POSSESSION (1981)
Dir. Andrzej Żuławski
An intense and aggressive domestic drama descends into experimental horror in Żuławski’s cult classic Possession. Steered visually by the restless cinematography of Bruno Nuytten the film constructs a world pervaded by uncertainty, discomfort, and a sense of worse to come. The initial horror is of an everyday nature: Mark (Sam Neill) arrives home to Berlin to discover his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) has been having an affair and is not the least bit sorry about it either. He turns on the insecure male hysterics and quickly drives her to a similar pitch—then beyond. However, in an apartment downtown Anna has been keeping (and gradually growing) a more monstrous secret, and as her behavior becomes more and more unhinged the film explodes into a warped and chaotic exploration of loathing, desire, and frustration.
As the above perhaps suggests, Żuławski’s film focuses at least partially on ‘possession’ in terms of sexual behavior: Sam Neill feels his cheating wife has acted like one ‘possessed,’ although in doing so highlights his own desire for ‘possession’ (of her). Character interactions are histrionic from the outset but often powerfully so—commanding our stunned attention with so much emotional mess. Beyond sexual ‘possession,’ the film is famous for its scenes of female madness, which are indeed remarkable and transfixing. Yet one scene in particular (you will pick it) is so explosive it seems to repel any 
possible identification or sympathy, risking a kind of objectifying ‘insanity porn’—a display foremost for our shock and amazement. Or perhaps in its transgressive and apocalyptic intensity (far beyond narrative or meaning) the moment achieves a kind of liberatory chaos? I expect opinions vary.
The mysterious Thing kept by Anna in her grubby parody of the domestic environment is darkly fascinating, yet the film seems occasionally to lose interest in it, so the device isn’t quite explored to its full visual or metaphoric potential. Ultimately the themes of partner-perfection and obedience are provocative and troubling, and the film’s emotional collisions both traumatic and captivating. But in addition to Anna’s startling hysterics, a very kooky paramour, the monster and a doppelganger there’s also talk of souls and death and God—and really there’s just a bit too much thrown in for us to get an intellectual or emotional feel for its implications. Disorienting sometimes to its detriment, Possession is nevertheless a work of wild and commendable audacity. 3.5 / 5
Good old-fashioned revenge doesn’t get much better than this down and dirty lead crusade from Giulio Petroni. On the kind of sodden night from which nothing good can come a gang of hoods storm the home of the young Bill Meceita, murdering both his parents. 15 years later, all grown up and more than handy with a gun, Bill (John Phillip Law) sets out for revenge. Meanwhile, Ryan (Lee Van Cleef), an outlaw as weathered as the rocks he splits during his term of hard labor, is finally granted release and begins his pursuit of the crooks who double-crossed him into the slammer in the first place. You guessed it: they’re the same low-lives.
Although the film’s main interest is action—the simple pleasure of watching a couple of tough hombres take care of business—Petroni’s stylistic flair lends a symbolism of its own to these proceedings. The treachery and isolation of the Western landscape, the inexorability of fate, and the development of a surrogate father/son relationship between Ryan and Bill are all evoked.
WOLFEN (1981)
This theme is hauntingly imbued in images of industrial and residential dilapidation—urban rubble through which the wolves stalk their prey. As Wilson tracks his targets, a tingling, stealthy score by James Horner accents (and never smothers) the film’s shivery atmosphere. A film as dark, graceful and bewitching as its elusive antagonists. 5 / 5
There are many noteworthy aspects of Henry Hathaway’s Garden of Evil, although perhaps the most striking is the sight of Gary Cooper (otherwise doing his wearily gallant thing as usual) suddenly punching co-star Susan Hayward square in the face. Phrased as one of those well-meaning “for your own good”-type maneuvers, the act is nevertheless so alarming that it threatens to overwhelm our focus on the story itself.
Filmed in lavish Cinemascope, a widescreen format intended to yank viewers from their TV sets by giving them the full measure of cinematic spectacle, Garden of Evil looks glorious. Additionally, Bernard Hermann’s score masterfully runs the gamut from brooding to dreamily elegiac, lifting the film’s themes of suspicion and sin out of the rich visual canvas. The story itself seems to lose some of its momentum in a few places, but the eye-popping visuals and momentous score easily rescue it from stagnation.
The characterization is intriguing and misanthropic, and an atmosphere of tension is established between the three wanderers from the outset. Cooper’s performance feels off-kilter though, and a number of lines are delivered as if he were engaged in a different conversation from that of his interlocutor(s). This may be a deliberate strategy to build up an atmosphere of impenetrability or miscommunication around his enigmatic character. The effect, however, is ultimately awkward—almost as if he were somehow digitally inserted from another picture.
Upon returning to their hideaway to plan a robbery, famed outlaws Butch Cassidy (Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Redford) are challenged for the leadership of their gang by an ambitious oaf, whom they slyly outmaneuver before admitting his plans for the group were pretty worthwhile after all. And pretty worthwhile stealing for themselves. They will rob the Union Pacific Flyer, not once but twice: hitting the train once would be audacious, but twice would be downright unexpected and, thus, probably more profitable.
BC&TSK’s most irksome offense is not its free-wheeling lack of imagination or expensive blandness, but the portentous tone it eventually takes on. The elegiac finale that sees Butch and Sundance go down is greatly misjudged, clashing with the general mood of affable anachronism that is, really, the film’s bread and butter. Having dialogue that’s all hammy jokes and merry sarcasm is all well and good, but one can’t expect to trade it in for moodiness when the film is almost over and instantly have achieved something.
What we’re left with is a Western too afraid of getting its hands dirty to really explore the themes it feels entitled to rudely grope at in its final scene. The film’s serious side is almost entirely compromised by its specious appeal to generational “hipness” and Western cliché. Various homages to other pictures—Jules and Jim (1962), Bonnie and Clyde (1967)—also seem indicative of its lack of real interest in putting its nose to the grindstone and forging something worthwhile on the subject at hand.
The golden age of radio drama may be in the past, but audiobook subscription service Audible supplies an enthralling extension to the saga of Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, and of creatures and memories that also refuse to be left behind. The play is approximately novel-length (indeed based a novel by Tim Lebbon) and divided into chapters of around 25-30 minutes long, complete with not merely dynamic voice performances, but also sound-effects and a score—by turns eerie, momentous and mournful—to bring the production to vivid, egg-opening life.
The narrative picks up after the events of the first film as Ripley’s escape pod is intercepted by the crew of a mining vessel, who begin having a xenomorph problem of their own. Consequently Ripley, here played with all the characteristic mannerisms by Lauren Lefkow, is on hand to tell them how fucked they are—before becoming the key adviser against the threat. Meanwhile, android Ash, played by (and dismembered as) Ian Holm in the original film and now performed by Rutger Hauer, is up to old tricks. Hell-bent on fulfilling his mission for the Company of transporting an intact alien specimen, Ash’s disembodied artificial intelligence infiltrates and contaminates various ship systems to sabotage this new team’s efforts. Conceptually and tonally, the film strikes a balance between the first and second films, combining the original’s focus on malignant AI and a crew under-prepared for the menace they face with plenty of action as the creatures close in.
This new story is thrilling and energetic, yet retains the technical flourishes that helped plausibly underpin the films. The only let-down here is that while the drama initially presents as an ‘alternative’ timeline, later turns of the narrative work to re-integrate what has happened into the existing Alien chronology in a manner that seems clunky and unnecessary. Nevertheless, this hardly makes much of an acid burn on such an gripping and gorgeous production. A must for fans of the franchise. 4.5 / 5
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967)
CONGO (1995)
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954)
and fins, the monster is also conspicuously anthropomorphic, and the suggestion of our continuity with so strange a cousin provokes unease through a blurring of the human-animal binary.
It's all done with mirrors 