31 Days of Halloween: Tetsuo: The Iron Man - A Surreal Dive into Industrial Body Horror

Tetsuo: The Iron Man - Shinya Tsukamoto - 1989

 

★★★★-Day 8 of the Nightmare on Film Street 31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Body horror night. Went all out with this bizarre Japanese flick with this weird communicable cyborg thing going on. Imagery is beautiful, the “iron man” has this this industrial, modern art thing happening that I dig. Also, what’s a Japanese movie without a lot of phallic imagery? It’s like going to Tokyo on a rare Godzilla-free day. 

 

Not a lot to follow plot-wise. You are just in this world and going with it. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining. It is funny/fun in a slapstick sort of way. I imagine director Shinya Tsukamoto gets a lot of Cronenberg and Lynch comparisons, but I also get a whiff of Sam Raimi.

 

Overall, well-acted, ugly beautiful, superbly stylish, and extremely interesting, though it kind of feels like a joke that you don’t quite get. Regardless, I can 100% say it is not like anything I’ve ever seen before. 

Speak No Evil - Christian Tafdrup - 2022

★- One of those elevated horror movies. Gonna have to remember that I almost always hate them going into the future. This was supposed to be up there with Barbarian and Nope for this year's best horror. Nah. 

Gist is a Danish family--mother, father, daughter--visits a Dutch family--mother, father, mute son--that they met on a vacation at the beginning of the movie. The hosts, it becomes clear, are fucking insane. The Danish couple, however, don't know how to read the signs and get the fuck out as shit starts to escalate and become more and more nightmarish. 

Hardly any of the movie is believable. The evil Dutch folks, it is revealed, has been up to some shit for a long time. One would assume 100s of years when we see the extent of it. However, I'm pretty sure we aren't supposed to think that they are supernatural in the end. 

All that said... I can’t imagine hating a movie more. Dahmer or Funny Games would be a palate cleanser after this fucked up watch. DO. NOT. RECOMMEND.

Goodnight Mommy - Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala - 2014

★★★- Yeah, fuuuuckkk this movie. Good or whatever, but extremely disturbing. Not happy I watched it. Cannot recommend.

The film is about a set of twins with a very complex relationship with their mother who had some sort of facial trauma. They live in a large isolated house where their mother seems off. The boys begin to question the mother's identity, believing that she isn't the same person as the one who went into the hospital. They begin to question if she is their real mother, and then, where their real is if this is in fact not the woman they know.

Slow burn leads to a horrific ending. The audience, like the boys, are never sure if this is a stand-in until the end, when the unimaginable answer becomes definitive. I see it has been remade in English with Naomi Watts as the "mother." I don't recommend that either. 

Dark Glasses - Dario Argento - 2022

★★★★★- Another Nightmare on Film Street challenge movie. This one for Italian films. Argento, the master of Italian horror, has a new film so that was an easy choice. A true return to form for him. Loved it.

Gist is a guy who is out there killing prostitutes. One played by Ilenia Pastorelli, a very pretty lady, loses her sight in a car accident that results when the killer pushes her car into oncoming traffic. Her car hits and orphans a Chinese kid. 

She eventually goes to visit the kid in an orphanage. He escapes and they make a deal. He’ll be her guide if she lets him stay there. Eventually, they get to tracking down the killer to get their revenge.

Like what they have going on here, the female lead and the Chinese kid. That is until the kid calls the killer thinking it's a cop the killer murders cop. By the by, this features a lot of incompetent Italian cops. You don't say, right? Anyway, the kid tells the killer where they are hiding out. Spoiler. Kids are fucking stupid. 

This all leads to a cool scene where her and the kid work together to try to shoot the killer. 

Another cool scene comes when Pastorelli’s character gets lost in the woods and feels her way to a building. Once there, she accidentally turns the lights on and has to get them off before the killer shows.

It becomes clear at one point that Argento doesn't know much/anything about snakes.

Great dog movie. Good girl. Also, it is a positive portrayal of sex work. That’s sweet. Like Dressed to Kill, but not transphobic.

Knife + Heart - Yann Gonzalez - 2018

★★★★★ - Wow. Brilliant movie. A contemporary queer giallo-inspired movie. Follows this group making gay pornography in 1979 Paris. They are lead by this director chick, played by one Vanessa Paradis, who is the star of the movie. This masked killer shows up and starts killing them one by one. 

I'm not exactly the target audience, but I have seen more giallo than anyone I've ever met. This is contemporary, subversive giallo.

Several great scenes. One is where all the actors have a wrap party picnic when it starts storming. One person gets caught out in the woods. As she (a trans actor) yells for her mates, the camera pans in fast circles giving the viewer a sense of being lost. A few times around we see the killer in the distance. Every time it goes around after that, the killer gets closer and closer, before you know. 

I thought it was a great, beautiful, captivating flick with a killer score by M83. However… let’s say this is not a family film. Not one you’re gonna wanna watch for your kids. You’ll know pretty quick what you’re in for when you fire it up.

My favorite thing about the movie is that the porn director gets questioned by the police about an actor in her stable who is murdered by getting repeatedly stabbed in his rectum. She immediately turns the experience into gay porn. I am crazy about films within films. This is an interesting, unique take on that. There is also a sacrilege porn, which was indeed something. 

The premiere for this movie based on the killings of the actors looked fun despite everything. JK, it was depressing and crazy as shit. Then after it is over you hear all the dudes in there buckling their pants. A lovely touch. Then there is more murder. 

This might sound sort of funny, but it ends up being a pretty moving scene where the fluffer cries and talks about how fucked up it is that they are filming a scene based on this dude's extremely violent and disturbing death. But then, with tears in his eyes, he's called in for duty. A professional, this guy. Turns out he's not even getting paid. Yeesh.

I like that about the flick, that they make the porn star lifestyle way less glamorous than say Boogie Nights. I'm not against it or anything, but it seems like a pretty sad grind, and this is definitely of that mentality, with all the stars on heroin or traumatized or what have you. 

One of my favorite things about the movie is that when the Killer is revealed and dealt with, they give him a really sweet and touching sendoff by showing a story and having this pretty profound voice over that tells a really powerful story. We see he is a victim too. The backstory of a slasher like Jason Voorhees for example it’s probably super sad and fucked up. Makes you think about me that. Then again, the deaths are so fucked up that maybe that lessens the impact a bit.

Bacurau is the okayest movie of all time

Bacurau. Movie I totally would have enjoyed 10x more had I seen it at the IU Cinema communally with a bunch of people on that amazing screen with that sick fucking sound system. In my bedroom, the only TV with a streaming device that supports Kino Now, where I rented this, not a great experience. But it was still a solid(ish) movie. It was the third Brazilian movie I can think of that I've seen and ranks third among those flicks. The other two were Black Orpheus and City of God, so distant third.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Formally thrilling and narratively daring, Bacurau draws on modern Brazilian sociopolitical concerns to deliver a hard-hitting, genre-blurring drama.

Ger

I generally like these sorts of movies. Twist on the whole home invasion premise. From the trailer, thought it was an alien invasion movie; spolier, it ain't. Flying saucer is a sweet-ass drone. Would totally buy that fucking thing with my stimulus check, if you know what I mean. But this takes place in the future and we don't have that shit yet. Anyway, gist of the movie is that townsfolk are being hunted by white people, one of them a Nazi, all of them sociopaths. Never exactly clear why. Thought it was over a water dispute, but it might be because the mayor of a near-by city is going to maybe lose reelection. Apparenlty they are able to vote for some city's mayor even though they are in what I'd say looks like the county. I have no idea how elections work in Brazil, but I guess these 100 people are really going to make the difference in Bacurau.

Speaking of there being 100 people, they get shipments of water and coffins every other day or so. The coffin-to-person in town ratio is way off as they get like 15 to 20 on the regular. What are you doing here? One person dies naturally in this town and like nine people, including the gringos, are killed. In what I hope is an outlier of a fucked up week, they still have a surplus of coffins.

Even has the gap in his goddamned teeth

Speaking of dumb shit, so the way we find out the mayor is in on it is the dumbest shit I've ever seen in my life. This guy, the fucking mayor that everyone hates, after all the gringos have been killed, shows up at the end like WTF. He walks past the village people who are all covered in blood and have guns and are obviously controlling the fuck out of this town. Goes up to like "the guy", who is more or less the Brazilian Lawrence Fishburn of the early 1990s, and some narco guy who has wanted ads coming over the radio, is living the Mad Max lifestyle, and has a truly incredible mullet (he is clearly not to be fucked with), and is all, "uh, what happened to all those white people I hired to kill you guys?" Holy shit. What the hell did I watch? He then tries to backtrack but he is obviously totally going to die.

Starred the Brazilian Larry Fishburn (Thomas Aquino) who was cool as hell and probably won the movie, some attractive woman with curly hair named Bárbara Colen, and Udo Kier who I think of as the asshole that owned a shark in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Also, some lady I sort of recognize named Sônia Braga who dated  David Lee Roth, Robert Redford, and Clint Eastwood, which is one hell of a trifecta. Her character starts out unhinged for some reason and then we see she is a doctor and reasonable, but strange. Yeah, this movie was weird.