Hooptober 8.0, pt.7- In which Ethan goes looking for a book on black magic but accidentally finds Gilles Deleuze instead
6/6 Countries (Australia, Belgium, UK, USA, Japan, Italy) (COMPLETE)
5/8- Decades (1980s, 2010s, 1960s, 1990s, 1970s)
2/4- Films from 1981
1/2- Haunted House Films
6th Lucio Fulci (after Don't Torture a Duckling, A Cat in the Brain, The House by the Cemetery, The Black Cat and City of the Living Dead, followed by A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, Zombie…
1st Nia Da Costa
About twenty minutes in to this, suddenly I realised why the figure of Candyman is so important to me. The original film is one of my favourite horror films of all time; I own two copies, one on Blu-Ray, have read the original story and Bernard Rose's original screenplay. It's not just Phillip Glass's incredible score, or the acting of Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd. It's not the socio-political elements or the undertones of religious horror.…
4th Ridley Scott (after Blade Runner, Alien and Thelma and Louise)
Lady Gaga apparently said that Ridley Scott works incredibly fast while making a film, and sadly it shows with House of Gucci. It has the air of a project done with aggressive haste, an idea that was clearer at the start of the process than at the end. The first hour is exceptional camp, charged by a wonderfully OTT performance by Gaga aggressively boss-babing too close to the sun.…
2nd Tracey Moffatt (after Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy)
Oh, I've wanted to see this for a while, ever since the wonderful article I've linked turned me on to its existence.* Even though the copy I saw was a terrible print, filled with glitchy colours and awkward sound drops, a real genius shone through, one that uses the props and dress of classic horror to fashion something unique to Moffat's artistic vision. It's entirely set in various areas of Queensland,…
1st Whit Stillman (before The Last Days of Disco, Barcelona, 'The Cosmopolitans' and Love & Friendship)
Another classic from my teenage years. Oh, how I wanted to live in the world of Tom Townsend and Audrey Rouget, wearing elegant clothes and talking to my friends about important issues of politics and literature until the small hours of the morning and not existing in crummy Northampton with its grey streets. Yet with the wonders of age (this is the third time I've…
1st Georges Franju
Franju described this as 'Horror in homeopathic doses', one that is interested in a quiet sense of anguish rather than hair-raising fear and revulsion, and he is absolutely right. Eyes Without a Face is an anti-romance, a film where any sentiment has been stifled by the crushing selfishness of Doctor Génessier, Pierre Brasseur's unbelievably arrogant surgeon. A fair cry from the lively bon vivant the Collab saw in Children of Paradise, Génessier is a vast, imposing figure,…
