Ultimately, the aesthetics, performances, language, black humor and scar riddled body horror won me over. But, for a film committed so fully to presenting itself as unique and transgressive, it is decidedly un-confident in its audience’s ability to understand it. Very rarely does the film sit back and let you try to piece it together on your own. It is constantly spelling out every theme it has up its sleeve. From a literal broken staircase between the rich and the…
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Violent Streets 1974
Genre films paint the most interesting portraits of the cinematic landscape. It's here that nations and cultures with vast geographic distances between each other can find commonality. Much has been made of the relationship between the Japanese jidaigeki/chanbara film and the American western. However, this celluloid rabbit hole goes much deeper than that.
Of course, the American western enjoyed a lot of popularity outside of the United States. Filmmakers from Italy, Spain, France and Mexico all tried their hand at…
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Wilczyca 1983
So far, this has been the most pleasant surprise from Severin's folk horror compendium.
Wilczyca or The She-Wolf is a visually scrumptious film. This is evident in the films opening shots as the camera focuses in on a hawk feasting on a dead horse, the latter animal's blood splashed all across the snowy backdrop.
Nightmarish imagery abounds in the subsequent hour and a half. At times it felt like a lost Hammer Films production, but…
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Clearcut 1991
I've considered myself a fan of 'Folk Horror' for quite a long time now. However, when I go back and look at my favorites of the genre, I notice that they are nearly all of a European/American flavor. Of course, there's the occasional The Wailing or Kuroneko, but every culture/nation has their own folktales. So, why is the genre so limited?
Well, the answer's that, it's not. However, some of these films are diabolically difficult…
