Masters of Horror: Episode 19 Pelts

I have no idea how the fur industry works in real life. I really doubt that showing off a single racoon-skin fur coat at a fur show, no matter how nice it is, would produce a great deal of profit if the maker did not have the means of producing more of the same quality. Isn't showing what's available the entire point of fashion shows? Jake Feldman (Meat Loaf) makes an effort to get more coons of the same kind at one point in the episode, but it really doesn't seem to be a major part of his plan. That plot point takes up only a few minutes, and mainly serves for exposition.

This really isn't a strike against the episode, however. Dario Argento is the master of stories that make absolutely no sense. I literally had to read the Wikipedia article on this episode to even understand how the curse worked. Like most of his work, this is a story driven by emotion. Here, that emotion is effective. We don't really care about the intricacies of how humans intend to turn a profit, the fact that they mean to turn a profit from the suffering of other creatures at all is sufficient.

The plot is kicked off by a fur trapper and his son (John Saxon and Michael Suchánek) who sneak onto private land owned by a strange elderly woman named Mother Maytar (Brenda McDonald) to trap racoons. They find that the skins they retrieve are supernaturally beautiful, and contact Feldman to sell them. By the time he arrives, however, both of the trappers are dead, the younger having killed his father, and then offed himself in a raccoon trap.

Feldman takes the furs, determined to make a beautiful coat to show off at a major fur show. He's also hoping to impress a stripper named Shanna (Ellen Ewusie) he tried to rape earlier in the episode. Why he's still allowed in the strip-club, or why she'll still talk to him, I don't claim to know. After the attempted rape she treats him mostly as an annoying, pushy, jackass client for the rest of the episode, but never as a threat.

The episode is based on a short story by F Paul Wilson. While I haven't read the story, according to tvtropes it ended with a homeless woman finding the coat. This woman is unaffected by the curse because she only wants it for warmth. This episode has a much grislier conclusion. I think this may be for the best. The curse doesn't really see a person working in a sweat shop making a coat as any less of a profiteer than the shop's owner or the trappers, so I can't see how heat wouldn't be a form of profit in the eyes of the curse.

Argento's narrative here is fairly straightforward, at least by the standards of Argento. He plays around with chronology a bit, but in fairly predictable ways. We're shown the gory aftermath, and then we're shown the death. The deaths are mostly karmic punishments for the deaths and desecration of the racoons. A woman sews up her face, a man is gutted, a woman dies with her hand trapped in an elevator similar to the racoon trap, and of course Feldman skins himself.

The best attribute here, however, is Meat Loaf. After Fight Club it's surprising to see him as such an asshole, but he plays the role perfectly. His attempted rape early in the episode is distracting, and should have either had more consequences, or been left out entirely. We didn't need that to tell us he's a sexist piece of shit.

That said, however, this is probably the best work by Argento I've seen to date, although I don't claim to be an aficionado of Italian horror. I know what I like, though, and I like this episode. It's gory, it's fun, it moves at a steady pace, and I like Meat Loaf.

Masters of Horror: Episode 4 Jenifer

I was kind of rolling my eyes when I hit Play on this episode, eagerly awaiting my chance to eviscerate it. That chance, however, did not come. I'd say this is a case in which my tastes have changed since I first viewed MoH a few years ago. At the time, I think I wanted to believe myself a refined movie buff looking for substance. Now, having chilled a bit, I find myself relaxing and enjoying the style of this very simple story, driven by the idiotic decisions of its protagonist. It's based on a 10-page comic from the 70s, clearly inspired by EC Comics, and so it does feel a bit like an extended Tales from the Crypt episode. However, that extension comes courtesy of Dario Argento, a man who never let his visual style be constrained by plot or characters, and who pumps it full of every sexily stomach-turning image you can think of.

This episode also benefits from the presence of Steven Weber. All that need be said to establish his horror cred is this: Among all the debate over The Shining movie versus the mini-series, the single point of agreement between both sides is that Weber's portrayal of Jack was better than Nicholson's. I repeat: Weber's performance of a man losing his mind was so good he is almost universally agreed to have made Jack Nicholson look like a hack by comparison.

I should note that this is basically an evil seductress story, and I'm uncertain how much we're supposed to like Weber's character. It plays on the idea of men as completely unable to resist a woman sexually. Weber is ensnared by a woman who is mentally disabled, and who realistically has very little power in the dynamic. I'm here to assess the quality of the material, not my approval of it, but I do think the episode is much stronger if you assume Weber is supposed to be an irresponsible jackass.

Frank Spivey (Weber) is a cop who shoots a meat cleaver-wielding lunatic to save a young woman (Carrie Anne Fleming), only to discover that the woman is severely deformed. She has a beautiful body, but a disfigured face, black eyes, and the mind of an animal. The dying man's last word is “Jenifer,” giving Frank a name for the woman.

Frank, fearing that Jenifer will not be properly cared for in an institution, decides to take her home. Her appearance terrifies his wife and son. Both of them find Jenifer disgusting based on her face alone before she even becomes violent. When Frank is unable to find other accommodations for Jenifer, and Jenifer eats their cat, the wife and son flee. Jenifer then kills the neighbor's daughter, but she keeps her place in Frank's life by having sex with him, apparently as part of an instinct to preserve her bond with her protector.

You're probably already seeing the problem here: Frank continuously blames Jenifer. She acts violently to anyone who isn't Frank, while using sex to sate him when he grows angry with her, and I his mind it's her fault. She doesn't know what she's doing, but it's her fault. Frank seems to be unable to bring himself to return her to an institution, even though it's clear she's highly aggressive, and not responsible for her actions (and unable to consent to sex in any meaningful way), and in need of sedation and confinement.

Eventually, Frank tries to hand her off to someone else. Unable to do it himself, he gives the key to his house to the owner of a Freak Show. He tells the owner to break in, kidnap her, and use her as an exhibit. Jenifer stores the Freak Show owner in the fridge, having disemboweled him when Frank gets home.

After the second murder, Frank and Jenifer go on the run. They live in a shed, and he starts working in a grocery store. Then Jenifer murders the son of his employer (one of the few times in the episode she shows greater-than-animal intelligence, as she knows to restrain his arms), and Frank decides she has to die. He ties her up in the woods, gets an ax, and is killed by a hunter. His last word is “Jenifer,” and the hunter becomes her new protector...so, we apparently have an ongoing line of irresponsible dumb asses who can't bring themselves to put the deeply troubled young woman with nice breasts in the care of medical professionals who can treat for her properly.

The episode works mainly on a visual level. Argento knows how to make Jenifer both enticing and disgusting, and people looking for gore won't be disappointed. However, if the implication was supposed to be that Frank was right to blame Jenifer, then this episode is just messed up. I don't “recommend” it, in the same way I don't recommend skydiving. If it's the kind of thing you're into, you don't need me to suggest it.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #24 Suspiria

I must open with a confession: my copy of Suspiria contains only an English-dub rather than the original Italian. It’s far from the worst dub I’ve ever seen and it generally works for wide-shots, but it becomes at least noticeable in close-ups. Still, I regret not having the original performances to base my opinion on.

One thing that should probably be noted about this film is that it was originally written to be about a dance academy for young girls, but there was a serious fear the film would be banned, so they simply cast adult women instead. The dialogue wasn’t really changed, and as such, the dance academy comes across oddly as a boarding school for women in their 20s. I suppose it’s possible they could be teenagers since I don’t recall any mention of age. This doesn’t really hurt the film, though. In fact, it gives it the sense of a nightmare. Who among us hasn’t dreamed that we were back in school, with our lives still being run by authority figures?

The plot involves a famous dancer, Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), coming to a prestigious dance academy. Deaths and strange occurrences surround the academy. A girl who was just expelled is assaulted, stabbed and hanged at a nearby house. Maggots fall from the ceiling. A previously passive dog becomes strangely violent and eventually kills his owner. And while in some cases the special effects may be a bit outdated, they’re always frightening.

I somewhat wish the movie gave us less explanation. This is partially because the explanation we do get is the standard ‘Evil Witch’ bullshit. The dance academy, as it turns out, was founded by a witch named Helena Markos, and is still run by her coven. In the dub at least, the old professor who conveniently shows up to summarize what’s going on even conveniently says that witches can use their powers “only to do harm.”

Beyond that however, the explanation really seems unneeded and out of place. The unknown is scary, so why go out of your way to make it known? Particularly when the scene that explains everything seems completely out of place and could be cut from the movie without really losing much. It seems to be the point at which Suzy becomes a more active protagonist, working against the evil forces running the Academy. But I certainly think such an epiphany could have occurred independently of that. People are disappearing, her friends included, so why shouldn’t she take action?

The musical score of Suspiria is one thing that’s particularly notable. I’m far from an expert on music, but even I can tell it’s not the kind of mix that you get in most classic horror films. Bells are combined with a synthesizer, creating an eerie sound. I’m not going to say I’ve never heard anything like it before, but if I have, I imagine it’s only because other films ripped off this one.

The cinematography is also amazing. There’s a heavy use of red lighting throughout the film. You could call it corny, but as I said, this is a nightmare. Yes, it’s true that on a logical level, the extensive use of red lighting might as well be replaced with director Dario Argento running through the set splashing red paint on everything, as if we don’t already get the idea of blood and death. But on an irrational level though, it’s still scary. In our primal instincts, the red is scary.

The ending is a let-down. She confronts the witch (Lela Svasta), the witch turns invisible, and she stabs her anyway. The scene is still beautiful, but it gets way too talky as the witch begins gloating. She even goes out of her way to name herself as “Helena Markos,” just in case the audience thought she was confronting a different evil witch whose death caused the entire dance academy to spontaneously catch fire.

Yes, I recommend this film. It could have been better, but it’s definitely good. The story isn’t the point, it’s the visual style of Dario Argento. I’m somewhat curious to see the thematic sequels, Inferno and Mother of Tears. The latter especially, as it was made in the 2000s, a good three decades after the original. I would love to see how it compares.