THE BROOD
Dir. David Cronenberg CANADA 1979
I've been on a sporadic David Cronenberg kick for the last year or so. After seeing and loving Eastern Promises, I dove into his (significantly stranger) back-catalogue and haven't looked back. The Fly, Videodrome, eXistenZ and Rabid were all horrifying and thought-provoking to varying degrees, but something about The Brood missed that disturbing mark.
The plot concerns Frank Corveth, a man forced to raise his young daughter Candice by himself after her mother, Nola is committed to an experimental psychiatric institute run by Dr. Hal Raglan, who utilizes a technique called psychoplasmics to channel their mental anguish into treatable, physical manifestations (I know, right). While Nola's obsession with returning to Candice begins to intensify, Frank's life is systematically dismantled by a rash of violence and murder that seems to be focusing on him and his daughter.
Although this is the last Cronenberg film (of those I've seen) that I would recommend, I don't want to give away the ending, because it's still pretty wild. The film is extremely subdued when compared to the other films I mentioned, both in terms of body horror and violence, but the finale boasts one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen committed to film and is worth the wait if you're inclined to watch it. The 80 minutes preceding it however, are pretty spotty.
The Brood is probably most similar to Rabid, of all the Cronenberg stuff I've seen. Videodrome seems to be where he cemented his voice and style, and his early films, while still extremely interesting, come off as a the work of a talented amateur. Both Rabid and The Brood concern a young woman undergoing horrifying experiences at experimental medical facilities and both unwittingly unleash said horror on the outside world (specifically the men in their lives). But where Rabid follows the more exciting template of the zombie/vampire film, The Brood is more of a paranoid murder mystery, with a slow-burn plot and a more subtle tone of dread as opposed to outright horror. It's an interesting turn, but even at 90 minutes, the movies starts to drag a bit. Combined with the low-budget, late 70's set decoration, most of the film ends up feeling like a made-for-TV psychodrama. The acting is also pretty weak across the board, with the exception of Oliver Reed, who plays Dr. Raglan like a sinister, subdued William Shatner. Not a bad flick overall, but I'd only recommend it for Cronenberg completists.
TRIANGLE
Dir. Christopher Smith UK/AUSTRALIA 2009
Of the three films that I review here, this is the one I'd recommend the most, although it's going to be a short review. It's almost impossible to discuss the plot of this film at all without giving away some major curve balls, of which the film throws many. It's a horror film. Sort of. About a group of friends who go for a sailboat ride. Melissa George plays the lead. That's honestly all I feel comfortable saying. I will however, try to convince you to see it.
So I only heard of this film (it was never given a theatrical release in the US) thanks to the guys over at the Slashfilmcast, who spent about ten minutes of one episode raving about it but not actually saying what it was about. Naturally this piqued my interest. I convinced my roommates to watch it, even though they knew nothing about it other than it was a horror movie and we all enjoyed the hell out of it.
Triangle operates on a pretty familiar, yet unique wavelength. It features numerous tropes common to all horror movies, but manages to effectively turn them against the audience and create a film that will probably take two viewings to completely understand (assuming it can be fully understood) and will probably possess Memento-level rewatch value for those who enjoy narratively twisted horror films. The protagonist/antagonist relationship, the attrition of the cast and the straight-forward, goal-oriented plotting of single location horror films are all features present in Triangle, but all of them take on bizarre new dimensions, thanks to a story-telling technique that, while not wholly original in itself, is applied here in a scenario where it is quite unexpected.
This is the ultimate success of Triangle, I think. It presents itself as a film that shouldn't require much thought, but abruptly and deftly begins to make you crank your brain into overdrive at the end of the first act and doesn't let up until the final frames. It would be easy and not completely incorrect to call this film pretentious and ultimately incoherent (I'm sure you could tear the plot to pieces if you were so inclined), but ten years into the 21st century, it manages to be a gripping and effective horror movie without being disgustingly violent, overly self-referential/meta or broad and pandering. And that, my friends, is refreshing.
I'd never heard of Christopher Smith before seeing this film, although I'd been aware of his latest film The Black Death, with Sean Bean, and am now all the more interested in seeing it. He makes some interesting visual choices, given the genre he's working with (I don't think I've seen so much effective use of soft focus in a modern horror movie), and some of his shots are simply striking. And Melissa George, who was serviceable if not particularly inspiring in 30 Days Of Night (that's a good way to describe that whole movie actually), is extremely capable of playing the wide range of emotions and scenes required of her in this film. Her character, Jess, is given a surprising amount of depth for the blonde protagonist of a horror movie and George perfectly strikes the balance of beautiful vulnerability and raw brutality that is at the core of every female character in a horror film.
If you've got any interest in this film, I'd recommend that you read nothing else about it and check it out as soon as possible. I don't think it will disappoint.
THE LITTLE GIANT
Dir. Roy Del Ruth USA 1933
The Little Giant is one of at least 4 films Edward G. Robinson made that spoof the gangster persona that launched in to stardom in Little Caesar. A Slight Case Of Murder is the best of the ones I've seen so far, although Brother Orchid is solid as well (I have yet to check out Larceny, Inc.). Little Giant has a bit of workhorse quality to it (Roy Del Ruth directed James Cagney in Lady Killer, which I reviewed a few months ago, another enjoyable, if unremarkable gangster comedy), but it's more than worth the 75 minutes it takes to watch it, and does take a slightly different perspective on the very narrow "Edward G. Robinson playing a retired gangster trying to fit in with high society" genre. Seriously, he made at least 4 movies about that.
So Eddie G. plays Bugs Ahearn, a wealthy bootlegger who gets out of the business when Prohibition is repealed. Eager to put his ill-gotten gains to good use, he and his crotchety right hand man move to a fancy resort town in California and attempt to rub elbows with classy high society types. There he acquires a snarky Girl Friday secretary in the form of Mary Astor and falls in love with a callow socialite who is only trying to land him because her family is broke. Zaniness ensues.
As I said, despite being a highly specific formula, the film is formulaic nonetheless. However, it's still massively entertaining for a number of reasons, chief among them being Robinson himself. Perhaps the reason Robinson made these fish out of water comedies so often was due to the way he felt about his real life career. A highly educated European immigrant, Robinson ironically became famous for portraying uncouth toughs with delusions of grandeur. His real life passion for and knowledge of art lends an extra layer of amusement to a scene in which Bugs shows off a Cubist painting he spent many thousands of dollars on, claiming it's got "loads of perspective" and claiming, "I'm just crawlin' with education. I been reading all them Greeks. They do plenty besides shining shoes and running lunchrooms." in a bit of hilariously obscure racism. Robinson sells all of this with his usual pitch-perfect theatrical hand gestures and machine gun delivery. I could watch a whole movie of him just ranting about things.
The film also shines as an example of what you could get away with in the Pre-Code era (basically the years between 1929 and 1934, when films had sound but no organized system of regulating content, until the Hayes Code was instituted). The scene I quoted above also contains a joke about cocaine use (actually using the word cocaine), which is never even mentioned, let alone joked about in old films. Some one also gets called a faggot, which I didn't even know was an slur back in the '30s. Not that racism and bigotry are funny (only sometimes), but it's pretty wild to see what you could get away with back during that tiny window of time, and it gives the films a looser, more natural feel, rather than the stuffy, uptight tone that people now associated with older films.
Finally, although she has a pretty small part, the film is a nice showcase for Mary Astor, who always left me a little cold in The Maltese Falcon. Granted, her character in that film is a remorseless, manipulative bitch, but the fact that she played it so well always kind of made me dislike her. Unfair, I know. Here, she plays a clever, sympathetic wise-ass and displays some pretty great comedic timing as the straight (wo)man to Robinson's motor-mouth gangster. The film as a whole makes an interesting choice to breeze through the crime elements and focus most of its time on the absurdities of the upper class and anyone who would try to fit in that crowd, an unsurprising, but understandable viewpoint for a film made during the height of the Great Depression. After all, who doesn't like to laugh at their betters?
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