Representing Switzerland: Jack The Ripper (1976)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Jack_the_Ripper_FilmPoster.jpeg

Dir. Jesús Franco

The Ripper (Klaus Kinski), a doctor, is prowling the streets of fog covered London, a Euro-specific version where everyone is speaking German and the world shown is built from German-Swiss construct, killing prostitutes because of an internal psychosis. However the police are slowly closing in on him, with the love of one detective (Josephine Chaplin) willing to gamble with her life to drag out the killer. Even if it could be the influence of the producers and crew on this film, a higher budget film from the director, this is not the only film from Jess Franco this atmospheric and very well made. With a career that has travelled numerous countries co-producing the work, the late director was very talented at his best, and Jack The Ripper is reminiscent of the British co-productions in their lavish looks. Unlike the British co-productions, this German co-production feels far more lenient to allowing Franco to express his more lurid, trangressive side along with mood. Far from the most lurid of Franco's work, far from the most violent or sexually explicit film ever released on British DVD, and definitely not the most violent or sexually explicit take on Jack the Ripper with the original graphic novel of Alan Moore's From Hell (1999 collected) in existence. But there is still things in this that, even with obvious prophetic effects, still cause one to wince with what is shown or implied, while still not overdoing for the sake of shock. Mixed with the mood the film has, expansive sets and darkly lit streets, it works together very well.

From http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4037/4317835170_08ba0ec4d3.jpg

Some may have issue with how most of the film is slow paced and has quite a few dialogue scenes, but maybe it's my personal taste here, but even with the plot reaching its obvious conclusion with or without the scenes, the dramatic and police investigation sequences were immensely engaging. Probably because, unlike an awful Franco film Bloody Moon (1981), these sequences are actually of interest for characterisation, plot or just detail. It was great that there's a side character, a blind man, whose amplified sense of smell and sound would ultimately doom the killer, in the beginning, to at least escaping the police by the skin of his teeth. That from the beginning he's going to be found out quickly, Kinski's character more desperate than calculated. That he's shown to actually be a person as well as a killer as a doctor. That there's comedy with bickering amongst the police and witnesses, and the witnesses themselves. That the cliché reason behind the killer's psychosis gets distorted through two very distinct scenes, the first through visual manipulation, the second a two person dialogue sequence played out through extreme close-ups of Kinski's face, showing that even if off-screen he was a reprehensibly being, he was still compelling onscreen in genre films like this. That, even if she becomes the per usual potential victim, Chaplin's character has a more calmed relationship with her detective boyfriend and gets involved with tracking the killer down entirely on her own initiative. The film, while possible to dismiss as perverse gloss, has far more subtlety than most films in this genre. Altogether its one of the better of Jess Franco's films. Not one of his best, but at least rearing the silver tier. It proves the work of Franco has quality to it, its graphic content mixed with a tense sense of tone. 

From http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2436/4317100987_12a8d5bab3.jpg

Eyes flew open, pulled back – [The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)]

From http://www.toplessrobot.com/2-house%20of%20usher.jpg

Dir. Roger Corman

USA

Film #4, for Thursday 4th October, of Halloween 31 for 31

Allas, I have only gotten through a few of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories in the short space of my life, but I can still attest to the fact that fear and horror, in his eyes, was a lingering spectre that drifts like mist into a person’s mind and draws away their breath. Adapted from one of his most well known stories, made into numerous films (from avant garde director Jean Epstein to a version by the late, great Ken Russell literally filmed in his garage), a would be suitor (Philip Winthrop) travels to the manor of the Usher family in hope to see his would-be fiancée Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey), only to encounter an ominous environment. Pushing him to leave immediately, her brother Roderick Usher (Vincent Price) is a man on the tip of disintegration, believing his family to be doomed, as the centuries year old home is literally falling to pieces and the land around it is a bare carcass of poisoned ground. The rest of the 80 or so minute film is lurid, sinister melodrama, Roger Corman enforcing that as well as being a seminal producer whose influence is vast in American cinema, he could direct as well.

The word ‘Technicolour’ immediately stands out from the film, the darkness of Poe depicted in a way so unexpected from the images you would normally picture in your mind....by portraying it through colours so bright they become as on edge as Price himself. The paintings his character creates, beautiful but frenzied collages of colour, are a perfect mirror of the film around them, even before a flat-out sequence of psychological breakdown depicted with Vaseline smeared camera lenses and full bleeding coloured lights. The classic score from Les Baxter, achingly romantic in style, contributes to this unsettled jitteriness, as the madness builds and the at-first stately and tense film suddenly starts galloping into gruesome lunacy.

That it feels like a chamber piece as well, the rest of the small cast (including Harry Ellerbe as the servant Bristol) matching the tone as well as Price in his quiet but blatant unravelling performance, helps amplify its story. I will not spoil anything – compared to the DVD box itself on both sides – but despite the falling interest in these types of horror films near the end of the 1960s, The Fall of the House of Usher is still ghoulish and twisted even now, the overwhelming colours and tone, matching the symptoms of sensory saturation the Ushers suffer from, adding to the perverse nature of the story. It may be a lot more blatant in its presentation of what Poe would write in his stories, but the sense of the horror and madness, as vivid and upfront in his literature, is still there and done with great respect.

From http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a301/deadmissbates/usher.jpg