Unapologetic Foreign Horror

 

Unapologetic Foreign Horror Delights!

by Kristin Battestella

This retro international trio is unashamed of the shocks and gore and unabashedly horror with the saucy and screams.

The Beyond – An inherited Louisiana hotel is one of seven gateways to hell in director Lucio Fulci's (The House by the Cemetery) 1981 surreal mix of Lovecratian books and bayou raids. The golden patina and antique interiors of the 1927 opening set off the rattling chains, gory whipping, screams, and squirting blood. “Flesh hisses” captions and swanky crescendos build to the then contemporary shabby and our ingenue heiress weighing the fix up cost versus the hotelier downturns. Call bells ring from empty rooms, hellish paintings abound, and creepy employees are dispensed with thanks to the flooded basement, zombie hands, and eyes popping out of their sockets. Spirits in the window lead to bloody workmen, floating bodies, autopsies, and warnings to leave the hotel. Melting acid and foaming ooze are approaching but the New Orleans jazz clubs remain so smooth as the stylish, unapologetic vignettes take time building unease before the gory payoff, creepy morgue moments, and little girl screams. The chilling scenes may be random or unexplained, but that's indicative of the spreading evil as everything from kooky bookstores and covered furniture to creaking doors, tools, and squeaking gurney wheels becomes on edge eerie. Cemeteries, repeated shots, footsteps, and parallel actions belie viewers with seemingly simple horror before gross bathtubs escalate to real shocks and gore. There's little to understand and not much of a story. No one is actively trying to find out what's happening or resolve the horror, and that is okay! Evil's a'comin' as monsters stalk blind women, dogs attack, and zombie hospital patients rise. Thunder and frightful reactions punctuate perilous falls, man eating spiders, and shootouts before body bags open from the inside and tormented eyes that look upon the horrors turn white. There's something flesh ripping to make anyone's skin crawl here! Dreamlike motion, warped sound, and distorted time mean nothing can be pinned down, and that indeterminate unknown is perhaps the most frightening of all.

The House That Screamed – Multiple versions abound of this 1969 Spanish produced AIP release, and the Tubi edition is cut off the top of the screen so I went with the Elvira's Movie Macabre version for more winks on the 19th century French boarding school murders and innuendo. The carriages, country campus, frilly frocks, swelling music, and period etiquette initially seem so grand, and a new arrival is a shrewd excuse to tour the classrooms. This discrete institution specializes in difficult, illegitimate ladies; and its arts, music, gardening, cooking, and ballet are healthy exercises in the prevention of morbid thoughts. Stern mistress Lilli Palmer (But Not for Me) runs a firm establishment – changing locks and nailing windows shut if need be. Heavy woodwork, cluttered interiors, and uptight fashions are stifling, and even the Foley effect of all the formal, harsh, hefty, old fashioned shoes reflects the strict repression. Unison prayers contrast the rough grabbing, ripping garments, and bound to the bed violence as a confrontational student is stripped and whipped in the seclusion room. Her mean girl perpetrators enjoy the humiliating hierarchy, repressed favoritism, and veiled sexual assault. Our principal's son is also essentially a prisoner kept apart from the poison girls who need correction. He needs a good woman like his mother who holds him tight to her bosom, caresses his hair, and kisses him. Of course, he knows the best crawlspace views and Tuesday is shower day – complete with steaming pipes, clinging white shifts, and scandalous girls who drop their towels just to shock the mistress patrolling the stalls. Although it's tough to keep track of the lookalike girls beyond their stereotypes, the natural, chatty dialogue provides details on who sneaks off from ballet class or who meets with a village boy in the wood shed. Jealousy and needlepoint combine for a montage of tedious threading, moaning voiceovers, rapid editing, and what we don't see saucy. Pretty music, flowers, and slow motion accent a would be romantic rendezvous that leads to warped stabbings and blood in the greenhouse. Thunder, ominous chorales, violent zooms, and freeze frame frights punctuate the spooky late night escape attempts amid fearful realizations and blackmail threats. Atmospheric candelabras and letter openers lead to eerie approaches, slit throats, and screams. It's probably obvious now who the killer is, but the creepy attic revelations are chilling with very little, and it's all still pretty damn twisted!

Hunchback of the Morgue – Scenic villas, beer, and tavern wenches suggest good times in this award winning 1972 Paul Naschy (Human Beasts) romp, but cruel insults and gorilla jokes force our eponymous attendant to take the demented slicing and dicing into his own hands. Although church bells and peasant styles invoke a period setting, there are modern cars and road signs, cold hospital white on white, mid century medical equipment, and lesbian inmate patients whipping each other. Mocking doctors and medical students are surprisingly mean and school children stone the pitiful hunched creature – elevating the tragedy and performance before the violent reds and grayish green body parts. Our outcast fights to defend himself, but tenderness is found in a saintly, dying patient, and he can return such kindness, sympathy, and even romance the pretty ladies. His child-like innocence is not ugly, but he realizes his terrible strength is being used to kill thanks to a deceiving doctor who claims he can reanimate the deceased, unrequited love. The surprising caring contrasts the disturbing gore as autopsies become desecration. The mad science, decapitation, and grave robbing make for a fun medieval mix of beauty and blood that forgives the expected low budget foreign dub, subtitles that don't match, and poor print technicalities. Fedora wearing detectives are on to the dismembered cadavers, skeletons, and underground tunnels accented by torches, acid vats, and real rats. Abducted ladies, missing doctors, catacomb chases, and feeding the babes to goo monsters make no apologies as everything is thrown at the screen in a wild, entertaining midnight watch.