Dos monjes (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934)

Dos monjes (Two Monks), recently restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project, is a stunningly beautiful Mexican Gothic masterpiece that tells its story of a doomed love triangle twice, from the separate perspectives of its two protagonists/antagonists-turned-monks. Considered a pioneering film in Mexican horror, Dos monjes is more of a romantic melodrama (though its opening and closing scenes are pure horror), but the whole thing is Goth as hell.

Juan Bustillo Oro, directing his third film, really goes for it, and the film's blend of Expressionism, surrealism, foreboding atmosphere, comedy, romance, tragedy, terror, graceful camera movements and off-kilter angles, carefully composed shots, editing that experiments with both choppily quick cuts and smoother transitions to mirror the psychological states of the characters, and shadows and reflections places it comfortably alongside such kindred films from the silent and early sound eras as Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vigo's L'Atalante, and Cocteau's Blood of a Poet and Beauty and the Beast, with Oro adding Mexican melodrama and Catholic guilt and forgiveness to the already potent mixture.

Dos monjes begins and ends in a Catholic monastery. One of the monks, Javier (Carlos Villatoro), has, in the other monks' opinions, fallen under the sway of the devil. Javier has grown mad, lashing out at the others and falling into strange fits in between brief periods of quiet normalcy. Another cloister of monks has been disbanded, their members dispersed to other monasteries. One of these monks, Juan (Victor Urruchua), has joined Javier's monastery and is urged to see if he can get the devil out of Javier, in a sort of make-the-new-guy-do-it hazing ritual. They usher Juan in while Javier is relatively calm, but when Javier sees Juan, he goes berserk. Juan gets the hell out of there, but Javier follows. The two men briefly recognize each other, for reasons we don't yet know, and then Javier picks up a giant crucifix and bashes Juan in the head with it. The other monks don't care for this sacrilege. Not cool, Javier. (Cinematically speaking, though, very cool, Javier.)

At this point, the film moves from Gothic horror to Gothic romantic melodrama as the monastery's abbot talks to the crazed Javier in a moment of clarity, followed by a conversation with the injured Juan. We see both men's stories in flashback, first Javier's, then Juan's, as they each confess their version of the events that led to both men becoming monks and Javier attacking Juan. This story also involves Ana (Magda Haller), the woman both men love. Javier, pre-monk days, was an aspiring musician and songwriter, living with his loving mother Gertrudis (Emma Roldan). While Javier plays his piano next to his Expressionist-as-hell windows, the woman across the street, Ana, watches him through the curtains before she's chased away by the angry-as-hell elderly couple she's boarding with. After she rebuffs the crude advances of a rich cad brought to the house by the oldsters, she is booted onto the street. Javier and Gertrudis take her in, Javier falls even more in love with her, and the couple get engaged. Things are fine and dandy, except for Javier's consumption, which causes him the occasional spell of poor health, especially in winter. Then, Javier's best bro Juan, a world traveler, wealthy entrepreneur, and sophisticate, arrives back in town. (I won't spoil the hilarious dialogue from Juan describing his recent travels and acquisition of wealth.) Sparks quietly fly between Juan and Ana, mostly in glances and gestures, though Javier doesn't notice. (His mother sure does.)

There is much more to this story, which I won't spoil and which ends back at the monastery in a surrealist tour-de-force that is like Bunuel meets The Phantom of the Opera meets Satan's fall from heaven meets the conclusion of a telenovela storyline, but one subtle thing I loved was the slight difference in dialogue, facial expression, and placement of characters in the handful of scenes that occur in both men's stories. Memory is unreliable, and I loved the way Oro showed this without making a big deal out of it. The gist of what happened remains the same, but the men's memories are shaped by their own particular points of view and the fuzziness caused by the passage of time.

I can't recommend Dos monjes enough if you're a film lover. The restoration by the World Cinema Project is gorgeous, and the clarity of the images (compared to crappy VHS and YouTube ripped copies) allows the viewer to see Oro's amazing shot compositions in nearly all their glory. If you're looking for a straight-up Gothic horror, you're only going to find it here intermittently, but give it a chance anyway. The whole thing is compelling, visually exciting, and damned good-looking. Dos monjes is a great movie.

Carnage (Andy Milligan, 1984)

No one made movies like Andy Milligan, and despite his reputation as a maker of so-bad-they're-good inept schlock, I think he was some kind of mad almost-genius. His choices are deliberate, not accidental, and his off-kilter approach to framing, blocking, sound, music, storytelling, acting, humor, violence, and the blending of opposing elements makes for an indelibly personal, unique body of work.

I've tried to describe Milligan's style in previous films of his I've reviewed on this site (Blood, The Body Beneath, his Sweeney Todd adaptation Bloodthirsty Butchers), and the closest comparison I can make is a strange blend of the funnier, bitchier, and more personality- and character-based of Andy Warhol's films (as opposed to more avant-garde work like Empire or Blow Job) and the films of Warhol's peers and collaborators Paul Morrissey and Jed Johnson, Desperate Living-era John Waters, '30s and '40s classic Hollywood and B-movie horror, '60s and '70s New York underground films, TV sitcoms, and gay camp, with a healthy dollop of misanthropic rage and a contradictory worldview that embraced both a reactionary pining for Old World traditions and values and a viciously funny critique of straight, mainstream society. 

An Army brat who frequently moved across the country as a child, Milligan is a complex stew, and by many accounts, a rage-filled man who was furious at being gay, furious at his abusive mother, mad at the world, and abusive and ill-tempered on his film sets. He hated anyone who smoked, drank, or used drugs (even though many of his characters do all these things), and he never learned to drive. His longtime chauffeur, Dennis Malvasi (who has a small part in Carnage and also acted in Milligan's theater troupe), an ex-con, ex-Marine, and demolitions expert, was arrested in 1987 for the bombing of several New York abortion clinics throughout the 1980s. He was just one of the many bizarre people in Milligan's orbit. In addition to making several strange horror films in Staten Island, London, and L.A., Milligan also directed gay sexploitation movies and an unaired sitcom called The Adventures of Red Rooster, acted in, directed, and made costumes for Off-Broadway theater, worked as a dressmaker, and owned and operated a seedy hotel. He died of AIDS in 1991 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Los Angeles.

Carnage is Milligan's haunted house movie, and, in my unpopular opinion, it makes The Amityville Horror look like a bag of wet French fries. Milligan really sticks it to straight, married couples here, and he also creates some of his creepiest images and funniest lines of dialogue. I particularly enjoyed almost every line uttered by Che Moody playing a character called "Mother-in-law." When her daughter tells her she's pregnant, Che says, "I'm not old enough to be a mother, and now I'm going to be a grandmother? What will I tell my boyfriends?" There is no narrative reason for this character to be in the movie, and she has the best lines. That is the kind of thing I respect, and live for. 

Carnage begins with the murder/suicide of a young couple in the Staten Island house you will recognize if you've seen Milligan's New York movies (it was his home). Shortly afterward, we are introduced to the next married couple to buy the house, Carol (Leslie Den Dooven, oddly and wonderfully listed in the credits as Leslie Den Den Dooven) and Johnathan (Michael Chiodo). Within minutes of moving into the house, Carol and Johnathan are given the business by ghosts. Records start playing by themselves, cups of tea are moved (more people make tea in this movie than in any five tea commercials combined), garden shears appear and disappear, phones hang up by themselves, windows open and close. The couple mostly gets the poltergeist treatment, but when anyone else comes over, the ghosts put the supernatural smack down.

The first person to get fucked up by the ghosts is the newly hired housekeeper Martha (Judith Mayes). The ghost of the dead woman from the murder/suicide pact appears in the basement minutes into Martha's very first shift and tells the woman to get out of the house. Weirdly, the ghost also refuses to let Martha leave the basement and turns her into a palpitating mess. Soon, a pair of unlucky burglars get some extreme ghost justice, and then it's on to the main event, Carol and Johnathan's housewarming party.

This housewarming party is a little odd. Two other couples who are friends of Carol and Johnathan arrive, and everyone immediately retires to their rooms and puts on bathrobes. One guy even tries to take a bath but runs into some ghost trouble. He takes a second bath hours later. What is going on with this party? When my friends who live in the same city as me come over for a party (pre-Covid), they do not put on robes and/or hop in my shower. Johnathan even says, "OK, everybody. Put your clothes on and let's drink a toast." It was daylight when they arrived at the party. Why are they all in robes? I'm not angry about this. In fact, I love it. More movies should make less sense more often. It really gives things a little flavor. More characters, delights, and ghost murders await, in grand Milligan style, and I was greatly entertained by almost all of it. 

Read the majority of Milligan reviews online, and you'll probably read someone saying what a pile of trash each movie is. Bunk. All this reveals is a world full of people with no imagination, joy, or soul. (Damn, I'm starting to sound as misanthropic as Milligan.) There are as many correctly incorrect ways to make a movie as there are people on earth. Don't let corporations colonize your mind and bully your imagination. Carnage is a blast. Milligan may have been a bitter, unpleasant man, but he made some weird fucking movies, and I salute him for it.

 

The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971)

The Cat o' Nine Tails is Dario Argento's second film as director, following The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and though Argento considered it an artistic failure, I think it's got a lot going for it. Not as expressively colorful as his mid-'70s to mid-'80s supernatural horror films or as gripping as Crystal Plumage, The Cat o' Nine Tails is nevertheless suspenseful, stylish, and weird, and has an excellent Ennio Morricone score. Early '70s Italian giallos with Morricone scores are a cinematic happy place for me, so I'm inclined to go easy on them, but there's a lot of cool stuff in this movie despite Argento's disappointment.

The international cast is led by two Americans, Karl Malden and James Franciscus (both playing Italians). Malden is Franco Arno, a blind ex-journalist who takes care of his orphaned niece Lori (future star of Cannibal Apocalypse Cinzia De Carolis). As Franco and Lori are walking back to their apartment one night, they pass two men in a car, and Franco overhears a conversation mentioning secrets and blackmail. He stops, pretending to tie his shoe, and instructs Lori to glance at the men and remember their faces. She can't see one of the men but gets a good look at the other one. Meanwhile, an institute conducting top-secret genetic research experiences a late-night burglary and one of the scientists is killed in a bizarre train "accident" a few hours later.

These events being possibly connected to the men in the car, the dormant journalist in Franco perks up and he decides to investigate, teaming up with a working journalist he bumps into on the street, Carlo Giordani (Franciscus). Meanwhile, bodies start piling up, with a killer targeting scientists working for the research institute and anyone else with inside information.

There are multiple suspects and lots of bizarre clues that don't seem to come together, and part of the pleasure of the film is in Argento's methodical unfolding of the mysteries. I also enjoyed the central mystery's interconnected world of secretive subcultures: top-secret research scientists, investigative journalists, homicide detectives, gay and bisexual men (Argento's films can sometimes be weirdly homophobic and anti-homophobic in the same movie depending on the scene), wealthy people, petty criminals.

Like many '70s giallos, we also get both incredible and incredibly gaudy architecture and design and a lot of wild '70s wallpaper and carpeting, perpetually horny macho Italian guys being dudes (there's a running gag of men pausing in mid-conversation to stare in slack-jawed wonder at Anna Terzi (Catherine Spaak) and her mindbogglingly over-the-top dresses), a truly bizarre sex scene involving a tearaway blouse and a couple glasses of milk (OK, this example is particular to this giallo only), a blend of leisurely paced scenes with graceful camera movements and frenetic hyper-edited montage, killer's POV shots, several spiral staircases, three or four knockout suspense set pieces, and some exciting rooftop chases.

I was also a fan of one of the detectives who exuberantly and excitedly shares his wife's recipes with journalists and his fellow detectives and is bitterly disappointed when they are too distracted to care ("I don't give a damn about your wife's ravioli!" and "Mustard gives me heartburn" are the responses; that ravioli sounded great, BTW, and I do give a damn about it).

Okay, The Cat o' Nine Tails isn't the wildest or most dynamic or most colorful Argento movie, but I liked its deliberate pace and structure, its building of atmosphere, the Morricone music, the graveyard scene, the look of the whole thing. Argento, in the '70s and '80s, was a gifted visual stylist, and this is a good-looking movie with a lot of character detail and flavor. I genuinely enjoyed it, even if the plot is possibly too coherent for '70s Italian horror and suspense.