13 Nights of Shocktober: Audition (1999)

 by A.J.

Night 7: Japanese Horror Night

“Words create lies. Pain can be trusted.”

Audition (1999)

The 1999 Japanese horror movie Audition first made its way into the consciousness of American audiences by appearing on “best horror movies you’ve never seen” or “best underrated horror movies" lists. I first learned about it from watching Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments where it ranked #11, between Misery and Wait Until Dark. Not a bad place to be. The “scary moment” that earns Audition its place on such lists and its cult status is the extended and unforgettable torture scene at the climax. However, there is more to Audition than just that torture scene. It is many, many steps above “torture porn” movies like the SAW movies. Audition is a masterpiece of modern horror.

At the suggestion of friends, and even his teenage son, widower Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) reluctantly agrees to find a new wife. He’s not sure how to go about dating again, so his movie producer friend, Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), suggests holding an audition. Yoshikawa asks Aoyama what he wants in a wife and quickly throws together a script and sets up a casting call for a movie that may, or may not, get made. Aoyama is hesitant to go along with this highly unethical scheme, but that changes when he sees the resume of Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina). He is moved by her story of having to give up her dream of being a ballerina after an accident. Her shyness and sadness mesmerize Aoyama and before the auditions even start he has decided on her. They go on a date and it goes well. Then she disappears and the film turns into a mystery as Aoyama searches for her and learns dark secrets about her past. Asami returns and then you may have to look away from the screen.

The very premise of holding a fake movie audition for a man to meet a potential wife is deceptive and unethical at best. It is also the kind of thing that often happens in mainstream romantic comedies that later in the plot is revealed, causes conflict, and then is excused or forgiven—if it is not just flat out overlooked. For a long stretch, Audition feels like part romantic comedy and part drama about a shy man finding love again almost to the point of parody. Nothing especially out of the ordinary or suspicious happens for the first 40 minutes. 

To say that the film takes a hard turn would be putting it mildly. Yet director Takeshi Miike crafts the film in such a way that there are no jarring shifts in tone. Everything feels believable even as it slides from one genre to the next so that when the horror does come it is all the more frightening for how believable it is. 

The screenplay provides characters with layers and substance so that no one aside from Aoyama’s son and his girlfriend, a rather wholesome couple, are only what they seem—though the son and his girlfriend come across as one dimensional by comparison. Aoyama is a mild mannered, decent man…who agrees to a deception to date a younger woman. Asami is everything that a stereotypical good and proper Japanese wife should be, but she is also an incredibly sadistic psycho-killer. Even the sleazy movie producer Yoshikawa has a reasonable, redeeming side. He advises Aoyama to stop seeing Asami because none of her references checked out and her agent has been missing for a year. 

Audition is so memorable and effective because of the low-key, slow and steady approach to the material by Takeshi Miike—it’s easy to see another director, especially a Hollywood director, playing up the blood and guts—and the excellent performance of Eihi Shiina as Asami. She believably plays the demure, shy girl recovering from an abusive past and the sadistic killer who believes they are fully justified in their actions. Aoyama’s key mistake was looking for a girl who could play a good and proper wife instead of looking for a girl who really was those things. Asami, it turns out, is a great actress, thanks to Eihi Shiina’s great performance. 

For that infamous torture scene which involves acupuncture needles and piano wire, Miike actually shows us relatively little, mostly keeping the camera on Asami’s face. Her expression and the sound effect of a thud on the floor provide more shock and squirm inducing horror than any gore Miike, a master of graphic violence and gore in films like Ichi the Killer, could have shown us. He makes the right decision for this film. I will say that Audition does have a “happy” ending, relatively speaking. It is not a dour slog and the torture itself is not the point of the movie. 

This is a difficult movie to watch and that finale with its violence and surreal elements meant to capture Aoyama’s overwhelmed state of mind can be an overload for some, perhaps many. However, if you’re looking for a movie that will actually provide interesting characters, not just fodder for a killer, and actually make you grab the person you’re with or squeeze the sofa cushions, and maybe even avert your eyes, then Audition should be at the top of your Shocktober watchlist. 

Audition is currently streaming on Tubi.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Gothic (1986)

 by A.J. 

Night 6: Horror Origins Night/Julian Sands Memorial Night

“As long as you are a guest in my house you shall play my games.”

Gothic (1986)

I have long been fascinated by the “haunted summer of 1816,” when Percy and Mary Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, and his traveling companion Dr. John Polidori challenged each other to create ghost stories over an unnaturally dreary and stormy summer at Byron’s vacation villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. Byron wrote only a fragment of a story, Polidori wrote the short story The Vampyre, and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Adding an extra layer of eerie lore to this true story is that their “haunted summer” was caused by the “Year Without a Summer,” when a volcanic eruption from the previous year threw so much dust and ash into the atmosphere that all over the northern hemisphere of the globe summer never really happened. Temperatures were far cooler than average, even frosty and winterlike, and storms and cloudy days were more prevalent. Ken Russell’s film Gothic is a speculative exploration of what inspired those young poets and authors and what ultimately inspired Mary Shelley to create Frankenstein and change the literary world forever. 

Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker who could give John Waters a run for his money in terms of works of sincere camp, and sincere sleaze for that matter. His films are often broad, range from mildly to especially ridiculous, are highly sexual, blasphemous, and explore the origins of myths, as well as the psychological effect of imposed norms on complex persons. In Gothic, the characters grapple with their inner demons and fears, enhanced by cabin fever, until everyone reaches a psychological, nightmarish breaking point during one especially stormy night. With its strange sights and not so subtle subtext, this film might be hard to take seriously, but Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker not afraid to indulge the at times outrageous nature of these characters. 

The cast is great with performances to match. The less famous figures of the bunch, Polidori and Claire, have the most memorable performances by Timothy Spall and Myriam Cyr. Lord Byron is well played by Gabriel Byrne as a sinister but alluring and magnetic figure. Julian Sands as Percy Shelley is perfect as an “artist” type. He is obsessed with his own death, completely overtaken by the wonders of nature, and still is believably worthy of the affection and care of Mary Shelley. Natasha Richardson is great as Mary Shelley–actually Mary Godwin since she and Percy were not legally married at this point–who seems like the only normal or sane person on this vacation filled with eccentrics. She may also seem like the most boring character, but she is not; she is just the best at hiding her neuroses. She may also be the only character with the greatest reason for anxiety and introspection and despair: the recent loss of her newborn baby. Her complexities are buried deep and as the film goes on they rise to the surface. 

Surreal sexual images abound: a woman whose breasts have eyes instead of nipples, a suit of armor with a pointed codpiece, and the anthropomorphized image of an imp, a miniature humanlike demon, sitting on the chest of a woman in her bed–a recreation of the famous painting The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. There is palpable homoeroticism between Byron and Polidori, and also Bryon and Percy Shelley. Polidori’s story The Vampyre is about a vampire disguised as an English gentleman who drains the life of a young woman–Byron had an affair with Polidori’s sister that proved ruinous for her, a mere incident for him. Bryon is more than hinted at as being a vampire, living off attention and lives of those around him. Claire Clairmont is obsessed with Bryon and pregnant with his child; Percy and Mary go to visit him essentially as an excuse for Claire to see Byron again. Since her and Polidori’s affections have been already won, Bryon has little interest in them and makes advances on Mary. 

The climax is a great psychological symphony of horrors. Every character is on the brink of madness or beyond. Gothic is about people that created works of horror, who are themselves haunted by fears and anxieties that come to the forefront of their psyches during one dreary and stormy summer. In a wild, swirling sequence the characters are each confronted with their own fears. 

This is a period movie that does not feel like a period movie due in large part to the style of Ken Russell and his willingness to actually depict fantasies and nightmares for more than pure sensation. All of these characters are young, free thinking Bohemian individuals who act like young Bohemian individuals so they do not seem to belong in the costumes we associate with a time of reserve and manners. These elements give Gothic an incongruous but lively feeling. This is a strange movie but for their time these were strange people.

Gothic is currently streaming on Tubi.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)

 by A.J.

Night 5: Vincent Price Night

“The incredible legends of the abominable Dr. Phibes began a few short years ago, all of them unfortunately true!”

Dr. Phibes Rises Again

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is one of the best Vincent Price movies, if not the best. It is a totally fantastic, wildly entertaining movie that I’ve written about before and could write about even more. It has to be seen to be believed. Topping a movie like The Abominable Dr. Phibes is pretty much impossible, but the sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, comes very close. 

If you haven’t seen the first film, not to worry, as the sequel opens with a narration and recap. Dr. Phibes (Price) was an Egyptologist who was horribly disfigured in a car accident and presumed dead. He actually survived but wears an incredibly realistic mask of his former face and can speak only through a special device connecting his neck to a speaker. Due to medical neglect his beloved wife, Victoria, died, but Phibes has her preserved in a suspended state. The Abominable Dr. Phibes had Phibes taking elaborate revenge on the team of doctors who failed to save his wife. Dr. Phibes Rises Again has him seeking the hidden River of Life in Egypt that will revive his wife and give them both eternal life. 

Dr. Phibes’s rival in the search for the River of Life is an archeologist named Darrus Biederbeck (Robert Quarry) who steals an ancient papyrus scroll from Phibes. So, Dr. Phibes unleashes his elaborate wrath on Beiderback and everyone standing in his own path to the River of Life. Biederbeck is arrogant and suspicious, and while he eventually earns some sympathy he never quite comes off as a hero or protagonist. Phibes, of course, is a murderous mastermind whose preferred execution method is elaborate and ridiculous devices, but in this film he comes across as more of an anti-hero; in the first film he was a charismatic and sympathetic villain. The closing credits group Phibes and Biederbeck together under the heading “protagonists” but Phibes is the character you are rooting for, or at least find more entertaining.

Many of the distinct stylistic elements that made the original film so memorable are also in the sequel. The elaborate art-deco design of Phibes’s lair is replicated in his Egyptian lair. His band of automaton musicians, The Clockwork Wizards, are now The Alexandria Quartet. Phibes’s beautiful but silent assistant, Vulnavia (this time played by Valli Kemp), is once again ready to help. And of course, Phibes still kills with ridiculous methods. One of the simpler kills involves distracting a man with a mechanical snake while a real snake attacks. Other deaths include but are not limited to: a raptor pecking someone's face to death and Phibes and Vulnavia faking a sandstorm to cover up the sounds of a man being crushed in a box. Robert Fuest returns as director for the sequel and once again his background in production design provides an exquisite, fun, and distinctive look.

Dr. Phibes was one of Vincent Price’s favorite roles and it is easy to understand why. Phibes is technically a villain but is sympathetic; he is vengeful but not hateful. He is devoted to Victoria and thanks to Price’s performance, Phibes’s love comes across as genuine and true instead of obsessive. Phibes is also a silent character, sort of. Since he must be connected to a machine to speak, his lips do not move while he talks, meaning that Price acts along to a recording of his voice. If acting is reacting, then Price gets to do both with the same character in the same scene in the same performance. The phonograph crackle of the speaking machine adds a nice eerie layer to the dialogue and monologues delivered wonderfully by Price. Dr Phibes is indeed one of Price’s best performances. 

The Phibes movies are not scary but they are excellent horror entertainment. They are campy, pseudo-slasher movies. If you ever wondered what the SAW movies would be like if all of the gruesome gore and cynical dread was replaced with fun, you should watch The Abominable Dr. Phibes and/or Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Like the original, the Dr. Phibes Rises Again revels in the ridiculous, the baroque, the weird. In one scene, Phibes puts someone in a catch-22 torture device. In another Vulnavia is wearing a sousaphone for no reason. The first time I  saw The Abominable Dr. Phibes was on Halloween night in 2015. I watched Dr. Phibes Rises Again on also on Halloween night. Watching either film is a perfect way to celebrate the Halloween season.  

For a long time both movies were very hard to find but thankfully they were recently released as a double feature Blu-ray. Both films will air on TCM as part of a late night Vincent Price marathon beginning on Tuesday, October 24th at 11PM CT with The Abominable Dr. Phibes followed by Dr. Phibes Rises Again at 12:45AM CT Thursday, October 25th. Dr. Phibes Rises Again is also currently streaming on Tubi and Freevee.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

 by A.J.

Night 4: Art Horror Night

 “An epic saga of violence and madness”

Velvet Buzzsaw

It took me a long time to get around to Velvet Buzzsaw, released on Netflix and lost amongst the regular deluge of “content” to the service in addition to all the titles already in “My List,” but it is an entertaining horror film well worth watching. Set in the high art world of Los Angeles, Velvet Buzzsaw is Nightcrawler writer-director Dan Gilroy’s foray into horror. While he does not try to reinvent the genre, this is not a formulaic genre exercise either. Gilroy clearly understands what makes an effective and lively horror movie. 

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a highly influential art critic named Morf Vandewalt, whose thick framed glasses, Caesar haircut, exaggerated facial expressions, and obviously affected speech will clue you in to the broad tone of the movie within the first three minutes. To invoke an art metaphor, Velvet Buzzsaw does not use the light, meticulously planned, almost imperceptible points of Georges Seurat (A Sunday on La Grande Jatte), but the thick and clearly visible brush strokes of Vincent van Gogh. This is not an “elevated” horror film but instead plays like it is an exquisite, high end feature length episode of Tales From the Crypt; a high compliment from this critic. 

Josephina (Zawe Ashton), an employee at a posh art gallery, discovers that her neighbor has committed suicide and left behind a note to dispose of his prolific body of unseen artwork and paintings. Encouraged by her boss, Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo), Josephina says she found the paintings in a dumpster without a note. This allows Rhodora’s gallery to claim ownership of all the macabre, mesmeric work by the late artist Deese. In exchange for a review and profile, Morf takes some of Deese’s paintings, sure to become very valuable very soon. His research uncovers not only Deese’s suicide note and final request, but the dark and violent past of the mysterious artist who mixed his own blood into the paint. It is somewhere around here that you, unlike the characters, realize that the art is cursed and all those who profit from it will receive their comeuppance. 

Like a Tales From the Crypt episode, this is basically a morality play—bad people do bad things and reap their sour rewards—used to deliver shocks, thrills, sex, and violence. Nearly every character is unlikable to some degree–except for the sweet and out of her depth Coco (Natalia Dyer), who floats from one unfortunate employer to the next, and John Malkovich as a now sober but washed up artist. Yet, all of the characters are drawn with such broad strokes that they are understandable, to some degree, and entertaining. 

The killer artwork provides for some very memorable and visually interesting “kill scenes.” Cinematographer Robert Elswit ensures that every scene, even the non-supernatural ones, look impeccable and eye-catching. The scenes of the artwork coming to life and moving and bleeding are creepy and scary and exciting too. Every moment of Velvet Buzzsaw is stylish, which is only appropriate for a movie set in the high art world. 

The screenplay has fun with and lampoons every art type: critics, gallery owners, rising artists, washed up artists, art bloggers/influencers. I suppose the weakness of the movie is that at times it thinks it is delivering biting satire but actually offers no real insight or critique of characters more concerned with profit and status than art or merit. The exaggerated characters and art allow for amusing moments without fully turning the movie into a comedy. A scene where a dead body is mistaken as part of an exhibit is one of the darker moments of humor. Another scene of a gallery owner first mistaking a reproductions factory and then bags of trash for a new work by the Malkovich character is another obvious but still no less amusing moment. 

Velvet Buzzsaw is broad but not over the top. Gyllenhaal’s performance is best described in the same way. As the movie goes on it builds a sense of impending dread around the characters but not for the viewer. No new ground is broken thematically but that hardly prevents this film from being an entertaining horror movie. The best thing about Velvet Buzzsaw is that it is not afraid to have fun; it does not think being scary and being entertaining are mutually exclusive.

Velvet Buzzsaw is currently streaming on Netflix.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Bad Seed (1956)

 by A.J.

Night 3: Psycho Killer Night

“It’s just that they are bad seeds. Plain bad from the beginning”

The Bad Seed

The “creepy kid” or “killer kid” movie is an entire subgenre of horror with entries like Village of the Damned, The Innocents, Bloody Birthday, The Good Son, and Orphan to name a few. The Bad Seed (1956) has a firm place as a classic, if not the classic, creepy kid/killer kid movie. Based on a novel by William March and its stage adaptation, the killer kid here is 8-year-old Rhoda who is outwardly sweet, privately snobby, and also quite evil and murderous. Though The Bad Seed is not at all violent, it feels delightfully subversive and transgressive, like a movie that got away with something, especially for being made during the 1950’s.

The trouble begins when Rhoda loses a class award to another student. Then on a field trip that boy drowns in a lake after hitting his head. The medal goes missing but later Rhoda’s mother, Christine (Nancy Kelly), finds it hidden in Rhoda’s room and begins to suspect that her daughter caused the boy’s death. She also starts to wonder if Rhoda may be responsible for the death of their last landlady, a nice old lady who promised to leave Rhoda an heirloom when she died…and then suddenly died. Christine is also dealing with the knowledge that she was adopted and her biological mother was a notorious serial killer. There are some debates about nature vs nurture, likely one of the first times the topic was addressed in a major film. 

Young Patty McCormack does an excellent job playing Rhoda. She seems completely capable of causing the deaths that happen off screen, which are plausible as accidents or murders–they are not grand or elaborate “kills.” She is also convincing as a little kid. Rhoda is smart and clever, but is not an evil genius. When the creepy groundskeeper, Leroy (Henry Jones), who sees right through her façade, taunts her about having evidence against her, she believes him the way a child believes an adult, even one they don’t like. This exchange makes Leroy Rhoda’s next target

You might hear that The Bad Seed is a campy movie, and after seeing it you might even agree, but this does not diminish the dark, disturbing nature of the movie. Many of the performances seem just a bit over the top, but a better description is that they are heightened stage performances that were not turned down for the movie version. This makes sense since most of the cast from the stage production reprise their roles for the movie. They are still great performances, however, and it is no surprise that Nancy Kelly received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and Patty McCormack received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Eileen Heckart, who plays the mother of the dead boy, really makes the most of only two scenes and also received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.

The real camp value in The Bad Seed comes from how totally oblivious the adults, except for Leroy, are to Rhoda’s malevolent side. When Nancy asks Rhoda about the death of their previous landlady the entire scenario is so obviously murder that Rhoda’s continued good girl act becomes humorous. I think director Mervyn LeRoy knew what he was doing in allowing these exaggerated, or camp, moments into the movie. The stylized performances and dark humor take the edge off an otherwise disturbing premise. 

Of course the novel and play end differently than the movie, which had to tack on a new ending to satisfy the requirements of the puritanical Production Code office. This is the most outlandish and campy scene of all, yet even this scene is so over the top that it feels subversive too. It is as though the filmmakers decided that if they had to add an ending where Rhoda gets her comeuppance, they would tack on the most ridiculous “moral” ending imaginable. Also, a Warner Bros. executive insisted on including a “cast curtain call,” not common in this era when movies had no closing credits, with the cast happy and smiling, including Patty McCormick and Nancy Kelly, just so audiences could rest easy with the extra assurance that they had not been watching a documentary. Though it may not be exactly scary, The Bad Seed is a dark and creepy and entertaining film.

The Bad Seed airs on TCM on Sunday, October 22nd at 1PM CT and is also available to stream on Hoopla.