Dario Argento's Door into Darkness - The Tram

From Midnight, With Love has been operational for two years, one month, and twenty-two days.  In that amount of time, I've focused on a lot of films from all corners of all eras of genre film.  But you know who, aside from a few brief mentions, I've never fully covered at FMWL?  That's right, Mr. Dario Argento.

There's not a good excuse for this.  I could blame my weird shaped head or the fact that others are way better at talking Argento than I am, but that would be silly.  Truth is, I've just neglected to directly write about the work of Mr. A, despite having already inducted him in FMWL's Hall of Fame.

In an attempt to change this, I wanted to shine a light on one of Argento's less-publicized projects, Door Into Darkness.  A brief Italian answer to The Twilight Zone, Door into Darkness was a series of four one hour chillers created (and introduced by, though he's no Serling) by Argento in 1973.  At the time of its conception, Argento had completed his "Animal Trilogy" (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, The Cat O' Nine Tails, Four Flies on Grey Velvet), which were each financially successful in Italy, and branching out to television was one of the first signs of how brightly his star would shine.

I hope to focus on all four episodes of Argento's series - which are now collected on one 2-DVD set by Mya Entertainment - but I started my look at the short series with the second episode, The Tram, which was written and directed by Dario himself.  Starring Enzo Ceruscio as a tenacious detective and Paola Tedesco as his girlfriend, The Tram opens with a young woman's body being found under the seats of a tram, and then follows the detective as he tries to figure out how the crime may have occurred.

If you're like me, you might not even know what a "Tram" is.  (What? Don't look at me like that.  I'm from Iowa, we have cars, trucks, and tractors.  That's it.  You fancy dancy city folk and your modern means of transportation frighten and confuse us.)  As far as I can tell from the episode (yeah, I'm not even gonna google tram, I'm just gonna assume), the tram is kind of like a cross between a trolley car and a subway train (if I knew what those things were).  I know this seems not important, but the whole point of the episode is that this murder occurred in a public place where it seems likely that someone - anyone - might have noticed a young blonde being killed and shoved under a bunch of seats.  On a tram, which I now know is a real thing that exists.

(Why can't there be tractor based murder mysteries?  Then I'd be sittin' here typing "Don't worry guys...I GOT THIS!")

My insolence regarding means of transportation aside, The Tram offers an interesting query to the viewer, and I must admit that I spent a large part of the early episode considering just how someone could pull off a murder on a mode of public transportation. I had to imagine a bus, because we do have those and the tram looks kind of like a bus.  I kept pondering how such a murder could occur, and found the idea behind Argento's story most interesting.  Unfortunately, the final act is tram-specific, and thus my bus thoughts were completely meaningless.  I fail at city living.

Luckily for the film, Ceruscio's Inspector knows a lot more about trams than I do.  And he has access to one, which means that he can spend most of his time trying to recreate the events of that fateful night at the scene of the crime.  Argento urges us to keep our eyes on the faces that appear throughout the film as we try to solve the mystery, but there really are only a couple of logical suspects in the film.  The mystery isn't too deep, but watching the detective piece together the crime as he nervously snaps his fingers is more entertaining than the plot deserves.  Argento doesn't offer the scope we're used to from his films either, but despite the shortcomings in plot and style I still found myself caught up in the mystery.

The final act does show off some of the giallo trademarks that Argento is famous for, and any viewer versed in Dario can probably tell from the beginning that Tedesco is far too good looking to not be a potential victim.  The climactic moments are closer to the likes of Deep Red (which would be Argento's next film) than the rest of the episode, but they mostly left me wanting more.  I also was a bit sad that we didn't get to witness the initial murder, at least through a recap after the killer is revealed.  It feels like this story could have easily been beefed up into a feature, which would have allowed for a little more action, better characterization of the suspects, and a bit of blood.

The Tram has me interested to check out the rest of what Argento put together in Door into Darkness, but certainly is a far cry from his most artistic thrillers.  It's still a fun quick viewing, and I recommend it to any Italian horror fan who loves the man's work.  Just try not to get caught up on the specifics of the tram itself, especially if you're a Iowan like me. Public transportation is just so confusing when it's not a hayride.

That's right.  We roll...in the hay.

Random Horror Throwdown: Black Sunday vs. Village of the Damned

Welcome, Midnight Warriors, to 1960...the year of the STARE. In one corner is Italian maestro Mario Bava with what most consider his "masterpiece" - Black Sunday. In the other, Director Wolf Rilla teams with George Sanders and a pack of creepy albinos for Village of the Damned. It's entirely worth mentioning that this throwdown could have been between the 1977 blimp-versus-Super Bowl thriller Black Sunday and the 1995 John Carpenter helmed remake of Village of the Damned. In that case, this matchup would have sucked.

Vs.














(OK, Stop staring. You'll go blind.)

The Movies: Black Sunday (1960, Dir. by Mario Bava.)
Starring: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi.
IMDB Synopsis: A vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant. Only the girl's brother and a handsome doctor stand in her way. (Note from The Mike: I LOVE when actresses play dual roles as evil and good. Bava made a mistake in his Erik the Conqueror, because he cast real twins as twins. Why pay twice for something that's the same?)

Village of the Damned (1960, Dir. by Wolf Rilla.)
Starring: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens.
IMDB Synopsis: In the small English village of Midwich everybody and everything falls into a deep, mysterious sleep for several hours in the middle of the day. Some months later every woman capable of child-bearing is pregnant and the children that are born out of these pregnancies seem to grow very fast and they all have the same blond hair and strange, penetrating eyes that make people do things they don't want to do. (Note from The Mike: My parents let me watch too much of the Playboy Channel as a teen. Thus, I'll never not find the phrase "penetrating eyes" (or any use of the penetrating word) funny.)

The Plots:
Witches are a blast, man. Especially in a Barbara Steele manner. Now, I love The Wizard of Oz with a passion, and that Wicked Witch is pretty ridiculously awesome....but in this case, the witch is fantastically scary. And, since it's Barbara Steele...kinda hot. But, like Suspiria later, this is one of those horror films that is really a style-over-substance thing. Village of the Damned is a plot I love. Possible extra-terrestrial involvement from the start, creepy kids, commentary on human nature....just a blast of cool ideas. I have to give it the point. (1-0, Village of the Damned leads.)

The Directors:
This one's a windmill, tongue-out, slam dunk. I don't know anything about Wolf Rilla. I keep misspelling his name as Wolf Rolla, probably because I think he's like that Rock'n'rolla movie mixed with werebeasts. To put his career in perspective, this film has over 4,300 votes on IMDB. Rilla's next most popular film, Cairo (apparently a remake of The Asphalt Jungle?) has 88 votes.

Mario Bava...is kind of a king. I mean, he kinda invented Italian horror. Argento may be the subgenre's poster child, but Bava INVENTED it. (Well, at least according to us Americans who like to revise other countries' histories as they're relevant to us, that is. And can we really call Italian horror a subgenre? Is it a racegenre? A geogrogenre, maybe?)

Whatever. Bava and Black Sunday get the point. (1-1.)

The Casts:
If you were ever to walk up to me, or perhaps comment on my blog, and ask "Hey The Mike, who's the most amazing actor of all-time that no one ever seems to talk about?", my answer would DEFINITELY be George Sanders. He's absolutely, positively, one of the best character actors of all-time. Just go rent All About Eve and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Rebecca and Man Hunt (ahhhhh, especially Man Hunt, he's so freakin' a good Nazi!), and then come back here and tell me he's not awesome. I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU!

I love Barbara Steele too, but Sanders is too awesome. And, Village of the Damned features Martin Stephens as his evil son, who would go on to be ubercreepy in The Innocents and win the "All-Time Creepy Child" Championship. So I HAVE to give the point to Village of the Damned. (2-1, Village of the Damned leads.)

(By the way, here Sanders plays Gordon Zellaby. Best character name ever?)

The Moods:
This, to me, is where Village of the Damned slips. Those kids are creepy, it's true. But then the whole "think of a brick wall" thing happens and...for whatever reason, it seems a little silly to me. Sanders has a few moments of being over the top while dealing with the silly aspects of the plot (but is still totally awesome), and the film seems to get a little off-track despite its short runtime.

Black Sunday, though about 10 minutes longer than Village of the Damned, seems to be a tighter flick. Its haunting stares, particularly from Ms. Steele, are completely penetrating (teehee!), and definitely creepy. And the music! Oh, it's gorgeous. I have to give the moodiness points to Black Sunday (2-2.)

My History With The Films:
This is an incredibly tough category to call. I've never really called either of these films a "favorite" horror film, but I definitely have always respected them both greatly. Normally, when I start one of these Throwdowns, I have an idea as to which film will come out a winner, based entirely on a gut feeling. Right now, my gut seems a little confused.

John Carpenter has long been my favorite director not named Hitchcock, and I will absolutely admit that I saw his version of Village of the Damned (a remake that looked fantastic to 14-year-old The Mike) long before the original film hit DVD and became available to me. So I've always had trouble getting past that crappy remake when thinking about the original film. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if the silliness I attribute to the plot is because of how silly the remake was.

On the other hand, Bava's Black Sunday was long a "must find" movie for me. It wasn't until my sister graduated from college in Connecticut (while I was stuck via plane in Chicago during a storm and missed the festivities and following trip to NYC), that my parents kindly brought a DVD of it (and a Leatherface bobblehead doll which totally still watches me as I sleep) home to me. I must admit that I was not initially infatuated with the film - hype was cruel to it - but have grown to dig it greatly with time.

This Decision is Like:
I'm completely rambling. Because, when I started this Throwdown, I had absolutely no idea which of these films I would pick. I kind of felt like I wanted to pick Village of the Damned, just because it's less talked about and I love George Sanders, but at the same time I couldn't imagine not honoring the tradition of Bava and Steele and the technical mastery shown in Black Sunday.
Isn't there an REO Speedwagon song about this? Do I follow my head, or follow my heart? I quite think there is.....

Is 90% George Sanders enough to overcome 100% Bava? Gah...no, it isn't. Were this any of the George Sanders flicks I mentioned earlier, I'd give it the win. But Black Sunday eeks out the final point. (3-2, Black Sunday wins.)

(Note from The Mike: I hate tooting my own horn, but...as difficult as this was...I had a blast writing it. Hope it makes some kind of sense to you!)

Midnight Movie of the Week #22 - Kill, Baby...Kill!

Italian super-director Mario Bava may be most known for his Barbara Steele and Boris Karloff films Black Sabbath and Black Sunday, but relatively lost among his filmography is the excellent 1966 ghost story Kill, Baby... Kill! (which will be known as KBK for the rest of the review, because I already overuse punctuation as is). I suppose it's unfair to say the film is lost, since you can find it on dozens of bargain bin DVDs and "Horror Classics" collections thanks to its residence in the public domain. But there are only a couple of restored widescreen versions of the film out there (one is only in a box set with four other Bava films, the other was never actually released by Dark Sky Films and existing copies go for over $100 on Amazon), and their limited availability is what makes it difficult for a fan who really wants to experience Bava's film. Thankfully, the film is pretty darn good, even in a transferred-from-VHS-and-washed-out-in-full-frame presentation.

KBK (also known as Curse of the Living Dead or Operation Fear; the latter of which sounds like a G.I. Joe episode) opens with a coroner arriving in a small village to look at some oddly departed victims, particularly a young woman who is seen throwing herself on a gate's spires in the film's first minutes. His findings? Gold coins inside each victim, which turn out to be the work of a sorceress who jumps into the story. Also involved is the village redhead, a medical student played by Italian beauty Erika Blanc, who might be the next victim.
In comparison to most Italian horrors of the '60s and '70s, KBK has a relatively straightforward haunting plot. But anyone familiar with his work knows that Bava does succeed when the film veers into the surreal, including a fabulous scene where the lead (played by The Last Man on Earth's Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) runs through a repetitive series of rooms while chasing a doppleganger to each door. The film also benefits greatly from some unique lighting choices. Bava had perfectly harnessed black & white photography in earlier works like Black Sunday and I Vampiri, but here he offers a lot of blues and oranges that seem like a beautiful flash-forward to John Carpenter's Halloween to this viewer. (The DVD presentation I viewed doesn't do these justice, as you'll see in the trailer at the end of this post.)

Child ghosts with a vengeance have evolved to become quite a profitable subgenre in horror over the last 50 years, and it's easy to see the influence Bava's film had on future filmmakers in that regard too. The sets are rich with wafting fog and dimly lit hallways (reminding me of films like The Others), and off-screen giggling has become a mainstay in haunted house films as well. But while KBK offers up these future mainstays, it still feels fresh in comparison to the films that followed, thanks to the intensity Bava's eerie setting and aggressive musical score add to the film.
I lust for the day when a high quality version of KBK finds its way to my doorstep, because I would like to call this one of the most visually striking horror films I've ever seen. There's a contrast between exterior and interior shots that is most interesting - exterior scenes show deeper colors than the interiors, but when the spiritual forces at play enter a building these colors seem to follow them in. KBK bucks the trend of most film hauntings, as pure darkness is rarely shown in the film's most tense moments.

While it may be difficult to find the film in a proper aspect ratio with proper colors, Kill, Baby...Kill! should be a treat for any horror fan looking for something visually enticing. Also should be a requirement for anyone interested in Italian horror (and maybe even Asian horror, which has milked the "ghost of young girl" thing for all it's worth). It might just be Mario Bava's best work.