SISTERS – Even though I've never been all that hot on DePalma, I have to admit he's made some pretty stunning films. 'Blow Out', 'Carrie', 'Phantom of the Paradise', they're all great, and highly distinctive too, what with his slightly hysterical flair for dramatics and visuals. 'Sisters', pretty much his first non-indie, is up there with the best of them. It feels quite audacious for its time – not many films back in 1973 would have attempted to bridge the gap between Hitchcock, Polanski and David Cronenberg, especially since the latter had yet to even make 'Shivers'. Plotwise, it follows Margot Kidder as she tries to deal with her murderous twin and the reporter from across the way. It starts with a riff on 'Rear Window', but its final third is a nightmarish and impressionistic unravelling of experimental psychiatry gone wrong. DePalma's flashy stylistics are in place, but the atmosphere is creepy rather than loud. I really liked it.
DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE – Perhaps the original rom-zom-com, Michele Soavi's 'Dellamorte Dellamore' unfolds in a small town graveyard, where an undertaker has to cope with a nightly upsurge of the undead. Well, Italian horror flick this may be, but gravedigger guy (or, why don't I just call him 'Cemetery Man'?) seems to be more bothered about existential ennui, his shitty love life and the exploits of his dense assistant. DD has really grown on me over the years, and I've come to recognise just how unique it is as a movie, throwing bits of wonky philosophising in with Italo zombie mayhem, black comedy and a wonderland style palette that would make the likes of Del Toro and T Burton gasp. Interestingly (for me) the film doesn't so much try for thrills or suspense as it does an atmosphere of curdled whimsy. I like the way it just drifts along – there's no plot, really, although things do take more of a shape during its latter half when cemetery man turns into a bit of a murderer. Even this drama is handled with a languid shrug of the kind perhaps best summed up when Cemetery Man's only friend emerges from a coma after massacring his family to murmur “everything's just...shit”. Pretty great.
BLACK MAGIC – You can get much weirder and more out there HK horror than 'Black Magic', but I liked this. I'm no expert in this domain of the genre, but 'Black Magic' pretty much got the early eighties Hong Kong horror renaissance's ball rolling, and, whilst its titular sequel offers more gore, freakiness and, erm, tits, the original doesn't necessarily skimp on the good stuff. It is weighted more in favour of story and development however, so, rather than craning your neck looking for bad special effects involving the puking of centipedes, you might have to accept the necessity of following a plotline about a woman's attempts to seduce some dude via sorcery before anything particularly graphic gets going. That said, obviously nothing goes to plan, leaving the door open for various HK horror staples (such as nice looking worms under skin) to eventually slip into the room. Speaking of rooms, this film is tres chichi, and resembles a peyote head's recollections of an interior design catalogue from 1975. Which in my book is definitely a reason to see it.
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