Spooky, Part Trois

As we, ever-so-slowly, make our way towards October's finale, I find myself wondering what the hell is taking so long. I can't recall a month ever dragging on like this. As I've stated many times before, I love October and the Halloween season, it's my favorite time of year. Except this year it's different. The build-up to the 2024 election has been a constant source of concern. While DJT is flipping fries (and his lid) at McDonald's, Kamala's people are trying to guilt me into donating more money to their campaign. Seriously, who do they think they're dealing with here? I am retired. I wasn't planning on spending my entire savings on a single election, although they wouldn't hesitate to take it if given the opportunity. Look, I get it. Losing this election is not an option. There is democracy and there is Donald Trump. That's it. In no known universe are those two things compatible. Think about it: Democracy or Donald Trump. The Dems need every penny they can get as the finish line looms just a few days from now but the increasingly aggressive tone of their texts and emails isn't motivating me to add to their coffers. Actually, we've done all we can at this point, anyway. The rest is up to the voters. There have been other distractions, too, primarily those involving doctors running tests. Many, many tests. Depending on what news the next two weeks bring, November may turn out to be even less congenial than October. Fasten your seatbelts.

I'm not sure how I first became aware that the 2013 movie, Army of Frankensteins, even existed. I feel fairly certain that someone I know back in my home state of Oklahoma must have brought it to my attention at one time or another. After all, it was filmed in Oklahoma, directed by an Oklahoman and featured Oklahoma actors. When I saw that it also has John Ferguson playing a mad scientist, I knew I had to watch it. The reason being that back in the 1960's, John Ferguson was better known to us kids as Count Gregore. Decked out in elegant vampire regalia, Count Gregore hosted Nightmare, which brought classic (and some not so classic) horror films to a local television station every Friday night at 10:30. I grew up with Count Gregore; he introduced me to Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and so many others that I can't begin to name them. If you want to blame someone for my fascination with horror movies, blame Count Gregore. He was funny, chilling and charming in a courtly sort of way. (More at the bottom of this page about Count Gregore because our paths did eventually cross much later at a posh Halloween party.)*

Even with all these Oklahoma connections, I started Army of Frankensteins with a sense of foreboding. Made on an extremely modest budget, the movie was only theatrically released in Japan before proceeding directly to video in the United States; the few critics who bothered seeing it were mostly brutal in their assessments. Still, I felt compelled to watch, if only to see John Ferguson one more time (I googled his name and, as of this writing, he's still alive at age 96). Certain I was going to witness an abomination I settled in fearing the worst. Against all odds, I ended up liking the movie. I guess when you go into a movie with zero expectations, surprises like that can happen. I'm not saying that it's a good movie. Except for a couple of performances, the acting is less than stellar (sorry, Mr. Ferguson), the Frankenstein monsters are badly conceptualized and the movie is about 30 minutes too long (it bogs down badly at the midpoint). But, it does have a certain clunky charm. The script is more often clever than not and offers some genuinely funny moments. Handsome Jordan Farris, the film's lead, is cast as Alan, a lovesick, recently sacked grocery store clerk, whose girlfriend seems not to be as dedicated to their relationship as he is. While taking a shortcut home through a dark alley, he is set upon by a couple of thugs, only to be rescued by a tough-talking kid in a hoodie. His young rescuer--Igor-- immediately incapacitates Alan and he wakes up in John Ferguson's creepy garage/laboratory. The mad doctor pulls out one of Alan's eyeballs to insert into his creation--the Frankenstein monster--who lays strapped to a nearby gurney. When Alan tries to lift himself off the floor, he grabs a lever that fractures the multiverse, transporting them all to the Civil War battlefields of 1865. To make matters worse, during the melee at the lab, the Frankenstein monster was inadvertently cloned dozens of times and now they're all stuck in time together. Alan, the kid, the doctor and the army of Frankensteins come to the attention of a group of Union soldiers and are quickly put to work battling the Confederates. This movie is a bit like Back to the Future meets Gettysburg meets Braindead. Eventually, even Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth show up. The over-the-top gore is played for laughs: in fact, most times the movie plays more like a comedy than horror/sci-fi. It helps that the movie is self-aware and never attempts to take itself too seriously. The fact that I actually enjoyed this movie probably says a lot about me, but I predict that, if enough viewers discover it, Army of Frankensteins could become a cult classic on the Midnight Movie Circuit. 

The Church (La Chiesa) is the second of Italian film director Michele Soavi's entries that I've watched this season (the other was Cemetery Man, mentioned in last week's post). This shocker centers around an enormous Gothic cathedral and the sinister goings-on within. As the frescoes undergo a restoration, certain supernatural entities are released after Evan, the church's new librarian (Tomas Arano), defies the orders of the cranky old bishop (Feodor Chaliapin) and descends into the building's ancient catacombs. Lisa, the artist in charge of the project (Barbara Cupisti), having followed him down into this creepy netherworld, discovers a decaying parchment which piques the pair's interest. Since they'll need to decipher its meaning, they quietly smuggle the document to Lisa's house where they decide to have sex. A bit of coitus interruptus occurs when, in the midst of the action, Evan has a brainstorm and leaps to have another peek at the document. Gadzooks, it contains the church's original architectural plans! Leaving Lisa high and dry, Evan hurries back to the catacombs and discovers a hidden crypt with a large cross in the floor, a mask-like protrusion buried in its center. Why, this protusion looks like a locking mechanism, he thinks. Why don't I just twist this clockwise and have a look-see? Evan doesn't realize that he's accidentally scratched himself during this bit of B&E, and that he's already infected with a demonic contagion. 

What we know (from the film's prologue), and Lisa and Evan don't, is that before the church was erected, there was a village on the site. Working on a hot tip that the villagers were devil-worshippers, the Knights Templar came riding in and slaughtered everyone there. After dumping the bodies in a hastily dug pit, the knights proceeded to fill it with dirt before placing a life-size crucifix over it. "You must now build a church over this unholy site," declares the Inquisitionist accompanying this posse. So, hundreds of years later, Evan and Lisa disturb the eternal rest of the dead peasants. The next day finds a group of schoolchildren and their teacher descending on the historic church, along with a couple of elderly tourists, a biker and his girlfriend, and the participants in a bridal fashion shoot that kindly young Father Gus (Hugh Quarshie) has reluctantly allowed inside the building. There's also the caretaker, his wife and their mischievous teenage daughter (Asia Argento). Since Evan has been fiddling around in the catacombs, he sets off a chain of events that causes a built-in mechanism to seal everyone inside. The degree of unpleasantness that follows cannot be overstated. Unlike Cemetery Man, The Church has no moments of comedy; it's pure horror all the way through. The ghosts, infectious agents and goat-headed fiends make mincemeat of pretty much the entire cast. While not as consistently gruesome as Cemetery Man, The Church's moments of carnage are explicit and disturbing. The performances here are all over the board--some good, some woeful--and whoever dubbed Barbara Cupisti's Lisa sounds like they have yet to hit puberty. The Church was beautifully filmed in the Matthias Church in Budapest with a mostly Italian cast and crew. Despite the uneven performances, a screenplay that doesn't always make sense and characters who disappear from the film with no explanation, The Church is intriguing and scary, perfect for a dark and stormy night. 

Less perfect for any kind of night is Hammer Films 1972 production of Countess Dracula. The countess is neither a relative of Vlad nor an actual vampire. No, she is a hideously ugly old crone who lives with her servants, and Cossack protector/wannabe lover, Captain Dobi, in your typical Hammer mountaintop castle. One day as she is casually knocking around one of her servant girls, she accidentally  discovers that the blood of young virgins will restore her long-lost youth. When Toth, a handsome, young Cossack, arrives for the reading of the late count's will, the egregiously evil countess is instantly smitten. Exit the servant girl. Believing the suddenly young and beautiful countess to be her daughter (the real daughter is locked up in a shed in the woods) the dashing, newly flush Toth begins a flirtation with the woman that momentarily comes to a screeching halt when she catches a reflection of her true self in a mirror. Hiding her face and fleeing from the room the countess instructs her lady-in-waiting to find her a fresh virgin ASAP so she can go riding with her paramour later in the day. Coincidentally, the circus has just come into town, which means: fresh meat! 

Meanwhile, Capt. Dobi, having caught on to the countess's little ruse, reluctantly agrees to help the lady-in-waiting drain the local blood supply. Bring on the dancing girls! As the countess and her young lover prepare to marry, she is chagrined to find herself deteriorating by the hour. What to do, what to do? Will the countess run out of virgins before she makes it down the aisle? The production values for this Hammer film are very good, except I think that castle has been used in every horror movie since Christopher Lee first assayed the role of Dracula in the 1950's. Most of the acting ranges from so-so to overwrought, but Nigel Green is actually quite good as the virile, middle-aged Cossack who is unaccountably in love with Ingrid Pitt's elderly countess. Nearly all the female characters, including Pitt, are decked out in costumes clearly meant to emphasize their bountiful bosoms: they look like they strolled over from a Russ Meyers film set. Loosely based on the story of 16th Century serial killer, Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary, Countess Dracula is a low to mid-tier Hammer outing that I'm pretty sure I won't be revisiting anytime soon.

We wind this week up with Der Samurai, a little known German horror film from 2014. Directed by Till Kleinert, Der Samurai marked his feature film debut and--possibly--his swan song as a filmmaker. I hope not because I really like this film. Set in a tiny German village in the middle of a heavily-forested nowhere, the movie features Michel Diercks as Jakob, a young cop tasked with maintaining law and order in a place where nothing much ever happens. Sure, there's a motorcycle gang who hang out in town but, aside from ridiculing Jakob, they don't seem to get up to much. For his part, Jakob keeps himself busy looking for lost pets and tracking a wolf who seems to be at large in the village. Anything to avoid having to interact with his bullying boss, the chief constable. After purchasing animal scraps from the local butcher, Jakob places them in a plastic bag and hangs them from a tree, hoping that he will be able to catch the wolf when it comes to feed. But, this wolf is far too wily for a novice policeman who is barely out of his teens and living with his grandmother. When a strange package arrives at the police station Jakob notices that there is a local address scribbled at the bottom and decides to deliver the bundle to its rightful owner. The house matching the address turns out to be an abandoned ruin on the outskirts of town. Abandoned the house may be, empty it is not. Inside, is Jakob's worst nightmare and guide to salvation. The Samurai (Pit Bukowski), a savage, cross-dressing, shapeshifter accepts the package and reveals its contents to be a katana, a curved sharp sword perfect for trimming overgrown gardens and lopping off heads. But there is something else between the two men, a connection that The Samurai instinctively senses and Jakob is only vaguely aware of. When Jakob tries to arrest the long-haired young man (in a sleeveless white frock) for trespassing, The Samurai grabs his sword and dashes out of the house. 

While Jakob and The Samurai play games of cat-and-mouse, trash cans are overturned, villagers (and a barking dog) are decapitated and Jakob's grandmother finds herself in peril when she, unwittingly, allows the stranger entry into her home. With Jakob in hot pursuit, The Samurai has plenty of opportunities to kill him but never does. Indeed, the pair seem to be participating in a dangerous dance that is both erotic, creepy and destined to leave one of them dead. As, one by one, the roadblocks to Jakob's happiness are removed, he finds himself coming closer and closer to embracing that which has eluded him during his lifetime in this mean, narrow-minded village.  

As with many of the other films I've discussed this Halloween season, Der Samurai has a surreal, dreamlike quality that causes the viewer to question how much is metaphoric and how much is straightforward. This tonal aspect beautifully enhances Jakob's journey of self-discovery, resulting in a remarkable release that caps off the movie in a way that seems almost joyful. At only 79 minutes, Der Samurai is a quick watch but one not easily forgotten. And for all that it was ignored upon its release, it has a 100% fresh score on the Rotten Tomatoes website. 

*The Halloween party mentioned above transpired in (or around) 1981 at 50 Penn Place, at that time Oklahoma City's premier shopping destination for the rich and socially connected. On one floor was a club called Pistachio's, which is where the event took place. Pistachio's was a bit above my paygrade but since I waited tables at The Magic Pan, located on the same floor, I managed to occasionally get free drinks. I was also friendly with one of the bartenders there so that didn't hurt. A college buddy and I happened to be at this Halloween party when in walked John Ferguson--Count Gregore--in full bloodsucking vesture, accompanied by two be-bosomed beauties wearing nothing but g-strings, high-heeled boots and black capes lined in red velvet. Oh, and fake fangs. Having had rather too much to drink, my pal and I descended upon the poor Count and his coterie, and spent the next half hour being gushing fanboys and probably annoying the hell out of the man. In spite of that, he was gracious and kind enough put up with us until, alas, we had to leave for another party.