Thursday, June 26, 2014

Woodslore Won't Save You...

Video Nasty #27
 
 
Don't Go In The Woods
1981
 
 


 
EVERYONE HAS NIGHTMARES ABOUT THE UGLIEST WAY TO DIE.
 

Alternate Titles: Although sometimes referred to as Don't Go In The Woods...Alone!, the final word and ellipsis appear to be nothing more than a semi-tagline mistaken for part of the title.  It was released in Australia as The Forest 2, although the films are unrelated.
Running time: 81:28 NTSC
Directed by James Bryan
Written by Garth Eliassen
Produced by James Bryan, Suzette & Roberto Gomez
Starring: Jack McClelland, Mary Gail Artz, James P. Hayden, Angie Brown, Ken Carter, David Barth, and Tom Drury
Music by H. Kingsley Thurber
Body Count: 16
Region 1 DVD from Code Red is out of print, but available if you're willing to pay for it.  (I should state that I have never even seen a copy of this release, the one in my collection is the 1986 Video Treasures VHS release.)
 
BBFC Status
 
Why it's a Nasty: Excessive and exaggerated sequences of gore.
What was cut: Nothing.  Don't Go In The Woods was never submitted to the BBFC before it was released to home media.
Current UK status: Don't Go In The Woods was passed uncut with a 15(!) certificate on February 7th, 2007.
Don't Go In The Woods was successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, making it one of the DPP39.

 
So it's been a few years since I've received an ominous package from that benevolent videovore previously referred to in these pages as El Presidente.  I still haven't...but I recently got a package that made me think of his bloodstained Nasties of years hence.

The package was a bubble mailer (for those who don't ship, that's a brown manila envelope reinforced with bubblewrap), which told me right off that I wasn't dealing with a serious tapehead.  What I pulled out made me want to cry: the VHS slipcover had been stripped of its' top flap, then slit vertically down one corner, and roughly grafted onto an oversize black clamshell case with some kind of wide pseudo-Scotch tape with melting adhesive that had already stained the inside of the cardboard.

This tape's been torture murdered, I thought.

Fortunately, that wasn't actually the case.  The box may be a lost cause, but the tape plays like a dream.  It's in incredible shape for an '86 VHS, especially an EP release from a budget video house.  It's also the perfect format in which to enjoy this gem of a slasher, which is long on personality and short on story.

Somewhere in the Rockies, A girl runs through the woods from an unseen pursuer.  She falls in a creek bed, the water turning red as she screams.  A man is enjoying the scenery near the same small river.  He is hit in the face with something, has his arm chopped off (the blood spurting rapidly from the stump), and dies.  Something in these woods isn't keen on having visitors.

Peter (Jack McClelland), Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz) and Joanie (Angie Brown) listen to the camping advice of Craig (James P. Hayden), who comes off as a total knowitall windbag, as the four make their way to a cabin deep in the wilderness.  Peter isn't much for all this nature stuff, which gets him some chiding from the other three, especially Craig, who should take a look at himself and his ridiculous hat before he starts passing judgment.  Meanwhile, more people die in exceptionally gory fashion at the hands of the unseen maniac stalking these woods: a middle-aged photographer, his heavyset wife, and a young female landscape painter who is repeatedly knifed and gouts rich red blood all over her canvas, which she clutches to herself as she falls in slow motion.  She's left her young daughter bouncing in a sling hung from a tree...a sling we see empty after the painter has been dispatched.  What fate has befallen this innocent child?  Will our heroes survive the woods?

The slasher film as we know it today was entering its golden age in 1981, and James Bryan's Don't Go In The Woods is a superb example of how ingenuity, resourcefulness and courage can result in poorly made, but enjoyable, splatter movies.  The film stock was a batch of leftover ends purchased for $400.  The blood was barbecue sauce and red food coloring.  The murder victims were mostly crew members and friends of the director.  The score by H. Kingsley Thurber, which runs non-stop and is both goofy and annoying, was partially recycled from another Video Nasty, 1975's Frozen Scream, which Bryan had also worked on as a cameraman.  What little story there was is about the same as every forest-set slasher since Twitch Of The Death Nerve: teenagers go to the woods for some freedom, find bloody death and terror.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The cast were mostly first-timers, and for most of them it was their only turn before the camera.  Popular Texas radio DJ Ken Carter is among the only-timers of Don't Go In The Woods, giving and amusing portrayal of a fat, lazy sheriff who doesn't necessarily believe that people keep disappearing in the woods around his little corner of the world.  Mary Gail Artz counts this as her only on-screen credit, but the same year handled casting duties for Halloween II at the beginning of a long, still-going career in film and TV.  The rest of the cast does what they came to do: act scared and die badly.

There are a few odd moments that detract from the film, most glaringly a sequence where Craig is telling a ghost story but is never seen.  The director has stated that he shot Craig for the sequence, but the film was ruined and unusable, which results in the scene showing only Peter, Joanie and Ingrid listening and reacting to Craig.  The opening murder sequence is also somewhat stilted, with no actions from the killer shown, only bloody water and screaming from the actress, making it the oddest and worst-executed death scene of any Nasty I've watched so far.

Mainstream movie critics (Ebert, Maltin, and other know-nothing clowns) deride Don't Go In The Woods as a miserable failure, but remember my old saying: "If Ebert hated it, it's probably good."  And good this one is.  It's fun, it's gory, and...well, that's about it, but that's enough for me.  I'm still not sure how this one ended up being successfully prosecuted, especially since when finally submitted for classification in the UK it ended up getting a 15 and not an 18 as most Nasties have received when finally approved for British consumption.  The ultra-bloody murder of the painter alone has more gore than Halloween, Friday The 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre combined.  Even bad movie lovers like me have come down on this picture for supposedly bad effects, but I'm not sure they were watching the same movie I was.  Or maybe I'm easy to please.  Either way, there's no denying that the title tune is a classic:

 
 
Word.
 
So that's it.  Get yourself a copy of this one (maybe borrow one before purchasing, you may not like it as much as I did), give it a watch, have some fun and maybe a scare or two.  I'll be sure to stay out of these particular woods.  And I won't go in any alone.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Mater Lachrymarum: The Third Mother

La Terza Madre
2007



 

IF SHE LIVES, WE ALL DIE.

Thirty years after it began, Dario Argento released the conclusion to The Three Mothers Trilogy.  And while I may be in the minority, I think it was worth the wait.

Sara Mandy (Asia Argento) is a research assistant who opens a long-buried box containing some weird statuettes and a blood red tunic.  Unknown to Sara, the box contains artifacts belonging to Mater Lachrymarum, The Mother Of Tears (Moran Atias), youngest, cruelest, and most beautiful of the ancient witches known as The Three Mothers.  And with the unearthing of the artifacts, she has awoken.  Demons appear in the research facility, tearing the curator apart in a brutal attack that is exceedingly violent, even for Maestro Argento.  Sara escapes with the help of a disembodied voice in her head (Daria Nicolodi, Asia's real-life mother and co-creator of the Three Mothers trilogy), and away we go.  Mater Lachrymarum dons her tunic and Rome is suddenly an orgy of unhindered, disturbing violence.  Mothers murder their children, random rapes and attacks become the norm, and the churches begin to burn.  The Mother Of Tears is ushering in The Second Age Of Witches.

While neither the most artistic (Suspiria) or most accomplished (Inferno) of the trilogy, La Terza Madre (The Third Mother) is still a satisfying end to the series.  Although the lengthy gap between the second and thirds films notes some changes in style and focus for Argento, he is still able to deliver on the eerie, hypnotic feel present in Suspiria and Inferno, while considerably amping up the brutality.  Indeed, while we remember these first two for their gory setpieces, the violent scenes in La Terza Madre are bloodier, more protracted, and take turns that Argento wouldn't have attempted as a younger filmmaker.  And as the behind-the-scenes footage attests, he still likes to get in on the action (Argento is notorious for playing the killer in his films, albeit only his hands are ever shown, wielding all kinds of sharp implements, in this case a meat cleaver).

The acting is strong in some places, weaker in others.  Asia Argento is not the world's greatest actress, but she handles the role of the terrorized Sara just fine, knowing when to scream, when to run, when to look confused, and when to take a shower.  Israeli actress Moran Atias appears as Mater Lachrymarum (a role originated in Inferno by Ania Pieroni, now retired from acting and too old for the part), a role that calls for melodramatic flourishes and gobs of nudity (she is at most semi-dressed in all of her scenes, the constant nakedness drawing a parallel between herself and the deviant sexuality of her followers).  My favorite performer in the film is of course Udo Kier, the brilliant German character actor (previously seen in Suspiria as a college professor who provides key information to Suzy Banyon, whom Kier's character mentions in La Terza Madre, a meta moment that film geeks like me swoon for).  Kier plays Father Johannes, a kindly priest who again provides our heroine with important knowledge she will need to survive.  All in all, the cast is good, but not quite on par with the powerhouse performances found in the earlier Mothers films.  (Incidentally, one of those cast members recently passed away.  We lost Mater Tenebrarum, Veronica Lazar, on June 8th, 2014.  She was 75.)

The score of La Terza Madre is provided by ex-Goblin Claudio Simonetti and his heavy metal combo Daemonia, although the score he provided resembles Keith Emerson's keyboards n' choir noise from Inferno more than it does the Simonetti-penned Suspiria.  Sergio Stivaletti provides the special effects, a genre veteran who has worked with Argento since Phenomena in 1985, and with Argento's brilliant protege Michele Soavi, as well as sitting in the director's chair himself, beginning with The Wax Mask, a project originally intended to be the first collaboration between Argento and Lucio Fulci (Fulci's death sadly kept that dream from becoming reality).  He pulled out all the stops for La Terza Madre, as eyes, limbs, faces, throats and guts are all ripe for destruction.  Mater Lachrymarum shows no mercy, and neither does Stivaletti.  The Italian theatrical cut was shorn of gore to receive the teen-friendly 14 rating, but these scenes were thankfully restored for the unrated home release.

For a long time after becoming acquainted with the work of Argento, I was convinced this film would never be made.  He had at one point been quoted as saying that Inferno was the end of the series since Mater Lachrymarum does make an appearance, thus making it the only one of the films to feature two of the three witches.  It has been reported that as early as 1984, Daria Nicolodi (co-writer of the first two films and the only person to appear in all three) had written a script for the third film, but this was scrapped, likely contributing to (or because of) the end of her romantic relationship with Argento.  Scripts came and went over the years, until Argento finally hired some co-writers and really focused on making it.  The end result is different in tone than his earlier efforts, being blunt and punishing compared to the ethereal wonder of Suspiria and Inferno...but really, what's wrong with that?  It's still very much Argento: a story that never quite makes sense, elaborate sets, the sense that the characters are all alone, never really a part of the real world.  The biggest differences come from the advances in cinema technology, and the use of CGI in one sequence feels totally out of place.  Practical effects bring more to the proceedings, making the otherworldliness of the Three Mothers stories believable in a way that hokey computer trickery can't.  Thankfully, there is only one brief CGI effect in La Terza Madre and it doesn't take you out of the dream too much.

If you've seen Suspiria and Inferno, you'd be crazy not to watch this one.  If you haven't seen Suspiria and Inferno, you'd be crazy not to run right out and watch them right now.  Cheers to anyone who watches the entire Three Mothers trilogy in one stretch.  And now I bid you adieu, for there is much to accomplish on this Summer evening...like maybe taking in another Nasty.  It's been too damn long.  Maybe it's time for some Nazis.  Or cannibals.  Or something malformed and creepy.  And don't open ancient urns from unmarked graves.  I'll heed that advice.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.