Nightmare Alley

 

Nightmare Alley

2021

Director- Guillermo del Toro

Cast-  Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Ron Perlman, David Strathairn, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins, Mark Povinelli, Holt McCallany, Peter MacNeill

            Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is on the run from the law. He seeks shelter by taking up with a traveling carnival headed by an amoral boss (Willem Dafoe). There Stanton meets a cadre of colorful characters; Major Mosquito, a wrestling little person; Bruno (Hellboy’s Ron Perlman) an old school aging strongman; Zeena (Toni Collette) and her partner Pete (David Strathaim) who run a mentalist show; and the sweet and lovely Molly (Rooney Mara) who has an act where she lets electric currents run through her body.

            Stanton buddies up to Pete and Zeena and learns all the tricks of the trade when it comes to convincing people that you’re psychic.  Pete warns Stanton however, to never run a “spookshow”, that is, convincing people that you can speak to ghosts, because it gives them false hope. Upon mastering the techniques, Stanton convinces Molly to leave the carnival with him and open an act for themselves.

            Stanton and Molly are raking in the dough until one night they are challenged by a beautiful blonde (Cate Blanchett) who questions the veracity of their act. Stanton decides to up his game by running the “spookshow”, against Molly’s objections, and convincing a rich judge in the audience that he can speak to the judge’s deceased son.

 

            Statnon is intrigued by the beautiful blonde who turns out to be a psychologist, Lilith Ritter. Statnon and Lillith concoct a scam of their own where Stanton can make an untold fortune. In return Stanton must agree to submit himself to psychoanalysis by Lilith. Stanton goes down the rabbit hole of convincing people that he can speak to the dead until the whole thing comes to a head with some dire consequences.

            The film is not really a horror movie, but its also not not-horror. Rather, its walks the lines between horror, noir, dark fantasy, and psychological thriller. Cate Blanchett is very much a femme fatale and her character would fit easily into any pulp thriller. It also uses elements common in horror movies like tarot cards, freakshows, and dreams. Guilt and sin are reoccurring themes throughout. The film isn’t scary but it will keep you engaged despite its rather lengthy 2 and ½ hour run time.

            It’s a Guillermo del Toro film, so you know it will be nice to look at . Set in the early 1940s it has an authentic look. Each character has their own motif as far as costume. Some of the sets look very expensive and I can’t help but wonder how much was built vs CGI, though it all looks real. Though the themes are completely different than Angel Heart, the two films would make a nice pairing as noir thrillers from a bygone era.

Fun fact- Nightmare Alley is neither an original film nor a remake. Rather, it is the second cinematic adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel of the same name. In addition to 2 movies, the novel has also been adapted into a graphic novel and a musical.

   

Perdita Durango (Dance with the Devil)

  

Perdita Durango (Dance with the Devil)

1997

Director- Álex de la Iglesia

From Spain /Mexico

Cast- Rosie Perez, Javier Bardem, Aimee Graham, Harley Cross, James Gandolfini, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Demián Bichir, Santiago Segura,

            

     Those familiar with Álex de la Iglesia’s work (Errementari, Witching & Bitching and Day of the Beast) will probably be surprised by this film. Though it does have his usual dark humor, it ventures into territories foreign to those better known films. If you didn’t know better you’d think it was an early Robert Rodriquez film. You may also be familiar with the character of Perdita Durango as Isabella Rossellini’s character from Wild at Heart. Both stories are based on the works of Barry Gifford.

Perdita Durango (Rosie Perez) is a free spirit who lives according to her own whims and easily gives herself over to her passions whether it is sex or violence. She meets Romeo (Javier Bardem), a criminal and self-styled  Santeria priest. He views his ceremonies as a kind of science that provides him with good luck. And who knows, maybe they do. Several times in the film, people aiming to do him harm meet with unfortunate (one might say comical) accidents. His rituals seem more show than substance however. That is, until Perdita ups his game and they decide to carry out a human sacrifice. Romeo has been hired to smuggle a truckload of fetuses (you read that right) from Mexico to Las Vegas, and he hopes the human sacrifice will bring him extra luck.

They kidnap two American teenagers (Aimee Graham and Harley Cross). They intend to eventually use them for their human sacrifice. Until then, the kids serve as sexual playthings for Romeo and Perdita. The kids eventually begin to undergo a kind of Stockholm syndrome and Romeo and Perdita start to develop a soft side for them (not so soft though that they are going to let them go).

            

     Their journey takes them through the American southwest and they are followed by a persistent DEA agent (Gandolfini). Eventually the consequences of all of their violence catch up with them but not before a string of bodies are left in their wake.

            

     Javier Bardem would become famous (and win an Oscar)10 years later as the assassin in No Country for Old Men. It’s interesting to see him still relatively early in his career, even with the tragic haircut. James Gandolfini would play another detective the very next year in the Satanic thriller, Fallen, with Denzel Washington. He would then become famous as Tony Soprano in The Sopranos.

            

     Rosie Perez, on the other hand, was a little more seasoned actor when this film was made and had already garnered critical praise for several roles, including an Oscar nomination. Rosie is both sexy and dangerous in this film. You can never tell what she will do or how she will react. It would be interesting to watch this movie back to back with Wild at Heart and compare her performance to Isabella Rossellini’s.

            

     Dance with the Devil is a multi-genre film; crime, horror, and dark comedy and it moves back and forth fluidly. Considering that the main characters engage in rape and murder, the film can’t be dismissed as mere escapist fun, yet the film never quite becomes a completely serious story. It’s best to view it as Perdita views herself. She does what she wants when she wants and if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else then oh well.

            

     There are a few versions of the film. The unrated American version (Dance with the Devil) is a few minutes longer (coming it at slightly over 2 hours) than the regular version. The Spanish version, titled Perdita Durango, is a few minutes longer than the American unrated version and has slightly more explicit sex and a little different ending involving a death bed hallucination.

Fun fact- Harley Cross plays Martin Sheen’s son in The Believers. In that film he is kidnapped by a Santeria cult.

Fun fact #2- Old school music fans will appreciate the appearance of the grandfather of shock rock, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in a supporting role.

  

Se7en

  

Se7en

1995

Director- David Fincher

Cast- Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Gwyneth Paltrow, R. Lee Ermy, John C. McGinley, Richard Roundtree

            

     As this blog is devoted to movies about devils, demons, and witches, no doubt many would disagree with the inclusion of Se7en in this list. There are no supernatural acts. Neither the Devil nor any demons appear. I have included this film for two reasons. First, it’s old enough that a lot of younger horror fans may not have seen it or heard of it. Second, as detective stories go, Se7en is closer to Angel Heart than it is to Silence of the Lambs. The movie is so steeped in religious symbolism and myth that it feels like an occult thriller.  Dante, Milton, and medieval religious philosophy form the backdrop of a movie so intense and original, it defies easy genre classification.

           

     Morgan Freeman plays Sommerset, a New York City detective on the verge of retirement. He is world weary, having his idealism and hope slowly whittled away by a life of seeing the worst that the world has to offer. Brad Pitt is Mills, an up and coming detective full of piss and vinegar and eager to prove himself.

            

     They are partnered up to solve a series of murders that have a religious theme. The victims are being murdered for having committed one of the seven deadly sins; lust, gluttony, sloth, pride, envy, greed and wraith. The crimes are intricate and clues left at one scene lead to another. I won’t spoil it by describing them; the revelation is the reward.

            

     In addition to a very clever script there is a great cast. Pitt and Freeman are supported by great character actors R. Lee Ermy and John C. McGinley. Kevin Spacey, decades before he would become persona non grata of Hollywood, is the movie’s enigmatic villain.  

Behind the camera there was also a lot of talent. The director, David Fichner, also directed Pitt in Fight Club and several years later directed the American remake of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote the screenplay, has some other impressive genre writing credits, having worked on Brainscan, Event Horizon, Sleepy Hollow, Stir of Echos and the 2010 remake of The Wolfman. Cinematographer  Darius Khondji worked on the interesting and weird French sci-fi film, City of Lost Children, the black comedy Delicatessen, and Ninth Gate. Film editing was by Richard Francis-Bruce who worked on The Shawshank Redemption, The Witches of Eastwick, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

The music was by Howard Shore, who among many other things composed the scores for The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Ed Wood, Dogma, The Cell, The Departed the Lord of the Rings trilogy!!!

           

     Despite sometimes seeming like a Nine Inch Nails song come to life, Se7en is very much a noir film. Morgan Freeman, with his overcoat and slouching fedora, could have come out of any pulp story. It was nominated for an Oscar for editing, but the cinematography also plays a big part. The sets are dark, the colors are muted, the ambiance is gloomy.

The film has a depressing, oppressive feel. The sun never seems to be shining. The whole city seems noisy, wet, and dirty. I’d say, that the feel of the movie, the gloomy sense of fatalism, sticks with you long after the shock of the murders wears off. Morgan Freeman’s character warns us throughout the movie that nothing he does matters. He has spent a life trying, and failing, to stem the tide of human cruelty. With his impending retirement, he sees just what little difference he has made.

We are warned, early on, that there won’t be a happy ending.  That’s an understatement.

   

Lost Highway

Lost Highway

1997

Director- David Lynch

Cast- Patricia Arquette, Bill Pullman, Balthazar Getty, Robert Loggia, Robert Blake, Gary Busey, Richard Pryor, Lucy Butler, Michael Massee, Henry Rollins,

           

    Trying to describe a David Lynch movie by summarizing the plot is like describing the taste of a steak by telling you how it was cooked. The MPAA rating says “Bizarre violent and sexual content.” That’s probably as good of a description as any but here goes.

The movie begins with a ritzy Hollywood-esque couple. Fred (Bill Pullman) is a saxophonist married to his glamorous wife Rene (Patricia Arquette) looking like a modern day Bettie Page complete with dark hair and bangs. Something has created tension in their marriage but we don’t know what. It seems like it’s either infidelity or impotency (or maybe both) but we don’t know. Strange circumstances occur including  videotapes arriving at their house with footage of them sleeping and Fred meeting a mystery man (Robert Blake) who seems able to be in two places at once. Fred’s grasp on reality seems to be loosening until he finds a videotape of him having brutally murdered his wife, something he has no memory of. Fred is sentenced and put on death row.

            One day Fred disappears from his prison cell and is replaced by young Pete (Balthazar Getty). Pete doesn’t know how he wound up in the prison cell and no one knows where Fred went. The mystery unsolved, Pete goes home, trying to make sense of this strange occurrence. He is a mechanic and his best customer is Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia) a violent mobster with a drop dead gorgeous girlfriend, Alice, who looks exactly like Fred’s dead wife Rene except blonde. Alice (also Arquette) puts the moves on Pete, and despite his fear of her violent boyfriend, he starts a sexual relationship with her that descends into murder as she manipulates him.

            This film is a somber meditation on evil. Fred’s house is dark, everyone wears black. There is a long dark hallway that Fred disappears into, symbolic of the abyss. The characters are undone by their own base lusts and greed.

            As for Patricia Arquette’s twin characters of Rene and Alice well there are a few different possible interpretations. I think she is some kind of succubus, reincarnating and tempting men into evil. Both men, Fred and Pete, resort to murder. One kills her and another kills for her. Another interpretation could be that they are simply pawns themselves, sisters, used by the film’s evil architect, the mystery man.

     Regardless of any other interpretations, I don’t see any way to view Robert Blake’s

mystery man other than as a satanic figure. He looks like an imp, menacing and vile .He seems to be omnipresent  and omniscient. He is also there, behind the scenes, manipulating all of the characters, pushing them toward a catastrophic end.

            The movie seems, superficially, to be a rather grim noir crime story with unexplained supernatural elements. The film doesn’t resort to symbolism but rather the emotion of imagery, most of which is very dark. It also has  a great heavy metal/ industrial soundtrack with the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Marylin Manson. Some of the movies best scenes are like short music videos combining disturbing imagery with unsettling music. This is a love it or hate it movie and I doubt most folks will feel ambivalent about it.

Angel Heart

Angel Heart

1987

Director-  Alan Parker

Cast- Mickey Rourke, Lisa Bonet, Robert Dinero, Charlotte Rampling,  Elizabeth Whitcraft

           

The theatrical trailer compares this film to both The Exorcist and Chinatown, and though I’m sure the comparison was made in an effort to connect it to two classics, it is a reasonable comparison. Angel Heart is a thriller which walks a line between a noir detective film and occult horror.

            Mickey Rourke is private detective Harold Angel. He is hired by the mysterious Louis Cypher (a cheesey pseudonym and really the only part of the movie I don’t like). Cypher (played rather restrainedly by Dinero) is looking for a missing person, Johnny Favorite. Johnny was a crooner who did business with Cypher before WW2. Cypher went into the Army, was wounded and then seemingly disappeared while convalescing. Angel is tasked with finding Johnny’s whereabouts so that Cypher can finish his business with him. 

     Angel’s search for clues leads him through New York and eventually to New Orleans where he encounters Johnny’s teenage daughter, Epiphany (Lisa Bonet) and Johnny’s old girlfriends Margaret (Charlotte Rampling who genre fans may recognize from Zardoz). Both women have an occult connection; Margaret is a fortune teller and Epiphany is a voodoo priestess. In the course of Angel’s investigation, everyone he meets ends up getting murdered, and rather brutally at that. Angel suspects that the mussing Johnny is to blame, tying up his old loose ends, but the truth ends up being much worse.

           

The film was very controversial, originally receiving an X rating. Today, the sex scenes seem a little tame but I think the big deal was not so much the scenes but who was in them. Lisa Bonet, who was only 19 when the film was shot, was known to most of America as Denise Huxtable in the wholesome family sitcom The Cosby Show. I think this leap from teenage innocence to explicit sexuality was too much for Hollywood and this role had the same chilling effect on her career that Showgirls had for Elizabeth Berkey’s.  Still she turns in a solid performance and her sweet, innocent looks helped sell the act.                                                                        Rourke carries the film, starring in every scene. It’s the kind of part he is perfect for; likable but a little slimy. As a gumshoe in the 1950s, Rourke looks the part with his perpetual beard stubble, oily hair and smirk. As the horrible truth unfolds, his character goes from cocky and confident, to scared and then finally resigned and without hope.

            One of the few serious Satanic films made in the 1980s, Angel Heart is one of the best films of the genre. Good production values, a good cast and nice costumes help, but what makes the film stand up to the test of time is its clever script and respect for the subject matter. You’ll have to watch the film at least twice; once to see what happens and a second time to wrap your brain around it.