The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954)

After a fossil of a previously unknown creature is discovered in South America, a team of archeologists journey deep into the Amazon to the mysterious Black Lagoon, hoping to find more pieces of the deceased species.

They soon realize that they are under surveillance by one of the fossil's living descendants... 

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Growing up, my mode of exercise was swimming - which is ironic because I am afraid of water. I had no problem with pools but I had an overactive imagination and with the monotony of laps, eventually my brain would start conjuring up all kinds of nastiness. It did not help that I swam in a place where it got dark fairly early and the pool was not that well-lit.

At primary school, they had a sale of old library books. I saw a book there about this movie and a friend bought it for me for a penny. It summarised the plots of all three Creature movies, with stills from the movie, and a making-off section at the back.

In this refracted way, the Creature found its way into my brain, and occasionally into that dimly lit pool I used to swim at.

While I have made my way through various kinds of horror films, I have not seen that many set underwater - I only watched Jaws for the first time about a year ago.

I have been wanting to check out more classic horror on the big screen, and I had a feeling eventually I would finally get to see the Gillman in the flesh. My local arthouse recently put on a selection of Universal’s classic Monster movies, and I booked in for Creature.

The last of Universal's classic monsters, Creature from the Black Lagoon is also an icon of the fifties trend of monster movies. It occupies an interesting place in the canon, because when it was released the characters the Creature is now associated with - Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man - were now fodder for parody in the Abbott and Costello films.

While it is set in the fifties, and draws on some contemporary technology, the bones of the story, with the creature’s tragic pursuit of a human woman, are closer to the pathos of Karloff’s  Monster, Chaney’s Wolfman and King Kong of decades past.

As far as the technical aspects go, Creature is really eye-catching. The movie was made for 3D, but I only noticed one or two moments that overtly played to that gimmick.

The underwater photography is really stellar - I found some of the shots and editing confusing, but these sequences really elevate the picture. When the creature first pops into frame, I jumped. It is also one of the moments which probably plays great in three dimensions.

I was really impressed by how well the Gillman moved underwater. Ricou Browning played him in the underwater scenes and there is a real sense of grace to the way he moves through the water, especially in contrast to the body language of the human divers he is attacking. 

For the sequences above the water, Ben Chapman played the Creature. I am guessing it is because Browning did not have the height to tower over the other cast members. On land, the Creature is still impressive (particularly the effect of making his throat pulsate in and out like it is trying to breath) but Chapman’s movements are more stiff and slow. 

At first, I was underwhelmed. Without the added element of water, it felt like I was watching a man awkwardly trying to walk around an environment he can barely see. The limitation actually ended up benefiting the movie - it gives the Creature a sense of vulnerability. In the water he moves with grace and speed; on land, he is lumbering and clumsy.

While most of the human players are somewhat stock, Julie Adams has some spark as Kay. Up until she becomes the object of the creature's affections, when she is reduced to a damsel in distress.

During the climax, the shot of Kay in the Creature’s lair is straight out of a pulp magazine cover - a prize for the Creature and the camera.

Watching this movie after Shape of Water, I was struck by how much of that movie is just taking the subtext of Creature and putting it on-screen, from the romance with the fish man to the portrayal of gender roles and the repression of fifties Americana. I have not gone back to watch that Best Picture winner, but after watching its main inspiration, I am keen to check it out.

Overall, I really enjoyed Creature, although I did miss the eccentricity and stylization of the earlier Universal horrors. Partially it is the time period, and the relative proximity to the enforcement of the Production Code. Watching Creature, there is a blandness and lack of specificity to the characters that made the movie feel a little remote, at first.

It also feels like the ur-text for a couple of conventions that other monster and horror movies would pick up - the POV shot in the first scene; the withholding of the Creature’s face during its stalking sequences. In a way, with the cardboard characters, isolated setting and barely-glimpsed antagonist, Creature comes across as a proto-slasher. Even the story structure of having most of the action take place in a tropical isolated location, with a woman in a bikini as an object of lust/death, feels like a foreshadowing of how the genre would develop. There were plans for a remake back in the Eighties, with names like John Landis and John Carpenter onboard, which probably would have seen that influence come full circle.

Enough rambling. It is a really good movie, and no it will not be haunting me when I next visit a swimming pool (however, I am curious in knowing what it felt like to swim in the suit).

 

Director Jack Arnold is a luminary of fifties sci-fi. Aside from Creature from the Black Lagoon (and its sequel), he also made The Incredible Shrinking Man, which is meant to be great. I am sure that I will get around to those movies in the future.

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933)

Scientist Griffin has dreams of being ranked with the greats of science. In order to achieve this goal, he has developed a solution that has rendered him invisible.

Determined to undo its effects, he has gone into exile to find a cure. What he does not realise is that one of the ingredients he used is driving him mad.

When his improvised lab is compromised by nosy village people, he declares war on the countryside.

Will the Invisible Man be cured? Or defeated?

There are some movies that deserve to be seen on the big screen. The Invisible Man is one of those movies that I have been looking forward to seeing, but I wanted to wait until I could see it on the big screen.

My local arthouse held a festival of classic Universal horror movies earlier this month, which gave me an opportunity to finally check it out.

Directed by James Whale following his work on 1931's Frankenstein, The Invisible Man is a delight.

In contrast to the gothic fairy tale of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man is more of a darkly humorous thriller, with plenty of screen time given to incidental characters (the villagers in Ipping and local bobbies) and Griffin's various escapades on his unsuspecting victims.

The filmmakers seem to recognise how cliche and dull the heroes are, and focus the action on Griffin’s rampage across the countryside. It is hard not to view the film as a farce, with scenes of Griffin befuddling a sleepy local policeman, or throwing money out into the street like an invisible Robin Hood. One of the highlights of my screening was the sequence in which a screaming woman is chased down a street by an empty pair of trousers singing nursery rhymes. My audience were roaring.

A lot of the film’s success is based on Claude Rains’ performance. Only glimpsed in the final moments, Rains’ voice is the only thing giving the viewer a sense of the character’s oscillating character, from a malicious prankster to megalomaniac. 

Released in the midst of the Great Depression, it was hard not to watch The Invisible Man through the prism of the current crisis. Griffin is motivated by hubris, but also a desire for economic advancement. He wants to be lauded as a great scientist, but his deranged talk of selling his invention for military use makes clear that he is more interested in profiting from his invention than its uses.

I did not even think about The Invisible Man of 2020, and I am struggling to think of ways to write about both of them. They just take the concept of an invisible man and spin it out into completely different works. The original is funnier and more eccentric, while the 2020 version boasts better characterisation.

One thought I had was the way the film frames Griffin’s abilities - in the original, his rampage feels like a dark power fantasy - there are lashings of horror amid the farce and black comedy, but the film balances both the threat the Invisible Man poses and the fantasy of being him. The 2020 iteration is more explicit in showing the consequences of this power fantasy.

The 1933 version of The Invisible Man is pretty short - it is basically the barest bones of the Welles story, and combined with the tone it is more of a breezy romp than the other Universal monster movies of the time (Bride is very funny, but packs more pathos in the Monster’s story).

Fast and fun, The Invisible Man is a great movie. Nothing much more to say than that.

NOIR WATCH 2020: Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945)

Shy, middle-aged Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) comes to the aid of a young woman, Kitty (Joan Bennett). Attracted to the young woman, he has a drink with her. When she deduces he is an artist, Christopher agrees.

Christopher returns home to his wife, who continues to browbeat him and compares him unfavourably to her deceased husband. 

Believing he is a rich painter Kitty and her boyfriend Johnnie (Dan Duryea) start to lean on him for money. Enraptured, Christopher steals from his job and from his wife to fund a new apartment where she lives.

It is a only matter of time before this house of cards falls in on all of them.

 

Though it features a man transfixed by a woman who draws him into crime, Scarlet Street is a great example of how conventions associated with noir are not fixed. It is a story about ordinary  people trapped by circumstance and impulse.

It is also an example of the influence of 30s French cinema on noir.The presence of Fritz Lang as the director is also notable, marking Scarlet Street as a meeting point of two of the genre’s biggest influences converging - the downbeat French dramas of the thirties and Lang, one of the key figures to come out of German cinema of the Weimar era.

While I have seen plenty of noir which focuses on familiar archetypes like the detective and the femme fatale, I always gravitate toward the movies about ordinary people who get in over their heads. 

While it does feature a great deal of manipulation, Scarlet Street is not principally concerned with a criminal scheme. It is about a small group of characters who are trying to escape their circumstance.

Cross is a schlub trapped in a loveless marriage, trapped by conventions and masculinities (with his dead predecessor’s portrait as a constant signifier of what he lacks). When he meets Kitty, he sees youth, beauty and (mistaken) support of his artistic pursuits.

While she shares some qualities with the fatale archetype, Joan Bennett’s Kitty is not a cliche. She is a young woman who uses her sex appeal because she has no other way forward. She is also ensnared in a doomed romance of her own, with Johnny, a man who is using her for his own benefit. One of the biggest tragedies of the film is that because of him, she ends up dead. 

Scarlet Street’s grey morality is probably due to its source: The movie was based on the 1931 film Le Chienne - I only realised this part of the way in, and it is hard not to see the shape of the narrative, especially as it heads towards the climax. Based on the strength of the remake, I am very curious to watch the original.

Knowing that it is a remake now, I wonder if the adaptation is responsible for some of the elements I did not quite buy. There were elements of the narrative that I found lumpy and contrived - thematically I like the reveal of the dead husband’s true fate, but the execution comes off as a contrivance.

The ending also feels a bit fudged, with Cross failing to complete his own life. 

However, this is one change that I kind of enjoy(?). There is something rather haunting about how it closes, with Cross forced to wander the earth while Kitty's voice haunts him. There is a brutal gut punch of a scene showing how his paintings have given Kitty immortality, which does carry a certain power. It is a suitably noirish end, even if the character feels too sympathetic to deserve such a fate.

In the lead, Robinson is a mile away from his tough-talking insurance man in Double Indemnity. He imbues Cross with a sadness and melancholy - he is an old man who is beginning to feel like he missed out on his youth. He is sleepwalking through life, with only his paintings to keep him awake.

Bennett is also pretty good as Kitty. There is a bite and solidness to her performance that makes for an interesting contrast with Robinson, particularly when she is under the thumb of Duryeas' Johnny. Duryea is a believable sleaze although he does not make sense as a heartbreaker.

Scarlet Street is a really terrific movie - the story is rather like a vice, but without the presence of the law as the arbritator of the protagonists' punishment. Technically, our heroes get away with it. They are just in no position to enjoy it.

Relevant 

Decoy

NZIFF 2020: The Kingmaker

A look at the life of Imelda Marcos and her perception of her role in the history and current state of the Philippines.

Watching the rise of people like Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump, it is hard to miss the ways their paths to power are following a familiar pattern: conservative adherents of older mythologised pasts who rise to power built on decades of systemic breakdown and economic decline.

A major criticism I have of news coverage of Donald Trump is treat him as an outlier, a singular evil who has turned the US into a fascist state, rather than the logical endpoint of decades of policy decisions and systemic inequalities.

While the context is unique, watching The Kingmaker felt like an echo.  

When the film begins, I was wondering what the film's approach would be - the first scene shows Marcos in a limo, stopping on a street and handing out money to children. For about the first quarter of the movie, Marcos is our guide, with an uninterrupted to-camera address about her life, her marriage, and her despair at the current state of her homeland.

I studied a bit on the Marcos regime at university, but that was a decade, so I was not prepared to be as skeptical as her words initially made me feel.

As the film progresses - and her lies become more blatant - the film breaks away from Marco's POV, intercutting her words with montages and information of what was really going on under the period of martial law. 

The film transitions from Marcos' voice, to those of the people she impacted, from villagers displaced by her desire to create an island reserve for her favourite African animals, to victims and opponents of the government, to current government officials, like Andres D. Bautista, who was head of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, who went from roles in government to living with family in the US after the rise of Duterte.

Marcos emerges as a shrewd manipulator, who simultaneously creates and believes her own view of reality. She can justify everything, and the film pays special attention to the ways in which historical revisionism has led to a rehabilitation of the Marcos. A particularly chilling sequence involves school children talking about how much better life was under martial law.

As the film heads toward the finish line, we follow Marcos' son Bongbong as he campaigns to become Vice President of the Philippines. The film also re-positions Duterte as an extension of this revisionism, but an active participant in the Marcos' plans to return to power.

I was amazed at the access that the filmmakers had to everyone. I was particularly surprised at Bongbong's appearance. Through his to-camera address and campaign appearances he comes across as a privileged rube, lacking his mothers' skills or sense of strategy. While Imelda sees him as the successor to the dynasty, the film highlights the ways in which he is only able to work as his mother's pawn. Once again, the parallels to other would-be despots are hard to miss.

The most unsettling aspect of the film is how, despite extended periods in her company, Marcos never reveals anything. At the start of the film, I wandered if the filmmakers had been taken in, and it would be a one-sided portrait, or a character study stripped of its broader context.

Instead, the movie offers a feature-length exercise in contrapuntal narration, juggling Marcos' own romanticized mythology with her cynical manipulation. Based on the characterization she gets here, I would not be surprised if Marcos would be happy with it.

The film may intend to offer a critique, but the final image that emerges from this film is of a formidable power player who is still terrifyingly relevant.

Related

The Surrogate

In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)

The tale of a dress, its owners, and the store who birthed it. 

I caught this at the film festival last year. When I heard it was coming out in theatres, I had to see it again. At the time, I considered writing something, but I just found myself writing questions. Rather than throw some garbage out to the world, I decided to wait and write a vaguely coherent trash pile. 

Watching In Fabric for a second time, I was able to give  myself over to it - I was able to enjoy its effects rather than noting the technical ways in which these effects were created.

In Fabric takes the hyper-stylisation of giallo and uses its particular obsession with aesthetics to create a dark fable about capitalism and consumerism, as the filmmakers follow the dress from one character to another.

Set almost entirely in interiors, in an undetermined pre-digital era, the film almost feels like one of the portmanteau films Amicus studios used to put out in the 70s: one of the story threads concerns Sheila, a middle-aged divorcee who is looking for love. Played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Secrets and Lies), Sheila is the down-to-earth centre of the chaos around her. Her ex has moved on with another woman; her son is too self-absorbed to pay any attention to her. She also has to deal with two all-powerful and terrifyingly relaxed managers (Steve Oram and Barry Adamson), who note every minute change in her daily life, and measuring each minor deviation against the potential productivity of the bank.

Jean-Baptiste gives Sheila a world-weariness and sense of yearning that grounds the viewer in her everyday dilemmas. 

I have to say, acting in this kind of heightened context requires such a delicate balance. I watched another movie, Slice, which aims for its own heightened tone, but it never finds its footing, particularly in terms of the acting. Having that film in the back of my mind really highlighted how difficult it is to hit the right tone.

Reg, a sad sack who is belittled by everyone. Engaged to Babs (Hayley Squires), he is another lonely soul who stumbles into the dress's path. Younger, and more well-off, the couple supposedly have their future ahead of them, yet their life comes across as unsatisfied and barren. 

Neither of the films protagonists for the beauty standards of the store’s catalogue, and express dissatisfaction with themselves compared with the specifications of the dress. There is a hilarious scene in which the store clerks caress and massage a mannequin's body while the store owner pleasures himself: even the store’s crew are under the spell of these unreal bursts standards.

To call it an abstract re-working of giallo feels limiting. The mannequins recall Mario Bava's OG giallo, Blood and Black Lace, but that is one reference in a movie that feels beyond easy categorisation.

There is little context to make the movie more of an overt genre piece: we get a set-up of a death in the past, the implication that the dress is either haunted or cursed. Thankfully, this movie leans into the disorientation of classic Giallo without the tired exposition dumps that make most giallo far less interesting.

Ultimately what is worth emphasising is that this movie is hilarious. The two Orwellian bank managers who dominate Sheila's workplace; Reg's droning monologues; the antics of the fashion house; even the way the dress transports itself around. This movie is laugh-out-loud funny.

The premise almost feels like a dare - imagine a giallo, but instead of a killer with black gloves, it's a blood red dress. Strickland frames and shoots it like a classic movie monster (in shadows and shown in pieces). It could be a joke premise for a Grindhouse parody trailer.

A deadpan delight, In Fabric is hilarious and terrifying in equal measure. 

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NZIFF 2020: The Surrogate

Jess (Jasmine Batchelor) is acting as a surrogate for her best friends Josh (Chris Perfetti) and Aaron (Sullivan Jones). When the unborn child is diagnosed with Downs Syndrome, a fissure grows between the friends over whether to keep the child or not.

This movie has a great, hard premise, and it raises some very complex issues. I just wish it followed through on its convictions, and expressed its central theme in a way that displayed a genuine commitment to it.

My big issue is that Jess never feels like a person. I found it hard to get a hold of her personality. It is hard not to view her as an opportunist in an idealistic sense. 

She wants to be an advocate for causes, but her pregnancy and her decision to keep the child come across as her deciding to become an advocate for an issue rather than a desire to raise a child.

The film appeals to humanism and empathy, but I felt like the movie needed more of an overt arc for Jess.  While the movie is obvious with its exposition, in terms of its dramatic turns, I was totally lost. 

Compounding how hollow the film's message is is the way it completely objectifies disabled people. This is a movie about treating people as human beings, no matter their ability, yet the movie operates in a diegesis where disabled people are props for argument by non-disabled people.  

There is a scene midway through the film in which a supporting character is criticised for objectifying her child as a 'literary device' in her advocacy. It might be an intentional foreshadowing of the way Jess is objectifying her own pregnancy, but if that is the case then the movie's message ends up feeling rather mean-spirited. 

I am disinclined to think the movie is self-aware enough to recognise this irony since disabled characters are mostly offscreen, and never have active roles in the movie, or speak for themselves. At one point, Jess refers to a teacher with Downs Syndrome as an example of disabled people living fulfilled lives, but we never see her. She is just an example in an argument, not a person.

I think that is the key problem I had with the movie, and the main character's advocacy. Jess is advocating for an issue, but it never feels like she is advocating for people. 

The movie keeps reinforcing how self-involved Jess s commitment to issues is. It might be a choice of the filmmakers, but it robs her argument with her friends of any moral foundation, which is only compounded by the film's ending. 

Why are we watching this story if the main character does not believe the argument they are making? Where is the drama in that? 

If the movie had Jess reckon with her own need to stand for something (perhaps have a character with Downs Syndrome call her out?), that would give this movie another layer of complexity. It would also act as a good stepping stone for the character's development.

In a movie with a stronger sense of characterisation and narrative development, having a compromised central character pushing an argument forward would be intriguing, but I left the movie confused rather than conflicted about the questions it thinks it is raising.

Apart from the confusion of its characterisation, I found myself distracted by the sloppiness of the scripting.

There are multiple mini-info dumps peppered throughout ("I have nausea - it's a form of morning sickness"; "Your Australian neighbour let me in") and moments of obvious subtext that just come off as really bad jokes (as our heroine contemplates having an abortion, another character asks her if she would like scrambled eggs for breakfast). 

Most importantly, there is a didactic component to the arguments that means these scenes fail as drama. The big confrontation scene between the friends feels like contrived sides of a debate, rather than three people arguing. 

There is a kernel of a great story in The Surrogate - sadly, the execution never does it justice.

To Live and Die in LA (William Friedkin, 1985)

When his partner is gunned down by counterfeiter Rick Masters (Willem Dafoe), Secret Service agent Chance (William Petersen) is willing to bend and break every rule to bring him to justice and avenge his friend.

I have heard of this movie for years, but I never had an opportunity to watch it. I have been meaning to re-watch Manhunter, but that review will have to wait. To Live... popped up on the internet, and I was finally able to watch it.

I feel like I need to take a shower. To Live and Die in LA is a mean, nihilistic policier where any moral line between black and whites is riddled with holes and set on fire. Released in 1985, this action thriller takes the loner cop protagonist to its most amoral extreme - Petersen's Chance is so unrelenting he seems to invite his own destruction.

The film opens with two scenes which highlight his near-supernatural attraction to danger - a brief glimpse of a man down a hallway and the sound of cutlery lead Chance into foiling a terrorist attack. In the second sequence, he bungee-jumps off a bridge - the filmmakers hold back on the reveal that he is tethered to a line, making it look like he is jumping to his doom. 

Played with cocksure confidence and a frightening level of self-absorption by Petersen, Chance is the polar opposite of his later portrayal of Will Graham in Michael Mann's Manhunter.

In the opposite corner is counterfeiter Masters (Willem Dafoe), another shark in human form who seems to recognise his opponent as kin. Dafoe's paranoid, smirking performance is the perfect counterweight to Petersen's intensity. 

The constant references to time act as a countdown to their final showdown.

As the film progresses, it becomes obvious that Chance and Masters are not exceptions - every character is scrabbling to get what they want. Chance and Masters are the most successful are the ones who are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy anyone who gets in their way.

The film is most famous for its car chase, involving Chance and his partner Vukovich (John Pankow) fleeing pursuing vehicles by going against oncoming traffic on the highway. The car chase is so excessive it almost stalls the movie, yet it also provides the key shift in the relationship between Chance and his partner. 

For the first half of the movie, I was struck by how piecemeal the scenes were between Chance and Vukovich - it almost felt like we were seeing too little of them in action. The dialogue in particular felt incredibly hackneyed - especially when Chance was talking about his deceased partner. It is dramatically functional, but it put me in the frame of mind that there was not much to be expected from the movie in terms of characterisation (the ridiculously cartoonish terrorist with his sticks of dynamite from the opening sequence did not help). 

The combination of the somewhat cliche dialogue and Roddy Muller's camerawork, which kept the characters and action framed in stark wide shots, meant the film's approach was so objective that it was hard to get a lock on what we were supposed to be feeling vis-a-vis the central duo. 

The film's emphasis on action is key for defining the characters and their relationships. What I took away from the car chase was Chance's complete disconnect from other people. While Vukovich is freaking out, Chance is focused on getting out of danger. Even after the chase is over, while Vukovich tries to calm down, Chance is busy knocking out the bullet-scarred back window. Cheerfully he tells Vukovich that he does not have to worry about the vehicle - they can just claim the back window was knocked out and get it replaced.

There are no consequences in Chance's world. Not for his partner, civilians or the snitch, Bianca (Debra Feuer) he uses to get close to Masters.

Chance's relationship with Bianca is the movie showing the underbelly of this character - he uses the weight of his position to treat her as his personal sex object. There is no personal-professional boundary to Chance's life - he happily abuses the power of his job to get what he wants. The film does not endorse the character's worldview - there is a sequence where a victorious Chance appears in her apartment and aggressively initiates sex over her protestations. 

At the beginning of the movie Chance's original partner criticises him for taking everything personally - and he is proved right. Chance is not motivated by some higher moral purpose - or if he is, he sees Bianca and all the people who he deals with as expedient to that purpose. 

I knew of the film's downer ending in advance, but it did not detract from my viewing. In fact, knowing that Chance is not going to make it enhanced the film. Chance is so detached from any sense of his own mortality that it makes sense that his end would come so ignominiously.

Fascinating and horrifying in equal measure, To Live and Die in LA might not be a satire, but its unflinching view of its protagonist feels like an indictment of the fascistic individualism coursing through the genre - there is something exhilarating about it, but Friedkin and his collaborators have no interest in the kind of mythologising and stark morality that was overtaking the action genre in the eighties.