KILLER TONGUE (aka La lengua asesina, 1996)

Before she became network TV’s go-to dominatrix, Melinda “Mindy” Clarke gnawed her way into the hearts of horror fans as, aguably, cinema’s first sexy zombie, Julie, in Brian Yuzna’s Return of the Living Dead 3. The movie’s poster ghoul, “Julie”, was the ultimate gothy pierced princess and in 1993 her image graced the covers of countless horror magazines, the zombie equivalent of The IT Girl. Clarke followed this iconic role with appearances in other cult hits like Xena: Warrior Princess, Firefly, and the mainstream obsessional CSI (as Gus Grissom’s personal top, “Lady Heather”). 

But before becoming a genre darling, the actress-formerly-known-as-“Mindy” took a delightful side trip to Spain to star in the indescribably goofy La lengua asesina—better known to English speakers as Killer Tongue.

“I know now I should have listened to my mother. And I should have followed her ways. Stayed in our nice harmonious little town in Sombreroland. And become a straight and untroubled, well-respected Valium-bound husband-killer alcoholic. Then cook my head like a turkey in a gas oven on a beautiful Thanksgiving day. Just like she did. But now it’s too late. And anyway things don’t come that easy any more. It all started four years ago with a heist… and a kiss.”

After puling a bank job and betraying their accomplices (Chip and Frank, leaving them tied up with their lips glued together in a painful-to-remove kiss), Johnny and Candy split up to lie low. Johnny gets picked up by the cops—no doubt investigating his suspicious wearing of a gold lame` suit—while Candy gets she to a nunnery and raises giant multi-colored poodles while helping to run the sisters’ side business, God’s Gas & Diesel, a last chance out there in the desert.

Johnny has the ass-end of the deal, having to contend with the vicious Prison Director (Robert Englund appropriately eschewing subtlety) with a confusing message of submission tattooed on his knuckles. While it says “Fuck You”, prisoners are meant to read that as “Fuck Me”. Failure to communicate ensues. Also, he has to be constantly aware of the duplicit nature of his fellow inmates, particularly the Chief’s favorite, Mr. Wigs (Doug Bradley). 

Grown bitter over the intervening four years, Chip and Frank discover the whereabouts of Candy, but she’s already lammed out to rendesvous with Johnny, unaware of his incarceration. In a simple desert shack, Candy dons some domesticity and makes soup for her and her poodles. Just then, a bit of meteorite survives atmospheric entry and lands in their meal. One sip transforms her from a ‘50s housewife to a veiny creature in an armored exoskeleton, with back spines and kinky dark hair. The poodles transform into drag queens. Remi, Loca, Portia and, of course, Rudolph (inexplicably played by Jonathan Rhys Myers). “It’s us, your bitches. Remember? Little fluffy things?”

Before you can evoke the sacred name of Pedro Almodovar, Killer Tongue gets weird. –Er. Namely with the introduction of the titular character, Candy’s oral appendage that talks like Harvey Fierstein, grows to miles in length and can punch through solid objects without effort (including Chip, and then the porcelain tub beneath him, and the floor, and possibly the Earth’s crust). It desires human flesh and is terribly jealous of any mention of Johnny. It also comes with its own theme music.

Speaking of Johnny, he’s escaped into the desert with the Chief in pursuit. Somewhere along the line, he winds up handcuffed to the bumper of the vehicle, which he drags behind him, undeterred in his quest for Candy. 

While waiting for Johnny, Candy bides her time trying to rid herself of the evil alien tongue via iron and butcher knife. In response, the tongue tries to suffocate her by wrapping around her face, suspends her from the ceiling, and ultimately gets her pregnant. 

And if that doesn’t spell entertainment, I don’t know what does. 

Depending on your mood, Killer Tongue runs at a length of time equal to either 90 minutes or forever. Made with a very specific audience in mind, Killer Tongue is the definition of both “campy” and “wacky”. None of the outrageousness is presented with so much as a wink or a tongue-in-cheek. To the filmmakers, the world of Killer Tongue is how the real world should be, transpecies poodles and latex S&M outfits for all. You can’t accuse the cast of being over-the-top because there doesn’t seem to be a baseline. It starts at hysteria and ramps up from there. 

In attempting to short-hand a summary for it, I’ve compared it in turn to “John Waters’ Wild at Heart” and “David Cronenberg’s Raising Arizona.” But really, writer / director Alberto Sciamma has created a chimera that exists all on its own, without mate or even sibling. It actually feels like a ‘50s sitcom reinterpreted by aliens, a Meet the Hollowheads for telenova fans. 

It can’t really be said that the cast are playing their roles “straight”, though every character is presented without irony—in fact, this may be one of the least ironic films ever made. It’s definitely sincere in its insanity even when you can tell it’s lost all sense of a narrative thread in the third act. That being said, there are genuinely inspired bits of character utterly organic to the film’s reality. Clarke’s horror at her 90’ tongue has less to do with the consequences of being infected by an alien parasite and is more about her big plans being ruined for Johnny’s return. Englund’s vicious Prison Chief, for the best example, is as complex as a cartoon character can get. During the day, it’s his job to be foul, brutal and sadistic, beating up men left and right, putting them on dreaded “survey duty”. But at night he walks through the barracks with a simple smile on his face, tucking a blanket around Wig and comforting a wounded dove by making a nest for it out of his toupee. The Chief’s raison d’etre is to make Johnny screw up his probation, but it isn’t too long before you understand he’s doing that less out of sadism and more because he’ll miss the handsome lug when he goes. Englund doesn’t play this with a s

ense of homoeroticism either, but complicated affection. 

While the poodles are meant to enduce squeals of delight and/or derision, each of them having stepped from an episode of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, their love for Candy is both endearing and evocative of a pet’s love for its human. Even the tongue’s relationship with Candy has an edge of love and devotion, even though it’s technically an alien parasite relying on her to sustain its life. As for her and Johnny’s love, well that’s the sort of devotion you can only find in movies and Shirelles songs. 

Loud and colorful, with an infectious, possibly sexually-transmitted score by Spanish band Fangoria, Killer Tongue is the perfect movie for people who like this sort of thing. I say that smart-assedly, but sincerely. Killer Tongue is one of those cult-films-by-design that you’ll either love or hate. Take all of those cliches for what they’re worth. The only way to measure the film’s success is through personal opinion. I happened to really enjoy it the first time and my love hasn’t waned since. But, then again, I’m not you. As with most cult movies, enjoyment comes with some assembly required. 

Now, unlike most of the movies I yak about, Killer Tongue is not difficult to obtain and shows up on at least two different collections accompanying other wacky wonders like Jack Frost 2 (a killer snowman in the Bahamas!). However, the presentation varies. Try very hard to avoid a full screen version as you not only lose a lot of peripheral happiness, but it also comes with washed out color and a soft image, probably sourced from the original EP mode VHS released before the turn of the milennium. 

If you do manage to fall in love with this film as I have, might I recommend that, upon meeting Melinda Clarke, you refrain from asking her to lick you from across the room. 

Just… trust me on that. She isn’t into it.

I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTORCYCLE (1990)

Image stolen from UK Movie Posters

No film addict can survive on a steady diet of the same. You can watch Turner Classic Movies all day long but after such a marathon, you start to hunger for something different. Dare I say even something “worse”. “Worse”, of course, is subjective, so let’s say instead “ridiculous”. After a week of viewing heady and/or heavy movies, movies that made me think and feel, I was in dire need of the ridiculous. You can’t ask for more ridiculous than what is offered by the gory horror-spoof I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle. 

Director Dirk Campbell, very soon a maestro of children’s television programming, got hold of a script by Mycal Miller and John Wolskel (the latter a frequent writer of English-version anime like Appleseed), rang up half the cast (and sets and even the composer) of the BBC series Boon (including title character Michael Elphick, Neil Morrissey (future voice of Bob the Builder), Amanda Noar (aka Mrs. Morrissey, at the time, anyway), and C:3PO himself, Anthony Daniels. They gathered together and said, to borrow a quote from Daniels’ Priest character, “Right. Let's go kick some bottom!”

I would say that the film’s beginning—taking place in an old churchyard while a biker in a red hood that just screams “Satanist!” is obviously up to no good—with a turf war between two bike clubs, the unnamed Satanists and the vicious rabble “The Road Toads”, occurs for no good reason, but really, reason went out the window with the title. (In fact little happens in this film for any reason, so let’s just suspend that expectation altogether, shall we?) What happens is that The Road Toads lay brutal waste to the rival gang using crossbows and jump cuts. The hooded Satanist most near the center of the frame is cut down in the prime of his incantation, and the little animated Pokemon demon summoned has to quickly find a host. Its new home is the biker’s own abused Norton 850 Commando—as good as any in a pinch and, we’re told, a “quite reliable” vehicle. In a lovely scene, the dying biker-Satanist-guy slashes his throat and bleeds into the tank.

We then meet lovable slacker rascal Nick Oddy (Morrissey)—aka “Noddy”—who purchases the bike for £1100, tells his girlfriend Kim (Noar) he only spent £600, then calls his buddy Buzzer (Daniel Peacock) to take a butcher’s at it to see what it’ll need to make it go. As a gag, Buzzer steals the bike’s gas cap. The next day, he’s found strewn about his apartment (“That’s Buzzy. I’d know his head anywhere.”) but at least the bike runs perfectly now, so long as you don’t try to take it into the sunlight. Inspector Cleaver comes ‘round to make inquiries about who would have it in enough for Buzzer to dismantle him in such a way, but Noddy honestly can’t say. Partly because he doesn’t know and partly because Cleaver’s garlic breath has him momentarily stupified.

While out for a jag, Noddy informally meets The Road Toads and the bike bucks beneath him, running several of them, including their leader, Roach (Andrew Powell, Joshua Then and Now [review coming soon]), the crossbow-wielding mad lad-cum-teddy boy what done in the Satanist biker in the first place.

Later, they have a proper funeral for Buzzer, his coffin stuffed upright in some geezer’s sidecar. No hearse for Buzzer, “He wouldn’t be caught dead in one’a them things.” Noddy and Kim stop off for a pint and in walk Roach and his Road Toads. After a protracted brawl involving the entire pub, most of the crockery and several of the mock battle weapons decorating the walls, Noddy and Kim manage to escape on the bike. Still peckish, they swing by Fu King (ordering from none-other than Inspector Clousseu’s Cato (Burt Kwouk) for some Chinese, but the minute Kim suggests “garlic prawns” the bike takes off with her still on it. Around a corner, it tosses her off and seems about to front wheel her head off when the cross around her neck gleams and makes it back off.

Noddy finds Kim but the bike has gone out into the night to exact revenge on the rest of the Road Toads. First spikes grow out of its tank in punk porcupine fashion, used as both methods of impalation and projectile, then its cracked headlamp develops a chomping action rarely seen in motorcycles of that model. That’s not even to mention its Ben-Hur-styled arrowhead wheel protrusions. Only Roach escapes, albeit with a tie-rod lodged deep in his… er, tailpipe, as it were. Its bloodlust unsated, the motorcycle has a go at a woman Jack the Ripper-style in an alley. Then, just for fun, it eats a parking maid. This bit of greed gives it away. Unable to eat the whole woman, it returns to Noddy’s dark shed and that’s where its owner finds it, sleeping and with a support-hosed leg in its headlamp.

Understanding little of anything is a natural state for Noddy, so he goes off in search of a Vicar. Unfortunately, he has to make do with a Priest. 

 Image stolen from Flat Pack Film Festival

Noddy: “I don’t want to confess. It’s about my motorcycle.”

Priest: “Are you sure it isn’t a garage you want?”

Noddy: “My motorcycle has turned into a vampire!”

Priest: “Pull the other one.”

Soon the Priest understands what he’s up against when, whist attempting to haul the beast out into the sunlight, the clutch handle snaps his hand and severs his fingers. Now the problem arises: unless the Priest knows what demon he’s dealing with, any exorcism performed could just make things infinitely worse. And infinitely worse is what happens. The vampire motorcycle goes on an unprescendented maraude of slaughter and vehicular homicide, eventually trapping Noddy, Kim, the Priest and garlic-breathed Cleaver inside a gym for the chronically steroidal. And dawn is a long way off. Will Birmingham ever again be safe for the god-fearing members of the C. of E.? Or, okay, fine, the Catholics as well?

“And anyone involved in this project should be proud. The script is knowing and self deprecating, plus it doesn’t mind making Morrissey, the movie’s hero, out to be a lazy male-chauvinist pig. The British predilection with toilet humour is here in full force (the ‘talking turd’ sequence [a nightmare scene in which Buzzy embodies Noddy’s bowel movement] being a particularly disgusting highlight, especially when it jumps into Noddy’s mouth) as is our obsession with having nice cups of tea to solve everything. The music is also suitably ridiculous, ranging an incidental score that sounds like it was lifted from a Carry On movie (yes, they borrowed the composer from Boon, would you believe) to pumping rock tracks, one of which is called “She Runs On Blood... She Don't Run On Gasoline” (which is included in it’s separate entirety as a special feature on the DVD). But the biggest gem in this pot of treasure is seeing Anthony Daniels – Mr C-3PO himself – as a camp gung-ho biker exorcist, complete with razor-sharp throwing-crosses.” (Eatmybrains.com)

So, well… does this not summon to mind the word aforementioned: “ridiculous”? I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is a gleefully gory horror-spoof-slash-homage. Never once does it take itself seriously because, well and again, it’s bloody title is “I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle”. If it were “Tea and Chips with the Missus”, that’d make it something else entirely. Everyone is on board here too, ‘all in’ as ‘they say’.

Truth be told, this was was a blind rental from our late-lamented local store, Incredibly Strange Video, sold by both the title and the prospect of watching His Lord and Lady Anthony Daniels perform sans gold outerwear. While not quite as hysterical as Braindead / Dead*Alive’s Father Jon McGruder (Stuart Devenie) (“I kick arse for the Lord!”), Daniels is highly entertaining and even kicks the film’s absurdity up another notch.

Speaking of the just-mentioned Peter Jackson cult favorite, there are numerous “touches” both movies share. Aside from the Priests and the anarchy, both possess comic relief bikers and a breakneck pace. Since they were released within a few years of each other (1990 for Motorcycle and 1993 for pre-LOTR Jackson), though from different areas of the English-speaking world, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that both Jackson and Campbell hit on the same horror-spoof zeitgeist that drives both films. The biggest difference would be zombies vs. vampiric vehicles and a budget of $3 million versus whatever change was found inside the cushions in the Boon communal couch.

When you’re in need of ridiculous look no further. If ‘ridiculous is as ridiculous does’, then I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle does nicely. 

POSSESSION (1981)

Andrzej Żuławski wrote Possession, his only English-language film, in the midst of a soul-murdering divorce from his first wife (and star of his first film, Third Part of the Night), actress Malgorzata Braunek. Just prior, he’d spent a handful of years adapting a movie he’d hoped would become his masterpiece, On the Silver Globe, based on a series of novels by his turn-of-the-century Polish writer grand-uncle, Jerzy Żuławski. Just as it was nearing completion, Poland underwent a series of political upheavals. The newly-appointed vice-minister of cultural affairs, Janusz Wilhelmi, saw Żuławski’s science fiction story as being too allegorical to the Polish and their seemingly endless battle with Communism—which infected their country immediately upon the defeat of the genocidal Nazis in WWII. The film, props and costumes of On the Silver Globe were confiscated and believed destroyed. Żuławski was exiled from Poland.

“[S]ocieties are very ugly, basically. And a filmmaker who flatters the society in which he lives for me is a skunk. Almost everyday in the Polish radio, TV and newspapers it slowly, slowly emerges that everyday in the countryside they murdered the Jews, because they were free to do so. And so there are very few clean spots, even as they are kept, of course, magnificently clean. But it is mostly the intelligentsia which preserves this consciousness and moral attitudes.” (“Beginnings Are Useless: A Conversation with Andrzej Żuławski”--Written by The Ferroni Brigade, Published on 12 March 2012)

He returned to his second-home of France in utter emotional turmoil. The venom he felt inside towards Polish politicos, history, filmmaking and women came spilling out of him in the form of a screenplay about the apocalyptic dissolution of a marriage, externalization of unhappiness, basically every cruelty two former lovers can commit on each other. It is also a film about hideous transformations and bloodlust that can come about from internalized rage-fueled need to remake one’s world for satisfaction. A film that Żuławski would attempt to pitch to Paramount head Charles Bluhdorn as, “a film about a woman who fucks an octopus.”

Having waded through the excess and excretion of Possession for two days now and reading as much about it in an attempt to understand it more fully, I’ve come to the conclusion that no one has ever seen the film in the exact same way, nor have they ever seen the film in the same way twice. For all the hysteria, convulsion and viscera, Possession is the visual representation of “mercurial”, slipping and changing from you as you watch. A viewer is a different person at the end of a screening and, therefore by the act of observation, the film has become a different thing as well.

Husband Mark (Sam Neill, fresh off of The Final Conflict: Omen III, which he won "thanks" to his mentor James Mason) has just returned from some sort of vague business trip and Wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) meets him outside their West German apartment complex with the posture of a coiled cobra. The divide between them is already present, and Mark isn’t sure if he should pick up his luggage or leave it on the sidewalk. Finally, he must pursue her into their home, juggling bags as he goes. They have a son, Bob, who enjoys scuba dives in the bathtub. Bob greets Mark warmly, happy to see his father, and in the presence of their son, husband and wife are smiling, doting parents. Later, in bed, the couple try to reconcile their emotional distance.

“Maybe all couples go through this,” Anna suggests, without a hint of belief in her words. “Were you unfaithful to me?”

“Truthfully, not really,” is Mark’s cryptic reply. “Without you I wouldn’t feel anything at all.”

Anna: “And what do you feel?”

Mark: “Are you honestly interested?”

Anna shakes her head, “No.”

The next morning he resigns his position with his firm, giving a suggestion for his successor. He will no longer report on the comings and goings of “their subject” who wears pink socks. When pressed for a reason for his leaving, he answers “Family.”

But as far as Anna is concerned, there is no family any longer. She stays away from them for days at a time. Going through her things, Mark finds a postcard of the Taj Mahal from a man he believes to be her lover. It’s inscribed in block lettering: “I’ve seen half of Gods’s face here. The other half is you… Heinrich.” Back-and-forth follows—Mark destroys a café and must be tackled by several workers before he hurts Anna; Anna leaves, returns to see Bob, leaves again. Mark checks into a hotel for three weeks and undergoes what can only be described as “withdrawl”, foaming at the mouth and rocking. When he returns to their shared apartment, he finds Bob sitting in filth, his face smeared with whatever he’s found to eat. Mommy has been gone “a long time”. When she finally does come back, Mark tells her that he’s taking over and she’s to leave. But she never leaves for good, never long enough for either of them to heal.

During their separation, Mark obsesses over Anna. She never did find the ability to explain to him what went wrong, where he was inadequate. Truthfully, she’s unable to speak coherently to him; whatever breakdown she’s suffering affects her concentration and articulation. While he is gripped with psychotic rage and desperation, she is gripped by desperation of a different kind, as well as an engulfing sense of shame, regret and even schizophrenia.

Confronting Heinrich for himself, Mark finds a middle-aged poseur-philosopher-playboy who swans about and invades Mark’s space, touching him too much and too intimately, yet still manages to beat the husband to a pulp. And the truth is that Heinrich hasn’t seen Anna either. Not for some time, and he’d like to know where she is as well.

Humiliated as much as a man can be, Mark concentrates on Bob, trying to be a good father while constantly teetering on the brink of madness. (Indeed, there are sequences of him in a rocking chair, violently swaying too far back, too far forward, and there is certainly an abyss yawning at his feet.) Meeting Bob’s teacher, Helen, he’s shocked at the resemblance to Anna, convinced his wife is wearing a wig and colored contacts to turn her eyes such magnificent, alien green. Helen is everything that Anna is not: clad in whites and creams as opposed to Anna’s dark blues and blacks; she laughs and the laughter reaches her eyes. She dotes on Bob. For a desperate moment, Mark thinks that she might even be a replacement for Anna, but Bob’s inconsolable nightmare leaves him begging for his real “mommy”, and will not take Helen as a substitute.

Where Mark has desperation, Anna has her mad secrets. In a sharp narrative left-turn, it’s revealed that she’s taken up residence in an unfurnished and decrepit apartment and has been joined by something bloody, fleshy and pulsing in the corner of the bathroom. Confronted by a detective Mark has hired to find her, her reticence in his presence turns to lunatic laughter and finally bloody murder as she slashes his throat with a broken wine bottle. When this man’s partner—and lover—Zimmerman, turns up looking for him, he too becomes something for the mutating creature to consume. Before murdering him as well she indicates the monster to Zimmerman and says, flatly, “He’s very tired. He made love to me all night.”

Breaking points actually come and go from here on out. Still shutting Mark out of her love, she stops his questions by holding an electric carving knife to her neck. After he tenderly sees to his wounds, she rejects him again and he too has a go with the knife, carving furrows into his arm. “It doesn’t hurt.” Anna says. He shakes his head, agreeing. And we know this is all going to come to a horrific conclusion. “Horrific” in the full sense of the word and not because of some phallic creature bloodying up Anna’s sheets. These two people are going to tear each other into atoms and take out everyone around them—Heinrich, Anna’s friend (and Mark’s convenient baby sitter and lover (or “loather” perhaps) Margit, Helen, Bob, Heinrich’s elderly mother—no one here is going to get out alive, no matter what your definition of “alive” might be.

I believe I could describe Possession scene-by-scene in great detail, down to the last shot, and still not give anything away. Looking over my notes, sequences written down don’t correspond with the way I’m remembering them. What is foremost in my mind is the final shot of the film—not to overuse the word, but it is truly apocalyptic, bathed in white light, with the din of war planes dominating the soundtrack; and the final shot of little Bob running from Helen, screaming “don’t open it”, don’t reveal that figure caressing the frosted glass of the front door, hurling himself face down into the tub but refusing to come up for air. Or the scene of Anna and Mark, his past having come out of nowhere to finally destroy them, their faces drenched with blood, kissing and, seemingly, trying to devour the mouth of the other. When the credits rolled, I felt like I’d witnessed something I shouldn’t have, and I’m not speaking hyperbolicly. But I’m not sure if it was the intimate and personal mutual destruction that still makes me uneasy, or if it was—finally, for someone who once-devoured “extreme cinema”—something that may have very well been the definition of taboo. Forbidden.

TFB: We think it is one of the ideas that contributes to making your work so personal that you have no other choice but taking it personal. Which may be another reason they don't fit this concept of categorization: Putting things into categories helps to maintain a distance, to keep the art at arm's length.

ŻUŁAWSKI: Distance...well, that is a question which could be debated for hours. I am also a member of the audience, and since I was educated in a certain way I can see so many different kinds of films and like them equally. I don't want to be pretentious and say: That's the only way—my way! And please hate the others, but not my film! That would be absolutely monstrous and I am too aware of the fact that cinema is like a tree. On a tree, of course, you have different branches, but we're all sitting on the same tree. Now it's electronic, but yesterday it was still chemical and theatrical. You have to humble and accept that we all are on that tree. But at the same time I am not humble because I do what I please. And I do this only because I think I am absolutely the same guy as any other guy in the cinema. I am not different.

TFB: That is the democratic idea: that everybody is the same in the audience.

ŻUŁAWSKI: Yes. But sometimes the audience elects Hitler and sometimes they applaud Stalin.
(The Ferroni Brigade)

As said, Żuławski was not in the healthiest frame of mind when he conceived of Possession. Nor, apparently, was he any better during production. The performances of both Adjani and Neill are off-putting from the very beginning. One reviewer wrote that the movie “starts with hysteria and ramps up from there” and that’s very true. Both actors emote like caricatures from the silent era, eyes and tongues lolling, hands grasping at their throats or clawing through the air. For the first half of the film they scream relentlessly at each other, becoming incoherent with their inability to communicate. When the two alpha males meet for the first time, Mark and Heinrich almost literally dance a waltz around each other in the narrow hallway. Even Heinrich’s beating of Mark has a balletic, stylized quality, half Baryshnikov and half Maxwell Smart (he karate-chops a lot).

But where Mark is all Noh Theater, Adjani is given the unenviable task of creating a person out of the beautiful, treacherous china doll Anna. She is all wild eyes, wide eyes, silently mouthing answers and delivering gibbering, nearly nonsensical dialogue while trying to explain herself. In one heart-rending scene, she stands beneath a crucified Christ statue and whimpers, pleads, begs for answers without saying a single word, pleading like a child or a wounded animal for some comfort. Minutes later she walks in an oblivious daze, immune to the world. While on a bus a wino reaches into her groceries and nicks a banana from her bunch, replacing the rest, and she never even looks up.

In the film’s most central set piece, after Mark receives a film shot by Heinrich of Anna teaching ballet—and literally torturing a young ballerina, holding her extended leg in the air and grasping her head back—Anna reveals a moment she experienced within a German subway tunnel. At first stunned and sleepwalking, she bursts into uncontrollable laughter, slamming herself and her satchel of milk against the wall, covering everything in filmy white. Within seconds she is gyrating in the air, seemingly and alternately raped or pleasured by something invisible, her limbs and head lolling like a drunken marionette, hips thrusting and throat choking. Finally she collapses to her knees as blood, and a variety of other-colored liquids, pour out of her, forming a pool between her legs. “I had two sisters fighting inside of me,” she tells Mark. “Sister Faith and Sister Chance, with their fingers clawed around each other’s necks. What I miscarried that day was Sister Faith. All I had left was Sister Chance and I had to take care of her.”

Unlike the other scenes of rampant emoting, the tunnel miscarriage, a five-minute, near-unbroken shot, never takes on a ludicrous edge. We are party to a lone woman’s nervous breakdown. (Indeed, both Mark and Anna are virtually alone throughout the movie. There are only a handful of extras who share the frame with them during the infrequent exterior street scenes.) “Possession is at once a dread-inducing ordeal, a bloody arabesque, and a swooning celebration of Adjani’s long, cloaked form in perpetual motion. The convulsive action reaches its peak, if not its dramatic climax, in the near-real-time scene in which, famously directed to “fuck the air,” contortionist Adjani bounces off the walls of an underground passage, hemorrhaging bloody goo from every orifice.” (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice)

According to Ben Sachs (Andrzej Zulawski's Possession, uncut), “Possession is an extraordinary document of actors pushed to their breaking point: it's frightening partly because Neill and Adjani look as if they're really losing their minds. Before shooting began, Żuławski spent several days working them into a trance-like state that allowed them to express freely their most primal emotions. This method was inspired by Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski (a major influence on Żuławski ), who viewed performing as a "total act" and felt that actors should exploit the intimacy of live theater to confront the audience directly. Possession succeeds like few other movies in re-creating this onscreen; in fact Żuławski claims that when Adjani saw the completed film, she couldn't believe what she'd done. She shouted at him, ‘You have no right to put the camera in this way because it looks inside one's soul!’” Despite being crowned Best Actress at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, Adjani was so shaken as witness to her own performances she attempted suicide (some report at the festival itself immediately after the screening).

“And even if it is a naively mystical vision, I think there's something [deep] going on stage or screen, if we give up, sacrifice. Of course, I never accept the [productions] such as Possession, which Żuławski thought insulting me [would] make myself better embody my crazy character: never revile me like that ... But interpreting a wandering soul, I know. The female misfortune, I know.” [Adjani, Interview by Fabienne Pascaud (poorly translated by Google Translate and yours truly)- Télérama No. 3089]

“Possession has been singled out lately on the repertory circuit in the U.S. after a very successful run at Film Forum. You’ve called it a “personal” film. What do you think of its recent success?”

“Please, how can I answer that? Possession was born of a totally private experience. After making That Most Important Thing (1975) in France, I went back to Poland to get my family (which at the time was my wife and my kid) and bring them to France. I had two or three interesting proposals to make really big European films. But when I returned to Poland I saw exactly what the guy in Possession sees when he opens the door to his flat, which is an abandoned child in an empty flat and a woman who is doing something somewhere else. It’s so basically private. Now I can go back to it many years later, but even the dialogue in certain kitchen scenes and certain private scenes is like I just wrote it down after some harrowing day. So it’s amazing how such a private thing became a kind of icon. You know Adjani got the prize at Cannes for this film, she got the Cesar which is the French Oscar and 14 other prizes in many festivals. Please believe me, it’s mentally very disturbing to see that your very private little film became something in which so many people recognize something of themselves. Thirty years later I’m still thinking about it.” [Film Comment Interview: Andrzej Zulawski By Margaret Barton-Fumo on 3.6.2012]

I suppose one could endlessly argue Żuławski’s misogyny—“I would say that Sam Neill, Francis Huster, and the others had the difficult parts to play because the women in these films appear like a tornado. They were banging into a scene and making a great fuss and being so expressive, and like you said at the beginning, “hysterical,” right? They make all of this noise, but the male actors are just playing the glue between the scenes. They keep the films together, which may not seem like such a fantastic starring role, but they did it with such talent and devotion that I almost like them better than the women. The women got the prizes, they got the applause, they were brilliant, they were spastic. But the men had the hard work of keeping the whole film together.”—and one can make excuses for this by reminding the viewer of the director’s hideous divorce, or the dehumanization he suffered as a Pole growing up under first Nazi rule and then Stalin’s iron fist. To me, these arguments are as hazardous as defending Roman Polanski the man to justify appreciating Polanski the artist. As personal as Possession is—for the director, the actors, Carlo Rambaldi creator of “the creature”—it remains what it is on the screen. What would you think of it on its own if you had none of the information before you?

In point of fact, how would one judge the U.S. release of Possession, cut by over 40 minutes into an incoherent and over-stimulated miasma? “Two men and a woman no one could ever possess,” warns the over dramatic American voice over. “Mortal terror, inhuman ecstasy. Soon you will know the meaning of Possession.” Which is a big fat lie if there ever was one. (See below) If at two hours Żuławski’s cut remains open to interpretation, then the edit for the consumer culture is rendered incomprehensible for pandering to the visceral. The very first time I viewed Possession in 1994, before I was even aware of another version, the videocassette was just an assault of two people screaming at each other, excelling even the most portentous madness to be found in Marat/Sade, which is at least set in a real asylum. This “cut” also beefs up the part of the monster, adding and duplicating shots, optically rendering Anna’s periodic murders in slow motion to get the best of the spurting blood. The ending is altered (from what I remember) and nothing is resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. With the emphasis on the blood and the sex, it’s no wonder Possession got caught up in Great Britain’s “Video Nasty” crusade in the ‘80s; the narrative has been reduced to prurience.

That’s not to say that Żuławski’s version delivers any real satisfaction either. This isn’t a film about resolution by any stretch. Conversations end abruptly, with slamming doors or mutual mutilation, slaps, sneers, bloodied faces. Scenes halt, the players suspended in inaction or impotence (however you want to define that word). Even the ending is just a stopping point and answers pour over the viewer like rain. Is this miscarried, tentacled lover/child of Anna’s her attempt to create a “perfect” version of Mark, for that’s apparently what it’s been morphing into (and with the appearance of a second Mark near the end, one of the few rational suppositions in an irrational narrative)? Is Helen really a doppelganger of Anna, or a more perfect mate that Mark has projected an Anna mask upon, preserving her delicate beauty by stretching it over a genuine Madonna/whore? What was Mark’s “assignment” and why was he hunted for it in the end? And was that part of the story intentionally left up in the air, as a commentary on Poland’s Stasi?

However, the biggest question is the one that begins the film and it’s the only one the characters beg answering: “What happened to us?” “Possession is honest enough to depict the emotional extremes of passion and conflict experienced during a breakup, yet self-aware enough to acknowledge how histrionic and ridiculous such squabbles can appear to outside observers. It’s both uncomfortably candid and deeply cynical. And with its blood-and-gasoline-drenched apocalyptic ending, Possession joins the recent Melancholia in portraying the sense that it must be the literal end of the world simply because it feels that way.” [L. Caldoran, Cinespect]

Rediscovery of Possession is relatively recent. It was unseen in its uncut form until a VHS release in 1999, where it was quickly embraced by many of the same critics who originally dismissed it. It’s been compared to Polanski’s English-language debut, Repulsion, as well as Cronenberg’s The Brood and most recently to Von Trier’s hateful Anti-Christ. And while all of those high-class films touch on similar emotions, Possession remains something ineffable. At times it’s an endurance test, a heartbreaking Scenes of a Marriage, a shrill theatrical camp, a monster movie, an end-of-the-world allegory, a spy thriller. All of these elements keep Possession outside of an appropriate genre box but its these disparities that keep the film, as I said, fluid.

As a jaded film student watching a bastardized version, I was just as quick to dismiss Possession as those who saw it premiere. My initial distaste prevented me from revisiting it despite owning the original cut for several years now. During my first viewing, untainted by much of the film’s or filmmaker’s history, I was put off by the histrionics, the unsatisfying narrative, the seemingly improvisational jumble of dialogue spewed out by Neill and Adjani as if they were given single emotions—rage and despair—to act out. But the film began its transformation approximately ten minutes in, with the introduction of young Bob and the mutable influence he has over his psychopathic parents. During their all-too-brief interactions with their son, one can see the Anna and Mark that existed during the good times. It’s the film’s sole emotional anchor and it leaves an impression deep enough to prevail when the screaming renews.

My second time through, the next day, was more investigative. Now that the shrill surface had washed away, I could see what was really underneath. Specifically: anguish. When Mark goes on his hotel bender, he really does seem to be suffering some sort of withdrawal. He no longer understands the woman he fell in love with. Worse, she doesn’t understand who she is any longer either. Helen and the monster/Mark clone are simultaneously projections, doppelgangers, wishes and manifestations of shame.

Suddenly, the title made much more sense, but in even more esoteric ways. Think of the word, “Possession”. Is Anna literally possessed (as the American trailer would have you believe) by some pseudo-Christian demon? Is Mark possessed by the need to retrieve the Anna who once was? Or is Anna a possession, the flag that Mark and Heinrich scramble over each other to capture?

I suspect that should I revisit this movie in the future, I will have not only different answers to my many questions, but different questions as well. Between viewings #1 and #2, Possession slipped from my grasp, becoming something than I thought it was over the span of less than 24 hours. What would ten years’ worth of insight bring me, now that I know about Żuławski’s history, his inexcusable abuses—both inflicted and inflicted upon? What man will I be the next time I visit Possession? For guaranteed, I will not be watching the same movie I just watched last night.

 

International Trailer

Gloriously misleading and ridiculous US Trailer

TWINS OF EVIL (1971)

(Image from Wrong Side of the Art)

If we’re going to maintain our open and honest relationship here, I have to confess that I’m more a Hammer afficianado than an outright fan. Even during their heyday in the mid- to late-‘60s, their budgets were minimal and it showed all over the screen. My favorite of their dubious trademarks included towns located on some strange time-split where it was often and simultaneously daylight on one side and misty night on the other. But where they lacked in money their movies made up for in atmosphere and a sense of otherworldliness. More importantly, they employed a pair of actors who lent gravitas to the proceedings: Peter Cushing and / or Christopher Lee. As long as one or the other appeared in the film, you were guaranteed some level of enjoyment.

For me, Hammer movies seemed to follow a standard beat sheet: Intriguing opening, usually bloody; then came the long middle part where carbon-copy young lovers, usually star-crossed, are introduced, their family feuds established, and perhaps hidden amongst all of this you’ll get a fun set-piece involving fangs or monsters but always cleavage. Finally, an exciting climax and a bloody ending. Since Hammer was competing with larger companies they continually pushed their “blood ‘n boobs” formula as hard as they could against the membrane of censorship also known as the British Board of Film Classification. Long before the board caved to pressure from self-appointed Minister of Decency, Mary Whitehouse, the BBFC during the Hammer years were actually pretty progressive, as far as censoring outfits go. This is largely due to the presence of Secretary of the Board, John Trevelyan, who saw his role in and of the board as men who are “paid to have dirty minds”. From 1958–1971, Trevelyan attempted to work with filmmakers and explain what cuts had to be made prior to a film’s release.

Of course, that’s his point of view. Some filmmakers, naturally, felt that he was the ultimate enemy. Roy Ward Baker, who directed The Vampire Lovers and Scars of Dracula for Hammer, notoriously called Trevelyan a “sinister mean hypocrite”, who played favorites with those he felt were in the “art house crowd” as opposed to commercial film directors. Acording to Baker and echoed by others, Trevelyan “kissed ass” with the bigger names in British Cinema. This relationship was sorely tested by Ken Russell and his still-controversial masterpiece, The Devils. While the two men warred over a sequence dubbed “the Rape of Christ” (a ten-minute scene that has only recently been restored to prints of the movie), John Hough took advantage of the distraction as he readied Twins of Evil for screens.

Twins of Evil is the third film of the so-called “Karnstein Trilogy”—the previous being The Vampire Lovers with Ingrid Pitt and its follow up Lust for a Vampire—all based on J. Sheridan LeFanu’s ode to the sapphic vampiric, Carmilla. Adapted by future rabble-rouser and trade unionist, Tudor Gates, the “Karnstein Trilogy” are perceived by some to be the last “great” films of the Hammer era, before their slide into utter poverty, and are notable for daring depictions of lesbianism, a theme that had gotten ten minutes chopped from “art house” film, The Killing of Sister George, in 1968.

As a trilogy, the “Karnstein” storyline doesn’t really work, having no real continuity to speak of, except for the name of the evil family and their matron, Mircalla (aka Carmilla). The first film of the series, The Vampire Lovers, set film-goers all a-twitter with its boundary-leaping scenes of blood and nudity and girl-vampire on girl-vampire action. The next two installments were toned down for British sensibilities.

While tamer than its predecessors, Hough’s Twins of Evil exploits some of this newfound exploitative freedom by casting Playboy’s first twin playmates, Mary and Madeleine Collinson, as the titular characters (no puns, please, we’re British). Maria and Frieda Gellhorn arrive in Karnstein from Venice, two years after their parents died. They show up at their Aunt Katy’s house in green, instead of the customary black-for-the-rest-of-your-lives. This enrages puritanical Uncle Gustav Weill (Cushing). “What kind of plumage is this? Birds of paradise?” But don’t be too hard on Uncle Gustav, he and The Brotherhood have been busy burning witches all night, doing God’s work. And by “witches”, these Bible-weilding psychopaths mean “unmarried women”, “women walking alone on a road”, “old crones”, anyone who has ever thought about having sex—you know, witches. In fact, the title sequence portrays one of these boys-being-boys bonfires after dragging a teenage girl forcibly from her home, lashing her cruxifix-style to a tree and then setting her on fire. And she screams and screams as the “devils” flee from her “purified” body. In the back, Pat Buchannan nods approvingly.

Within seconds of arriving, the more-willful Frieda is ready to skip town as soon as she can find someone appropriately handsome and dangerous. One of Gustav’s primary adversaries is Count Karnstein himself (played by Damian Thomas, best-known as the baboon prince Kassim in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger), a decadent lover, vague ruler and admitted Satanist who takes great delight in humiliating Gustav and his puritanical ways. Which, this early in the film, is a point in his favor since thus far Gustav has failed to win the hearts of the minds of the viewer.

But then we are whisked away to Castle Karnstein where the Count is being bored out of his mind during an actual Satanic pageant. Once he angrily dismisses the players, he finishes the sacred “stab the naked girl” ritual himself, evokes Satan but winds up with Mircalla instead. She makes him into a vampire (in a nifty shot in which she stands behind Karnstein but he alone is reflected in the mirror, and he watches himself fade away as he turns fangy).

Before long, Karnstein is out to find something of Gustav’s to corrupt and sets his sights on Frieda. Frieda is loved and admired by schoolmaster Anton (David Warbeck of Fulci’s The Beyond)—literally, he can only see her, the rest is vaseline on the lens—when he really should be attracted to the more-demure Maria because… well, hell, she looks just like Frieda but she isn’t a bitch. Besides, as everyone—everyone—points out, the two sisters simply cannot be told apart. Frieda exploits this by sneaking about at night and making Maria pretend to be her, so that Maria gets beaten twice (it’s implied by not only Gustav but every patriarchal figure they’ve ever encountered). Strangely, Maria can sense when Frieda is hurt, but either Frieda can’t feel Maria or just doesn’t give a damn.

As typical of Hammer, no one heeds the vampire warnings (even though, apparently, there’s already one running around long before the Count is turned during sex with his dead relative), more busty girls are either bitten or are flame-broiled by Gustav, and Frieda tramps around with Karnstein until she, too, is a mistress of the night. Her first task is to bite into the plump breast of Luan Peters (aka singer Karol Keyes) before the camera quickly cuts to anything else lest Trevelan wield his scissors.

If you’ve seen a Hammer film—any of them—you know what’s going to happen. But Hough and Gates pull some nifty turns along the way. When Gustav catches neice Frieda feasting on one of the Brotherhood, he has her locked up so that he can make sure the rest of the family is safe, planning on burning her later. Sorry, purifying her later. But Karnstein manages to switch Maria for Frieda and soon it’s the nice slutty twin that’s heading to the stake and Hough plays this sequence to the hilt of suspense. 

The second twist is far more subtle and involves Gustav’s character, which more than proves Cushing’s a master thespian. After he almost turns the incorrect neice into jerk chicken, Gustav’s faith in his own crusade gets shattered. This is never discussed openly, but you can watch it work on Cushing’s face. Used to the seat of power, when Anton presents Maria with a crucifix and she kisses—rather than sizzling beneath it like Fried did—Gustav is visibly shaken. While he never says it, it’s clear he’s wondering how many other innocent women have been put to death under his pious wrath. We see a glimpse of his regret just as he’s about to put the torch to Maria, refusing to pass it to his second in command—this isn’t some random wench to be roasted for fun and, you know, “God’s will”; this is his neice, who he swore to protect. The realization that he could very well have killed his own flesh and blood in the same manner as he had “purified” so many others chills him.

After this sequence, Gustav still leads the Brotherhood but defers to Anton. “You’re sure a stake to the heart will release [Frieda]? That her pure spirit will be saved?” For the first time in the film, we see all his noxious, prideful bull-puckey summed up in a question. Maybe the others in The Brotherhood were just out for a rolicking witch-burning, but Gustav honestly—honestly—believed he was saving the innocent souls of the wicked. Without the subtlety of Cushing’s performance revealing the man beneath the zealot, Gustav could have remained a villainous figure for the rest of the picture.

While Count Karnstein is really the villain of the piece—with his fangs, his coiffure and cape—but more than anything, he’s just kind of a dick. He spends the climax in a vault, shoving out or dragging in one sister after another and locking the door again, taking few steps to take the upper hand. Gustav, for all his evangelical lunacy, was a man of action and principals. Yes, he shared Karnstein’s arrogance, but he wasn’t out burning witches every night because he was bored.

It’s this last-act transformation that allows Twins of Evil to rise above its formula. It’s not the first time Cushing has helped this elevation; each of his turns as Baron Frankeinstein in the Hammer series shows a different man beneath the madness. But beyond the sex, blood, atmosphere and pretty photography, Twins of Evil gives the viewer something to think about, namely: think long and hard before you’re convinced of your own righteous. 

THE PYX (1973)

 

Canadian Det. Sgt. Jim Henderson (Christopher Plummer) is called to the scene of a death that could have been suicide or murder, and he’s leaning towards the latter. The body of a prostitute was found on the ground outside a tenement building, in one hand a necklace with an upside-down crucifix, in the other, a small round metal container on a chain. Henderson quickly learns that the woman’s name was Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black), that she was a high-priced call girl working exclusively for a Montreal madam and that she had a relatively severe heroin addiction. Following his leads, Henderson’s suspects start turning up dead as well, murdered in perfunctory, if gruesome, fashion.

Parallel to Henderson’s investigation, we witness the last days of Elizabeth Lucy’s life. After an appointment with a regular John, she helps a younger and similarly-addicted hooker escape the life to a Catholic rehab clinic. Her madame, Meg, rewards her big-money score with a fix, then tells her about an arrangement with a real high-roller who’d asked for Elizabeth personally. She meets the reptilian Keerson (played by Jean-Louis Roux, actor, playwright, staunch anti-separatist senator and, according to Wikipedia, “briefly the 26th Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, Canada” ) on his private yacht, driven there by his personal driver. Keerson tells her to strip and then demands that she tell him personal facts about herself, her life and her background, leaving her more naked than she’s ever been.

Clues lead Henderson deeper into previously-unknown territory. The metal container, he learns, is a “pyx”, a lunette used by Catholic priests to transport a consecrated host to someone sick, in-firm or otherwise unable to physically make it to receive communion. Combined with the inverse crucifix, Henderson uncovers a Satanic cult, with Elizabeth right in the middle of an important ritual—one that may or may not have succeeded, depending on how Miss Lucy died. 

 

This is a pyx.

Based on the novel by Canadian author, John Buell, and directed by casual Star Trek director Harvey Hart, The Pyx is primarily a straightforward police procedural, naturalistic in the pattern of Serpico or The French Connection. The viewer is never an active participant in the investigation, always held back as if by some line of invisible police tape. We watch Henderson interact with his partner, Det. Paquette (Donald Pilon); we see him violently interrogate a frustrated suspect, but we’re not part of the mystery.

Conversely, we’re much more involved with Elizabeth’s story, drawn into her life with intimate close-ups, put at a distance only when Elizabeth closes off to the people around her—particularly when dealing with Meg—or when she’s shooting up. In these moments in particular, the direction is to make us feel like intruders.

The biggest problem with The Pyx as a film is with its structure. It isn’t readily apparent that the parallel storylines are subsequent, that we’re witnessing Elizabeth in a previous time, even though we’ve seen her lying dead beneath the opening credits. There are no visual or even textual indicators that we’re in the past when Elizabeth is on screen. When the body is identified as “Elizabeth Lucy”, then we’re introduced to the woman alive, then told of another hooker who has disappeared, at least I was duped into thinking that perhaps this was a matter of mistaken identity. The missing hooker was mis-identified as Elizabeth, her storyline was happening concurrently with Hendersons and at some point the two would come together. There’s a definite disconnect once the realization of time-shifting hits and it takes a while to get back onto track.

[Image stolen from Cult Trailers]

   Whether or not this was intentional on the part of the filmmakers is open to debate, of course. For my part, I had to stop after Keerson’s interrogation of Elizabeth and restart the movie to see where or if I’d missed something. It’s a definite misdirection and since the movie spent many years in the public domain (I first found it as part of a multi-disk horror collection), I started to wonder if this print was missing footage, or if this was a different edit entirely. A quick glance at a second “official” DVD told me otherwise; this was apparently the intended edit.

Strangely, the title character, the Pyx itself, barely figures at all in the movie. Little attention is drawn to it in way of close-ups; it is explained in almost off-hand dialogue (delivered by Pilon via clumsy American dubbing), and its signature scene, featured so prominent in the film’s trailers, is nothing more than a quick cutaway during the climax.

If the above weren’t enough to give one pause, there’s also the matter of Karen Black’s inconsistent performance, which is predominantly flat when she’s attempting to appear aloof and soul-dead. It’s difficult to tell when she’s supposed to be smacked-out and when she’s just shut off from Meg or another john. She only shines during her first scene with Keerson, and it really is a powerful sequence which left me feeling as emotional exposed as she was. On either side of this scene, however, it’s hard to generate any sympathy or concern for Elizabeth. She’s just not that interesting. (And speaking as one who could never get past Black’s wandering eye, which I’ve always found distracting—my problem, not her’s—Black never seems present in the film, as if she’s being directed by two conflicting points of view, but not in service of the character.) 

Christopher Plummer is Christopher Plummer. If you liked him in everything else he’s ever been in, you’ll like him in this. As Henderson he’s alternately determined or blandly appealing. The scenes were he attempts to be a tough guy fall flat. Pilon, for what little he has to do, is far more intimidating, possibly because his character is in service of the story and, as a result, a cypher.

As stated, there are multiple prints of The Pyx floating around, some under the title The Hooker Cult Murders and in various degrees of watchability. It’s actually pretty easy to luck out and land a widescreen copy on one of the numerous portmanteau collections, but there are also some dreadful full-screen copies as well, with no panning-and-scanning to speak of, so beware of versions focusing on tables with knees at either side. It’s an unusual movie and, at risk of being racist, a very Canadian thriller as well: low-key and lacking urgency, but getting the job done in the end. 

DRAG ME TO HELL (2009)

Christine Brown, a mild mannered loan officer—some may even venture to refer to her as “timid” or “wilting” or “generally terrified”—really wants the assistant manager position at her bank. Because her boss is played by David Paymer, she’s forced into a passive aggressive competition with another less-experienced but more minoritied co-worker, Stu Rubin (Reggie Lee), whose obsequiousness and under-handed-osity knows no bounds. Her boss tells her that the ideal candidate for that coveted position is someone who can “make the tough decisions”. Apparently, she’s been far too helpful and compassionate with her loans of late and it’s implied heavily that those attributes are frowned upon.

So enter Mrs. Sylvia Ganush, a fairly revolting and elderly Hungarian woman with one blind eye and an underwater-mortgage. While begging for an extension of credit, Mrs. Ganush coughs up gobs of lung into a stained handkerchief, places her false teeth on Christine’s desk and then empties the entirety of the mint dish into her purse. Since it’s easier to be compassionate to the non-disgusting, Christine makes the “tough call” and tells Mrs. Ganush that there’s no possible way to extend her credit any further. While that is not entirely true, let’s be a little realistic here. Ganush has already received a multitude of extensions and is obviously living beyond her means. Plus, you know: ew, slimy dentures on the desk! After receiving this news, Mrs. Ganush does what comes to her mind: first she begs on her knees then, when that fails, she attempts to strangle Christine.

Shaken but certain that she’d impressed David Paymer by surviving a gypsy assault, Christine leaves for the day. In the garage, the old bat attacks her again, in Christine’s own car! This in no way helps Ganush’s case and Christine is forced to defend herself with a Swingline, managing to even staple Ganush’s dead eye shut before kicking the car into gear and ultimately crashing. After getting kicked out of the car five or six times, the old gypsy finally gets what she came for: a button from Christine’s coat sleeve! With this button, she curses the loan officer and hands the object back.

Now, for all of Christine’s timidity and naivete and humanity, she does have the majority of her life together, despite the fact that she’s dating a guy played by Justin Long who collects coins. She brings him food, a rare coin she found in circulation (a 1902 nickel with an imperfection of George Washington making out with Abe Lincoln or something) (I’m kidding; it’s a “standing liberty” quarter, far less rare than the other one I described), and endures his side of a conversation with his mother where he’s obviously defending her past as an overweight farm girl. But after her near-fatal gumming by Ganesh, practicality is thrown to the wind. She drags Justin Long (who deserves no better than the character name of “Clay Dalton”) to fortune teller and world-famous-on-that-street mystic, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao, who would later play a mystical chemist in Chris Nolan’s Inception). Rham Jas confirms Christine’s greatest fears: Justin Long is a dousche. Oh and she’s also been cursed to Hell. A demon is coming for her to drag her there. Just like the title says!

Hysteria follows. Nobly following his contract, Long continues to support her by remaining her boyfriend, doing her no favors. The side effects of the curse include a horrible worksite nose-bleed that should have summoned squadrons of paramedics to her side but instead leave her coworkers staring in shock at this obvious hemorrhage like she’s a bleedy weirdo. Then her big account gets inexplicably dealt to another bank (could Stu be the culprit? Or one of the non-speaking-role co-workers?) so there goes her promotion. And apparitions of Ganush attack her often enough to make her seek out the old woman to make amends. In the course of this attempt at apology and plea for curse-removal, Christine of course stumbles over her own feet and destroys the now-deceased old lady’s wake, winding up under the formaldehyde-leaking corpse, much to the horror of everyone the crazy bat’s ever been related to.

Christine trys everything from kitten sacrifice to exorcism complete with goat when Rham Jas finally gives her the real secret: get rid of the goddamn button! But this is kind-hearted, at-the-end-of-her-rope-but-still-cartoon-sweet Christine we’re talking about. She can’t even bring herself to pass it off to people who have treated her most like shit—not Stu, not David Paymer, not even Justin Long (though, admittedly, the only reason he’d deserve it is for being Justin Long). So what’s the most logical next step for poor little Christine? Why dig up Ganush’s grave and give the button to her, of course. In the rain. In the dark. In her best clothes! If she did get dragged to Hell, Satan would probably wince, pat her on the head and send her topside for another chance, only to find her back in Hades a week later. “I offended another gypsy,” she’d say with an adorable shrug. 

 Look at him...Justin Long-ing all over the place.

For Evil Dead fans Drag Me to Hell was meant to be Sam Raimi’s long-awaited return to horror. After years of suffering beneath the yoke of Laura Ziskin and Spider-Man, Raimi wanted to tackle some more familiar ground, preferably free of Bruce “I’m on Burn Notice, mother-fucker!” Campbell. And while Drag Me isn’t quite the unrelenting gore-fest of the first Evil Dead, it shares the off-beat humor of Army of Darkness (and owes no small amount of debt to Night of the Demon). The gags are more gross-out than bloody, mostly involving Ganush spewing some liquid or semi-solid into Christine’s open mouth. Sam does manage to make a snotty handkerchief one of the scariest things to ever exist, though, and that’s among the reasons we all love him.

But at no time do you feel like Christine had this coming. In interviews, Raimi and his brother Ivan talked about wanting to do a story about an everyday, good-hearted person who does one act of cruelty out of selfish ambition and pays for it. Okay, if Christine had actually driven the bulldozer into Ganush’s house screaming “Assistant Manager, bitches!”, maybe the Brothers Raimi would have had something. But all the girl did was: her job. It’s practically analogous to Snow White slapping the poisoned apple out of the witch’s hand and getting squished by a dwarf-pushed boulder immediately after. Throughout the movie she’s presented as an eager-to-please little doormat who gets more than her share of flaming shit bags dropped on her, and for that she’s doomed to Hell?

You can’t help but wonder if all that Marvel Comics money went to Sam’s head, because what he basically made was a Mitt Romney morality tale with Christine representing small business and Ganush standing in for the filthy 47%. I mean, here’s this poor, sweet, innocent woman in charge of the economy being bullied by a gross, grotesque, filthy and possibly undocumented elderly woman who’s demanding more credit, even though she hasn’t earned it. In point of fact, Ganush feels entitled to her house because she’s lived there for thirty years. “Never missed a payment until the sickness took her eye,”—yeah, right. And what were you doing that got you so sick, Mrs. Ganush? Probably some unhealthy lifestyle, and now she’s no doubt on welfare, lying around and sucking off the welfare teat! Little Miss Golden Haired bank person has her hands tied by the system, and even if they weren’t, she was looking to advance her position through hard work and personal responsibility. Is that so wrong? Why should she be punished for ambition and Ganush rewarded for being a drain on the American taxpayer? Besides, Christine said that she wanted to help her, isn’t that enough? Apparently not for this godless, toothless semi-foreigner who inflicts nothing but hardship on poor, poor Christine (innocent of all wrongdoing except for the misguided love she feels for a filthy liberal academic who collects—sorry, hoards—rare coins).

 Direct, Sam! Direct like the wind!

While Drag Me to Hell is a worthwhile roller coaster ride, complete with all the wild Raimi angles and the chaos that gleefully Evil Deads all over the place, from a thematic point of view, the crime really doesn’t fit the punishment. Even the most judgmental horror movies—if you have premarital sex you die; if your parents do something evil you die—would find fault in Drag Me’s premise. Maybe if Christine had more bite to her—instead of doe-eyed Allison Lohmann they’d cast Eliza Dushku, who could have at least hinted at a dark side, or even better, if they’d cast Lil’ Miss Blankface, Kristen Stewart—we could root for Christine’s inevitable Hell-dragging-to.