31 Horrors: Hardware (#22)

Wherein I attempt to watch 31 horror films over the course of October. 31 horror films that I have never seen before, from obscure to acclaimed classics. We'll see how well I go in actually finding the time to watch and then write about them in some way.

Well this was insane and I loved it.

It's hardly surprising to discover that Richard Stanley's 1990 sci-fi/horror action flick received a poor critical reception upon its release. It's a tough film to pin down, seemingly a pastiche of so many different films that it's hard to keep count - post screening my friends and I labelled Blade Runner, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, The Terminator, Alien, Short Circuit, Rear Window, Total Recall, Vertigo, and several more as obvious influences - and yet one that, despite it's mad sloppy screenplay, proved to be an intoxicating winner. It's an exhausting hoot of a film that shows flutters of such astonishing technical finesse that I couldn't help but admire its chutzpah even when it was flapping about like a fish out of water. I loved this movie, perhaps against my better judgement.

Set primarily in one of those futuristic dystopian cities that became so popular in the aftermath of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner where the skies bleed red from nuclear radiation and the cityscapes are dark masses dotted with neon and fluorescent. Hardware begins with the emergence of Dylan McDermott's Moses out of the desert where he has been scavenging for spare parts. Taking some mysterious, but uber-cool, electronics home to his girlfriend who uses these type of foreign objects in her industrial artworks. They live in a world riddled with dirty violence and people are lining up for voluntary sterilisation to reduce population growth. Naturally, the machine from the desert wakes up from its robotic sleep and begins to wreak havoc in exceedingly violent and explosive ways.

I'd never actually heard of this movie before I saw it on a Halloween night double bill with, what else, Halloween at the Astor Theatre. It shares nothing in common with that 1978 classic, so it was a double bill in horror goodness only, but I'm glad I got the chance to see it and to do so on a big screen. The astonishing editing and production design is best experienced on a cinema screen where they merge to form a dizzying collaboration. As the film continues to go higher and higher with its batshit craziness - culminating perhaps in a truly confounding, eye-popping sequence that takes a bit of visual influence from 2001 and Vertigo - I was continued to grow fonder and fonder. Richard Stanley, working from a screenplay (an admittedly odd, muddy one) by Stanley, Steve MacManus, and Kevin O'Neill, never lets up and isn't afraid to go to some truly unexpected places. The gore, too, which rears its head in the final act is certainly a bright and red in a gleeful fashion.

As a visual feast, it ranks alongside Blade Runner, Dark City and The Matrix as dying worlds on life support. It's visually stunning. The claustrophobic one-set nature is obviously derived from Alien, but Stanley is still able to do some interesting, fresh things with it. I admired the performance of Stacey Travis, more the star of the film than McDermott, and found she was able to make the preposterous sequences glisten with genuine emotion, not to mention blood, sweat and tears. Even when it descends into a grotesque Real Window moment of voyeuristic perversion, she keeps the film from spinning off of its axis, something that Stanley clearly had no interest in.

This hallucinogenic, post-apocalyptic, weird, crazy horror extravaganza was a real treat. Evil robots are always fun, but I don't recall seeing anything this flat out bonkers. A movie without blinkers on in its wide-eyed technology-is-evil-yo attitude and that has the balls to really go to some odd places. I loved it! And who can resist a movie in which Iggy Pop features as a radio DJ? A-

Weirdly Weird

This morning I read a nicely put piece on the issue of "weird for weirdness' sake" that argues people who make such complains about certain films are using a film's very unique quality as a scapegoat for their inability to like a film. I've seen films that are weird and liked them, and I've seen films that are weird and disliked them, but while I can sometimes understand a person's misgivings over a film due to some impenetrable oddness, I also don't think it's a filmmaker's responsibility to be coherent when they're not working in a familiar wheelhouse. Personally, I think to say a film by David Lynch is "weird for weirdness' sake" is to, quite frankly, not be paying any attention whatsoever, but I can certainly see where somebody could find his variety of weird cinema unpalatable. There's a big difference between personally not liking it and thinking the director has nothing to say. This all ties nicely together with a double feature that I attended this last past week of Alejandro Jodorowsky films at The Astor Theatre.

I'd never seen any of this famed Mexican director's work before, so the chance to his two most famous titles together on the big screen in 35mm prints was one I wasn't going to pass up (it meant skipping the press screening of Jennifer Westfeldt's Friends with Kids that I'm not terribly upset about). I had heard much about Jodorowsky's famed 1970 cult breakthrough, El Topo, but I know now that one can never know what to expect. If I see any of this man's other work I certainly won't make the mistake of thinking I know what I'm getting myself in for It's history as one of the original "midnight movies" was a definite lure, and in that regard I am certainly glad I got the chance to see it (one can't have an opinion on a film without actually see it, no matter what the internet tells us these days), but I can't say I enjoyed the film too much. Yes, it's quite strange, but it's strangeness isn't particularly interesting or portrayed in any visually arresting manner. The film's second half, with its exploitation of disfigured incest victims featuring quite prominently alongside its heavy religious iconography, proved to be a further tedious excursion into a rather uninteresting world that Jodorowsky had crafted. I'm sure Jodorowsky was going for something, but what that something was remains a mystery to me, hidden by laboured storytelling and an excessive run time.

Technically there's skill there, no doubt. I found particular fascination within the soundtrack that Jodorowsky constantly fills with noise despite the barren landscapes. Whether its an army of clucking chickens, gusty winds, mulling goats and the like, the speakers are certainly working overtime when other aspects are not. I got a kick out of the costume design by Jodorowsky himself that I could see had influenced the likes of Tarsem Singh's The Fall. Sadly, I found the film just never went anywhere potent enough to justify its crude stylistic flourishes and disturbing imagery.


The second feature, The Holy Mountain, on the other hand, was an entirely different experience. Dealing with a lot of the same issues as El Topo with its frequently confronting religious imagery and weird segues, I was instantly taken by it unlike its predecessor. The Holy Mountain was, I was surprised to discover, the next feature of Jodorowsky's career. A surprise because it feels like a rapid maturation and major advancement over the sloppy El Topo, but also because it proved that it wasn't just my distinct lack of pharmaceutical aid during the screening of El Topo that made me not enjoy it. The Holy Mountain is an awe-inspiring step for Jodorowsky and one that left me in a constant state of slack-jawed admiration. With its clean, assured direction, phenomenal art direction (truly some of the best I have ever seen), absurd imagery, bonkers descent into comedic oddity, and endlessly fascinating mythology I was entranced by The Holy Mountain.


I was disturbed, as one should be, by the very real animal cruelty as well as the questionable prepubescent child nudity and irksome representation of gay figures (all of which were also found within El Topo, and I suspect his later works, too), but at least this third feature of his came accompanied with such a strong, stylistic vision that I found it less troublesome. For the first hour, certainly, I just couldn't keep my eyes off of the screen as Jodorowsky threw dazzling image after dazzling image at me. From the opening scene of a robed man performing a religious act upon two women in a sterile white and black room I was hooked. I don't really know what any of it means, but I was fascinated nonetheless. Pockets of people amongst the audience were chuckling away at the odd imagery - the toad city for instance - but I mostly sat there with my serious face on, soaking it all in. This was powerful stuff and I was determined to not let Jodorowsky's obvious nods to El Topo's pot-headed legacy get in the way. Of course, by the time one character started humping a mountainside, followed by what can only be described as "tiger tits", something in my brain snapped. I ended up cackling for several minutes straight and then at frequent intervals thereafter until the ending. Oh, that ending? Yeah. Wow. I can't even, ya know? I don't even want to know what the director was smoking when he planned out The Holy Mountain. Something dangerous, no doubt. It's of little surprise that John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped finance the picture, also.


These two films seem like excellent mirrors to any debate about "weird for weirdness' sake". Both are weird, sure, but I found only The Holy Mountain did it in the context of a film with the gravity and the scope to give the impression of having a deeper meaning. In contrast, El Topo felt like little more than shenanigans. Even if I didn't entirely get what it was all about, it's a film of truly epic visual power - visuals that took my breath away - and one that really can't imagine experiencing on a small screen. Thank god The Astor Theatre (once again), hey?

Review: American Graffiti & Two-Lane Blacktop

American Graffiti
dir. George Lucas
Year: 1973
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 112mins

Two-Lane Blacktop
dir. Monte Hellman
Year: 1971
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 102mins

Having only THX 1138 to his directorial credit, George Lucas’ second film was a radical departure from that science fiction thriller, not to mention the Star Wars franchise that would consume the rest of his filmmaking career thereafter. American Graffiti is a groundbreaking comedy from 1973 that sees Lucas putting the focus on his own childhood of the early 1960s. Lucas’ iconic movie would go on to become a box office blockbuster that would define the independent film movement for decades to come.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
This review originally went up at the end of last week in time for the week-long season of American Graffiti and Two-Lane Blacktop at The Astor Theatre. Alas, Trespass Magazine went away for a few days for a makeover. They're back now, but this glorious double feature is only screening for two more days so if you're in Melbourne do check it!