scende Leggera).  He’s a drug trafficker, but he’s also unjustly persecuted (or thinks he will be, not unreasonably), and this is something most people have felt at one time or another (just maybe not for homicide).

Returning from Milan, our protagonist discovers his wife murdered.  Exploiting his political connections, he and his girlfriend Liz (Patrizia Viotti, a beauty who died far too young) are whisked off to a purportedly empty hotel while his friends concoct an alibi for him.  Things take a turn for the weird when the couple’s isolation really kicks in.

Savona’s film depicts a cynical world.  Giorgio thinks nothing of the life he leads.  He thinks nothing of cheating on his wife (despite his later declaration that he was divorcing her), stating that, “Marriage is a mistake,” as if that applies to all marriages.  He drags Liz along with him, not because he craves her specific companionship (he does say he loves her, and maybe he even means it), but so that he has someone to fuck when he gets bored.  His friends aren’t friends at all.  In fact, they don’t even like each other when Giorgio isn’t around.  They are people using each other for their own ends.  This is illustrated at several points in the film with voiceovers of the various characters’ thoughts, and all of them are essentially the same (everyone else is a son of a bitch and a degenerate, but not me, and I’ll fix them).  The drugs that Giorgio traffics in are used to fuel political careers so power can be attained and maintained.  They are vampires, draining the life’s blood of the people they pretend to serve (something limited to Italian politicians, surely).  Liz is the audience perspective character, outside of Giorgio and company’s world, but still willing to go along with all of it, thus conflating her with the rest of these people.  In a particularly telling sequence, she and Giorgio watch a porn film as they have sex.  While their lovemaking is passionate, it also feels empty, because it’s fueled by the prurience reflected off the movie screen rather than any feelings they should have for each other.  Even the police are disenchanted (likely from seeing the worst in people every single day), and they are not above manipulation of (assumedly) innocent people, even to the point that putting their lives in peril is okay, so long as the case gets solved (this is nothing new in Italian genre cinema).

Death Falls Lightly is different from many gialli, while keeping some of the things that define the genre.  It has a mystery killer, represented by POV camera shots (alas, no black gloves).  It has a lurid quality to it, mostly delivered by Viotti and her willingness to get naked.  It has a few final twists which are both ridiculous and satisfying.  But, at its heart, the film is an Old Dark House story filled with bizarre scenarios.  The hotel is a large, empty space.  The dining room looks like it was abandoned mid-celebration rather than shut down.  The place houses the ghosts of better times sent crashing and burning down to Earth.  Giorgio and Liz are shut in, not allowed to even open a window and look outside.  Thus, they have to deal with each other in a more intimate way than they likely have before (see Giorgio’s distaste for marriage and its implications).  Rather than coming together spiritually, the vacuity of the hotel only exacerbates the couple’s frictions.  Enter the “spectres.”  It seems the hotel is not so empty as Giorgio was led to believe, as evidenced by the appearance of the Owner (Antonio Anelli).  He has killed his wife so he can be with his mistress Marisa (Rosella Bergamonti).  Sound familiar?  Immediately, the Owner enlists Giorgio in removing and burying her body, and this he does without putting up much fuss.  This leads to the appearance of the owner’s daughter Adele (Veronika Korosec) and some strange encounters, like when she takes a bubble bath while a monkey swings around a portable clothes rack, or when she stabs herself (or does she?) as a part of some arcane ceremony.  What happens after these folks show up is a swift descent into Hell and insanity for Giorgio.  This is also the point in the film where Savona ratchets up the psychedelic trappings, with all manner of odd angles, handheld shots, jump cuts, and so forth.  Giorgio is never certain of what he’s seeing or how to act in response, but he always finds himself going along (just like the viewer).  These scenarios are manifestations of his life and situation (directly and indirectly), and by forcing Giorgio to confront these things, he is forced to confront himself.  This isn’t to say that the resolution he comes to is positive, but it is, ironically, more honest than the world in which he had been living.

MVT:  The fever dream/experimental elements are macabre and intriguing.

Make or Break:   The arrival of the Owner takes a tense, freak out situation and spins it into surreality.

Score:  6.75/10

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)

Way down in the lower depths of Jailhouse 41 (it’s not actually called that in the movie), the eponymous Scorpion (aka Matsu, played by Meiko Kaji) lies chained, subject to the sadistic whims of the cycloptic warden Gorda (Fumio Watanabe).  After enduring humiliations from both guards and fellow inmates alike, Matsu and six other prisoners make good their escape.  But their flight to freedom will prove more harrowing than their stay in the penitentiary.

Meiko Kaji is one of those cultural icons revered more for their looks (i.e. the act of looking, not their physical traits, though she is also a striking beauty) than any thespian skills.  This isn’t to say she can’t act, but from what I’ve see, she’s rarely called upon to do more than clench her jaw and glare.  And she does both spectacularly well.  Here in Shunya Ito’s Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (the second entry in this influential series), the entirety of her performance is physical.  She doesn’t speak at all until near the film’s end, and then it’s only two lines of dialogue.  Nonetheless, we know exactly what’s going on in her head at all times (it helps a bit that this generally boils down to three emotions: hatred, suspicion, and pity).  This is Matsu’s strength.  She doesn’t mince words because there’s nothing left to be said.  The ultimate pragmatist, Matsu sees the world for what it is – a merciless, misogynistic shit hole – and deals with it in the same way that it has dealt with her.  All of this is reflected in her eyes.

Speaking of eyes and reflections, Jailhouse 41 is rife with them, and not only from Kaji.  Gorda’s dead, false eye attempts to consume and violate Matsu’s soul.  His eye, Matsu’s eyes, and Oba’s eyes (the contagonist or secondary antagonist, if you wish, played by Kayoko Shiraishi) all give off the same look throughout the film but with different meanings.  Matsu’s deadpan stare is a retreat into herself, a fortification against the external world, and a coiled trap waiting to be sprung.  Her fellow prisoners misread her limp inactivity as acquiescence and apathy, when, in fact, it is anything but.  Gorda’s eye is a metaphoric monster and the ugliness inside the male psyche, the male id unleashed.  He’s a lecher and a brute, not above using his status and his staff to destroy the women in his charge.  When first we meet him, he’s one year into his attempt to drive Matsu insane (it can be argued that he’s wasting his time, because she already is, in a sense).  The blacked-out lens of his glasses reveals for the audience the cruelty and alienation in the man, as we espy the horrors he subjects others to in it.  His false eye, when it’s finally popped out of his head, presents not just a victory but also a portal to an alternate reality, a looking glass world where the events of the narrative never took place (and if you think about it, this shot is similar to the first shots of the film which focus on Matsu’s eyes, and the entire film can be seen as a pure dream/nightmare sequence from her perspective).  Finally, Oba’s gaze is pure bestial fury (she’s even honest enough to admit this – “I know I’m a beast!”).  She hates everyone and everything, a nihilist preferring the solitude of her rage to what sisterhood she may form with the other escapees.  Everyone is an enemy, because they’re different from her, and she’s paranoid enough to believe that this matters (not without some reason).  This comes through crystal clear in her baleful gaze (often cast from under her eyebrows).  

These three viewpoints form a worldview of how these women (all seven of them, but, by extension, all women) are seen and treated.  In one of several fantasy sequences, the crimes of the escapees are described.  The women kneel, dressed in matching outfits (like their batik prison uniforms, this unifies them) before a field of blackness.  The camera glides past each as a narrator (in, I’m guessing here, Noh Theatre style) sings of their sins.  While they are all guilty of their individual crimes, it is stressed that all of these women were driven to commit them by men.  This tableau is presided over by an old woman.  She was found, alone and deranged and clutching a knife in a death grip, in an abandoned village.  She, too, has been cast off by the world of men, and it has destroyed her.  She is a portent of what will happen to all of the protagonists, but it’s Matsu who refuses to accept this fate.  Later, we see a reenactment of Oba’s crime.  In it, the local villagers surround her, net her, and beat her.  Oba transforms into each of the escapees, tormented by the people who put she and them in this position.  Again, it’s Matsu who stands up defiant, the ideal of feminine individuality in the film.

Jailhouse 41 is as gorgeous and carefully crafted as any film from Japan at this time (it does bear some stylistic clichés of the era, but they fit for the nightmare quality of the picture) while being as enthralling as any exploitation movie made.  For as sleazy as it is, however, the tone is grim.  This isn’t light fare, though it certainly has heightened moments.  Its exploitation elements are more condemnatory than titillating.  The film is designed to provoke some thought, not erections (or at least I found nothing sexy here).  What I did find was excellent filmmaking for any level of budget or genre constraints.

This will likely be the only film from the Arrow bluray box set that I review.  This is not because I don’t like the others in the series (they’re all fantastic in their own ways), but they do tend toward a certain formula (this one being the exception) which would make further reviews redundant.  Then again, who knows?  Maybe I’ll come back and want to dip my toes and pen in these waters somewhere down the road.  Anyway, the set is outstanding, packed with the usual quality supplements in which Arrow excels.  There has been talk about the color timing on these films, and I have to say that the level of blue in this film is noticeable, but I also feel that it adds to the atmosphere of the piece.  I also know that Arrow stated that this coloring is due to the level of restoration they performed on the original materials, so if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

MVT:  Ito displays a deft hand, stylishly and narratively.

Make or Break:  The scene where the prisoners are punished for an attempted riot proves their breaking point, and it may be the viewer’s, as well.

Score:  8/10 

Nothing but the Night (1972)

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

Adults use a lot of rather creepy threats to keep children in line.  “The boogeyman will get you.”  “You’ll shoot your eye out.”  “You’ll go blind if you keep that up.”  My grandmother used to say she’d put me outside for the gypsies if I didn’t behave.  True to her word, one night she did, in fact, lock me out of her house at night, and I was left to wait (for what felt like hours but was likely only a few minutes) in sheer terror for the gypsies to snatch me up.  I swore I could hear the clip-clop of their horses’ hooves (no doubt engulfed in the very flames of Hell) on the then-brick road leading to her place.  Needless to say, I was scared shitless but pretty well-behaved after that.  But what we also had in my area was the Kis-Lyn reform school for boys, and this was the place where the bad kids were left to fend for themselves from the other bad kids, according to popular gossip.  The mother of a friend of mine even packed his things in a suitcase and dropped him off at the doorstep of a different local boys’ home which he believed was Kis-Lyn to put the fear of God in him.  Even though the school had been closed for eight years by the time I was born, you would still hear the name bandied about as a form of punishment for some time.  It’s funny, most parents today wouldn’t dream of intimidating their children with some of the things with which we were coerced into good behavior.  But the impact was immediate and undeniable (at least in the short term).  The kids at the Inver House orphanage in Peter Sasdy’s Nothing but the Night (aka The Devil’s Undead aka Castle of the Living Dead aka Devil Night aka The Resurrection Syndicate) get the double whammy of being menaced not only with death but also with the far worse fate of becoming adults. 

On the Scottish island of Bala, various elderly people are murdered, all of whom are trustees of the Van Traylen Trust which funds the Inver House orphanage.  Colonel Bingham (Sir Christopher Lee) calls on acquaintance and pathologist Sir Mark Ashley (Peter Cushing) to help him investigate after a busload of children crashes with more trustees aboard.  One survivor, the young Mary Valley (Gwyneth Strong), holds the key to all the answers.

Nothing but the Night is a deceptively simple thriller with a rather dark underbelly.  The greatest and clearest piece of that seedy dark side is in how the children in the film are treated.  Kids in this film are little more than pawns.  For the trustees of the orphanage, they are vessels to be filled with their selfish venality.  For Mark and Bingham, they are clues to a deeper mystery.  Bingham even admits that the whole reason he wants the case is because a friend of his was involved; the deaths of the children on the bus are “incidental.”  Mark resents being pulled into the whole affair, only getting involved because he doesn’t like being put in his place by the hoi polloi.  For Dr. Haynes (Keith Barron), children are painful memories screaming to be dragged out into the light of day.  For reporter Joan Foster (Georgia Brown), they are a hot, tabloid-y story to be exploited and splashed across the front page.  For Anna Harb (Diana Dors, in full-on late stage Shelley Winters mode), her daughter Mary is a piece of property, her ownership of which is more important than the girl’s well-being, and this isn’t the only reason that Anna is a poor candidate for motherhood.  Never are the children really treated as individuals, Mary being the exception as she’s the sole clue to what’s going on.  Despite the protestations of the adults who claim to have the children’s best interests at heart, they are more intent on probing them to satisfy their own ends.  It’s a tragic statement on the callous abuse of children as things, and it’s all the more terrible in this instance, because the children are already considered castaways, unwanted by society, and therefore, prey.

In this vein, but to a lesser degree, are issues of identity and maturation.  The orphans are a collective.  We see them playing, and that’s about it.  Mary, as the focus of the narrative, is the exemplar for the film’s depiction of the aforementioned themes.  On the fateful bus ride, she is the cheerleader, conducting her fellow children in a variation of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”  She usually has the innocent exuberance we expect from a girl her age.  This is the genesis of the person she should grow to become; it should be a process.  Her “repressed memories,” then, are the loss of her childhood identity/individuality and the domination of a new identity, an adult one.  That these two actions are instantaneous and simultaneous is indicative of their nefariousness.  There is no development.  There is only the loss of childhood, and this absence is what produces monsters.  The juxtaposition of virtuous children with iniquitous adults and the unification of the two is where the film derives its horror.

The film’s tonal shift from giallo-esque thriller, a la What Have You Done to Solange? (sort of), to science fiction/horror film is rather jarring, even though the groundwork is laid out from the beginning.  Said groundwork, however, is cleverly disguised with a few guileful twists you probably won’t see coming because the filmmakers wisely don’t emphasize them.  Lee and Cushing get to play on the same side of the moral coin, much like in the superlative Horror Express, though Cushing infuses his character with just enough of his classic Baron Frankenstein portrayal to give yet another in a long, long list of fantastic, fully-realized performances.  The locales are all gloomy, casting a predetermined pall over the proceedings.  Sasdy (primarily a television director [most notably responsible for the 1972 production of Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape], though he directed a few films, such as Hammer Studio’s Taste the Blood of Dracula, one of the less traditional offerings in the series but no less worthy) brings a workmanlike sense of direction that grounds the film in a reality which is both straightforward and twisted.  Overall, the film is satisfying, and the aftermath is chilling, but I can’t help but think what could have been had Sasdy and company played the story straight.  I know I would like to have seen more entries in a franchise featuring Bingham and associates (this was the first and the last film produced by Lee’s Charlemagne Productions; it was adapted from a series of novels by John Blackburn, and the original plan was to produce more of them).  Especially if the dynamic lead duo from this one starred in them.  Alas…

MVT:  It’s Lee and Cushing all day long.  It usually is when they appear onscreen together, and this is no exception.

Make or Break:  The finale slaps all the pieces together, but I could see it not working for some people.  That, and that the reveal of a certain character’s fate made little sense to me, considering the timeline of the film.

Score:  6.5/10