[Make Them Die Slowly]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

"Messiah Of..." and "The Child" are definitely operating in that territory. And Rollin and Franco... but they know what they're doing. What also interests me is the feeling that sometimes arises when a film goes so badly wrong, and a strange or alienated atmosphere isn't intended, but happens anyway.
It's funny, only today I was wondering why I stick with movies - because so many times I come away feeling that everything of value could've been concentrated in the form of a few images and addressed in a more succinct form - plastic art, photography or poetry. But watching 'Lemora' today I thought, cliched as it sounds, 'film is the closest thing we have to a manifest dream'... a dream that's stepped outside of itself. In that, there's something to do with film being somewhere between fantasy and reality - I think that's why people get so worked up about potent images, be they violent or sexual. There's that weird power, of fantasy, or something that would normally be associated with an internal state, stepping over, but in a more direct and more pure way than would be the case with any other art form.
I think that possibly has something to do with your shamanic model. My own approach is maybe more nihilist, but definitely shares something with a kind of psychedelia ie. what happens to perceptual systems when thay crack or dismantle? They reorganise - in a psychotic way. Horror films, or just weird films, show that, and embody that too. As much as the most generic horror movies reinforce narrative and perceptual stereotypes, they also point in the opposite direction, to where the strangeness is.

I think we are talking of the same experience but in different contexts. To go really out on a limb, and perhaps trip into psychosis, I sometimes wonder if really strange films and the experience of them are in fact muddled glimpses into the creation of the soul/psyche but we are so far removed from our true selves that the information, images, sounds etc and experiences we receive no longer have any value to us as we struggle to understand them. We are then left with strangeness and for myself a sense of longing for something I have lost but have never known.