THE STENDHAL SYNDROME – I’d forgotten that this was the one with that weird subaquatic “kissing a fish with a human face” scene – hats off to Dario for being warped enough to convince his own daughter into doing it. The rest of TSS is marked by other feverish moments, but the baggy thriller plotline and its sprawling runtime leave me a bit ‘meh’. On the plus side, Argento’s incomparable style means that the atmosphere never really drops, and I guess a mediocre work by a genius artiste is never simply just average.
THE MESSIAH OF EVIL – Although still relatively neglected, ‘The Messiah Of Evil’ is, for me, one of the greatest horror movies. Its atmosphere is as fathomless and as secretive as the sea at night – fittingly, because that’s where we are, in a small coastal town where the dead are walking. Seeing it is like watching a shadow form through a dreamy haze, with no zombie shoot-outs and only a couple of ‘big horror moments’ to distract from the slowly mounting dread. That’s the feeling this movie gives me, anyway. It’s still a low budget narrative horror movie with all the usual mainstays – wraparound in an asylum, Lovecraftian set-up, creepy guy at the gas station. But for nightmare ambience it’s got to be at or near the pinnacle of seventies horror cinema.
SPECIES – It never seems like a bad idea to watch ‘Species’. It is what it is – pure popcorn, a big flashy B-movie with a bunch of names acting like idiots. I mean, some of that dialogue. What drags me back to this one is the nostalgia value more than anything, and I’ll feel entertained, a little, but also a bit hollow after a while. But it’s nice to reminisce.
SPECIES 3 – I’m always a bit surprised this series made it as far as a ‘part four’, which I’ve never seen. No excuses now that I have the box set from 88. ‘Species 3’, on the other hand, has lived in the hinterland of my movie-watching memory for a good few years, having made a fairly feeble first impression that lingered on none the less. This not particularly highly anticipated reunion has done little to balance my perceptions. It’s basically classic early noughties DVD fodder, full of the flat but glib aesthetics of that time and with not much interesting going on but hey, you knew that anyway. On the other hand, it’s fine for a throwaway watch, doesn’t drag too much, and any movie which makes a big thing about a pile of alien tendrils flopping out of someone’s rent-open stomach is ultimately OK by me.
THE ORACLE – Roberta Findlay brings us the good and the bad (well, mostly the bad) with supernatural vengeance flick / mid-eighties fashion disaster time capsule ‘The Oracle’. Someone in New York moves into their new pad, finds a Ouija board and uncovers secrets from beyond the grave; then a rather butch fellow murders a prostitute across town, but it all makes sense in the end. OK, enough with ‘the good and the bad’, ‘The Oracle’ sucks big time, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t sat there with a massive grin on my face for half of it, feeling a bit delirious. Findlay does a pretty good job of balancing torpor-inducing drag with cheapo funhouse macabre; outbursts of the latter, sudden flourishes of pound-shop effects done up with faux Bava lighting, are what make this film a bit special. Plus there’s the grit and the grime of mid eighties Noo Yawk, always a reason to watch a movie in my book.
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