October 2015 Horror Movie a Day

[Charles Castle]

The Lair of the White Worm

Spoiler

Ken Russell's dalliances with the horror genre were always perverse. Whether the artsy take on nunsploitation in The Devils or the evolutionary visions of Altered States or the Romantic freakout of Gothic, Russell always approached the genre obliquely, using its imagery but eschewing its narrative tropes. A rare exception to this is The Lair of the White Worm (1988), which has a conventional horror movie plot - taken from Bram Stoker's worst novel - upon which Russell hangs his usual altered states of consciousness and psychosexual derangement. It's as looney a horror movie as the 1980s ever produced - which is saying something - though it's perhaps less strange than some of Russell's other films. It's a matter of degrees informed by the history of the director rather than by the genre's standards themselves. Russell, whatever his faults, was one of a kind.



The story finds archaeologist Angus Flint digging up an old Roman convent behind a Derbyshire bed and breakfast. Part of his find is a mysterious skull that he thinks might be some kind of dinosaur, but for the strata at which its found. It's mere thousands, rather than millions, of years old. The two sisters who own the B&B are still mourning the disappearance of their parents a year previous, though they've reason to hope as local constable Ernie brings them their father's watch found in Stonerich cavern. The sisters take Angus to a local dance celebrating the slaying of the D'ampton worm, a dragon reputedly killed by the ancestor of the local nobility at that very cavern. The local nobility is Lord James D'ampton, an amiable rogue who's just returned to his family estate after coming into his inheritance. His return coincides with the return of another local aristocrat, Lady Sylvia Marsh, who lives at Temple House. Lady Sylvia is a mystery to most of the locals; she rarely winters in the vicinity. When she comes across Ernie lurking around her property, she helps him with a snakebite by sucking the poison out of his leg. She's got a sinister agenda, though. She visits the B&B while the sisters are out searching for more clues and finds Angus's dragon skull. She absconds with it, but not before spewing venom at a crucifix. When Eve, one of the sisters, returns to the house with James, she touches the venom and is rewarded with terrifying visions of the destruction of a convent by Roman soldiers, and of snakes wound around the Cross. Lady Sylvia, it seems, is the mortal servitor of the snake god, Dionin, and she's looking for a sacrifice - a human sacrifice - and Eve is just to order. Meanwhile, Angus, James, and Mary uncover evidence that something survived in Stonerich cavern, which appears to have a connection to Temple House. Their suspicions are confirmed when they learn that Eve has been abducted and it's up to them to save her...

I say that this is more conventionally a horror film than Russells other "horror" films, but that's not quite true. It follows a conventional Gothic horror plot, but in most of its particulars, it plays like an elaborate put-on. This is in part because it's monster - played with a kind of libidinous glee by Amanda Donohoe - is particularly liberated. One wonders if Russell is undermining the sexual unease and repression that so concerned Bram Stoker or if he was, instead, tweaking the nose of his financial backers. This film was part of a four picture deal with Vestron, who had had great success on home video with Russell's Gothic and asked him to make another horror film for them. Russell's own preference was to make The Rainbow, a follow-on film from his 1969 version of Women in Love based on another of D. H. Lawrence's novels, and this film was the price he paid to get it made. Did the director resent this price? It's hard to tell from the text of the film, really, but one thing is for sure: The Lair of the White Worm leaves a more indelible impression than The Rainbow.

I am a heterosexual male, but I used to have a huge crush on Amanda Donohoe based on this film and on her role as C. J. Lamb on L. A. Law two years later. Donohoe's character on that show was one of the first gay tv characters who was allowed to express her sexuality on-camera and I know that I'm not the only viewer that remembers "the kiss." In any event, Donohoe's character in Lair isn't specifically gay, she's more of a pansexual force of nature. More: she delights in her sexuality, even if that sexuality includes human sacrifice and startling ceremonial phallic sculptures worn as a strap-on. She's all of Stoker's unease about the castrating monstrous feminine made flesh - and she's shameless about it. The film flatters her, too, and she pretty much blows her fellow actresses off the screen, both because Russell dresses her in fetishy outfits and because of the actress's willingness to follow Russell's phantasmagoria off the cliff. Her smile as she licks blood from the end of one of the phalluses during one of the film's hallucination scenes is totally genuine. She seems into it.

In the manner of a classic Universal horror film, this divides the duties of "hero" among separate characters. Both Peter Capaldi's Angus and Hugh Grant's Lord James are stalwart hero types, but the film does something unusual with the way they're coded. Given that Angus is a bookish scientist type, you would expect him to be the Savant - the Peter Cushing character with a deep knowledge of the enemy. That's not how this film codes him, though. That role is actually assigned to James, who you would expect to be the man of action. It's Angus who gets that role. It works surprisingly well. I should mention that it's been a while since I last saw The Lair of the White Worm, and in the intervening years, Capaldi has acquired his own indelible screen persona as he's aged. His younger self reminds me a bit of Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters, but the voice is the same and I kept imagining him as a young Malcolm Tucker, slaying the Worm with a stream of verbal bile and profanity. This has nothing to do with the movie itself so much as it's a quirk of my own. Take that however you like.

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Alucarda

Spoiler

I often don't know how to react to nunsploitation movies. Apart from the feminist and gay-activist objections that I might raise about the exploitation elements in nunsploitation, I'm perhaps more deeply conflicted by the religious implications. Depending on who's behind the camera, these films either indulge in anti-religious straw-manning or they function as religious propaganda. Sometimes, they'll do both within the same damned movie. Alucarda (1977, directed by Juan López Moctezuma), a key nunsploitation film from Mexico, makes no pretense of a coherent theological critique or even a coherent story, though I think it mostly functions on the religious propaganda side of the equation.

Justine, whose mother died in childbirth, is sheltered in a convent. Upon her arrival, she's greeted by her roommate, Alucarda, a girl her age who mysteriously appears behind her. Alucarda chafes at the strict life in the convent and steals away with Justine to explore the woods, where they form a bond and promise to die together, neither one able to bear life without the other. They encounter a goat-faced Roma who warns them of sinister forces about afoot. The girls press on undeterred, and eventually wind up in the mausoleum where Justine was given birth. There is indeed a dark force in the tomb, and when the girls return to the convent, it possesses them. The goat-faced man reappears and encourages the girls to make a pact with the Devil and engage in a ceremonial orgy. During their lessons the next day, the Devil makes himself known as the girls refute the teachings of St. Theresa and hail the kingdom of Satan on earth. Their teacher, Sister Angelica, attempts to drive out the devil, but the incidents of possession become more severe until Father Lazaro decides that the only hope is an outright exorcism. This goes awry, killing Justine, and when the proceedings are interrupted by the unbelieving village doctor, he takes Alucarda to his home, where Alucarda proceeds to seduce the doctor's blind daughter, meanwhile Justine's influence is still felt from beyond the grave, as if she were still somehow alive...

In short, this film is bonkers. It's filled with weird non-sequiturs and design elements. The convent in this church is seemingly subterranean, suggesting that Christ is somehow a Chthonic god (and we all know who is the Cthonic deity in the Christian pantheon, don't we?). The main meeting space in this convent has a veritable army of crucifixes behind the altar, and yet this army is insufficient to keep the devil away. Perhaps it's piety that attracts him rather than sin. I dunno what the hell the makers of this film are saying along these lines. It's not usual for priests to be in charge of convents, and the nuns wear no kind of liturgical habit I've ever seen, so maybe this isn't a straw version of the Catholic Church at all, but some weird renegade cult. This notion has problems of its own, though, because if they're a cult, they have some measure of the truth on their side because their version of Satan is totally real.

As a digression, the notion that Satan is real and directing our actions is a problem I have in general with a lot of horror movies. I mean, I can suspend my disbelief for this as a fantasy trope if I must, but this assertion so often results in the most reactionary horror movies, the ones that, as I've mentioned, function as religious propaganda, that I'm usually irritated by the trope and unwilling to make the effort. I generally prefer a level of ambiguity, but that's my own unbelief talking so take it with a grain of salt. I am annoyed that this film casts the doctor as a straw atheist, though, and there's no papering over that.

As much as the religious elements of this film seem incoherent. they're less obnoxious than the association of lesbianism and sexual freedom with Satan. This is one of the less savory elements of the nunsploitation film, though I suppose I can take it on its face as an example of religion as instrument of brutal repression and anti-religion as liberation. I can get behind that, though I don't know that that's what this movie is going for. I wish this film's catalog of Satanic behavior was more expansive than this, because as mischief goes, going around screaming blasphemies seems relatively tame compared to the activities of, say, the devil cult in Rosemary's Baby or the kids in Blood on Satan's Claw. Until the end, that is, when our pair of lesbian demonesses start hurling hellfire and mayhem like they're the second coming of Carrie White.

As an assemblage of horror movie tropes, this has a lot in common with the mainstream of Mexican horror. This is a "blender" movie, taking elements of the lesbian vampire movie (this is nominally based on "Carmilla"), the Marquis de Sade ("Justine"), and The Exorcist. While this kind of moviemaking often results in an incoherent sprawl (boy, howdy! Does it!), there's certainly an undeniable energy behind it, too. Whatever this films other flaws, it's never boring.

In truth, all of this is secondary to the imagery. This movie is rich with startling scenes. Some of these are subtle: Alucarda materializing behind Justine, for instance. Some are baroque: Justine, naked, rising from a coffin filled with blood. Some are just plain outrageous: Sister Angelica, killed by Justine, hoisted aloft as a make-shift crucifix once all of the other crosses are burning. Viewed only as a cascade of images, this plays as if the filmmakers have slipped the audience a mild hit of acid. This is the genre version of the psychedelic freakouts of Jodorowsky (with whom director Juan L. Moctezuma was a collaborator), in which the narrative matters less than the altered states of consciousness of its characters as transmitted to the audience

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[/spoiler]

[stethacantus]

I came soooo close.

Last year I would have loved to participate in the challenge of watching 31 horror films in 31 days, but knew with all the network television shows I watched, really had no time to do so. But this past year almost all of the late night hosts I watched, including Letterman, retired. This left Conan as the last late night program I watched on a regular basis, and therefore giving me free time after 12 midnight every weeknight. I could put Conan on DVR,  begin the movie around 10pm or 11pm, then watch Conan at 1am, or perhaps save it for the morning. Realizing that I could pull this off this year, I came up with the idea of watching only horror films from Hong Kong, all from my video library.  Going through my library I came up with enough Hong Kong movies to pull this off, some which were on VHS and laserdisc, two formats I have not used in years. Some were pure horror, some with just a hint of horror, but just enough to qualify. And since I had seen all these movies before, I did not have to worry about needing to rewind if I was to nod off for a few minutes during the late night viewing.

A couple of weeks into the challenge my computer was hit with one of those encryption viruses, and I lost the notes I had been writing since the first day of the challenge, which would have been in depth reviews of each film. I was tempted to give up, but kept going. I got to Friday October 30 and was still on schedule with an entire Saturday to complete the challenge. Then I made a huge error. I decided to save the final film for 8:00 at night instead of the afternoon. Why bother watching a film during the hours when I would be interupted every few minutes by trick-or-treaters? Things were going well, when at 5:00 I got the phone call.

A friend had been given World Series tickets through his work. Someone in his party had cancelled,  which lead him to calling me and asking if I wanted to go to a world series game. I had not actually been interested in Baseball for the past couple of decades, and was not following the Mets in their playoffs. But how could I pass up the chance to see a world series game live? I would have to leave for my friends house immediately. I thought that since it was daylight savings time and October 31st would be extended by an hour, I could possibly get back home by the deadline and begin watching the 31st film before midnight. But then the Mets blew the game, and my friend wanted to go to the nearest bar for a round of stiff drinks. And it would have been rude to have accepted a gift of being brought to a playoff game, and then flatleave my friend in his hour of need.

And he was paying for the drinks.

What was suppose to be a single round of drinks did not dull the pain, and one drink lead to another, and finally we were so drunk that we could not even remember who the Mets were. I do not remember what happened after that, but I woke up in my bed late Sunday afternoon with a hangover. I had missed the deadline, and was in no mood to watch anything on a television screen. ( the light from the screen made my eyes hurt. ) I did not watch the 31st film until last night, and only then because Conan was a rerun.



Oct 1
Black Magic ( 1975 )
An evil black magic priest is chased by a Taoist priest out of a remote Thai village he had been cursing. He ends up in a modern city where he sets up shop, casting spells for paying customers. A rich bitch falls for a construction worker, but he already has a girlfriend and  is not interested in her. She hires the evil priest to cast spells on the construction worker and his girlfriend. The Taoist priest shows up to help them, and the film ends with a supernatural battle between the two priests. A decent horror film from Shaw Brothers.

Oct 2
Black Magic 2 ( 1978 )
Same cast playing different characters. This time an evil priest is killing people and bringing them back as zombie slaves. Better than the first movie.

Oct 3
The Seeding of a Ghost ( 1983 )
Another film featuring a black magic priest. This time, a taxi driver seeks revenge for the gang rape and murder of his unfaithful wife. He hires the priest, the wife's body is dug up and violated,  and a curse is enacted, killing off the rapers one by one. But the best is saved for last, when a woman gives birth to an octopus type demon that proceeds to eat everyone in the room. Good fun.

Oct 4
The Boxers Omen ( 1983 )
Another good Taoist priest vs evil black magic priest flick from Shaw Brothers. This time involving a boxer who is given supernatural powers so he can fight the evil priest. Just as with the past films, lots of gore and special effects.

Oct 5
Human Lanterns ( 1982 )
The villain of this martial arts film is a serial killer who makes lanterns out of his victims. A decent martial arts film with a horror twist.

Oct 6
Spiritual Kung Fu ( 1978 )
One of the very few decent films Jackie Chan made for Lo Wei's studio. Chan plays a Shaolin student who discovers ghosts in an isolated part of the temple, and they teach him Kung Fu.

Oct 7
Heaven and Hell ( 1978 )
The beginning of this movie is a bit of a mess and at times hard to follow, even seeming as if the spliced together footage from other unreleased films that had nothing to do with the rest of the movie. The main plot involves characters who end up in hell and have to fight their way out.

Oct 8
The Dragon Lives Again ( 1977 )
A really bad Bruceploitation movie that is so dumb you have to keep watching. Bruce Lee ends up in hell along with James Bond, Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, Dracula, and a few other famous motion picture characters. He teams up with Popeye ( yes, Popeye ) to prevent the others from overthrowing the King of Hell, and is awarded by being allowed to return to Earth.

Oct 9
Bruce Lee We Miss You ( 1976 )
More Bruceploitation. This time Bruce Lee's ghost beacons a martial arts teacher to investigate his death. A dumb film, but with some really decent action scenes.

Oct 10
The Mighty Peking Man ( 1977 )
The Shaw Brothers version of King Kong ( and Mighty Joe Young ) using a man in an ape costume and lots of miniature sets to destroy.

Oct 11
A Chinese Ghost Story ( 1987 )
A great classic. A young man takes shelter in an abandoned temple not realizing it is haunted by a beautiful female ghost who is a slave of a soul eating demon. The ghost has lead many a man into the clutches of the demon. but this time she falls in love, and stands up to the demon, resulting in a special effects showdown.

Oct 12
A Chinese Ghost Story II ( 1990 )
The continuing adventures of one of the characters from the first movie. A very decent sequel.

Oct 13
A Chinese Ghost Story III ( 1991 )
Basically, a remake of the first film.

Oct 14
Green Snake ( 1993 )
Very decent film about two snake spirits who are able to take human form.

Oct 15
the Killer Snakes ( 1975 )
Basically, Willard, but with venomous snakes instead of rats.

Oct 16
Robotrix ( 1991 )
A mad scientist transfers his brain into a robot and goes on a killing spree. One of his victims is a female cop who is brought back to life as a sort of sexy Robocop.

Oct 17
I Love Maria ( 1988 )
A gang of villains create two killer robots, one a hulking giant, the other normal sized and resembling a female. During a heist the female robot breaks down, and ends up with a couple of vagrants who reboot her and turn her into a heroine. Of course this leads to a climatic robot battle.

Oct 18
The Seventh Curse ( 1986 )
In Thailand, an explorer rescues a woman from being sacrificed by a cult, and ends up being cursed. To stop the curse from killing him, he needs to return to Thailand to confront the cult that cursed him.

Oct 19
Heroic Trio ( 1993 )
More of a superhero film, but enough supernatural stuff to make it count as a horror flick.

Oct 20
Wicked City ( 1992 )
A team of paranormal secret agents battle shape shifting monsters called Rapters who have disguised themselves as humans. Based on a Japanese anime of the same name. Another special effects extravaganza that has to be seen to be believed.

Oct 21
Corpse Mania ( 1981 )
Very decent slasher film /  murder mystery from Shaw Brothers

Oct 22
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain ( 1983 )
While not a horror film, per say, this milestone classic from Golden Harvest Studios ( Heralded as the first big budget special effects movie shot in China ) does have a lot of evil magicians and spirits.

Oct 23
The Witch From Nepal ( 1986 )
While visiting Nepal, Chow Yun Fat discovers that he is the chosen one who must safeguard a sacred bone sword from an evil witch doctor. This leads up to a great climax with Chow battling the witch doctor in modern day Hong Kong. The only thing wrong with this movie would be the annoying supernatural rom-com that takes up the second act.

Oct 24
The Occupant  ( 1984 )
A really, really, really bad comedy with Chow Yun Fat, where he is being haunted by the ghost of a dead singer.

Oct 25
Spiritual Love ( 1987 )
Chow Yun Fat discovers a note in an antique desk from a spirit, which leads to a female ghost haunting him. Nowhere as bad as The Occupant, but not that good.



Oct 26
The Shadow Boxing ( 1979 )
Another classic from Lau Kar Leung. This time involving the folklore that priests are able to reanimate dead bodies so they may return to their home towns to be buried. In this movie a priest is leading a group of hopping corpses ( hopping because it is the only way corpses with rigor mortis can move. ) back to their respective villages when a fugitive from the law disguises himself as one of the dead to get past checkpoints.


Oct 27
The Bride With White Hair ( 1993 )
One of the all time greatest Hong kong fantasy films. The origin story of the white haired witch.

Oct 28
Untold Story ( 1993 )
A psychopath massacres an entire family so he can take over their restaurant, and finds a novel way of disposing of the bodies. Based on a true story.

Oct 29
Dr Lamb ( 1992 )
The allegedly true story of real life serial killer Lam Kor-Wan.

Oct 30
Mr Vampire ( 1985 )
The classic Horror-Comedy that began a new genre of films in Hong Kong.

Nov 2
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires ( 1974 )
A co-production between Shaw Brothers Studios and Hammer Films. This was one of the later films in Hammer's Dracula series. Van Helsing travels to China to help some martial artists rid their village of the 7 Golden Vampires and Dracula.  A very entertaining mix of Kung Fu and Horror.

[Charles Castle]

Deliria

Michele Soavi's Deliria (aka Stagefright, 1987) is of its time and place. It's a slasher, of course, but it's a slasher film that exists at the confluence of that subgenre and the Italian giallo. It's not exactly a giallo. It doesn't have the perverse investigative plot of most giallo films, but it borrows the giallo's style, in which massacre is lovingly mounted as slick entertainment. This is the descendent of Dario Argento, of course, for whom director Michele Soavi once worked as a second-unit director. Take out the director's credit, and you might mistake this for Argento's work. It's certainly cruel enough.

The story here finds a theatrical company putting on a show about a masked murderer. The murderer, Judex-style, wears a bird's head (an owl, in this case). The production is overseen by Peter, a domineering director who sees this production as his ticket to the big time. He's a stern taskmaster, too much so for Alicia, whom he berates and fires for heading to a doctor's office for a sprained ankle she suffers during the film's opening number. The nearest doctor, it turns out, is a psychiatric hospital where mass killer, Irving Wallace, is being held in custody. Wallace, it seems, has figured out how to escape custody, and hitches a ride back to the theater. Peter, for his part, wants his people to bear down on the production and to this end, he locks everyone in the theater. Unfortunately, Irving is in the theater, too, and soon, he's bumping off the cast and crew one by one...

My first impression of Deliria? Wow, it's the 1980s. I suspect that fashions are like water for fish. When you're surrounded by them, you don't notice how ghastly they sometimes are. As I say, this is of its time, and its time is 1987, five years before punk went mainstream. The music is of its time, too, a generic echo of the fading New Wave. The early part of the movie, and several other parts of it, too, look a lot like a music video. It's of a piece with other films from the same period, from the mild to the wild.

This is a film that thrives on viciousness. The setting of the story in a theatrical company that is making a musical out of mass murder is a tip off to what Soavi is up to. The violent set pieces in this movie are the attraction, in the same way that the musical numbers in a musical are the attraction. Everything that links the set pieces together is incidental. The subplot where two castmates discuss what to do with her unborn baby? It doesn't save her from being massacred. Or him, for that matter. This is not a drama about people or even about theater (though it perhaps suggests the attraction of the grand guignol). This is about slaking the audience's taste for violence. To that end, it stages its murders with aplomb: the murder weapons are diverse, the situations are varied (one murder happens in front of the entire cast before they realize that they're in the presence of a murder), and the gore is copious and grotesque. The implements of mayhem include a pneumatic drill, a chainsaw, a pickaxe, a fire ax, and a run of the mill knife. A glancing blow from a chainsaw takes off a woman's breast. Another woman is sawn in half. One cast member is trussed up like the killer as a way of provoking his own friends into hacking into him with an ax.

There's a final girl, of course, and the movie counts down to her isolation and her final confrontation with our masked killer. This film's finale is better than one finds in most films: it's more Hitchcock than it is Friday the 13th, but then, the Italians discovered the effectiveness of Hitchcockian suspense as a build up to massacre long before Hollywood caught on. There's a level of craft in these scenes that eludes comparable American films. The final set piece doesn't even hinge on gore. It's pure, object-oriented filmmaking that coincidentally sends its heroine on a kind of hero's journey into the underworld. The owl mask the killer wears tends to abstract the film away from the slasher movie and into a kind of dreamy conte cruel of the sort favored by the Symbolists (certainly, its echoes of Franju and Feuillade are not accidental).



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Europa Report

Europa Report (2013, directed by Sebastián Cordero) is a hardcore science fiction film that uses the found footage form to ratchet up the dread as a crew of intrepid astronauts investigate the possibilities of life on Jupiter's icebound moon, Europa. This is a film that demonstrates the fact that science fiction and horror were born as conjoined twins and were never quite separated into tidy, discreet individuals.

The film follows the journey of Europa One and its crew on a jaunt through the solar system bound for Jupiter and its moons. The crew is a diverse, from multiple countries. The mission is the first manned mission to travel beyond low earth orbit since the 1970s and expectations are high. Unfortunately, communication is lost between the spacecraft and Earth en route and the astronauts are on their own. They persevere and make it to their landing on Europa and find that there is indeed life there: first they find a kind of blue-green algae in the surface ice, then sinister bioluminescent shapes beneath it. Things continue to take turns for the worst, though. The landing has caused the capsule's propulsion systems to malfunction, and the light from their struggles to escape the moon are attracting the attention of the inhabitants of Europa's hidden ocean...

As I've mentioned, this film is hard science fiction. There's a level of verisimilitude that lends it an aspect of documentary. This is not just down to the structure of the film, but also the result of its production design and laconic dramatic style. Given the fact that we know at the outset that the expedition becomes lost, there's a mounting tension. Structurally, this is a horror film, with its characters being picked off one by one - not by a nut with a knife or some demonic entity, but by the unmerciful nature of space travel. There's no room for error in space, and this crew makes too many mistakes. This is like a horror film in one other respect: it relies on its characters to do stupid, out of character things to keep the plot going, though in context, those things are understandable. In real life, no astronaut would persist in the activities shown in this film when given the order to abort by their commanders. But that's movies for you.

This movie adds one interesting wrinkle to its faux-documentary format: one of the characters, the mission's pilot, Rosa, has several scenes in which she's talking to the camera interview-style. The way this is shot suggests that she survived the mission and returned with the footage and it keeps the audience guessing once it becomes apparent that Rosa is the final girl. This has also learned some tricks when it comes to the form of the found footage film in so far as it breaks away from a singular camera and includes shots from multiple cameras placed all over its setting(s). This gives the filmmakers some freedom to compose the frame and direct the film rather than rely on POV shots. It also lets them indulge in multiple instances of split screens containing multiple aspects of its action.

Europa Report has better actors than you might expect from a low budget sci-fi thriller, including Sharlto Copley, Michael Nyquist, Embeth Davitz, and Isiah Washington. The actors are all vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough to impinge on the notion that we are watching real characters rather than performers. On a meta level, the star of the film is Anamaria Marinca, who alone of the crew speaks to the camera a little about her inner life. The casting of this film is impeccable. So is the production design, which calls to mind both the actual space programs of the world and the space films of the 1970s. The obvious touchstone for this film is 2001, a fact the film itself elides with a snippet of "The Blue Danube." It's a testament to the fact that film craft has become so good and so accessible that this looks like a film that has a gigantic budget even though it cost less than $10 million. There's a high degree of visual sophistication on display here, as well as an awareness of the best way to deploy its resources. In addition to the found footage structure of the film, this also has the structure of a classic monster movie, in which the film teases the audience with hints of what its monster looks like before its big reveal at the end. If anything, Europa Report waits almost too long, but the environments it puts on film are interesting enough that you don't really notice a lack in this regard. The monster itself is credible and Lovecraftian at the same time, and at the end of the film, I mumbled to myself that Lovecraft was wrong: Yuggoth isn't Pluto, it's Europa. That's the geek in me, I suppose.

In any event, I liked this film a lot, warts and all. It tickles the same kind of appetite for hard SF that Moon stroked a couple of years ago. It's a "Golden Age of Sci Fi" kind of movie, untroubled by the terrors of shifting realities and problems of identity so common in contemporary, Phillip Dick-influenced sci-fi. This is the kind of thing that A. E. Van Vogt used to write - "Black Destroyer," for instance - and it's fun seeing it come to life.

[Darth Geek]

Great reviews, CHC. Europa Report sounds interesting. Although this part

Given the fact that we know at the outset that the expedition becomes lost

Does this mean the movie is essentially told as a flashback? I hate that.

[Charles Castle]

Great reviews, CHC. Europa Report sounds interesting. Although this part

Given the fact that we know at the outset that the expedition becomes lost

Does this mean the movie is essentially told as a flashback? I hate that.

Yeah, it's a found footage film. I'm beginning to grow weary of this myself, but it wasn't enough to chase me away. I'd give it a shot if it sounds at all interesting to you. The running time is only 89 minutes so there's a relatively small investment in potential buyer's remorse.

[ScottotD]

Great reviews, CHC. Europa Report sounds interesting. Although this part

Given the fact that we know at the outset that the expedition becomes lost

Does this mean the movie is essentially told as a flashback? I hate that.

Yeah, I watched some bullshit movie a while ago that did that.  Citizen Kone or something 

[Charles Castle]

Great reviews, CHC. Europa Report sounds interesting. Although this part

Given the fact that we know at the outset that the expedition becomes lost

Does this mean the movie is essentially told as a flashback? I hate that.

Yeah, I watched some bullshit movie a while ago that did that.  Citizen Kone or something 

Overrated!

[Darth Geek]

Great reviews, CHC. Europa Report sounds interesting. Although this part

Given the fact that we know at the outset that the expedition becomes lost

Does this mean the movie is essentially told as a flashback? I hate that.

Yeah, I watched some bullshit movie a while ago that did that.  Citizen Kone or something 

Good point. That is one of the very few that use a flashback narrative well. Because it is a mystery and all about learning about Charles Foster Kane. Whereas most of the movies and TV episodes I have seen use it for horror or action genres, where it just ruins any suspense whether characters are going to survive or where they end up.
One of the most aggregious examples was the first Captain America movie. Although to be fair, that scene at the beginning was so short and irrelevant I usually forgot it even existed.

[Edward J Grug III]

What makes the Captain America use of it egregious?

[Darth Geek]

What makes the Captain America use of it egregious?

Because it's so short and pointless.

[Edward J Grug III]

What makes the Captain America use of it egregious?

Because it's so short and pointless.

Short is a problem?

I don't think it was pointless though, it sets up that he is doomed (a common use for that type of framing device) but also that it was going to tie into the current day Marvel universe.

Also, since it is quite a well known origin story, it's not like it could have been played off as a twist.

[Darth Geek]

What makes the Captain America use of it egregious?

Because it's so short and pointless.

Short is a problem?

I don't think it was pointless though, it sets up that he is doomed (a common use for that type of framing device) but also that it was going to tie into the current day Marvel universe.

Also, since it is quite a well known origin story, it's not like it could have been played off as a twist.

It adds nothing to the movie (I didn't get a "sense of doom" from it at all). And while watching the rest of the movie, you'll know that in any action scene where there isn't the flying wing plane that he will survive. And when he does get to the flying wing plane, you know how the situation will end. If they had put the scene of them finding the plane in the ice after he crashed, and then showed him waking up, it wouldn't have changed the movie at all. In fact, it feels like that's how it was in the script and they rearranged it at the last minute.

I don't think it really hurt it as a whole, I quite enjoyed the movie. But that bit at the beginning just sticks out like a sore thumb as an unnecessary rearrangement.

[Edward J Grug III]

What makes the Captain America use of it egregious?

Because it's so short and pointless.

Short is a problem?

I don't think it was pointless though, it sets up that he is doomed (a common use for that type of framing device) but also that it was going to tie into the current day Marvel universe.

Also, since it is quite a well known origin story, it's not like it could have been played off as a twist.

It adds nothing to the movie (I didn't get a "sense of doom" from it at all). And while watching the rest of the movie, you'll know that in any action scene where there isn't the flying wing plane that he will survive. And when he does get to the flying wing plane, you know how the situation will end. If they had put the scene of them finding the plane in the ice after he crashed, and then showed him waking up, it wouldn't have changed the movie at all. In fact, it feels like that's how it was in the script and they rearranged it at the last minute.

I don't think it really hurt it as a whole, I quite enjoyed the movie. But that bit at the beginning just sticks out like a sore thumb as an unnecessary rearrangement.

The doom isn't him dying, it's him losing his life as it was. Losing 60 odd years.

[Darth Geek]

What makes the Captain America use of it egregious?

Because it's so short and pointless.

Short is a problem?

I don't think it was pointless though, it sets up that he is doomed (a common use for that type of framing device) but also that it was going to tie into the current day Marvel universe.

Also, since it is quite a well known origin story, it's not like it could have been played off as a twist.

It adds nothing to the movie (I didn't get a "sense of doom" from it at all). And while watching the rest of the movie, you'll know that in any action scene where there isn't the flying wing plane that he will survive. And when he does get to the flying wing plane, you know how the situation will end. If they had put the scene of them finding the plane in the ice after he crashed, and then showed him waking up, it wouldn't have changed the movie at all. In fact, it feels like that's how it was in the script and they rearranged it at the last minute.

I don't think it really hurt it as a whole, I quite enjoyed the movie. But that bit at the beginning just sticks out like a sore thumb as an unnecessary rearrangement.

The doom isn't him dying, it's him losing his life as it was. Losing 60 odd years.

Which narratively is irrelevant to the movie, which is about his origins and activity during WWII.

[Edward J Grug III]

I worte a response, but I am bored of this conversation.

It's a very short scene. Skip it if it bothers you.

The story told in flashback is an excellent device if well used, and is used in some of the greatest films of all time - Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, The Godfather Part II, Goodfellas - and I'll wager those are all films you would just dismiss.