THE SLIFR 5th ANNIVERSARY WINGDING!

Way back when, in the dark ages just after the turn of the century (21st), when the word “blog” was more likely to conjure images of congested sinuses than opportunities for personal expression on the Internet, I began reading Jon Weisman’s Dodger Thoughts, a blog devoted to analyzing and processing the experience of being a thinking Dodger fan (not, as some of you might be thinking, a mutually exclusive proposition). As I followed how Jon used the format to consider and critique not only the Dodger organization and individual games, but also the intricacies of the game at large, and also to interact with his ever-growing readership, I began to think about starting my own blog. Finally, in November of 2004 I screwed up enough courage to create a template, come up with a name (The Good, the Bad and the Dodgers) and dedicate my first post, an introduction and a sort of mission statement which was designed to clarify my purpose as much to myself as to anyone who might actually stumble across this embryonic, anonymous site. I wrote that I did not want to “contribute to a junk Internet culture that values quantity, immediacy and accessibility over genuinely considered thought, cogent analysis and good writing” and expressed a hope that “after time there might be… a coherent feeling and approach on this blog that might attract a readership with a reasonable anticipation of what I might be up to and, of course, a desire to follow along.”

But at the beginning I knew I was only writing for myself and for what few friends and relatives I could cajole into occasionally checking my new project out. And before the pixels on the first post were even dry I reconsidered that title, which I felt was going for a certain evocation and juxtaposition of subject matter but hadn’t quite made it there. The title I replaced it with worked better, I thought. It is the one that remains on the header to this day. My first real post, an article previously written for my own amusement and practice, came in at just over 7,000 words. I assured my reader afterwards that it was an anomaly, that I didn’t have the energy or drive to write articles of that length on a regular basis. And I got a lot of free advice from friends who suggested I keep my average about 6,000 words shorter, at least, because surely no one would ever have the patience or attention span to slog through a blog loaded with similarly logorrheic epics.


It took nearly seven months of sitting online for that article to generate a comment, and when it did the comment seemed to confirm the wisdom of my friends’ advice. The author was one Frobisher, and here’s what she/he said, in its entirety:

“ After reading your blog may i be presumptious enough to say you could have done with serious sub-editing. It was long-winded and bloated, sometimes less really is more!”

My response, either consciously or unconsciously, framed the terms of debate that I hoped would stand as more and more comments hopefully began to come in:

“ Frobisher: You may. Thanks for checking in. How did you get here? And what did you think of some of the other pieces?”

I didn’t care that she/he thought the piece was overlong and long-winded nearly so much as that she/he somehow got here, read it and was willing to talk about it. My dear wife, however, took umbrage under the assumed name she decided to use when responding on the blog and stood up for her husband in her typically sharp-tongued manner:

“ Frobisher, may I be presumptuous enough to introduce you to capitalized words and Webster's 11th edition?”

And a little over two years later, someone named “Frank Booth” (much nicer than his PBR-swilling rep) felt compelled to chime in, and he started his comment with a nice bit of encouragement:

“Nice blog. Long-windedness be damned--it's your party, ramble if you want to.”

It was May 2007, two and a half years later. The train was a-rolling. We were halfway then to where we are now. November 15, 2009, two days ago, marked the fifth anniversary of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, and as Frank Booth suggested in evoking the anguish of Leslie Gore, I’m throwing a party. I never thought I would still be writing this blog five years after I started it, and I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t made a lot of excellent friends along the way. Along with everyone who might be reading this now, I’ve invited some of those friends, old and new, to join in our little anniversary wingding. And there will be music, comedy, some odd and lively and strange moments to watch and savor, some of which are directly related to things I’ve written about here, and some only representative of the spirit which I hope reigns here and runs untethered. But most of all I just want to send out thanks to anyone who ever read anything I wrote here over the last five years, and especially to those who then wrote back with their own thoughts and started a real conversation. It’s that desire for communication, inspired by the investigation and understanding of what movies can mean when they are at their best, and what it means when they’re not, which I hope carries this blog into the next five years, and beyond.




“Everyone has a few websites they visit frequently, especially movie lovers. Among the very best of these is Dennis's eccentricly titled SLIFR, which I've become pretty addicted to. In addition to providing links to other worthy sites and Blog-a-thons, Dennis provides informative commentary and opinions on everything from Eurohorror to indies to TV and current releases. Best of all, it's fun. One of my favorite sites, and not just cuz he says nice stuff about me. Honest. (Okay, I admit it, I do like that part)” – Joe Dante, director (Gremlins, Explorers, Matinee)




"Dennis Cozzalio might truly be the most remarkable figure in the film blogosphere: a man of indefatigable energy and admirably broad tastes who somehow manages to seemingly see everything, and to write about it with wit, grace, passion and depth. On top of which, he is as humble and good humored as anyone you're likely to encounter on the Internets. That shimmering landscape he calls Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule exists to remind us all of what the blogosphere could be, if we only relaxed and engaged with our peers in a spirit of open, seemingly endless generosity. Dennis makes writing about film seem like a party, and everyone is invited." – Brian Doan, Bubblegum Aesthetics




“It was, as I recall, the late summer of 2006 -- a very dark time. My friend and colleague Roger Ebert had suffered an arterial hemorrhage July 1 and nobody knew what the prognosis for recovery would be. Or, if they did, they weren't saying, and like many others I was wracked with anxiety, worried sick about his condition. Meanwhile, I was running a web site called RogerEbert.com… without Roger Ebert. This is an impossible thing to do, let me tell you.

A few months earlier, we had moved my blog Scanners out from under the RogerEbert.com URL and onto an actual MoveableType blogging platform, and I was able to persuade the Chicago Sun-Times to let me open it up to reader comments, something we'd never done on the main site. Frankly, working alone in Seattle, with Roger incommunicado, was making me not only worried but lonely.

Something had to be done. I decided to reach out to the movie blogging community, under the naive assumption that there was one. Turns out, there was, and one of the first people I reached out to was Dennis Cozzalio at the delightfully named Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. (I had been a huge baseball fan in the mid-to-late 1980s -- especially the 1986 Mets and then Tommy Lasorda's Dodgers after I moved to Los Angeles in 1987.) I came across one of Dennis's wonderful quizzes -- but the thing I liked most about it wasn't his clever questions, but Dennis's own answers. I mean, this sounded like a guy who could be a friend of mine. I wrote about it on Scanners.



Today, even though we've never actually met face-to-face, Dennis is a friend of mine. And through him (or in concert with him) I've found some of my other favorite hangouts in the movie blogosphere: The House Next Door, That Little Round-Headed Boy (who's been through several other incarnations), girish, Self-Styled Siren, Cinebeats, Flickhead, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger…, Cinema Styles, Arbogast on Film, Like Anna Karina's Sweater, The Kind of Face You Hate… There really is a community of serious-minded (but funny), knowledgeable (but not ostentatious) movie writers out there, and Dennis seems to be at or near the heart of it all.

If you've spent much time at all at SLIFR, you know why. The guy is amazing: smart, inexhaustible (how about those periodic, comprehensive LA repertory round-ups?!), articulate (clean, too), incredibly generous… and just fun to be around. Not a month has gone by since that day in 2006 that I haven't learned something really valuable from something Dennis has written. And this is a guy with a full-time job, a Lovely Wife and two Lovely Daughters, who went back to school to get an education degree, who actually teaches, and who also enthusiastically devotes himself to the celebration of drive-in movie culture. I get exhausted just thinking about him. In a good way.

What more can I say? Dennis, my most heartfelt congrats on five years of SLIFR. Long may its marquee glow!” - Jim Emerson, Scanners





"Dennis Cozzalio embodies everything I look for in a film critic. His writing is honest, informed, open-minded, sensitive, exuberant, analytical, passionately opinionated but never, ever condescending. For filmmakers, he's the perfect audience. For the rest of us, he's the ultimate movie guide." – Peet Gelderblom, filmmaker, cartoonist







“Why is SLIFR such an exemplary blog? Because Dennis Cozzalio combines a veteran historian's erudition and a great critic's perceptive eye with the infectious attitude of a lifelong enthusiast. It's a rare, heady mix that always makes for exhilarating, provocative reading. Happy anniversary!” - Glenn Kenny, film critic




“There are close to 115 million blogs out there. Technocratic estimates that 60-80 percent don't make it past the first month. Dennis has been blogging tirelessly (well, I bet he gets tired sometimes) for five years. It's hard to keep up the momentum, not to mention the creative energy. As a fellow blogger, albeit a reluctant blogger, I salute Dennis and wish SLIFR a happy 5th and many more.” – Lauren Kessler, author (Dancing with Rose, Stubborn Twig, The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes)




"Dennis obviously loves to write and he's damn good at it, but I find his generous spirit and willingness to support his fellow bloggers truly inspiring. He has gone out of his way to offer me words of encouragement when I really needed them and I've seen his graciousness and kindness extended to other bloggers on numerous occasions. Even though we might occasionally disagree about a film I know Dennis is more than willing to listen to my opinion and take it to heart even if we don't come to the same conclusions. His hospitality is apparent at his blog where he welcomes newcomers and old friends in an equally friendly fashion. He is truly a gentleman's blogger if there ever was one and I take off my sombrero to the man!"- Kimberly Lindbergs, Cinebeats




“In 2006, I came across Dennis's review of my movie Seed of Chucky. The review certainly was no rave. I'd call it a tepid half-appreciation. At best. But after browsing the site (and by "browsing" I mean staying up all night to rabidly consume the site's entire contents up to that date), I quickly recognized a kindred spirit -- someone whose enthusiasms could encompass both Nashville and The Boys from Brazil. I sent Dennis a note; he invited me to meet for coffee; and we've been friends and moviegoing pals ever since. As his many readers-- fellow bloggers, print critics, filmmakers, and fans alike—can attest, Dennis is one of the finest writers about movies to have emerged from the blogosphere. And as a proud member of the SLIFR community, I have had the pleasure of getting to know (at least electronically, and in a few happy cases, three-dimensionally) the various unique voices and attendant points-of-view of my fellow citizens. I also have had the pleasure of getting to know Dennis's family, and enjoy my new identity -- given to me by his daughters -- as "the guy who always watches Speed Racer and Hairspray with us."

Regular readers may have clocked, over the past few years, Dennis's seemingly growing appreciation for Seed of Chucky. If I were cynical, or even the slightest bit realistic, I might at this point question Dennis's objectivity about this particular movie. His status as a true friend, however, has never been in doubt.” – Don Mancini, writer-director



"Dennis Cozzalio could sneeze a thousand words! And some of it's actually intelligent." -- Mystery Man, screenwriter



“I started commenting on Dennis's site about two, two and a half years ago, I think. If memory serves, my first comment on SLIFR was the first comment I left on any blog, and SLIFR was the first blog of any kind I ever followed. There are several reasons for this. One is that Dennis may well be the most welcoming blogger on the planet. Every comment is appreciated, as is every opinion -- I know this, because Dennis and I have a history of disagreeing on movies, politics, and whether or not the entire sport of baseball is a complete waste of time. But Dennis has never talked down to me, or to anyone that I've ever noticed. And given how vast his knowledge of film is, he probably could have found a couple of pretty good angles for doing just that, but he never did.

So he's a very friendly guy, so friendly, in fact, that despite the fact that I've never met him in person, I do consider him a friend. An actual friend. But since SLIFR is a movie blog, it's worth repeating that Dennis knows a shit-ton about movies. I think the first time he and I ever really connected was in the comments of a post he wrote about Jonathan Rosenbaum's post-mortem takedown of Ingmar Bergman. It was a really good conversation, and at one point I said to Dennis that, because of his writing, I'd been spurred to track down and watch Raw Meat, Charley Varrick, The Man Who Never Was, The Emperor of the North Pole and The Plague of the Zombies, all of which he had praised in the preceding months. I didn't agree with his verdict on all of those films (although I didn't actively dislike any of them, and The Man Who Never Was, for example, I thought was really excellent), but Dennis had been able to communicate his enthusiasm for each in a way that made me think, "I really need to see that." And not one of those films is any kind of high profile "classic", in the institutional sense of the term -- each has a cult big enough to keep it on video, but those films are still rarely talked about. Dennis knows that this is completely irrelevant to the quality of a given movie, and he loves stumbling onto great, forgotten genre films.



Further, his complete lack of ego regarding his own tastes is truly admirable. What I mean is, if Dennis likes a film, he doesn't give a damn what the majority opinion is. He'll go to the mat for it. Not to be contrarian, but because he enthusiasm for it is genuine. And, as I said, he communicates that. He communicates it so well, in fact, that I still feel a bit of honest-to-peaches guilt over the fact that I still haven't given Speed Racer a shot. Really, I feel bad about that. I will get around to it, though, I promise. As soon as Dennis finishes reading Flicker.

Later, I started my own blog, and a few months ago, when Inglourious Basterds came out, Dennis sent me an e-mail and asked if I wanted to join him in an on-line, co-blogging conversation about it. Brother, was I honored by that. Really, of all the great film bloggers he could have asked, he asked me. I still don't know why, apart from the fact that, despite our occasional differences of opinion, Dennis and I do have a particular affinity for various genres, but the same could be said for a whole host of film bloggers. So I was truly flattered, and jumped at it. The resulting four part series of posts is an enormous highlight of my so-far brief blogging career, and not just because we got Jonathan Rosenbaum to swoop in and defend certain statements he'd made about Tarantino's film (you can all judge for yourself how successful his defense was). That series was also a highlight because for about a week I was joined at the hip with Dennis, one of the best and brightest and justifiably revered (and justifiably beloved, on a personal level) film bloggers out there. I wouldn't have been able to write half the words I ended up typing out for Inglourious Basterds if Dennis hadn't set the standard in each post, writing gleefully and intelligently about a film too many people were willing to dismiss out-of-hand. I had to step up my game, to be worthy of the association with Dennis. Whether I did or not, I don't know, but I did my best, because the last thing I wanted to do was let Dennis down.

So happy fifth anniversary, Dennis! Callooh, callay! I hope you and SLIFR hang around for about fifty more.

Also, you're a miserable bastard.” - Bill Ryan, The Kind of Face You Hate



"Dennis Cozzalio isn't just a dynamo who's running a great blog, he's also doing some of the most engaged, robust and rewarding writing about movies to be found anywhere." – Ray Sawhill, writer


“Dennis Cozzalio blogs about film the way Manny Ramirez bats on steroids, with power, timeliness, and superhuman pizazz. Cozzalio deftly expresses his cinematic insights with the verbal virtuosity of a Vin Scully, appealing to a wide-ranging audience of movie mavens and film-viewing novices." – Ivan Simon, high school teacher, San Luis Obispo, California

“SLIFR IS FIVE! In my head, a voice says ‘Slyffer.’ SLIFR, that not-a-word acronym for Sergio Leone (and the) Infield Fly Rule, is how I mentally pronounce Dennis Cozzalio’s web log. Maybe everyone does. Of the curious (and long) title, one might observe that SLIFR contains a superabundance of commentary on neither baseball nor Leone. Nor is it fixated on the Manly Pastimes of sport and violent Westerns. Why is it even called that!? Rather than a description, is a title about the feeling and spirit of the thing.

The spirit of the infield fly rule itself is to place emphasis on talent and gamesmanship rather than, say, infielders dropping pop-ups to force out pinned-down runners. It also involves the better judgment of an umpire who is paying attention to determine if the fly ‘could’ be caught. Maybe I’m exerting extraordinary effort, but there you have it: judgment call —criticism — invoked in effort to make the game more fun for everyone.

I’m just guessing again, but I believe I first read SLIFR in September of 2006, while patrolling the Internet for reactions to Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia. De Palma is one of my favorite filmmakers, one I hold near and dear — I spent a good chunk of 2006 playing De Palma in a sketch comedy revue — and over time I’ve learned deal with the usual set of blanket dismissals leveled against the director (plagiarism, misogyny, plain meanness and whatever ‘style over substance’ is supposed to mean) by dismissing them right back. I have no need or desire for critics to echo my personal opinions back to me, and if anyone feels that way, I imagine they run out of critics to read, and quick. Anyway, Dennis did not like The Black Dahlia as much as I did (i.e. — not much and very much, respectively), but that is hardly important. The piece on Dahlia starts with a mini-essay on divisions in the way the critical community grapples with De Palma, followed by reviews of reviews by esteemed SLIFR pals Matt Zoller Seitz and That Little Round-Headed Boy. And THEN he goes into lengthy notes on Dahlia’s problem areas before circling back to its place in De Palma’s filmography. This is all cool stuff that you can’t do in newspapers, and at which a good blogger excels.



See, SLIFR is a generous blog. It is not a multiple-posts-a-day place, but it is generous in a far more useful way. The Dahlia post is just an example among hundreds, but it contains an extended, engaged essay, which wrestles with the film, acknowledges personal response, and conveys a sense of community. As any regular reader knows, each season is greeted at SLIFR with an exhaustive guide to Los Angeles revival theatre screenings and an open-entry, no-prizes movie quiz. Though I am already aware of L.A. theater schedules, and the quiz responses run into triple digits, I end up reading every last word. Every time. I have to guess at when I found SLIFR because when I bumble onto an Internet spot I enjoy, I read through the archives in full.

In November, 2006, when I learned that Robert Altman had passed away, my first thought was: I wonder how Dennis is going to take this. We become invested in the tastes of our favorite critics, even if we don’t share them. All it takes to be a good, competent film writer is a sturdy knowledge of film history and skill to articulate thoughts with words. The rarer talents are ability to forge connections to other experiences (film or literature or the social sciences; whatever), see into the code that composes the text, and apply an evaluative eye with some acumen and panache. Dennis’s writing has all those qualities, but the complete mystery factors are those SLIFR offers in spades: honesty of opinion and the ballsy seductive skill to make a reader want to hear you out. That’s what it takes to put Mandingo on your 100 Favorite Movies List and to write approximately once a week about your abiding love of 1941.




I find 1941 almost impossible to finish watching, and my favorite De Palma is Body Double, a film for which I know Dennis has no great enthusiasm. The majority of the time, and on the important matters, our tastes seem pretty well aligned... but that’s not really the point. One of the reasons I tend to prefer academic film writing and critical analysis over review-oriented writers is the willingness to spend energy and effort thinking seriously about films the writer does not like. To generalize, reviewer types and most bloggers are at their weakest when faced with movies they hate or adore. Dennis’ Black Dahlia piece runs, what, 6200+ words? It is not a sin to have an opinion about movies, even a very weird opinion. The art of criticism is one of backing it up. The next morning you may realize you don’t agree, but while reading SLIFR the point of view is always thoroughly argued, well reasoned, and damned if it isn’t convincing. At the very least, the mission outlined in Post #1, has been realized: for five years SLIFR has delivered ‘genuinely considered thought, cogent analysis and good writing’ without junking up the Internet.

In addition to passion for the noble pursuits of film and baseball, I hear that Dennis has what they call a “real life,” finding time for things like jobs and enjoying his city, outdoor activity and a family he clearly cherishes. Don’t we all have those? Real lives? And it seeps into SLIFR in the best possible way. It is in pieces about taking his daughters to see Duck Soup or High School Musical 3, or boosting for local drive-in theaters, or the epic tragic-comic-romance story of chasing down Screen World volumes, that it matters that we know — or feel like we know — something about the man who holds the opinions. Intimate personal details aren’t necessary (or necessarily desirable — honestly, I know more about Harry Knowles’ digestive system than my own), but a sense of the writer’s personality, values and extracurricular interests provides warmth and context even in deep-contemplation film criticism. The focus is still on the movies, but long-term Cozzalio readers inevitably have a picture of the master of ceremonies as a well-rounded, funny, hard-working, kind and humble human being. Even if we don’t know him personally, those are qualities put forth in the content of SLIFR itself.

More succinctly: Last year a coworker asked me, ‘Hey, do you have a movie blog? You were linked by Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. It’s one of my favorites.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘mine too.’” - Chris Stangl, curator, The Exploding Kinetoscope




“I'm not sure when I first became aware of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. I believe it was in the early months of 2006, perhaps sometime before that. In any event, the very title, the wondrous range of topics it implied, was something this reporter found instantly intriguing. It drew me, like a paper clip to a magnet; and passing it by simply wasn't an option. Thus did I first venture into what fast became, and remains, one of my favorite haunts in this man's blogosphere. Four years later, I still visit and read SLIFR regularly, enthusiastically . . . though admittedly I rarely comment (this is just my somewhat introverted nature at work; I often can't bring myself to leave comments on my own blogs); and still it amazes me. Not the volume of Dennis's writing, nor really with its always superb quality (the man knows whereof he writes; far more than some other, more celebrated voices in this concord). No, what continues to impress me no end about this blog is that it has created, and maintains, something very like a communal spirit within the film blogosphere; a true sense of Welcome. It is the least insular film blog in creation. I could try the patience of everyone reading these words by developing that point; detailing what an achievement that truly is. But I think everybody knows (or ought to know) the full context of what I'm saying here. To paraphrase something Gore Vidal once said about a certain print publication, SLIFR is the only film blog that more-than-adequately services its readers. I'm proud to testify before this committee that I am now, and will always be, one of them. Happy Anniversary!” - Tom Sutpen, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats




“By now, is there anything more tiring than to listen to the web cheerleaders who, like digital-age descendants of Captain Video's gee whiz cadets, tell us all about how the internet is going to make everything just swell, tell us this even as venues disappear and the ones left have no place for writing that is anything more than an impotent knee jerk?The Internet has fucked us good and proper, and film criticism may be the most fucked of all. No longer do we have to listen to the loudmouth behind us at the multiplex because now he has his own site. Now every Ben, Luke, and Harry gets to blurt about what's wicked pissa this week with a sense of history that makes the guy in Memento seem like Henry Steele Commager.

Where the web has given us something can be found in the sites that are written, not just squirted out like canned cheese, where the writers are ignoring what's current (ie., what will be forgotten on Monday morning) in favor of what obsesses them, angers them, inspires them, makes them dream, overwhelms them. Writers like this, and Dennis Cozzalio is one, combine the fan's avidity, the critic's attention to nuance, the conjurer's ability to evoke, and the sense of interwined awe and recklessness that makes criticism worth reading and writing. It starts, I'm guessing, with a sense of being in thrall, of standing up, like a man facing a hurricane, to what thrills you, and respecting movies enough to know that what doesn't achieve that formidable power is a paltry thing. It was never easy to do this in print, never easy to write criticism that doesn't depend on fashion. But with discoveries being made all the time via DVD (and still, thank God, in rep houses) what's "old" can seem more vital, more alive, more pressing than this week's releases. I love Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule because it operates out of that loving demand for movies to be worthy of the power we've invested them with. If some time in the future, film criticism gets to throw away the crutches, it will be because people like Dennis kept making offerings to the movie gods. Screw the heathens! God save the believers. – Charles Taylor, film critic





"SLIFR was one of the first blogs I stumbled across when I entered the world of film blogging and it still remains one of my favourites. The quizzes, of course, are a big reason - answering them is fun, but even better is reading the great responses from the very long list of contributors to the SLIFR community. The main reason, though, is that Dennis brings the 'personal' to each of his posts that makes his writing and criticism so much more interesting, entertaining and, for me anyway, useful than many of the other writers out there. I prefer film criticism to inject the personal reaction to the art form and SLIFR provides that with each and every post. I may never forgive the Dodgers for "Dodger Blue Monday" (against my beloved Expos), but I can almost see myself rooting for them in your honour, Dennis..." – Bob Turnbull, Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind


"The subject is always a surprise at Dennis Cozzalio's blog Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Predictability is criticism's cardinal sin (and it's easiest trap), but the only thing you know for unwavering certain when going to Dennis' site is that you're going to get something up-close, in-depth & personal. Of most I'd ask forgiveness for invoking a bad Michelle Pfieffer movie to offer praise ("She eats the lens!"), but I won't with Dennis because it's entirely likely he'll publish an extended defense one day. Hey, you loved The X-Files: I Want to Believe (my brother!) and at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, anything's possible. Happy 5th Anniversary!" - Keith Uhlich, The House Next Door and Time Out New York




“There is no blog comparable to SLIFR. Bridging the gap between academia and entertainment better than any other of its ilk, Dennis C.’s sometimes endless cinemaniacal ramblings always fascinate, intrigue and amuse—without ever being self-righteous, self-serving or snarky. The film school prof you wish you had is now set to dominate a blog-niche you never knew you needed. All that, plus the best name ever! – Mike Werb screenwriter (Face/Off, The Mask)




“All good blogs are, I think, honest extensions of the personality of their proprietors. SLIFR is, by acclamation, one of the very best, and not only among cinephile sites. A scholarly, goodhearted place run by a scholarly, goodhearted fellow that takes us everywhere from the dankest realms of exploitation cinema to the joys of family and friendship, to the geekiest and most wholesome forms of bone-deep, all-around movie love, readers are hooked on SLIFR because they sense it reflects the truth of what Dennis Cozzalio is all about. There are lots of very sincere pumpkin patches on the web, but something tells me that SLIFR would be the Great Pumpkin’s favorite hangout.” – Bob Westal, Forward toYesterday and Premium Hollywood

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BUFFALO BOB AND THE INFIDEL: ALTMAN'S LEGACY vs. SCHICKEL'S POISON PEN

In the introduction to new his book, Robert Altman: An Oral Biography, Mitchell Zuckoff describes his friendship with the director, whom he met near the end of his life, and how Altman initially resisted the idea of doing a book with him. But the conversations Zuckoff had with the director convinced him that there was a book that could be wrangled from all those wide-ranging talks. Altman didn’t like the idea of self-analyzing in public, but he eventually caved in to Zuckoff’s suggestion on the condition that the book be largely about filmmaking and Altman’s work—anyone who has ever heard one of his gregarious DVD audio commentaries knows he has little difficulty talking about that subject—and less about his personal life. “The deal was… that we’d talk film, not life,” writes Zuckoff. “He didn’t want stories of his past deeds or misdeeds to fog the lens, and he didn’t want anything to hurt his family, especially his wife, Kathryn Reed Altman. His one concession was a chapter that would sketch the broad contours of his past.” Zuckoff goes on to say that “The films he eventually made weren’t overtly autobiographical… He didn’t need to make movies about himself because the entire process of filmmaking was his adult life, a stage for his passions, his rages, his triumphs, his humor, his visions, his failures, his gifts.”

But when Altman’s death put an abrupt end to their collaboration, through the mourning and sadness a new theme emerged. “Our talks, Robert Altman’s final sustained interviews, would form the backbone of a book about his work and his life, rough edges and all,” writes Zuckoff. “Kathryn agreed, recognizing that to understand the films Bob made and the man he was, the man she loved, mean examining the whole, remarkable, complicated, combustible package.” Altman fans and scholars (myself included) hoped the book would be a valuable addition to Patrick McGilligan’s equally warts-and-all biography Jumping off the Cliff, which was published in 1989 just before Altman’s career renaissance with The Player in 1992.

When Robert Altman: An Oral Biography was published three weeks ago the reviews were largely positive. Mark Harris, in his fine, comprehensive piece for the New York Times reveals that by the time “this scrupulously intelligent and entertaining biography” has taken 150-or-so pages to get up to M*A*S*H, the director’s career breakthrough at age 45, “we’ve come to learn a great deal about how the director’s life shaped the art that followed” and that the book “is, appropriately, more likely to restart arguments about Altman than to resolve them, and to send both the director’s admirers and his detractors racing to their DVD shelves to make their cases.” (Which is how it should be.) Finally, Harris concludes that Zuckoff’s oral history format works “not just because the form he has chosen mimics so elegantly the boisterous cacophony of a really good Altman movie, but because he lets the contradictions, reconsiderations and regrets play across his pages with no agenda other than to clarify and illuminate the up-and-down-and-up career of a brilliant, erratic film artist.”

Of course among the boisterous cacophony of praise not only for Zuckoff’s book but for Altman’s films and his standing as a great film director one must necessarily make room for opposing views. In that light then, to Zuckoff, and probably to Harris, Richard Schickel would like to offer, “Says you!” Or something like that. Schickel’s nasty and derisive review of the book published in the Los Angeles Times on October 22 surprised Altman fans and just about anyone else interested in good criticism, not because he dared to dislike a book which everyone else seemed to hold in high regard, but because he used the book, which, incredibly, is mentioned with only glancing interest in the review, as a soapbox from which Schickel proceeds, from the very first sentence to deliver an angry diatribe not only on the uselessness of Altman’s films (and, presumably, the deluded state of those of us who continue to cherish them), but also Altman’s notorious resistance to sobriety. “It appears that from the beginning of his career until almost its end (until illness slowed him),” Schickel intones, “Robert Altman never passed an entirely sober day in his life.” A few lines later he observes with disapproval that “Mitchell Zuckoff, who interviewed 145 people for the long, insanely admiring Robert Altman: An Oral Biography, never comes to grips with the effect this had on his films.”


Schickel spends the rest of the review denigrating Altman’s reputation as an indiscriminate wrangler of “spur-of-the-moment” behavior,” a purveyor of deliberately muddy overlapping dialogue which was intended “to make sure the audience never quite understood what was going on." He concludes that the director was a misogynist and a misanthropist, two tired ideas that don’t seem to gel either with the director’s famous love of actors or his desire to spend time in their company and that of the many other humans (male and female) with whom he worked. (And even if the charges of misanthropy were true, isn't it possible that one could enjoy spending time with people while being severely critical and disdainful of their tendencies as a whole?) Yet for Schickel, this alleged distaste for humanity “essentially substitutes for ideas in his movies and his characters are, in effect, characterless.” We also learn from Schickel aboard his pedestal that Altman was “a man with no interest in the fundamentals of film,” a permissive, passive-aggressive man “addled by his addictions” who was unable to direct our attention to anything that was on his mind. Finally, Schickel concludes with the finality of a puckered and constipated professor that “(Altman’s) films do not transcend their times; even the best of them remain trapped within those times.”


This was undoubtedly news to those of us who continue, in our delusion, to find ways to relate to and understand and interpret Altman’s films as something more than time capsule artifacts. Is there anyone beside Schickel who cannot see how Hal Phillip Walker’s Replacement Party platform not only presaged the ascendance of Ross Perot but also the entire idea of a government headed by Bubbas who were just like us, a government secretly operated by shadow puppeteers who were only just beginning to emerge into the public spotlight in 1975 when Nashville was released? Exactly how do the three decades that have passed since the complicated identity crisis of Millie and Pinky was dramatized in Three Women prevent us from understanding it? Admittedly, there are elements of M*A*S*H that I find discomfiting, and I’ve never shrunk from saying so. But to trash it so completely as being witless is to be willfully ignorant not only of its representative qualities as social satire-- satire that, though it is anchored in observations about the Korean War and, of course, Vietnam, is not sealed off from relevance to our current situation—but of its importance in establishing Altman’s variations on the fundamental elements of film language that he, of course, had to know and master before he could so effectively break and reshape them.

But Schickel isn’t satisfied with trashing the films. That act of destruction is part and parcel with destroying the reputation of the man as well. Zuckoff’s assertion that the book had to be about Altman’s work and his life serves as a permission slip in Schickel’s eyes to focus on his own projections about the man’s drinking and drug abuse, and by extension his finger-wagging disapproval of the whole counterculture environment in which Altman thrived and made his films. Of course, for Schickel, a moralistic biography hag in a film critic’s tweed jacket, this kind of hatchet job is nothing new. In 1990 he used almost the identical tactics to dismiss Scott Eyman’s well-regarded volume Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford and to inform all of us who have been, for some six or seven decades now, operating under the misguided notion that John Ford is some sort of cinematic master, one of the founding fathers of narrative film, that we were all wet. Oh, and yeah, John Ford’s besotted lifestyle and disregard for many of those around him is at the rotten, squirming heart of such failures as The Quiet Man and The Searchers too. As Brian Oard commented during Jim Emerson’s discussion of this matter over at Scanners, “I'm reminded of what Abraham Lincoln reportedly said of Ulysses S. Grant's drinking: ‘Find out what he drinks and give it to the rest of my generals.’"


"Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em!"

I’ve been reeling over this absurd campaign for the last couple of weeks, still incredulous that a critic of Schickel’s apparent stature would indulge in such an irresponsible, dunderheaded attack. I also wondered aloud to some friends recently if there had ever been such asinine non-thinking display from someone who I assumed would know better. And I don’t mean “someone who disagrees with me,” but someone who ought to be able to see through such flimsy tactics—someone who would see through them if they were evident in anyone else’s work. One friend responded that I have seen this kind of nonsense at work before, but, as he put it, it usually comes from someone on The 700 Club or from someone whose IQ is smaller than their belt size, not from an alleged critic. It is that “alleged” attachment that I find more appropriate than ever for Schickel, in light of this carpet-bombing of Altman’s life and career, and in light of Schickel’s own “long, insanely admiring” overview of Clint Eastwood’s work-- a director who I also admire greatly but whose conservative working methods clearly appeal more to this Time magazine schoolmarm with a haircut than do Altman’s more flexible ones.


I only wish it hadn’t taken me this long to marshal the time and resources to write about Schickel’s comments myself, but it has, so call me irrelevant and behind the curve if you will. (For a great overview see Jim Emerson’s ”Reviewing Altman,” where a portion of this piece originally appeared as a part of the ongoing discussion.) It was suggested by one of Jim’s readers that to broach a defense or a response to Schickel’s comments at all is tantamount to protesting too much. If Altman’s achievements are so solid, then they will surely be able to withstand the carping and mewling of a speck like Schickel. Surely Schickel’s observations will dry up and float away on the breeze generated by the applause of a new generation of filmgoers as they discover Altman for themselves. I don’t doubt these things are true. But, to paraphrase Jim’s point, I felt a strange kind of obligation, as someone who has been thrilled and inspired and moved to tears repeatedly by movies as disparate as Brewster McCloud, The Long Goodbye, California Split, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Three Women, Popeye, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Secret Honor, Tanner ’88, The Caine Mutiny Court-martial, Gosford Park, The Company and A Prairie Home Companion, to reiterate, in the face of willfully ignorant or agenda-riddled criticism, that the movies did and do have value, and as living, breathing creations, not museum pieces, and that they were willed to life not as a by-product of debilitating chemicals but despite them, through the rigors and inspiration of a true artistic vision. Unless you believe (as Schickel apparently does) that Altman was shit-faced 24/7 on one substance or another, alcohol and drugs simply cannot credibly account for the consistency of style, and the mutability within that style which allowed for so many different approaches to so many different styles and themes that Altman wove into a career as one of the great filmmakers.

For Schickel there is apparently no need to separate the artist from the art on this fundamental level, even though most all of us learned a long time ago that there can often be a gulf between what a man produces and the way he regards another person (or a substance) in social interaction. But to even consider this apparent truism so far as to have to mention it at all is to lend credence to Schickel’s fatally flawed point. The critic never approved of Altman’s lifestyle or the kind of hazy, dissolute quality he saw in his films, which he then couldn’t help but connect in his head. One might as well say that Jeff Spicoli would have turned out movies that looked and felt like Altman’s because, like Altman, he was a raging pothead. Yet that notion is only slightly more absurd than the one that Schickel peddles, which is that Altman’s substance abuse crippled his instincts as a filmmaker, and if we look back on them now, in sobriety, we’ll inevitably see Altman’s films as time capsules with nothing to say to our modern generation of filmgoers. They’re no good! Why? Because I said so!


This is precisely the kind of huffy, baseless dismissal that some print critics, including Schickel, have slammed bloggers and other Internet-based film writers for—shoddy journalistic tactics and the inability or unwillingness to back up their grandstanding, attention-grabbing claims. It’s incredible to me not only that Schickel would construct a dismissal of a major filmmaker’s career on such flimsy grounds, but that the editor responsible for printing it in the Los Angeles Times would not call him out on it and simply reject the piece on grounds of insufficient journalistic standards. (To his everlasting credit, Times blogger Patrick Goldstein objected to Schickel's rant in print, and he also provided a forum for Alan Rudolph, longtime Altman associate and filmmaker in his own right, to respond to Schickel’s charges by printing Rudolph’s long and eloquent testament to Altman’s on-set methods and the man he personally knew.) Schickel’s review does nothing to prove his own cranky premise, but it sure does drive another solid-gold nail in the coffin containing what’s left of his credibility as a critic.

In his piece, Jim Emerson makes a crucial point:

“…Altman carefully assembled his movies (and most of all their fine-tuned Hawksian soundtracks) so that you weren't left with the spectacle of actors flailing away for something to do or say while the camera rolled, as is pointedly the case, for example, in Jaglom's insufferable movies. If an actor wasn't in character, or wasn't doing something worth keeping, Altman would lose interest, his camera would wander away, the dialog would disappear into the sound mix, or he would cut around the moment. If you watch (and listen to) Altman's movies closely, you can see the intelligent choices he's making, even while the experience itself feels open, free-wheeling, sprawling, chaotic, bustling or any of those other Altmanesque adjectives critics are inclined to use to describe his work.”


Matt Zoller Seitz, in a blog-a-thon a number of us participated in several years ago to mark Altman’s 81st birthday, memorably described going to a family party. As he surveyed the roomful of people gathered together, he found himself emulating Altman’s roving camera eye, sorting through the assemblage, choosing what to focus on with his eyes, his ears, noting the effect it had to choose a visual focus and yet emphasize the overheard conversation coming from nearby, unconnected to what it is he was seeing. It’s incredible to me that Schickel would even come close to implying that what Altman did was akin to letting the camera roll and dull-wittedly waiting for something to happen, to reveal itself. This was a notion that I gave credence to when I was 15 years old, when I had comparatively little life experience, when I wasn’t capable yet of processing, of understanding the complexity of vision that Altman had composed and was offering on his audio-visual canvases. I’m not suggesting that Schickel must appreciate everything that Altman does (even we Altman acolytes aren’t so blind), or that there is only one way to understand Altman’s films. But what is Schickel’s excuse, as a critic who presumably knows something about the way films are created, that allows him the luxury of such a thoughtless dismissal? What is his excuse for not having a greater cognizance of Altman’s methodology than a 15-year-old?

I once had the privilege of asking Altman himself, at a screening of The Long Goodbye at UCLA in the days just before The Player came out, whether or not he thought his films were manipulative. I asked the question because I’d been having heated discussions with someone who was intent on dismissing his visual style because of the way he used the zoom lens and other techniques to direct our attention toward certain aspects of behavior and performance. To this person, Altman’s directorial manner was too emphatic, too on-the-nose, as if Altman were saying, “Whoops, you won’t catch this unless I italicize it for you with my zoom lens.” My response to this argument was similar to the scenario Matt so memorably described, though no doubt not as cogently presented or argued. And I also countered that to suggest that Altman was manipulative above and beyond the methods of any other director in cinema simply because of this noticeable stylistic technique was to be willfully ignorant of the myriad ways in which directors as disparate as Hitchcock, Hawks, Godard and Herzog—in other words, just about any director you can name who can cut and juxtapose film or make a choice as to where to place the camera—use film to express their vision of the world. It was a joy to hear Altman respond to my question by saying, “Of course it’s manipulative! I want you to see things how I see them!”

And he’s right—Altman’s movies are distinctive not exclusively because of their hazy, laid-back rhythms but because of how Altman employs that seductive pose to frame his investigative, searching, sometimes chaotic, nearly always visually thrilling approach. That approach is not, by the way, directly transferable from film to film, even though anyone paying attention could see that the same man who directed M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, The Long Goodbye, California Split, Nashville and Buffalo Bill and the Indians also directed the relatively sparsely populated and meticulously observed Images, Three Women and A Perfect Couple with their relatively more tightly focused visual range. Without that manipulation, you’re left with Henry Jaglom, who disdains film technique, or at least the appearance of smoothness that technique would serve to create, who literally does seem to think that his duty is that of camera operator and that “the truth” will be revealed not by him but through the rambling improvisations of his actors. Could Schickel honestly look at a movie like McCabe and Mrs. Miller or Secret Honor or Buffalo Bill and The Indians or The Long Goodbye and truthfully suggest that these films came together not because of an artistic vision but in spite of a mediocre director’s pot-addled sensibility? Apparently. After all, he put his name on the review. It’s a shame that this punk excuse for criticism had to be the last thing of Schickel’s that I will ever read. Altman’s reputation remains unsullied in my eye, while Schickel’s—well, Schickel’s is in the tank.

Oh, and by the way, I’m well into Zuckoff’s book right now, and guess what—it’s terrific.

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GODSPEED, ROYBOY: ROY MATCHETT 1924 - 2009

Roy Matchett, a man I’ve known for close to 40 years, the father of a close friend in high school and college, died this past Saturday, October 30, at the age of 85. Roy was not a man of great renown. He was not a famous film director, an esteemed screenwriter, a gifted cinematographer or a beloved actor, though I always thought he resembled a best-of-all-possible-worlds cross between Paul Newman (those piercing blue eyes) and Mel Brooks (he was more physically imposing, but shared the great comedian’s raucous humor). So why, if all of the above are true, is he being eulogized here? Well, simply because Roy was that rare animal, the parent of a pal who eventually became a pal himself. I spent a lot of time running around Roy’s house with his son Ron, and I can’t remember even a split second when Roy and his eternally good-humored wife Jeanne didn’t treat me just like one of their own boys. I never felt like I was the intruding sidekick that had to be endured for the sake of their own boy’s bad taste in choosing friends. Whenever I visited their house, whether it was for dinner or just to hang out and take up space, I was made to feel like I belonged there. At the same time, if we did something dumb Roy dished out his disdain in a manner which ensured we both felt chastised—he wasn’t about to let me off the hook due to anything as easy as biology.

Roy’s temper, in addition to being a source of genuine fear (he never raised his hand to anyone as far as I ever knew, but he had a voice that sounded like the kind of thunder that would gather together into its own kind of fist), was also an endless source of comedy for me and Ron, and Ron’s older brothers Lee and Kevin too. Part of the fun of hanging around with the Matchett boys was the stories with which they would regale eager listeners about their dad’s often profanely eloquent tirades, and more often than not these stories were told in the presence of Roy himself, who was always up for having a good laugh at the expense of his reputation as a human volcano. From my perspective, growing up around Roy Matchett was like being the little egghead chicken toddling around at the feet of Foghorn Leghorn. He had the capacity to be endlessly interested in what was going on in my life, and he would talk to me at length about my family—he knew my grandpa well—and all the things I was captivated by—and then the next minute he might just as easily find himself in a fit of stuttering exasperation by something I might say, or something I didn’t understand about what he was trying to tell me. And Roy was never satisfied with understatement in getting his point across whenever outrageous exaggeration was an option.


One of the funniest anecdotes illustrating Roy’s benign Foghorndom came when his family took me along on my one-and-only Hawaiian vacation, on the island of Kauai, during the spring of 1980. Ron, his then-girlfriend (now wife) Janell and I flew independently from the rest of the family out of Eugene and met everyone at the airport in Kauai, where Jeanne immediately burst into tears upon seeing us arrive safely. Roy burst into something else when it was discovered that (again, for the one-and-only time during my whole history of commercial flight) my luggage had been lost (accidentally left in Honolulu would probably be more accurate) and took it upon himself to ride herd on the local airport staff until my bag reappeared a day later. The Matchetts had secured for us all a lovely two-story condominium right on Poipu Beach for our week-long stay. Their only mistake was that they rented a property in which the only unit large enough to house Ron, Janell, his brother Lee and wife Jeannette, and myself was the one at the top of the stairs. All was fine until Roy, lounging in his quarters below, got an earful of five young people treating one man’s ceiling like their own hardwood floor. The first two days were peppered with complaints from the elder statesman directed at all of us for making stampeding noises when we were moving about the condo. One morning he came upstairs, sat us all down on the couch and actually conducted a seminar on how to walk across the floor without disturbing the downstairs neighbor. (Of course no one was downstairs during this demonstration to affirm whether or not Roy’s techniques were effective.) Confident that we now possessed enough knowledge of basic physics and acoustics to avoid such transgressive behavior for the rest of the trip, Roy returned to his lower dominion while we got ready for the day’s adventures.

Perhaps a half hour had passed and we were almost ready to leave for the beach when the front door to our condo flew open and a red- faced Roy burst in (accompanied, I’m fairly positive, by a dramatic musical soundtrack stinger). “All right, who the HELL is up here STOMPING back and forth across this floor??!!” he bellowed. There wasn’t much time to do anything but try to suppress laughter, which I knew was probably not the best response to share in this situation, before he continued. “Cozzalio, didn’t I show you how to walk across the floor?! There’s no need to smash your feet down full force every time you have to take a piss or go get something out of the refrigerator!” I also remember some vague threat involving being tossed into shark-infested waters should we not be able to get our pounding heels under control. And then it was off to a fun day with Roy as our tour guide, and his jolly demeanor bore not an ounce of recall about the outrage that started his day. Later, just to tweak the master, we three boys shot a lovely photo of our bare feet as a special souvenir for our benignly grumpy patriarch. I like to think he treasured it.


Roy knew I thought he was hilarious, and I always got the impression that he really enjoyed making me laugh. He enjoyed watching me laugh too, I think. He and Jeanne took me to Reno one weekend when I was probably no older than 15 to see Don Rickles—my first big show. Rickles was hilarious, of course, but Roy seemed more tickled about how funny I thought Mr. Warmth was than about the show itself. (“Hee-hee-hee! I looked over and thought the spaghetti vendor was gonna split a seam!”) As I got older, I remember the conversations I had with Roy as being characterized by emergent respect, a lack of condescension that one might naturally expect coming from the older, wiser father of a best friend (which I definitely experienced from other parents). I think that as my high school years gave way to college I began to think of Roy, and Jeanne too, as real friends rather than necessary attachments who came along with knowing their son.

The last time I saw Roy was around 1992, when I brought my wife to my hometown for Christmas and we went to their house to visit. I talked to him on the phone a couple of times after that four or five years later. Then, around six or seven years ago I got a call from Ron telling me that his dad had suffered a devastating stroke and had lost his capacity for speech. It was around this time that the dreams began (much like the ones I still continue to have after my grandmother had been killed in a freak car accident), in which I come to visit the Matchetts and Roy, of course, is not frail and incapacitated but vital and booming and irreverent, just how I always knew him. At the end of the dream—and I always somehow know that the dream is ending—I am filled with sadness and dread because, like the times when I am reunited with my grandma, I don’t want Roy to go away-- I know that, however convincing my dream, his reality was something far different than the pleasant concoctions of my mind and my memory.

And now, after a long and difficult time in which his physical capacity only weakened and his awareness of even his closest family members was inconsistent and unreliable, Roy has passed away. I will always regret that I never got to properly say good-bye, or that I was unable to spend any more time with him, either before or after his stroke, for selfish reasons as much as any others. But in this hour in which everyone who knew him contemplates the pain he had to endure, the commitment and love and support with which his family surrounded him during his most arduous years on this planet, and the relief which he surely now enjoys, it’s easy for me to think back on Roy Matchett as one of the most influential people in my life. Without ever intending to, he did much to shape my sense of humor, its saltiness and irreverence and warmth, and the loyalty and respect he offered to people, specifically to the nerdy, bespectacled buddy of his youngest son, is a model to which I am, if I am living my own life correctly, constantly referring. When I think of Roy Matchett, from this moment until I am incapable myself of remembering, I will think of a man who I loved at times as much as I did my own father. Godspeed, Roy Boy. And if the Lord makes too much noise stomping around up there in that mansion on the hill, don’t hesitate to tell him to knock it off. You deserve your rest.

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HALLOWEEN LEFTOVERS

There seems to have been an unexpected enthusiasm about Halloween this year around our house and around the neighborhood which, in addition to the kid-centric holiday falling on a Saturday, seems to have added a certain happier dimension to its celebration than in past years, as I remember them anyway. It was nice to be able to spend the day with my girls decorating the front of the house-- even though our decorations were meager by the standards of some of the other nearby houses, they were downright garish and pagan placed alongside the majority of them which, it being a neighborhood of older retirement-age folks for the most part, noted their participation in the spirit of the evening mostly by leaving their porch lights on. And though the expected downturn in the number of those houses who usually grab the holiday by its prickly tail was apparent—the neighborhood haunted houses that can be counted on to go all out were a little more subdued this year, no doubt because of the tightness of everyone’s budget—there was a marked uptick in volume of candy distribution, if my daughters’ trick-or-treat bags can be counted as representative samples. My youngest couldn’t even carry her bag home. (We picked through the 25% of really good stuff and donated the rest to the needy coworkers in my office who will, as it turns out, consume even Willy Wonka Fun Dip with only the slightest hesitation.)

Halloween 2009 just seemed like more fun this year, and there are three reasons I can think of that might help to explain why.

I DISCOVERED THAT MY KIDS LOVE THE UNIVERSAL MONSTERS


This was the year the girls found out about the Universal Studios monsters in their element, and it was due mostly to getting to see Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein on the big screen a couple of weeks ago. The movie couldn’t be more kid-friendly, and yet it packs a few moments within and in between comedy bits that a young audience could conceivably rank as scary. Not only did my daughters eat up the adventures of Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) avoiding these creepies, they also found the creatures themselves compelling. They knew not from wolfsbane and the seductive menace of Bela Lugosi before this past October. But now they’re ready for the real thing. I took my daughter to see Tod Browning’s Dracula at the New Beverly just a week later, and she was shivering and hiding her eyes from Lugosi’s piercing stare like it was 1931. I’m not sure why, but classic comedies from this period (Duck Soup, The Lady Eve, The Awful Truth), and now the slow-paced insinuating horrors spawned by the Universal backlot, have managed to pierce the attention-deficit shield constructed by video games, manga and the other more modern action movies she also loves and improbably found a place in her heart. I have promised to screen the entire Frankenstein series for her next—James Whale’s original, most assuredly the The Bride of Frankenstein, and then Son, House and Ghost, with a special place reserved for one of my favorites, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman-- unless we get really lucky and some of them show up on the big screen again soon. And given all this interest, it might just be time to break out the old monster model kits.

I WAS REMINDED THAT IT’S GOOD TO REVISIT THE CLASSICS (AND SOME NOT-SO-CLASSICS TOO)


I had the opportunity to look at several movies during the Halloween month that I either remembered fondly from my horror-loving boyhood or had never fully warmed to the way others had seemed to, and the results were a little bit surprising. I spent a long time enjoying the anticipation of digging into the delights offered on MGM HD’s “Dying for the Weekend” series of horrors, because there were a couple of old favorites in there as well as a couple I’d never run across before. But the cruel fact is, I just wasn’t able to see everything I wanted to see from their line-up. (And when, in the history of my film-watching or anyone else’s, has this truism ever not been a truism?) And it was a disappointment to discover that one of the pictures I was most looking forward to seeing again, The Return of Count Yorga, was a bit of a wet noodle. The first movie was an important movie in the development of my taste for modern horror films and I still think it stands up pretty well today. But the sequel, which I characterized from my memory as “very good” in the article previously linked, turned out, to these eyes which are 37 years older than when they first gazed up on it, to be somewhat sleepily paced and far too dependent on a bevy of nightgown-clad vampire brides infected by what appears to be a plague of rampant bed hair lurching at the camera and smacking their oversized dime-store vampire fangs. Robert Quarry as the titular count seems disinterested here too—he should be out ravaging early ‘70s party types, but instead he spends the entire movie pining for the bland Mariette Hartley, an unappreciative recipient of Yorga’s attentions who also ends up on the receiving end of the movie’s shock ending, wholly warmed-over and gender-flipped as it is directly from the first film.


Much more enjoyable was Grave of the Vampire, a movie I never gave much of a chance when I was growing up and scouring the movie pages of the Portland Oregonian and the San Francisco Chronicle, because the ads looked so cheap and unpromising. But the movie has a certain crude power, is relatively well made (by John Hayes, an exploitation director responsible for titles like Up Yours—A Rockin’ Comedy, All the Lovin’ Kinfolk, Mama’s Dirty Girls, Jailbait Babysitter and Hot Lunch) from a script by David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, and is not just a little bit mean and punchy to boot. Michael Pataki plays Croft, a notorious vampire who rises one night to terrorize and drain the blood of a boy and his girlfriend, and then proceeds to drag the girl screaming into an open grave where he proceeds to rape her. The girl, improbably, survives the ordeal and gives birth to a son who has no taste for milk but certainly enjoys the drippage when Mom accidentally cuts herself while mounting another doomed breastfeeding attempt. Up to this point (about a third of the way through), the movie has a certain mournfulness to it, and well as a creeping morbidity that is unusual and affecting. But then Grave takes a hard left past the logistical booby traps one would think would be inherent in growing up a vampire and jumps straight to the boy’s adult life where, against all likelihood, he turns into lantern-jawed exploitation star William Smith. Smith, none too happy about the way Dad treated Mom or about his own undead situation (which the movie sets aside until its gory conclusion), has tracked down the bloodsucking patriarch—he’s teaching night classes on the occult!—and is out for some stake-in-the-heart-type payback. Grave of the Vampire remains engaging largely because of Pataki’s barely contained contempt for the daylight dwellers that surround him—he’s actually pretty damn good in this role—and for the juice and surprising cruelty the filmmakers bring to their own tawdry premise. It doesn’t really add up to much, but in terms of the drive-in fare amongst which it was spawned and ran in the mid ‘70s, it’s a fang or two above the usual fare.

Even better is the 1971 Hammer entry Twins of Evil, another of the studios “expansions” upon the J. Sheridan LeFanu story “Carmilla” which, in addition to the original Dracula novel, also stoked the fires (if you will, and I insist) of rather more openly erotic Hammer vampire films such as The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire, among countless others. Here Le Fanu’s ageless and undying Carmilla is resurrected just long enough to pass along her undead thirst to one Count Karnstein (the insinuatingly effective Damien Thomas, whose manner reminds me of no one more than Corey Feldman). Karnstein casts a black pall of hedonistic intimidation over the citizens of a small village, most of whom despise him but cannot bring themselves to oppose him for fear not only of his alleged Satanism, but also—and perhaps more immediately of concern—his connections to the country’s ruling government. One of the few not intimidated is Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing), leader of a local group of religious zealots called the Brotherhood, who spend their free time accusing sexually alluring women of witchcraft and then burning them alive in order to save their souls. Weil senses trouble immediately when his twin nieces from the city (played with not just a little sexual allure by Mary and Madeleine Collinson, hot off their tour as Playboy’s first duplicate Playmates) arrive for an extended visit. Maria is sweet and compliant with her uncle’s restrictive demands regarding their behavior, but Frieda recoils from him immediately and is soon sneaking out of her bedroom window and up the hill toward Castle Karnstein, where she soon discovers that nights in the country can be pretty lively too. It has been noted that Cushing had lost his beloved wife Helen not long before shooting began on this picture, and it’s genuinely moving to know of his personal anguish and see Cushing grapple with the humanity in his tyrannical, unsympathetic character. His behavior is abominable, but you don’t for a minute discount his conviction as simple demagoguery—Weil is frightening because he believes in the terror he and his “brothers” unleash on the community spun out of little but their own fears. And when he is finally confronted with evidence that his zealous persecution of Karnstein, who he sees as just another transgressor, is grounded in actual, as opposed to imagined horrors, his own sins come seeping into his visage like spiritual sewage. Twins of Evil (the lurid jokiness of its reference to Hammer’s typical heaving cleavage quotient finally given literal as well as lascivious expression) is a first-rate vampire tale, one of the studio’s best, and Cushing’s performance takes it deeper, into the shadowy territory where religious hysteria and intolerance intersect with the collateral damage of familial consequences. Beside his work as the terribly wronged and poetically justified Arthur Grimsdyke in 1972’s Tales from the Crypt, this may be his best performance.


Finally, I caught up with three pictures, none of which I had seen in probably 20 years, one of which I dismissed as a failure when it was first released, and found that all three were, to these aged eyes, solid horror movies in their own right. Blacula (1972) bucks all the odds and wrings some genuine fright out of a potentially preposterous premise—an African prince (William Marshall) is condemned to eternal thirst by a plantation-owning Count Dracula and is resurrected in present-day Los Angeles where he goes all Ardeth Bay in search of the reincarnation of his beautiful princess bride (and yes, I too would rise from the dead for Vonetta McGee). Anchored by Marshall’s utterly straightforward performance, Blacula sidesteps the occasional embarrassing stereotypes (blacks, gays and honkies will all avert their eyes over various bits) and manages to get to a surprising depth of feeling amongst the scares. The undead sacrifice that ends the movie goes after the same sort of emotional heft that Anne Rice occasionally reached for, but it would hardly count as sacrilege to suggest that Blacula does it better.


It was really nice to see Child’s Play again after so long and discover that—and again, we’re talking about overcoming a potentially preposterous premise—a movie about a doll possessed by the soul of a raging killer works some real magic in the goose bump department. The screening, at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater, was augmented by a terrific Q&A panel moderated by screenwriter Mike Werb (Face/Off, The Mask, Firehouse Dog). Guests included the film’s principal writer Don Mancini (who wrote the film’s four sequels and directed Seed of Chucky), producer David Kirschner, special effects designer Kevin Yagher and the film’s star, Catherine Hicks. The discussion ranged from the origins of Mancini’s concept, to the difficulty of executing the movie’s complicated animatronic effects, to finding love on the set (Hicks and Yagher met there and have been married for 15 years), to the tricks and traps of playing such a potentially campy concept utterly straight, right on through to working with children, specifically the convincing work done by Child’s Play’s Alex Vincent, who finds himself the focus of Chucky’s campaign of terror. Kirschner and Mancini were particularly enlightening on the subject of how difficult it is to shepherd a project, even one with as much initial enthusiasm as this one had, through the production system while maintaining resemblance to the script’s original concepts. And Mancini got the evening’s biggest laugh--When asked by a member of the audience to elaborate to what he had up his sleeve for the proposed Child’s Play remake to return the franchise, which had become notoriously irreverent and satirical in its last two chapters, to its frightening roots, Mancini waited a beat then simply replied, with an impish grin, “No.” If Hollywood teaches us anything, it is the value of keeping secrets. But on the strength of seeing Child’s Play on the big screen again (not far from where I saw it in Westwood on is original release), Chucky unleashed in 2010 in full-on terror mode ought to be something grand and gory to behold.


Finally, on a whim one night as I cruised down the aisle at my local Vons, I noticed a copy of John Carpenters Christine (1985) on the shelf for $5.99. Added attraction: inside was a coupon for $7.50 toward the purchase of a ticket to see Zombieland. Gee, depending on where you see it that’s a little over half price to see a big, new hit. Combine that with the rock-bottom price of the DVD and the fact that I hadn’t seen Christine since I dismissively sniffed at it the night it opened, and there’s a deal I just couldn’t pass up. I remembered Carpenter’s conception of the Stephen King story as being turgid and overly literal-minded in 1985, too lightly sketched in compared to the rich excessive pleasures of King’s bloated but undeniably exciting novel. But it’s been 24 years since I read that novel too, so what bothered me about what Carpenter either left out or couldn’t convey is certainly less in the forefront of my mind now, and without those concerns I found the movie to be streamlined and compelling, and blessedly free of the smash-cut-gasp-and-run techniques of the modern horror film. This might just be Carpenter’s most visually confident and arresting movie, in terms of composition and in terms of patience—there are some beautiful long takes in Christine that orchestrate dread and suspense like nothing else the director managed since The Thing in 1982. And again, the pleasure of seeing effects executed in real time and space is exemplified in this movie’s approach t the tactile seductiveness of Christine herself. We can completely relate as Arnie (Keith Gordon) steps back from his beloved vehicle, which has just been trashed by the requisite band of thugs, whispers “Show me,” and stares in awe as Christine, through the pre-CGI magic of physical effects, reconstitutes herself before our eyes. This sequence is perhaps even more impressive in 2010 than it was 1985 because we know, in a neat reversal of CGI's tendency to throw us out of a given sequence by literalizing the impossible, that somehow the effects whizzes at work here did it in physical space.

As for the casting, just about everybody, especially those thugs (led by William Ostrander, who was 26 when the movie came out) look at least 10-15 years too old to be high school kids. But John Stockwell and Keith Gordon have an interesting rapport, especially at the beginning. As one who was often the beneficiary of friendly behavior from those outside and above my social standing in high school, it’s nice and believable to see Stockwell’s football star and the pitch-perfect mixture of disdain and respect, embarrassment and relaxation he evinces in his relationship with Gordon’s Arnie. Gordon often overdoes the nerdy clumsiness at the beginning of the film, but he nails the desperation and the alienation from his well-meaning but often hostile and overbearing family. When his new girlfriend finally casts her spell, all that previously tamped-down hostility is transferred to Arnie’s headlights (no longer shielded by the giant plastic frames of his glasses), and we can see by Gordon’s contemptuous stare than everything he perceives is colored not only by that hostility, but also by his auto-erotic connection with Christine. It’s a shaky performance at times, but ultimately a satisfying one. Christine’s supporting cast is also better than I ever gave them credit for, headed by Robert Prosky as a delightfully profane garage owner, and filled out by the demented duo of all-American eccentricity of Roberts Blossom and Harry Dean Stanton—if only Tracey Walter had shown up, it would have made for the ultimate whack job hat trick. Carpenter can’t figure out how to sell the ending of Christine, and its confrontation between Arnie, Christine and Stockwell operating a giant earth mover, like Sigourney Weaver at the end of Aliens but sans anything like the maternal subtext of that movie to offset the fundamental silliness of the imagery, ends up unavoidably flat. But the director tweaks everything with a terrific final image and a line, delivered by the movie’s oh-so-‘80s ingénue, Alexandra Paul, that will make you giggle while you shiver.

I REALIZED THE $12 I SPENT ON MY HALLOWEEN COSTUME LAST YEAR IS THE BEST INVESTMENT I’VE EVER MADE

I always thought my Tor Johnson mask was the shit. But have you ever tried walking around in one of these heavy latex bastards for an hour? Recommended only if you like hyperventilating and/or accidentally slurping up your own condensed sweat from the inside of the mask. Believe me, two air holes where the nose goes ain’t enough. Nah, I can’t say enough about traipsing around the neighborhood like a life-size Der Weinerschnitzel escapee. You get lots of candy offers, lots of laff-laden compliments, and the awe of your kids, who can’t believe they have such a weird dad but are secretly glad (on a night like this) that they do.



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ALL HAIL ROBERT MORLEY!

The flat-out funniest thing I managed to see, on screen or in 3-D life, during this past week, one which was largely bereft of even the most forgiving smile? Robert Morley as Undershaft, the armament magnate and alienated patriarch of a household of idealistic children, among them Wendy Hiller’s ambivalent Salvation Army major, in Gabriel Pascal’s 1941 adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara, is berating his son for having no idea what to do with his life and ambitions. After suggesting the arts, philosophy, the army, the navy, the church and the bar, and concluding, after the young man’s every rationalized rejection, that there's not much left but the stage, the son replies, "I do know the difference between right and wrong." Morley's eyes widen, he wheels his girth toward the boy and lets fly with a gloriously sarcastic and hilarious tirade straight out of Shaw:

“You don't say so! What? No capacity for business? No knowledge of law? No sympathy with art? No pretension to philosophy. Only a simple knowledge of the secret that has baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business and ruined most of the artists-- the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius! A master of masters! A god. And at 28 too.”

Shaw or no Shaw, Robert Morley is one of those actors I put in a very special category, the one occupied by the actors and actresses I will watch in absolutely anything, who crystallize the glories of whatever production we happen upon them in and raise the level of even the most tedious mediocrity for the time they’re on screen. An accomplished stage actor and playwright as well as one of Britain’s most recognizable and unique screen acting talents, Morley was in his share of stinkers, to be sure-- Around the World in 80 Days, anyone? Major Barbara was only his fourth film appearance, and lucky for us he still had the likes of Partners In Crime (1942), The Small Back Room (1949), The African Queen (1951), Beat the Devil (1953), The Good Die Young (1954), The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958), Oscar Wilde (1960), Those Magnificent Young Men and Their Flying Machines (1965), The Loved One (1965), Theater of Blood (1973), Great Expectations (1974), Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978) and Little Dorrit (1988) all waiting along his lifeline before he died in 1992. The haughty demeanor of some of his most memorable characters, his precise delivery of the most chewy lines, and the degree to which such a large man could internalize and project such delicacy across such a wide range of roles both silly and sublime—all of these would serve as the template, in my mind at least, for anyone who came after and tried to create the same kind of vivid character work in his prodigious shadow. Some succeeded, some didn’t, but none would be as memorable as Robert Morley.

Your favorite Robert Morley performance? Your favorite British character actor?

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HALLOWEEN PURSUITS

Happy All Hallows Eve, devils and angels!

(Images courtesy of the Riptheskull collection, which I became aware of through the excellent Halloween-themed site Season of Shadows.)

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FOR THE ITALIAN HORROR BLOG-A-THON: LUCIO FULCI'S DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING

The following essay is my contribution to Kevin J. Olson's Italian Horror Blog-a-Thon, which features multiple links to all manner of fascinating and fun reading on this rich, Halloween-appropriate topic. Kevin writes the essential, and now eternally-Inglourious Basterds-linked blog Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies. Thanks for the invitation to participate in this gathering, Kevin. It has been all kinds of fun!

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I come here not to bury Lucio Fulci (he died in 1996), but to praise him. At least this once. It’s time to admit that I’ve never much been one for the all-stops-pulled brand of zombie horror that gained Fulci his greatest degree of notoriety, at least here in the States among hard-core horror fans. I saw Zombie (originally known in Italy as Zombi 2) on its original run through America back in 1980 and have seen it a couple of times since, and I’ve never been able to key in on what his fans found to be so special about his work, beyond his coal-black take of humanity (a brand of nihilism that has always seemed to be too easy to come by and perhaps a little too fashionably adopted by some of his faithful) and his willingness to push the limits of the spectacle of gore. In the years since I’ve managed to see The House by the Cemetery and The New York Ripper, which both seemed pretty repellent to these eyes, and The Beyond, which was as visually spectacular as it was deeply silly. So while not particularly offended by the work of Fulci’s that I’ve seen (okay, there are moments in The New York Ripper I wouldn’t be too quick to try to defend), the word I would use to describe my feeling about his movies would probably be “indifferent,” which is why I thought, given his following, he might be a good candidate to write about for Kevin Olson’s Giallo Blog-a-thon.

But when I went to IMDb to begin my perfunctory research of the director I discovered that, before he became noted for the zombie pictures he had quite a career behind him already. Fulci’s first picture was released in 1959, and among those movies there are the requisite thrillers, of course, a comedy or two, a James Bond knockoff, even a couple of westerns. And more than any of his movies I’d seen so far, I really enjoyed discovering some of the titles for Fulci’s movies, their Italian names and especially the monikers with which they were dubbed in other countries. Some of the juicy nuggets I found include: Come inguaiammo l’esercito (known in the U.K. as How We Got Into Trouble With the Army), Colpo gobo all’italiana, a.k.a. Getting Away With It the Italian Way, which was translated literally in the U.K. as Hunchback Italian Style (!!!), Tempo di massacre (Massacre Time), The House of Clocks, The Ghosts of Sodom, A Cat in the Brain, a little morsel called The Senator Likes Women which, translated from its longer Italian title in the U.K. became The Senator Likes Women… Despite Appearances and Provided the Nation Doesn’t Know, Una sull’altra (a.k.a. One on Top of the Other which became in France Perversion Story), and A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. These last two titles come highly recommended by Fulci enthusiasts who note their placement at the roots of the giallo genre, which were initially much more closely entangled with murder mystery than the onslaught of bloody guts which characterized the later zombie films.


The third giallo directed by Fulci, immediately following Una sull’altra (1969) and A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), was the equally perversely titled Don’t Torture a Duckling (1971) which, in Italy, was known as Don’t Torture Donald Duck. (Undoubtedly fear of reprisals from the Mouse House was behind the adopting of the more generic water fowl featured in the U.S. release title.) And beyond my curiosity about a movie with such a weird name, I was very interested to see what a Fulci movie sans the living dead would look and feel like given that everything I’d seen of his to this point was all grime and nastiness and general ineptitude decorated with buckets full of grue and shock effects. And from the very first striking images, Don’t Torture a Duckling announced itself to this cynic as something very different from what I’d experienced before. In a series of gorgeous Panavision long shots over which the credits play, we see the rolling hills of a beautiful Italian countryside and how they have been interrupted, violated by a long, elevated highway (itself strangely beautiful) which snakes its way through the landscape announcing the impact of modern civilization on the tiny village over which it runs.



It’s a memorable way to introduce the movie’s overriding theme of a clash of cultural assumptions which reveal that the forces of modernity may be no more enlightened than the village’s superstitious, intolerant and relatively atavistic citizenry. The movie’s thematic strands are expanded when we witness an anguished woman unearth the skeleton of a tiny baby, perhaps stillborn, perhaps murdered, her hands bloodied by tearing at the earth as she carries it away. Later, a child is abducted from this rural Southern Italian village, and the carabinieri, a team of local police augmented by city officers, arrest Guiseppe, a local simpleton, when he is caught collecting the ransom money. But as it will become apparent in Fulci’s narrative, what appears to be true may not be, or may have hidden angles, truths within truths. Giuseppe admits the extortion but claims that the boy was already dead when he found him, and while he is in custody another child’s body is found.



The focus immediately shifts to two other suspects: Patrizia (the luscious Barbara Bouchet), a well-off, spoiled and decadent woman who has returned to the village where her father was born to wait out the heat from a drug scandal of some sort, and Maciara (Florinda Bolkan, superb and fearless), the woman we saw earlier digging up the bones of her baby. Already looked at with suspicion by the locals, Maciara has been driven to the brink of madness over grief at the loss of her own child, and on top of that she may be a witch. After a third body is discovered, she attempts to hide but is soon captured. It is here that Fulci drops his first narrative bomb: Maciara, already seen covering the corpse of one of the victims with earth, her hands bloodied in the same way we saw them earlier, confesses to killing all three boys with her black magic. But when it soon becomes apparent that she couldn’t have killed the third child she is released, an act of legal justice which nonetheless condemns her to a horrific death at the hands of outraged locals who have perhaps always hated or been frightened by her and who now have moral grounds (however specious) on which to unleash their rage.



One of the rural officers advises against releasing Maciara out of fear of just such a result, and it is from this reluctance of the urban-based officers to understand or fully comprehend the differences which operate within these two worlds that Fulci wrings the richest thematic juice out of his narrative. The observation of stereotypes streak straight through Don’t Torture a Duckling, whether they be the guttural behavior of a mob screaming for revenge, or the salacious tendencies of a slinky, somewhat perverse seductress as she torments a horny 10-year-old boy (who has been hypnotized by the sight of her nude body) with suggestions of a sexual initiation, or the superiority (or even simple functionality) of civilized morality in a setting where other mores and codes may more strongly apply. But Fulci gives more than a suggestion to their flip sides as well. Are the stereotypes justified, or do they reveal degrees of opposite truth? We’re asking the questions right up to the point where the movie forces us to face our own presumptions as audience members, and those of the characters, about the capacity of a mentally challenged girl to understand her situation, as well as our faith in figures of religious authority. (Rest assured, Fulci has none, and though his point of view got him and this movie into trouble in Italy in 1971, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that a large portion of the population—though perhaps still not in Italy—has caught up to his cynicism regarding men of the cloth.)

Don’t Torture a Duckling (the title refers to a doll purchased for the aforementioned mentally challenged girl by Patrizia) is a tight, fascinating, visually acute thriller which, for all of its relative sophistication in the Fulci oeuvre, reveals a filmmaker who was, in 1971, considerably more than the uninspired hack whose career devolved into ever more lurid and inept gross-outs. (Fulci’s zombie fests were apparently heavily tampered with, so it’s possible that I’ve never been exposed to a true representation of his genius in this field, but honestly, what’s left on screen that is clearly of his origin doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.) My most immediate frame of comparison, given my limited exposure to Fulci’s work, is to look at Duckling up next to The New York Ripper which, incredibly, features a psycho who disguises his voice by quacking and imitating Donald Duck. Ripper is grindhouse grimy and lumpy, and prone to extended episodes involving the lovingly observed evisceration and nipple-slicing of naked and bound female victims which make it hard to refute charges of misogyny against the director. Duckling, on the other hand, is brutal and visually elegant, sometimes even funny, and in it Fulci clearly harbors more sympathy for the women than the movie's often barbaric or self-righteous men. Duckling also highlights far more narrative sophistication than I would have ever thought possible of Fulci. The last half of this movie had me reevaluating characters and situations and processing visual clues and red herrings at a highly pleasurable rate.


And the evidence of Fulci’s visual mastery is everywhere—from the beautiful, corrupted landscapes (that elevated highway is inexplicably haunting), to the director’s frequently witty graphic continuity in the film’s visual connective tissue (imagery of fetuses and small babies abound), and the fluidity of his use of split-frame deep focus in which two impossible close-ups are married in wide-screen Panavision and given equal emotional and graphic weight. This last trope in particular recalls the heights to which Brian De Palma would eventually take the same technique, and as I prepared for this blog-a-thon by watching Duckling and also Giuilano Carnimeo’s The Case of the Bloody Iris, the influences on De Palma became fascinating to note. Carnimeo stages a couple of murderous set pieces, one in an elevator, that present evidence of his film’s influence on Dressed to Kill, and in Duckling Maciara’s horrific beating at the hands of a group of men led by the father of one victim, and her struggle to find help as she drags herself up a hillside and beside a road, has some of the same agonizing visceral power and emotional laceration one experiences witnessing the ordeal and eventual death of Oanh in Casualties of War. I can think of no higher praise for a director who has been accused of enjoying the tortures he has inflicted upon his female characters. Would that the evidence to refute such claims n Fulci’s work extended beyond Don’t Torture a Duckling. (That’s an invitation, Fulci fan, to write in and lead me to more evidence to the contrary, by the way!)

On the strength of Don’t Torture a Duckling I am confidently off to discover what else about Fulci I might be ignoring as others rush to celebrate the excesses of his tedious (to my eyes) late period. In particular, I cannot wait to see the two gialli that preceded Duckling-- A Lizard in a Woman Skin also stars the magnificent Florinda Bolkan—and I absolutely must know what a western by Lucio Fulci looks and feels like. But I also have to admit being kind of tickled thinking of what rabid fans of Fulci’s hard-core decayed flesh opuses might make of this movie. It definitely has its blood-splattered highlights (including what must be the funniest fall from a great height ever committed to film, Fulci’s official calling card re the gory standards to which the rest of his career would aspire), but it is so much more subdued, so much more concerned with what have to be considered classical cinematic values (as least in comparison to Zombi 2) that, Kevin J. Olson excepted, I wonder if the Fulci faithful would be as patient with this one. Don’t Torture a Duckling also features the best cast of any Fulci movie I’ve seen—in addition to the pulchritudinous delights afforded by Barbara Bouchet and the freaky, heart-wrenching performance of Florinda Bolkan, there’s Tomas Milian as a sympathetic reporter who initially suspects Patrizia of the crimes and then teams with her to seek out the real killer, Marc Porel as Don Alberto, the priest of the local parish who anguishes over several things, perhaps the least of which is the disappearance of the three boys, and revered Greek actress Irene Papas as the mother of the aforementioned duckling-bearing retarded child (as well as another of the cast of characters), whose own mental stability is shrouded in secrets and doubt. Best do as I did: put aside your distaste for the Lucio Fulci of Zombie and The New York Ripper and give this one a spin. The title may seem perverse and silly, but Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling turns out to be one of the crown jewels of the Italian giallo genre.

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For further reading, I recommend essays by Tor at BloodyGoodHorror.com, Nik Allen at 70sFastRewind.com, Christian Sellers at RetroSlashers, and a rather brilliant visual exegesis of the movie’s visual motifs, including the rural vs. urban, pagan vs. Christian dichotomies, as well as a look at that fall from a great height I mentioned previously, from Howard S. Berger and Kevin Marr at the wonderful (only slightly tongue-in-cheek) blog Destructible Man, devoted to "The Theory And Practice of Cinematic Prosthetic Demise (a.k.a. The Dummy-Death In Film)." DM is where I appropriated some of the great screen grabs featured in this post. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

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