If I hear another tornado warning post, I am going to scream. Shreveport has been under assault since this afternoon, and our street has converted itself into a roaring stream... as if we have been moved to newfound lakefront property. Unreal. I've been hoping to come update my blog for the last several hours, but every time I've moved to my laptop, another Severe Weather Alert beeped across the house or sirens went off in a distance or the lightning began to strike like a strobe on gay ravers night at Studio 54.
Silently waiting on the pad beside my computer is the list of films still waiting to be announced as being part of my top-ten. Tonight, I give you numbers six and five.
6. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971, Directed by John D. Hancock)
Unless you're a member of the VCR generation of kids raised on weekend trips to the video store, this is a surprisingly frightening gem of unease and tension. I remember first watching the movie late one Saturday night on a local station airing it as "The Late Late Show" or the "Midnight Movie", although I definitely saw it well past midnight. What strikes me most about this film are the memories of all the feelings it gave me. The interiors of the house are sparse and look very old. I remember thinking that the house and the grounds really reminded me of the antique decor and style that was my great aunt Louise's house growing up. For that reason, I came to associate her house with this movie...thereby associating her house with ghosts and dread and insanity.
The story is quite simple, and probably a bit trite by today's standards as the twists and turns and focus on a recently released psychiatric patient have been done and re-done again and again in recent years, but the film's star is sympathetic and believeable. Any time a director can have me wondering what's real and what's not real, I realize that he has definitely done his job. This is a thinking person's foray into terror and madness, and something that still gives me the chills when I give it any further thought.
Also recommended: Brad Anderson's Session 9, Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls, Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, Alfred Sole's Alice Sweet Alice
5. The Brood (1979, Directed by David Cronenberg)
To watch a Cronenberg flick is to know that you are about to experience the most disturbing and totally unsettling imagery outside a David Lynch film. Where Cronenberg and Lynch stray from each other is in what is implied and what is actually shown. Where Lynch shows us a severed ear in a field and builds a taut story of secrets and depravity around its discovery, Cronenberg is more likely to show us disgusting moment that led to the actual severing of that ear. In fact, Cronenberg is something of a master of taking issues of body dysmorphia to extremes the human race may never have thought possible. It's impossible to say which of his films is really his best, but I know one thing for certain: The Brood scared the shit out of me.
Imagine a moment when you found yourself at your absolute angriest... do you shake? cry? sweat? lash out with your fists? bitingly insult with a caustic tongue? There are many times that I feel anger is the worst possible character defect, I think there is never an appropriate place to channel it. Based on that idea... meet Nola Carveth. She has found a way to channel her anger that has got to be seen to be believed. Absolutely disturbing, gross, jaw dropping, and perverse. If this movie doesn't scare you, then you've got bigger issues than Nola.
Also recommended: Cronenberg's Rapid, Cronenberg's The Fly, Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, David Lynch's Eraserhead, Roman Pulanski's Repulsion, Roman Pulanski's The Tenant, David Fincher's se7en, Ridley Scott's Alien
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