Cassandra (Colin Eggleston, 1987)

For the first time since my Blue Monkey review, I dipped back into the analog world of VHS for the otherwise hard-to-find obscure Australian horror/thriller Cassandra. Watching a VHS tape on my still-functioning VCR is my boring version of Proust's madeleine. The last remaining video store in my city of Austin just bit the dust a few weeks ago (I Luv Video RIP), and though I still watch a lot of DVDs and Blu-rays (and still get discs from Netflix in the mail), streaming has taken over as the primary way I watch movies, which makes me kinda sad. Streaming has been great for late-night whims and convenience and adventurous viewing, but I miss physical media and the experience of being in an independent/mom-and-pop video store. 

Taking this remarkably well-preserved VHS tape out of its cover and watching it on my VCR last night gave me a warm feeling, calling back the many glorious hours of watching movies (especially horror movies) on videotape rentals with friends or by myself on weekends, summer afternoons, and late summer nights from the later elementary school years all the way through college. It was one of the few times in life where I was in the right moment of technological and cultural history at the right age. I don't know what my aesthetic would have been if I had been raised in the corporate algorithm/permanently online/context-free organized streaming chaos of the present moment, where every human is both permanent consumer and brand and where we all tunnel into our own lonely algorithm-nudged niches that rarely overlap with any real outside-of-computer-or-phone community.

Speaking of isolation, Cassandra begins with an isolated little house in the Australian desert. A young woman commits suicide, urged on by a freaky little boy. ("Do it," he frog-croaks while wearing a malevolent grin.) Then, the house becomes engulfed in flames. A woman named Cassandra (Tessa Humphries) wakes up in a panic. This was all a dream, though a recurring one she has been having every day for several weeks. Maybe it's not a dream, she thinks. Maybe Cassandra is calling up something she observed when she was too young to carry the memory. Her parents, fashion photographer Stephen (Shane Briant, an actor with the most intense eyebrows since Milo O'Shea) and fashion designer Helen (Briony Behets), assure her she's just having nightmares but whistle a very different tune when Cassandra's out of earshot. They're extremely worried about these dreams and have several huge secrets wrapped up in them.

Meanwhile, Stephen hires a mysterious, slightly creepy new assistant, Graham (Tim Burns), and carries on an affair with one of his models, Sally (Natalie McCurry), which Cassandra soon finds out about at her parents' beach house. (Sally's poses during her photo shoots, set to quintessentially '80s nonsense pop filler by a band named Wa Wa Nee, are very, very funny, possibly unintentionally so.) Cassandra's dreams become more vividly detailed, and since her parents remain evasive, she confides in a friend, bartender Robert (Lee James). Throwing a match on this extremely flammable family drama is a deranged killer, who begins slashing up people in the family's inner circle and leaving weird messages on the walls about Cock Robin.

Cassandra has a pretty complicated plot for a slasher movie, and a few hazy or nonsensical details point to even more plot that has been trimmed from the final edit. The film can be silly and overly melodramatic, but director Colin Eggleston has a decent visual style, Humphries is good in the title role, and there are many genuine shocks and creepy moments and the Australian desert is always a great location for unsettling events. Cassandra is no classic, but it's a genuinely enjoyable horror movie with some inspired scenes and entertaining '80s silliness. I also need to point out that the cinematographer's name is Garry Wapshott. Incredible.

Cassandra was director Eggleston's final feature film (he also made a TV movie in '87 before retiring). He mostly worked in Australian television, but he directed a handful of horror films as well as the softcore sex comedy Fantasm Comes Again and the sci-fi movie Sky Pirates. His most well-known horror movie is Long Weekend, considered one of the best examples of the when-animals-and-nature-attack subgenre. I haven't caught up to that one yet. Until next time, get out your VCRs.