I believe I came across this one playing late one night on A&E years ago. Hard to say for sure at this point because the film is so odd that it makes one question his or her own mind.
The film in question is POSSESSION by Andrzej Zulawski and it came out in 1981 and stars Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani as a couple whose relationship and family is falling apart in an overly dramatic and violent way.
The film is jacked up to eleven from the beginning and the performances are as white-hot intense as can be. Now, my tolerance for over-the-top melodrama is high, so take my enjoyment with a grain of salt.
The story evolves into an exploration of betrayal of trust, destructive behavior, mental manipulation and physical violence—so fun stuff! But throw in dopplegangers, tentacle creatures, spy games, and multiple murders. It’s insane and endlessly entertaining mess.
It starts out quirky and dark as the sisters act out their own elaborate death scenes in an almost shockingly gleeful way. That caught me off guard, but it wasn’t long before the black humor reached me and I was drawn into their world.
Little do most men know or understand the secret lives of teenage girls—it’d be really creepy if we did. But the point is that some forms of fiction, be it books, television or movies sometimes give us a peek into that mystery that we could only guess at.
GINGER SNAPS is, easily, one of the best werewolf movies ever made, but what makes it so much more intriguing is that the female leads, the sisters who have to deal with one of them going through the change (get it?) of lycanthropy, are so completely and strangely unique in how they are drawn.
Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle are flawless.
he was quiet and nice and it was a privilege to look at his art in person.
Bernie is known for his brilliant illustrative work on his adaptation of the FRANKENSTEIN novel.It was a project he worked on for seven years.He is also known as the co-creator of Swamp Thing, DC Comics very own muck monster—the most popular of all the muck monsters.But what he should be most remembered for is the sheer quality of his line, the perfect attention to light and darkness and the genius of his compositions.
I’ll shut up and let some examples of his work speak for itself…
and, as always, CLICK the images for a real look at the details—
Out of the orange of the October autumn, the Fall season has brought us two potentially superb horror television shows.
First up is FOX’s THE EXORCIST which takes it’s name and theme from the original film and book by William Peter Blatty.
It begins with a troubled woman who has been having nightmares, and whose younger daughter has been hearing strange noises in her home and whose older daughter has been acting strangely.
She asks Father Tomas Ortega, a new, progressive priest who has recently been given jurisdiction over their suburban Chicago parish. He struggles to find cause for her worries beyond the normal, but eventually begins to understand the true nature of the problem. But when he takes his concerns to his leader in the church, he is rebuffed.
Meanwhile, the older, more battle-hardened Father Marcus Keane is sought due to his experience with possession, only he is at a place known as a home for recovering or broken priests.
Taught and well acted, the show has a pace that slowly turns up the tension. Meanwhile the other, larger plot seems to add a more apocalyptic scope to the darkness that is encircling this family and the city.
This month, it is my favorite show on television--for full episodes, check out this link:
or, if you want a little sample first, here's a peek:
Meanwhile, over at SyFy it appears that they’ve truly chosen to go for a higher quality of programming. With interesting shows like FALLING WATER, they seem to be heading in the right direction. But the show that really grabbed me was CHANNEL ZERO.
Granted, I’ve only seen the first episode of this six episode self-contained season, but if the rest of the episodes prove as strange and interesting as the first one, then we’ve really got something interesting.
The show is about a man named Mike Painter, a child psychologist, who returns to his hometown to research the series of murders that took place there when he was a kid in the late 1980s. His twin brother was one of the victims.
As the mystery is revealed, the memories of his childhood come forth, bringing with them nightmarish visions and events that shaped his childhood. His memory is jogged about a children’s puppet show which nobody seems to remember called “Candle Cove”.
All I know is I’m hooked and if you want to be, you should tune in to channel zero for the weirdness. You can watch the entire first episode through the link below or tune in for one of the multiple replays SyFy will be doing this week:
