WHERE EAST IS EAST...

What sort of man turns a wild gorilla loose on his ex-wife? Well, if the man is being played by Lon Chaney, and the story is being presented by Tod Browning, it makes sense. Where East is East (1929) currently available on the Warner Archive streaming service, was the final pairing of Chaney with director Browning. While it's not as bizarre or perverse as their nine previous collaborations, it boasts large dollops of exotic imagery, jungle action, and weird romance.

Chaney plays Tiger Haynes, an animal trapper in French Indochina who supplies circuses with wild beasts. The first time we see him he's in a tree, lowering a net onto a tiger. The animal thrashes, trying to escape, and the realness of the tiger gives the film a visceral feeling that stands in contrast to the stylized acting of the time. Chaney is a tough lout as Haynes, his face badly scarred from his past battles with animals, but there's a regal quality to him; he returns from the hunt on the back of an elephant like a king returning from battle. 

The one love in Haynes' life is his feisty daughter Toyo (Lupe Velez). They play games that are strangely sexual in nature - he'll get on all fours like a tiger and growl while she smacks him around. Then she'll sit on his chest and punch him, while he laughs. Not exactly sure if this happens in most single parent households, but Haynes does the best he can. Besides, being smacked around by Lupe Velez isn't the worst way to spend an afternoon.

On his most recent return home, Haynes learns that Toyo has fallen in love. Toyo's love interest is Bobby, the son of an American circus owner (Lloyd Hughes). Haynes hates the idea - we get the idea that love hasn't been good to Haynes - but when a tiger wanders into the Haynes' home and stalks Toyo, Haynes is impressed by the way Bobby races to save her. Maybe the lad is OK, after all.

Haynes invites Bobby to join him on a boat trip to sell some animals, but once aboard, Bobby is smitten by the mysterious Mme. de Sylva (Estelle Taylor), an earthy, vampish woman of indeterminate age. The woman, who seems from the Theda Barra school of vamping, turns out to be Haynes' ex-wife and Toyo's wayward mother. Talk about coincidences! Haynes gives Bobby a smash on the chin to snap him out of it, and warns his ex to stay out of the way. Mme. de Sylva is used to getting what she wants, though. We're not sure if she genuinely desires Bobby, or just wants to stir up trouble, but we're not totally surprised when she turns up at Haynes' home. Toyo, of course, is delighted to see her mother, which complicates things even more.

The film was released in May 1929, a time when talking movies were already wedging their way into theaters.  Browning and Chaney were among the slowest to jump on the sound bandwagon. Where East is East has some animal sounds, especially where tigers are involved, but otherwise is a "silent" film. Reviews were mixed.  The New York Times noted that the movie featured "several shrewdly photographed and exciting episodes with snarling tigers," but found the love triangle "more than slightly incredible."  Other critics objected to the high number of kissing scenes, and some found Velez' raw energy to be distracting. The Film Spectator wrote that Velez, "makes the hand itchy for a fly swatter." 

Swedish poster for Where East is East

Chaney was generally praised for playing a role that didn't require him to be deformed in some way, but looking at the movie recently, it was Velez and Taylor who stood out. True, Chaney was a force, and his mere presence could enliven a scene, but this isn't one of his better turns. Most of the time he just stands around scowling. Velez, though,  was a treat, a lively little firecracker, while Taylor was a believable vamp. Taylor was a popular actress of the 1920s, known as much for her stormy marriage to boxing champion Jack Dempsey as for her movie roles, and she was a willing risk taker in that she played a rather evil temptress here. While she's definitely the sort of mother in law that I want, not everyone was impressed.  "Estelle Taylor," reported The Times, "with her eyes frightfully made-up to give them an Oriental slant, is unfortunate in her role."  

Where East is East wasn't a major hit, and as Browning biographer David J. Skal wrote, it was largely an "anemic retread of characters and plot devices from earlier films." But taken on its own, removed from the Browning/Chaney canon and just enjoyed as a relic from 1929, the film still hits with a strange power. It's comforting to know that big studios like MGM actually made weird movies like this at one time. 

There's also the gorilla to consider.  It had been penned up in Haynes' home for years, and according to Haynes, it still remembered being mistreated by de Sylva. I don't know who played the gorilla, but the beast is a burly menace, at least as fearsome as the ape in Murders in the Rue Morgue a few years later.  When Haynes can take no more of his ex-wife's antics, he lets the gorilla loose, symbolically unleashing his own pent up anger.  The creature bounds up the stairs to Mme. de Sylva's room, ready to settle an old score. Hearing the mayhem, Haynes has a change of heart and dashes in to save his ex-wife. Old reviews of the movie mention an actual fight scene between Chaney and the gorilla, but it doesn't exist here. In this particular print, the scene cuts to Chaney on a sort of gurney, badly hurt and bandaged. He bids Toyo and Bobby goodbye as they board a ship bound for who knows where. 

The impression is not so much that Haynes gave his life for Toyo, but that his life was destined to end this way. The scene, simply shot, is Chaney's best in the movie. He looks exhausted, sad to see his daughter leave, but relieved that his tortured existence may be ending. In reality, Chaney was already suffering from the cancer that would kill him in a year, which adds to the scene's bittersweet edge. Could Browning have known this would be his final time filming Chaney? Could Chaney have known?  Watch the scene carefully. Look at Chaney as he gazes into the camera.  It's the look of a man saying farewell.

HELLION...

Hellion is a dour, occasionally hopeless movie that makes you feel about as bad as any movie in a long time. It is a bleak little treasure, which is why it's been given a limited release and is available on VOD as well as in theaters. It's hard to imagine exhibitors putting this one on the screen next to the latest Marvel comics epic. But it may develop a following based on its good performances and word of mouth.

That is,  I certainly hope so. In an era where two or three movies battle for the public's attention while the rest disappear down the proverbial rabbit hole, here's a little story about a broken family in Texas trying to stick together.  One of the kids, Jacob (Josh Wiggins, who reminds me of a pocket Matt Damon), has a half-assed dream of becoming a motocross champion, thinking that he can bring some self-respect to his fractured household if he can qualify for the nationals.

Jacob is a hard kid to like. He's a 13-year-old vandal, and he sets a bad example for his much younger brother Wes (Deke Garner).  As we watch him, though, we learn that he's just a simple kid.  When he's not  destroying property,  he's home listening to heavy metal music and watching cartoons. Jacob has a good heart, but he doesn't know what to do with himself. He and his friends loiter around a park, looking at porn magazines and harassing girls; the bits of conversation we pick up are about step-dads and fights and other broken families. His friend Lance (Dalton Sutton) is a giant and a bully, his festering violence always threatening to disrupt their lazy afternoons. 

Jacob's father (Aaron Paul) is in a limbo after his wife's death, drinking too much and disappearing for long periods of time. He thinks nothing of leaving Jacob to look after Wes, which draws the attention of a case worker who decides to separate the boys and send the youngest to live with an aunt (Juliette Lewis).  Jacob takes this all personally; he's angry at his father for not being responsible, and angry at himself for not looking after Wes.

The whole business of Jacob's motocross fantasy would take up more of commercially minded movie, but in Hellion it plays on the periphery. Jacob can no more qualify for the nationals than he can finish a family meal without getting into a fight with his dad. Wiggins and Paul are so raw and realistic that it's uncomfortable to see them together.  We know early on there will be no scene of them curing their problems with a game of catch.

 

The movie was directed with a loving touch by Kat Candler, who also wrote the screenplay (and originally shot Hellion as a short in 2012).  Candler has an artist's impulse to go anti-Hollywood, for there are no subplots about Jacob trying to win the love of a rich girl, or saving his father from ruin. Jacob's not charming, and doesn't have a witty sense of humor. Candler wants us to understand the pain beneath the skin of this punk, and we eventually do. The desperation on his face when he tries to reconnect with Wes but is turned away by his aunt is heartbreaking.

Candler presents the film in a risky and intriguing manner: She allows no light to shine from these people. We feel that these characters, even the kids, are deadened inside.  The whole movie has a deadness at its center - lack of income, dysfunction, aimlessness, combine to create the atmosphere for these kids to grow in. Wes is developing an imagination - he likes pirates and enjoys reading 'The Swiss Family Robinson,' perhaps envying that family's ability to stick together during tough times - so maybe there's hope for him. Jacob, though, seems destined to do the wrong thing, just like his father. Their lives are marked by long stretches of boredom, with occasional outbreaks of violence, and back to boredom.

The movie was shot in Texas last year, but it could have been shot in my Massachusetts neighborhood of the 1980s. I knew kids like Jacob and his friends, knew about their broken families. Strangely, the kids I knew all loved motocross, too. They may not have had decent clothes and their grades were bad, but they all owned a nice dirt bike, a guilt gift, perhaps, from a visiting dad trying to make up for the time he was gone. The bikes, I assume, represented a kind of freedom, a way to speed past their dull, somewhat painful life.

Hellion is a movie to appreciate. It's about people who are basically decent but adrift, who are too beaten down to have much hope. It may feel like movies we've seen before, but it's not predictable and doesn't rely on Hollywood staples. Kat Candler cares too much about these characters to treat them cheaply. She's offered us something realistic, and in this day and age, realism is an exotic flavor to be savored.

DVD DUMPSTER DIVING: The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio

When a young woman is killed in the woods near the Florence Nightingale Institute, detectives immediately begin their investigation at the weird old nursing establishment. Why wouldn't they? The place seemed full to bursting with suspicious characters. There was shifty-eyed Dr. Cabala, for instance, who looked too much like Christopher Lee to be totally innocent.  Or maybe it was Dr. Carter, who seems a bit too enthusiastic about splashing around in the guts of dissected frogs. (His fingers seem permanently stained from frog juice). Then there was Hettie Green, the head of the nurses who liked to welcome new trainees with a very sensual bedtime massage. Accusations could also be aimed at Moss, the drooling hunchback who wandered the landing in his role as handyman, often peeking in on the young nurses as they slept or showered. Then again, maybe it was the cloaked figure in the top hat who seemed to always be lurking in the shadows. There’s even a young nurse who is acting in a local stage production of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde, a small girl whose delicate hands belie a facility with a sword. That’s only part of the cast of characters in The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio, an occasionally bloody and often pornographic mess from 1971, brought back to gory life by the kind fellows at Vinegar Syndrome, a group that thrives on reviving long buried grindhouse dreck.

The epic was directed by Eric Jeffrey Haims, who spent a brief time making porno movies in Hollywood under the auspices of his bare bones production company, Xerxes Productions Ltd. Haims gained a small amount of publicity when his 101 Acts of Love was shown at Hollywood’s Las Palmas Theater in ’71 before an invited group of medical professionals. The film was part of a benefit, with proceeds going to the LA Free Clinic. Haims’ piece was one of those bogus medical documentaries that were made as an excuse to show couples humping, yet J. Michael Kenyon of the Hollywood Reporter praised the thing: “…the beauty and intrinsic calm of physical delight are well highlighted by artful rendition…” I wonder if Kenyon saw The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio...

According to those who keep track of such things, The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio was given an extremely limited VHS release many years ago by Intervision Video, resulting in some outlandish bidding wars on Internet auction sites. There have been instances of it selling for over $1,500. (Who bid that much? It must have been J. Michael Kenyon.) Not to dampen the spirits of the lucky winners, but I can’t imagine what made this movie such a collectible title. True, there are some scenes of lesbianism, and a lot of nudity, and some of the ladies are very pretty. As for the Sappho stuff, the girls give it the old college try, which probably helped the movie get its X rating. I can even understand how some might point to this movie as a forerunner of the slasher flicks that would explode by the end of the decade. (In fact, The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio boasts a scene where a couple’s barnyard coitus is interrupted when the male is beheaded by someone wielding a nasty looking scythe, a distinctly Friday the 13th type of murder.) I'm also sure that many bidders were titillated by the idea of a horror movie cast with performers from the porn industry. Still, for $1,500 you can get real women to come to your house and do stuff to you. On the other hand, who knows what owning the actual VHS in its original box can do for a fellow’s social standing.

On the plus side, the movie is not bad looking. Cinematographer Arch Archambault was fresh off of shooting Count Yorga, Vampire, and he creates a nice, saucy atmosphere for the lesbian nurses and twitchy doctors to roam around in. There’s a scene in the hospital where the very beautiful Mady Maguire (as Dr. Leticia Boges) wanders in the dark with a candle; the scene is downright atmospheric, as if we’re suddenly watching a real movie made by competent filmmakers. Unfortunately, it doesn't last long. Maguire, incidentally, may be familiar to some for her occasional appearances on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’, and for her starring role in Norma, a cheapo stinker where she played a nymphomaniac. The final role of her illustrious career came in 1980 with an appearance on the short-lived ‘Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.’

Other than the occasional inspired moment from Archambault, there’s not much to recommend. The acting is of community theater quality, and the script is like something a junior high school kid would write after watching a couple of old Hammer films. Aside from the sex scenes (which contain plenty of groping and heavy breathing), the actors move woodenly and unconvincingly through the creaky plot, decked out in what barely passes for 1870s period costuming, but making no attempt to hide what were obviously 1971 hairstyles, and distinctly modern, urban accents. (One of the nurses sounds like Fran Drescher, and the two detectives on the case, while dressed as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, sound like extras from 'Kojak.')

Aficionados of vintage '70s porn might be interested to know that Rene Bond, who by some estimations appeared in anywhere from 80 to 300 porn productions, appears here in a key role. Bond earned some notoriety for being one of the first women in porn to undergo breast augmentation (allegedly paid for by porn producer Harry Novak). Bond's real life boyfriend and longtime porn partner Ric Lutze is also in the film. Bond and Lutze look like kids here, and even though there isn't an ounce of talent between them, I wonder if they thought The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio, which was promoted as a horror film, might lead to more roles in non-porn features. It didn't. By 1978, Bond would drift away from porn and embark on a somewhat successful career as a Las Vegas stripper. She died young, at 45, from cirrhosis of the liver. It's rather bittersweet to see her here, young and vibrant.

Another familiar face to lovers of old porn will be Nora Wieternik. She plays Amber Van Buren, a sexed-up nurse whose wardrobe consists of a single corset. She’s appropriately bawdy for a goofy film like this one, and the only member of the cast who seems to know what she’s doing. Wieternik would work often during the early 1970s, usually as a hooker or a hippie in such classics as Dr. Dildo’s Secret.  Some might recognize her as Queen Amora in the campy spoof Flesh Gordon (1974).  I also enjoyed the work of the brilliantly named Hump Hardy, the sinister looking chap who played Moss the hunchback. Hump had an almost superhuman ability to drool on cue, which is why I'm so surprised he never acted again. Surely there was a place for him somewhere in Hollywood.

But wait, there’s more! Vinegar Syndrome added a second Eric Haims feature to make this DVD a double event (it is part of their ongoing “Drive-In Collection”). The B side of the program is A Clockwork Blue (1972), a throwback to the nudie cuties of 12 years before. This time Haims takes some of the same cast members from The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio and dresses them as various historical figures, including Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and Betsy Ross. Viewers are taken through a sort of kinky trip through history, as if any of us really wanted to know about Betsy Ross’ sex life. The movie is as dumb as it sounds, but A Clockwork Blue was actually a bigger hit than The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio, having a longer shelf life on the porn theater circuit, sometimes as part of a bill with Deep Throat. Not surprisingly, Warner Bros. took Haims and company to court over the title sounding too much like A Clockwork Orange. Haims backed down, and changed the title of his film to A Tic Toc Blue.

For those keeping score, both titles are scanned in 2K & 4K from 35 MM internegative (Jekyll) and 35 MM camera negative (Clockwork).

No extras here, just a lot of bad acting from people who could screw on cue but couldn't recite simple dialog.

(A Blu ray edition has also been issued by Vinegar Syndrome.)

BOOK REVIEW: CARSICK...

Years ago one of my favorite shows on television involved George Plimpton. In the name of "participatory journalism," Plimpton would try out for a job as a circus acrobat, or maybe he'd try to be a stand-up comic at the Apollo theater.  He was tall and sort of clumsy, and he had a posh New England accent that always made him sound like a fop, but he was just so damned admirable.  A hell of a writer, too. 

I kept thinking of Plimpton as I read John Waters' Carsick, an attempt at participatory journalism of which Plimpton would have approved, I'm sure. Waters, director of such cult classics as Pink Flamingos and Hairspray, hasn't directed a film in years, but has refashioned himself as a filthy bon vivant. I liked parts of his last book, Role Models, and had anticipated Carsick the way I used to anticipate his movies.

The story is about Waters' hitchhiking adventure from Baltimore to San Francisco.  A hitcher in his youth, Waters feels brave and bold as, nearing 70, he hits the off ramps and truck stops of America, meeting a variety of kindhearted people along the way. Some recognize him instantly, but the best chapters are about the people who have no clue about "The Prince of Puke." 

The book is divided  into three sections, the first two being Waters' fantasies about what could go right or wrong on his journey.  Despite being as outre as his movies, the fantasy chapters aren't quite as interesting as the real life chapters where he stands in pounding rain as one car after another ignores him. There's an underlying story in Carsick, and it's about a man who yanks himself out of his comfort zone and subjects himself to punishment. Waters makes light of his situations, but there's always the impression that Waters is testing himself, testing his endurance, testing his coolness under fire. Can he do actually do this? 

There's also a slight sense of melancholy here. Waters can no longer get proper funding for his movies, which is a sorry comment on the state of movie making these days. As he hits different locations in Carsick, he recalls scenes from his movies, especially Pink Flamingos. Waters is not an outwardly sentimental man, but there's a sense here of a man looking back on an incredible life, and feeling lost and uncomfortable as he enters a new phase. 

Waters encounters people from all walks of life during this journey, but aside from a perky young Republican fellow known as 'The Corvette Kid,' these good and kind folks of the road blur together. I attribute some of this to Waters' compact writing style - he's as anal with his prose as I imagine he is with his closets. He sometimes surprises me with his writing, making his points with an economy of language that is impressive, but at other times I wish he'd written more about a particular person or place. That's why the book, despite a few funny moments and a final act that moves like a race horse, is unsatisfying. 

Waters occasionally comes off as an elitist, sneering at the complimentary breakfasts offered by the various motels, or grousing about his meal at the Outback Steakhouse.  He also sounds shockingly naive when he marvels at the kindness of heterosexuals. When Waters praises some straight man for loving his wife and family, which he does repeatedly throughout the story, he sounds as dumb as a white person who has wandered into a black neighborhood and is surprised that he doesn't hear gunfire. It's clear from Carsick that Waters lives in a bubble. He writes as if his readers are all rich, gay movie buffs and, like him, have never been inside a Walmart. Carsick is Waters' communique from the front lines of America's heartland, where there are plenty of cute truckers to admire, as long as you can survive the packaged donuts.

To Waters' credit as a writer, I felt like I was on the road with him. I felt his anguish and desperation when he seemed to be stranded, and I felt relieved when he was finally able to crash out on a lumpy hotel mattress. His climactic arrival in California was also a relief, as is the end of any long, unpleasant journey. But there came that airtight style again, and a quick wrap-up, as if he'd decided terseness was preferable to a long, sloppy goodbye. He saves the slop for the acknowledgment page, praising the people who picked him up as "the only heroes in this book," although I'm sure some of the people who passed him by were perfectly decent.

THE LUNCHBOX...

Sajaan Fernandes works at a dull office job. He's the sort of man who would like to be left alone, but he's too polite to tell people to bugger off.   He has applied for early retirement, but is annoyed by the energetic young fellow who has come to replace him.  Sajaan is a widower, and sometimes watches old videotapes his late wife recorded off the television; he watches her favorite old comedies so he can be reminded of her. He spends his nights smoking cigarettes on his balcony, looking into the window of the family next door.

Ila is a young woman enduring a loveless marriage. She packs her husband's lunch daily and leaves it to be delivered by Mumbai's lunchbox delivery system. One morning, through a fluke, her husband's lunch is delivered to Sajaan. This leads to a series of notes passed between Ila and Sajaan through the lunchbox. At first, the notes are merely compliments on the meal. Then they grow more personal, until grumpy old Sajaan takes things a step further and suggests the two pen pals meet.

For Sajaan, the simple correspondence comes just in time. With his retirement looming, he's feeling like a relic. He tells a co-worker that he was recently pricing a coffin for himself. He was surprised when the funeral home offered him a vertical one.  "I've spent my whole life standing in trains and buses," Sajaan says. "Now I'll even have to stand when I'm dead!" Good lines like that one are sprinkled throughout The Lunchbox, an elegant movie from India that unfolds like a delicate, paper structure.

The India of The Lunchbox is not the elegant India of old Merchant Ivory movies, or the glitzy silly place  of Bollywood musicals. Nor is it the dank, dirty countryside depicted by Satyajit Ray. The Lunchbox takes place in a modern, dreary city, where businessmen trudge to work in the mornings on overcrowded trains, each dressed in the same colorless office wear. The expression on their faces is sheer deadpan, as if they've all been stunned by the drabness of their lives. Ila is the only woman we see in the movie. She's desperate for someone to talk to and share her thoughts. 

The movie takes a turn when When Ila realizes her husband is having an affair; she reveals this sad fact to Sajaan in a note. Suddenly, Sajaan's adventurous side comes out. Ila's notes are the catalyst for Sajaan's long dormant feelings of love and compassion. But as he shaves for his clandestine appointment with Ila, he begins to feel old. The bathroom, he says later, smells the way it used to smell when his grandfather used it. When, Sajaan asks himself, did I get old?

Aging, death, and loneliness chew at the edges of the movie. Along with Sajaan's wife being dead, we learn that Ila's father has been in a coma for years. There is also a news headline read by  both Sajaan and Ila that involves a local woman who commits suicide. These dark elements give the movie a sense of melancholy even as we're charmed by Ila and Sajaan.

Writer/director Ritesh Batra is smart to keep Ila and Sajaan apart. He tells their stories separately,   and we grow to love them as characters. The actor playing Sajaan, Irrfan Khan, is a young man, 45 or so, but he carries himself with a slight weariness that makes him appear older. He's so emotionally stagnant that when he first smells one of Ila's lunches we can't tell if he likes it. He makes the same face whether he likes something or not. The gradual breaking of his serious front is one of the movie's great touches. Still, would an older actor have been better? Perhaps. But Sajaan still seems youthful enough in appearance that we believe he and Ila could possibly be together. A much older actor might look better in the role, but he wouldn't make us see the romantic possibilities here.

Nimrat Kaur, the young actress playing Ila, does a good job as a woman who craves something more than what her husband can offer. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is the movie's unsung hero as Shaikh, the man hired to replace Sajaan. He goes from being an annoying bumbler to one of the movie's most endearing characters. His blossoming friendship with the grouchy Sajaan could have been a movie in itself. Another delightful character, the mysterious 'Auntie' who lives upstairs and offers advice to Ila on love and cooking, is never seen; we only hear her shouting out her window.

The notes passed between Sajaan and Ila are slight, but when people are feeling desperate and empty, it doesn't take more than a few simple kindnesses to move them. What really makes the movie work is its willingness to show us Sajaan and Ila in detail, everything from the way Sajaan eats bananas to cure his heartburn, to the way he handles his eyeglasses and places them carefully in a little yellow case.   I like how Ila listens to music while her husband is away, but turns the music off as soon as he arrives. I like how she plays with her angelic little daughter. I like how Sajaan is short-tempered with Shaikh, but covers for him when Shaikh botches an assignment at the office. These are decent people, and we want good things for them.

I was also impressed with how the lunchbox itself almost becomes a character. The Indian lunchbox isn't the box-like contraption we use in America. Instead, it's a series of small tin canisters that fit together in a kind of cylinder, and are then slipped into a thick, green, cloth bag.  There are several scenes where we see the lunchbox being picked up by the delivery man, hauled around Mumbai, rattling around precariously on top of a truck, until it's placed on Sajaan's desk.  The lunchbox looks alone and fragile during these travels, as delicate as love itself.

WOLF CREEK 2...

I barely remember Wolf Creek. I remember there was a pig hunter with a big knife who killed some young travelers and kept their body parts in some kind of underground butcher shop.  I liked the idea that the killer was just a plain old mug with a thick Aussie accent, and that the movie was allegedly based on a true case, but Wolf Creek came out in the middle of a horror movie glut; it didn't stick in my memory. I do recall Wolf Creek  being   more mean-spirited than most movies, and making me wonder whatever became of other Aussie characters like Crocodile Dundee and Yahoo Serious.

Somehow, Wolf Creek 2 works better.  I walked out of Wolf Creek 2 feeling  as if I'd just spent a few hours running through the Australian outback and was slightly sun-stroked. I don't know if it will have any more of a lingering effect on me than its 2005 predecessor, but it worked.

Part of its success, and I'd usually knock a movie for this, is that it gallops all over the place in terms of style and tone. The opening scene shows Mick Taylor, the bigoted Australian farmer who murders tourists for fun, pulled aside by police for speeding. He gets revenge on the belligerent cops, as we knew he would, by blowing off the head of one, and setting the other on fire. The scene has the comical feeling of an old Troma movie here, as if we're supposed to root for good ol' Mick and his ultraviolent ways.  The cops were bullies, see, and it was fun to see Mick light them up. Yet, within a few minutes, he's torturing some unfortunate German tourist in a scene that is less like The Toxic Avenger, and more like the most horrific scenes in Last House on the Left, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the originals, of course.) Later, as Mick disembowels one of his victims, he listens to Patsy Cline singing 'I Fall to Pieces,' and jokes with the corpse. Suddenly, we're getting gallows humor. I half-expected the old Crypt Keeper to pop out at any minute.

The film's climactic set piece involves a British tourist Mick has captured and taken to his underground lair/torture chamber. Tied to a chair and knowing his death is near, the Brit stalls for time by engaging Mick with some dirty lymerics and Aussie singalongs. As if a switch has gone off in his head, Mick can't help but join in on "Tie My Kangaroo Down, Sport." The scene is nerve-wracking, for we can't tell if the Brit has found a way to survive, or if Mick is just messing around. Mick, softened momentarily by the singalong, decides the Brit deserves a chance to save himself.  Mick offers him 10 questions about Australian history. If the Brit gets five of the 10, he's free to go. But Mick has a big selection of angry looking power tools nearby, just to keep things interesting.

These graphic scenes wouldn't be enough on their own. What elevates the movie are the constant visual surprises pulled by director Greg McLean and cinematographer Toby Oliver. In their hands, the expansive Australian outback is almost like a lunar landscape, wide and menacing. The vastness of the place and its emptiness is a frightening experience in itself, even if you're not being hunted by a madman. I was also impressed by the moviemakers' use of sunlight, especially when Mick steals a horse and rides after the runaway Brit, his dark silhouette looking almost iconic against the burnt orange sky. It's a beautiful moment, not the sort of thing we're used to seeing in modern horror movies. 

 

McLean, who co-wrote the script with Aaron Sterns, also gets into something I'll call the "horror of indifference," a queasy sense that no one gives a damn about you. The movie's key motif is for Mick's victims to try to escape by hitching a ride with someone. Sadly, the occasional car or truck that speeds by doesn't even notice them. And when Mick is sticking his knife into somebody, the vastness of the countryside seems to make things more hopeless; in the outback, no one can hear you scream. 

This bleak world view, in which the planet is a big, lonely place and we're just small critters waiting to be destroyed by unfriendly forces, is unsettling. I don't know what it says about the Australian national character - is there really such bitterness and anger? "Someone has to keep Australia beautiful," Mick says at one point, as if he's doing his country a favor by dismembering tourists. We never learn too much about Mick, which is probably what keeps him intriguing. He's a loner, and as in the first movie, we see him alone at the end, walking through the outback, as isolated as John Wayne at the end of The Searchers. Even a dumb scene where Mick's truck squashes a herd of kangaroos can't dissuade me from thinking McLean has something different in mind than just garden variety blood and guts. This is horror by way of John Ford, shot big, with big feelings at stake.

McLean's movie isn't for everyone. Even fans of horror movies are divided. Some wonder why Mick is never punished. Some seem irked that McLean casually breaks the conservative rules of horror, and doesn't bother with some insipid movie hero to put Mick in his place and restore order. But part of the movie's strength is that Mick is like a force of nature, as much a part of his environment as the kangaroos and the cracked soil. How, exactly, are you supposed to punish a force of nature? You can't.

I'm glad the movie wasn't American. An American director would've turned it into a found footage mess, and the recent crop of young American actors are so shrill and effete that horror movies suffer from their inclusion. I like that the first tourist couple we see are German. They're very sweet together, and it's sad to see them fall into Mick's clutches. An American couple would have been bickering the whole time, texting their friends, being obnoxious, because that's how Americans think they're supposed to behave in movies. I like how Rutger, the German fellow, loses his temper when a truck almost hits him and his girlfriend on the highway. Rather than grouse about how he loses his temper too easily, as an American actress might, the German girl merely takes his hand and calms him down. Even from a distance, their closeness feels real, in a way that few young American actors could capture. 

I also like John Jarratt as the relentless and remorseless Mick. I don't know if he's a satirical character or not, or if he's supposed to represent some proverbial chip on the Australian shoulder, but he's one hell of a movie villain. He's enough to make me forget Yahoo Serious.

THE SACRAMENT...TORMENT...

One of the joys of watching new movies is to see a journeyman performer absolutely steal the show, as  Gene Jones does in The Sacrament.  Not only does he steal it, he runs off with it and practically dances in the end zone.

Jones plays Father, a self-styled preacher-guru who has established Eden Parish, a church community in a hidden jungle location. An American documentary team travels there to profile him, but once there, they realize that all is not as pleasant as they've been lead to believe. Not only are there armed guards surrounding the place, but a little girl gives one of the newsmen a note that simply reads, "Help us." Father, meanwhile, holds court, offering slippery bromides about freedom and unity, always looking a little too self-satisfied to be trustworthy. Jones gives a knockout performance. Somehow, with a talent that must be possessed by all cult leaders,  he's able to speak to a crowd and make it seem like he's whispering in your ear. Where has Gene Jones been?

He's an older man, a Louisiana native in his late 60s. According to the Internet Movie Database, Jones  doesn't have a big pile of movie credits. He's learned his craft by appearing in plays, including some off-Broadway work. Although Jones has a few notable appearances - he provided some voice work for Tim Burns' memorable Civil War documentary in 1990, and landed in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men, playing the the gas station attendant in the memorable "coin toss" scene - he seems to have started working regularly in movies only during the past year or so. He has a few more coming up, a couple of indy horror movies, and what looks like a dark Christmas comedy with Robin Williams. I hope The Sacrament earns him some attention.

The rest of the movie doesn't quite match Jones' work.  It's an uninspired knockoff of the 1978 Jonestown massacre, done in a found footage, fake documentary style. Director/writer Ti West has some luck in the first half, creating an eerie atmosphere.  The Eden Parish compound looks right, and aside from the unctuous newsmen (why are the majority of young male actors so effete?) the movie pumps along nicely. Surprisingly, it's in the supposed climax where things get dull.  We all know how Jonestown ended, so when this movie follows suite, there's not much to get worked up about. Whether the documentary crew escapes or not is, I suppose, the reason we're supposed to care, but they're such stick figures that losing them to Father's madness wouldn't have bothered me much.

Still, there's a 12 minute scene at the center of the movie that has stayed with me. It starts with the thundering applause that greets Father as he makes his way towards the Eden Parish stage for a service. I loved the way he ambles up to the microphone to speak to his flock, and the way he handles an interview with the doc team. It's one of my favorite moments in a movie this year, particularly in the way Father absorbs and revels in the excitement of his minions. I'd like to think it represents the arrival of not only Father, but of Gene Jones, who will undoubtedly get his share of applause in the years to come.

What is it with horror movie villains wearing masks? I understand that it's a tradition dating back to at least the silent film era - Erik the phantom wore a mask as he terrorized the Paris opera, and Jason and Michael Myers wore their famous masks, and the Saw guy wore an interesting mask, as did the killer in Scream.  My favorite mask belonged to the killer in The Town that Dreaded Sundown - just a plain canvas sack over the head with eye-holes cut out. The bad guys are wearing masks more frequently in the past year or two. I've seen sheep masks, goat masks, and others. In these recent movies, I remember the masks, but not the stories. 

In Torment, there's a makeshift family of psychopaths who wear masks made from the heads of giant stuffed animals. The head of the family slips a giant mouse face over his own, and walks around with this giant mouse head for the entire movie. He takes it off once, and we're supposed to gather that he has a badly scarred face. Who can tell for sure? The cinematography is so murky that we can't tell what's going on most of the time. 

The psychopaths get these stuffed animal heads from a little boy who has traveled with his dad and stepmother to a summer home in the woods. It seems the psychos want the little boy for their own ersatz family, so they kidnap him. They torture the dad for a while, and torment the stepmother.  But why did they cut the heads from the kid's stuffed animal collection and turn the heads into masks? Did they do it so the boy would feel more comfortable around them?  And what sort of kid collects giant stuffed animals, anyway? 

There's a vague plot about the kid missing his real mother and not liking his stepmother, but this just makes the movie's 80 minutes drag on. It's one of those stories where the father calls his son "boss," and has "heart to heart" conversations with the kid on a swing set, where the dad says, 'I miss mommy as much as you do.' By then you'll be rooting for the guy with the mouse head. (This 'normal' family is so awful that the first time we see them, they are in their car having a contest to see who can scream the loudest. I'm serious.)

There's some blood and violence, but not too much. The suspense is hackneyed, with a lot people running through woods and falling down. The stepmother actually steps on a nail at one point, injuring her foot so she'll have to limp around and be easier to catch. The kid acts like a real piece of shit until he's scared, and then he's suddenly supposed to be vulnerable. The dad is tied to a chair and forced to tell his son that he doesn't love him. This, of course, makes the kid want to live with the crazy mouse family. 

There's not much more to report. If you like the idea of a guy with a giant mouse head stalking around while carrying a meat cleaver, this is the one you've been waiting for.