5 CLASSIC RANDOM INTERNATIONAL HORROR FILMS FROM HALLOWEEN

Mario Bava - The Mask of Satan, Italy 1960

Italian Horror icon Mario Bava’s first film, The Mask of Satan would put him on track to becoming one of the most influential directors in the history of the genre. Inspired by the British Hammer Productions films, The Mask of Satan takes studio horror to the next level of scare, being banned and recut in several countries upon release. The film starts out with a bang as a witch is tied to the stake and sentenced to death. She puts a curse upon her punishers, and vows to make their ancestors pay. Then, in brutal fashion, before they light her on fire a demon mask is hammered onto her face in closeup, a disturbing shot even for today's viewers more than 60 years on. The opening scene is brilliantly shot in black and white as shadows, flames, and smoke populate the frame to accentuate the gothic images. The rest of the film is shot with equal skill and visual flare. The camera hovers through the elaborate sets in long shots shot in deep focus, like a ghost eerily floating through space. The film’s lead actress, Barbara Steele went on to become an international star in the film thanks to her regally frightening performance as the resurrected witch. Her giant, bulging eyes and thin, sculpted features accentuated by eyeliner and holes in her flesh left from the removed mask, make for one of the most unforgettable characters in horror cinema. The intense, violent, vengeful look in Steele’s eyes paired with her grotesque makeup is so striking that one feels mesmerized, as if the very image of her striking face has been hammered into our minds. Given her unique look and unforgettable breakout role, it is unsurprising that he would go on to have a successful career in the horror genre, and even attracted the attention of Fellini to appear in his masterpiece 8 ½ . While the Hammer films triumphantly reinvented Hollywood's golden age of horror, Bava’s are even more impressive thanks to his technical flare which elevates the goofy storytelling to something visually spectacular and truly haunting. 

Ken Russell – The Devils, England 1971

As shocking as Paul Verhoeven's recent Black Plague set, sexual lesbian nun exploitation film Benedetta feels, in many ways it is like a more aestetically restrained version of Ken Russell's 1971 film The Devils. In this controversial film a jealous nun's sexual repression leads to the demise of a very sexually active priest in medieval France. Whereas Verhoeven's film is scandalous, Russell's is straight up bonkers. Vanessa Redgrave plays the delusional and sex craved hunchbacked mother superior who (along with every other female in the film) lusts after Oliver Reed's macho Father Gradier whose very mustache oozes with sex appeal. The Devils in the title are not mythological demons, but rather the human race itself, beings who fake possession and take advantage of the church and government's acceptance of supersticion to take down their enemies in the name of God. The church itself is portrayed as a diabolical institution, turning its followers into devils because of its inhumane doctrine which forces them to suppress their sexuality, the most natural of all desires. Yet this is no serious, stern study of the faults of the church. It is an over the top, flamboyant, psychedelic cry for sexual liberation as demonstrated by Michael Gothard's long haired, sleeveless Mick Jagger-like depiction of an exorcist who is getting way too much pleasure out of his job. What begins as a trial soon turns into an orgy when the nuns are all forced to admit to being seduced by the devil. In order to give a believable performance, all the innocent sex curious women are finally freed from their chastity. They rip off their clothes and start humping everything in sight. Like their exorcist, they enjoy this demonic possession much more than any God Fearing woman should. What is most impressive about the film is its bombastically operatic scale. The black and white dream sequences are hauntingly erotic and surreal, the set design is magnificently enormous and artifical with the convent, cathedral, and castle walls wonderfully recreated with expressionist delight. The sheer amount of extras used throughout the film is astounding as well, whether it be the amount of dead bodies thrust into a mass grave, the stoic, swaying, black clad spectators of an execution, or the tumultuous, deranged audience turned participants of the exorcism turned orgy. The orgy scenes are epic in their chaos, and Russell captures the disorderly spectacle of debauchery with a quick cutting camera that shoots everything in deep focus, allowing the lens to take the full blast of color and scope of the set, costume design, and overwhelming amount of people present on screen. The cast, including Reed, and especially Redgrave, are clearly having a blast giving 110% to their performance, squeezing the absolute most out of every maniacal laugh and masochistic line of dialogue.

Sam Raimi - The Evil Dead / The Evil Dead II, United States 1981 - 1987

Sam Raimi made a name for himself at the age of 20 thanks to a film he made with his friends, his brilliant sophomore effort, the micro budget horror gore comedy titled The Evil Dead. The film quickly became a cult classic and would propel the director to Hollywood as the chosen one to bring Spiderman to the big screen. What The Evil Dead lacks in production expense it makes up for with elliptical camerawork and ingenious effects that bring this offbeat film to life in the way no extra amount of money could. It goes to show that when you lack the money to do whatever you want, you are forced to get creative, and truly magic things can happen. Raimi takes the trope of the clueless college friends going on vacation to an unexpectedly, but obviously haunted, house and pokes fun at it, with a jock who is overly cocky, a ditz who is overly ditzy, and a protagonist who is overly lovable to the perfect point of enjoyable ridiculousness. We know exactly who these characters are because we have seen them dozens of times in other horror films, which makes characters like pretty boy Ash played by a tall handsome, and impressively eye-browed Bruce Campbell, and his Michigan State sweatshirt wearing girlfriend Linda instantly recognizable. The film opens and closes with the camera hovering and humming through the autumnal forest in a fast and threatening manner towards our attractive heroes. This playful camerawork bookends a film full of camera tricks and clever editing and framing that make the film frighteningly fun. Raimi never stops experimenting with his shots, playing with mirrors, smoke, reverse photography, and a bloody projector to keep the audience constantly visually stimulated between chuckles and gasps. The B movie style effects, animatronics, and sets are wonderfully mobile as they sinisterly creep and crawl to and fro. Artificial makeup and spare body parts, coupled with buckets of red blood make the film a raunchy, gruesome ride. The absurdity of the first film is turned up more than a few notches in the second film where we see the same Ash return with another Michigan State sweatshirt wearing Linda, yet he seems to have forgotten everything from his past experience. Raimi takes his stereotypical, 2 dimensional characters even further, cleverly displaying that nearly all horror movie characters are nothing more than Ashes and Lindas thinly disguised as other characters with different names and slightly different appearances. Add on a chainsaw arm, some cheesy zingers and a few extra buckets of blood and limbs and you have a hyped up second version of the first film with even more absurd humor and violence. Raimi has now been chosen to return to the superhero scene with the sequel to Marvel’s Doctor Strange, but there is little doubt that, even with all the money of the Disney powerhouse behind him, it will be difficult to outdo the clever little films he made with his buddies for fun.

REC - Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, Spain 2007

The found footage film genre first startled audiences in 1994 when The Blair Witch Project was released. Since its impressive debut, it has spawned many imitators, including last year's enjoyable pandemic zoom film Host. While most of the films that copy Blair Witch's format fail to live up to the original, another example of a more than worthy disciple is REC, the 2007 Spanish zombie film is easily one of the scariest and most satisfying to emerge from the genre. Directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza take us to Barcelona where a late night TV presenter is doing a program on how the overnight shift in a fire station works. It is a brilliant set up that feels completely real and convincing, and everything is going as boringly as expected until the station gets a call it must answer in a block of flats. ‘Yes! Finally something interesting!’ our camera crew fatefully believes as they unknowingly jump into the firetruck. The rest of the film takes place in one building as the injured woman they have come to help brutally attacks one of the police officers. Before they are able to escape, more authorities have arrived at the scene and sealed off the building. We spend the rest of the film with Ángela and, our eyes and ears, the cameraman Pablo, a character who never appears in front of the camera, as they record the happenings in an effort to document their terrifying experience and, probably unconsciously, distract themselves from the chaotic situation they have found themselves in. The performances are incredibly authentic from the television crew, policemen, firemen, and residents. Between the face covering jumpy scares the film offers a couple of comedic moments as Ángela interviews the residents including a posh, demanding mother and her cute little blond daughter, a half senile elderly couple, a Chinese family, and Ramón, a superficial old maid ready for his closeup. We watch, completely on edge as these characters, one by one, in one inventive and frightening way after another, are infected. The shaky camera takes us up and down the stairs, into the apartments, shops, and halls of the building and captures many of the brutal events from a distance or even off screen. Despite this, the scares are equally, or, perhaps, even more effective because of it. The last scene is too ‘out there’ compared with the very believable rest of the film, but, even so, it is a very well executed scarefest with moments of parody that does a great service to the found footage fad, making it much more rewarding than a mere gimmick. 

Train to Busan - Yeon Sang-ho, South Korea 2016

We’ll finish off this year’s list of films with another zombie movie, South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan. Yeon gives us a very entertaining zombie train action film that takes hints from fellow Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer. Like Snowpiercer, and other Bong film, The Host, and even the recent Korean Netflix sensation, Squid Game, Train to Busan is a genre film with a message. As in the examples listed above, the critique is anything but original, but it gives the film another layer of social politics and makes it that much more interesting. The film opens with a brilliantly creepy and comedic scene as a farmer is stopped in his truck by men in hazmat suits who explain to him that a leak at the nuclear plant will not affect his livestock this time. Once they let him continue down the road, due to his distress and sense of self pity, gets distracted when he drops his phone and accidentally runs over a deer and seemingly kills it. After he inspects the damage, huffing and puffing about the bad luck he has, he drives on and the deer disturbingly lifts itself up by its head before a close up of it's wonky, dead white eyes. The rest of the plot revolves around a hardworking, bloodless, yet gorgeous, fund manager from Seoul who decides to take his young daughter, despite his own unwillingness, to see her mother in Busan for her birthday. Unfortunately, right as the doors to the train are closing, an infected person manages to slip onto the train, dooming the passengers and setting the craziness in action. The ongoing scenes, much like REC, though in a very different aesthetic style, are a series of the passengers moving from cars, trying to change trains, and fighting against zombies and amongst themselves in almost equal parts. The action is fist pounding, almost absurdly fun, with a special mention for the almost unbearably cute and touching relationship between macho man Yoon Sang-hwa and his pregnant wife Seong-kyeong. While the anticapitalist, ecological, and family messages may be broad, they are quite effective, and the final images of the survivors are strikingly moving as the viewers wonder, with possibly misplaced optimistic hope, how they will be able to reconstruct another life. Train to Busan is one of the best examples of socially minded Korean genre culture that is irresistibly entertaining in a way that has conquered not only its home country, but the world.