Top 20 Films of 2017

Birdboy

Catching up the backlog of my top 20s! As always, counting up to #1. Sorry for the lack of descriptions at this time.

20. Soul Mate (China, Derek Tsang)
19. Baby Driver (USA, Edgar Wright)
18. Phantom Thread (USA, P.T. Anderson)
17. Personal Shopper (France, Olivier Assayas)
16. Mother! (USA, Darren Aronofsky)
15. Raw (France, Julia Ducournau)
14. The Square (Sweden, Ruben Ostlund)
13. Thoroughbreds (USA, Cory Finley)
12. The Meyerowitz Stories (USA, Noah Baumbach)
11. Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (Spain, Alberto Vazquez & Pedro Rivero)
10. The Nile Hotel Incident (Egypt, Tarik Saleh)
9. A Ghost Story (USA, David Lowery)
8. Dunkirk (UK, Christopher Nolan)
7. Call Me By Your Name (Italy, Luca Guadagnino)
6. Your Name (Japan, Makoto Shinkai)
5. Get Out (USA, Jordan Peele)
4. The Florida Project (USA, Sean Baker)
3. Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri (USA, Martin McDonagh)
2. Lady Bird (USA, Greta Gerwig)
1. Blade Runner 2049 (USA, Denis Villeneuve)

The Nile Hotel Incident

Runners-up: The Teacher, The Big Sick, It Comes at Night, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, The Insult, The Lure, Wind River, My Friend Dahmer, The Beguiled, Coco, Summer 1993, Graduation, Creepy, Icarus

Overall: Perhaps not a stand out year for cinema, but a year that saw some rejuvenation from relatively fresh blood in the US and a few established names that continue to push themselves hard. Also maybe my favorite grieving scene: Rooney Mara eating an entire pie.

A Ghost Story

Film Atlas (Sweden): The Magician

Country: Sweden

Title: The Magician / Ansiktet (1958)

Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater, a traveling magic show, rides by carriage through a twilight forest in 19^thcentury Sweden. It leaves behind it an indefinite string of run-ins with the law. Ahead are towns full of suckers and sightseers on whom the troupe plans to ply their trade. The company consists of mute magician Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max von Sydow), his male assistant Aman (played by actress Ingrid Thulin), his sly grandmother and the smooth-talking carnival barker Johan. Along the way they pick up a sickly alcoholic actor. The tormented Vogler, it seems, observes with morbid fascination the exact moment of his death. 

Arriving at the local consul’s inn, they are received with a mixture of skepticism, excitement, curiosity and contempt. The consul, police superintendent and minister of health, knowing something of Vogler’s disrepute, demand an exhibition of their talents before permitting them to perform in public. Dr. Vergerus, a prominent man of science and campaigner against superstitious, spiritual and supernatural beliefs, treats Vogler with cruel disdain but is secretly unnerved. Meanwhile the consul’s wife claims to ‘recognize’ Vogler and, desperate and infatuated, begs him to explain the senseless death of her child.

That night a series of upstairs/downstairs encounters take place in bedrooms, kitchens and laundry sheds, with the servants drinking and making love while the magicians prepare and perform their act. However the show is a disastrous travesty: Vogler’s magic is laughably fake, the police chief is flagrantly humiliated and the final act ends with a shocking death. The malevolent Dr. Vergerus takes the corpse into the attic to conduct an autopsy and, in the film’s most harrowing sequence, is terrified by spectral visions. But the morning comes and with it the discovery that nothing is what it seemed, including the fortune of the outcast troupe.

Made only a year after Bergman’s best known masterpieces (‘The Seventh Seal,’ where a disillusioned crusader plays a game of chess with Death as a plague sweeps Europe and Wild Strawberries, in which an elderly doctor comes to terms with his misspent life during a cross-country road trip), ‘The Magician’ has been sadly neglected, if not outright eclipsed. Bergman, one of cinema’s greatest directors, spent much of his career preoccupied with somber themes like spiritual crisis, failed relationships, unhappy families, shame, frustration, loneliness and the struggle for meaning in an imperfect and perhaps godless world. The Magician dabbles in that arena, particularly evident in Vogler’s tormented silence as he wrestles with spiritual and vocational demons, the tension between natural and supernatural explanations and the psychic pain of rejection and death in their various manifestations. 

But The Magician also shows Bergman’s lesser-seen and rarely-discussed sunny side: his love of farce, romance, wicked comedy and playful ironies. These are expressed through the parallel stories of the servants (including the inimitable blonde-bombshell Bibi Andersson), coachmen and the easy-to-overlook mischievous grandmother, whose offhand mysticism is a lot closer to real magic than Vogler’s conjuring tricks. Bergman’s frequent collaborators are almost all in attendance (Sydow, Andersson, Thulin, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Erland Josephson) with the moody black-and-white cinematography courtesy of Gunnar Fischer in one of his last Bergman partnerships before the equally sharper-eyed Sven Nykvist took over. The Magician may not be Bergman’s best work (my favorites are his more intense and experimental psychological studies ‘Cries and Whispers’ and ‘Persona’), but with its twists, turns and tonal shifts it’s certainly one of his most fun.

My Favorites:

Cries and Whispers

Raven's End

Scenes from a Marriage
Force Majeure

Persona

A Swedish Love Story
Girl with Hyacinths

Involuntary

The Seventh Seal

Wild Strawberries

Together (2000)
Here's Your Life

Shame (1968)

The Magician (1958)

The Emigrants

The Saga of Gosta Berling

The Magic Flute (1975)

Songs from the Second Floor

Major Directors:

Ingmar Bergman, Lasse Hallstrom, Lukas Moodysson, Ruben Ostlund, Alf Sjoberg, Victor Sjostrom, Mauritz Stiller, Jan Troell, Bo Widerberg

Hall of Strangeness Part XXXII: Vampire Edition

I’ve been watching several interesting vampire films lately (a subgenre that seems in no danger of going out of style any time soon) and I thought it would be nice to update the vampire series I did a while back. The Twilight series is notably absent, but I don’t even want to get into that. Instead, I’m going to talk about a handful of vampire oddities from around the world in my old “Hall of Strangeness” format, which is relatively undemanding both to write and to read.

Let the Right One In – (Tomas Alfredson) John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Swedish novel and Alfredson’s film adaptation have been somewhat surprising critical and popular successes. The story follows a young boy who befriends a vampire child and their difficulties dealing with bullies and an insatiable craving for blood, respectively. Shot in cold dark hues, riddled with unsettling implications and unfolding with unusual elegance and maturity, “Let the Right One In” is nevertheless a little rough around the edges. Some of the horror scenes overshoot the slow-burning mood (CG cats especially) while at other times showing too much reluctance to explore the controversial source material. Still, the film is both ominously beautiful and effectively creepy; it will doubtlessly and deservedly enjoy a cult following.

Artistry: **** Fun: *** Strangeness: **

The Living Corpse – (Abdul Baqi) Not long ago I was amused to see “Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground)” (2007) being hailed as “Pakistan’s first horror film,” which seemed odd considering that the same description was used to promote “The Living Corpse” (1967), made four decades earlier. I’m not nearly qualified to say whether even this film really holds that title, but it certainly doesn’t hold much else. Ostensibly a retelling of the Dracula story in Hammer Horror fashion, the filmmakers couldn’t resist the requisite Lollywood musical numbers and end up with a discombobulated mess that can be unevenly enjoyed with the right mood and the right crowd.

Artistry: * Fun: ** Strangeness: ***

Thirst – (Park Chan-wook) About a third of the way into Park Chan-wook’s (best known for “Joint Security Area” and his revenge trilogy) South Korean bio-horror epic I realized that the film was really an alternate-universe adaptation of Emile Zola’s 1867 adultery fable “Therese Raquin.” It takes a fair amount of guts to modernize a 19th century French naturalist classic, but to change the main character from a petty clerk to a vampire priest is a special type of brilliant. The rather long film covers a lot of narrative ground, indulges in Park Chan-wook’s peculiar gallows humor and addressed themes of lust, repression, sacrifice, guilt and revenge. Not all of it works, but maybe it doesn’t need to.

Artistry: **** Fun: *** Strangeness: ***

Trouble Every Day – (Claire Denis) I’m really glad I have a chance to say something nice about Claire Denis, especially after being possibly the only person to dislike “35 Shots of Rum” when I saw it at SLIFF last year (so it is fitting that her oft-ignored mainstream-maligned “The Intruder” is amongst my all time favorites). With “Trouble Every Day” Denis made an unlikely entry into the vampire genre, but characteristically reinvented everything. By rhythmically alternating between several disturbing subplots featuring an inspired cast (Vincent Gallo, Beatrice Dalle, Tricia Vessey and Alex Descas) and a lot of oblique imagery, Denis weaves a Lynchian nightmare dense with atmosphere and allegory. The power of any given scene is inversely proportional to the amount of talking that occurs, so it’s fortunate that much of the film is near wordless. The soundtrack, not to mention the cannibalistic rape scenes, haunted me for weeks after viewing.

Artistry: ***** Fun: * Strangeness: ****

Vampire Ferat – (Juraj Herz) When I learned that Czech New Wave iconoclast Juraj Herz (The Cremator) had a made a horror movie about a vampire sports car starring Dagmar Havlova (16 years before she became the First Lady of the Czech Republic), I knew I had to see it no matter what. That said, going without subtitles was a tough slog and though the film is more conventional than his gothic burlesque “Morgiana,” it certainly wasn’t as easy to follow as, say, John Carpenter’s “Christine” (if you know where I can get subtitles, please link me in the comments section!). From what I could gather in-film and online the car is fueled by blood it sucks from the driver’s foot whenever the acceleration pedal is pressed. A hapless doctor turned detective (played by director Jiri Menzel) investigates the enigmatic car company Ferat (as in Nosferatu), run by an evil lesbian kingpin (queenpin?), after his ambulance-driving nurse become addicted to racing the titular vampire vehicle. Highlights include the hand-drawn opening credits, the brooding industrial soundtrack and a delightfully gory dream sequence. Herz admits that the best scenes were all destroyed by the censors.

Artistry: ** Fun: ** Strangeness: ****

Vampire Week Part 6

Rank: 10
Title: Shadow of the Vampire
Director: E. Elias Merhige
Country: USA
Year: 2000
Review:
A hit on the indie circuit, “Shadow of a Vampire” is a fictional account of the 1922 “Nosferatu” production, with much borrowed from reality. Eccentric, egomaniacal genius F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich) is determined to realize his cinematic vision, despite lacking the full resources and support de rigueur for executing such grandiose visions. The director is confident of at least one asset: his lead actor. The obscure “performer” is currently living in a cave near the Czechoslovakian shooting location.

The rest of the cast has a little trouble adjusting to Count Orlok (Willem Defoe doing a brilliant Max Schreck impersonation), who takes method acting to the extreme by living inside his repulsive makeup and creepy persona. After he starts eating raw bats and lurching towards jugulars with thirsty longing, his costars begin to worry that he might be exactly what he seems to be. As Murnau continues headlong with his legendary shoot, the tension builds towards the climactic scene (both for the film-within-the-film and the film-that-is-the-film).

The over-the-top performances showcase the clash of egos and obsessive drives that lend directors mythic legacies and fill pages of gossip columns. Merhige underlines the self-destructive thrill of the director and the all-consuming identity-loss of acting all-the-while generating postmodern grins and generation-old shrieks. The inspired casting makes much of the magic possible; even Udo Kier has a role to ensure this film’s cult status.



Rank: 9
Title: Irma Vep
Director: Olivier Assayas
Country: France
Year: 1996
Review:
If “Les Vampires” shouldn’t count as a vampire movie, “Irma Vep” shouldn’t even be considered, but oh well. “Irma Vep” is a post-modern movie-within-a-movie about a French director who passionately wants to remake Feuillade’s seven hour silent “Les Vampires” with Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung as the eponymous villain. Though the film is a satire aimed in many directions at once, it keeps a warm heart and personal focus. I found myself instantly won over by the director (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) and his insane idea.

Maggie Cheung is great as herself, providing some cross-cultural conflict, an inexplicable determination and a surprising affinity for the role. Assayas’s troubled shoot allows him a chance to riff on the film industry, cineaste culture, the art world, celebrity worship and relationships (including the perennial vampire theme of lesbianism now channeled through an informed modern realism) with equal parts humor, humanity and insight. The skin-tight cat-woman suit that Mrs. Cheung must wear for the part becomes the object of multiple fetishes and a way of unlocking inner spaces long repressed (and not just sexual). The power of the role soon consumes the actress in unusual ways.

Despite the dogme-95 mod-grittiness, the film comes off hip and breezy. It culminates in an unexpected triumph in the midst of a seeming implosion and, for those with the spark of whimsical avant-garde rebellion, provides one of cinemas most magical final sequences.

Rank: 8
Title: Frostbitten
Director: Anders Banke

Country: Sweden

Year: 2006
Review:
With the release of “30 Days of Night” in theaters now (October 2007), it’s hard for me not to notice that Sweden’s Anders Banke beat it to the punch (though his film will probably be seen by 1/100th as many people). The premise of both films is a horror story in the polar north where midwinter nighttime lasts for months at a time; the perfect breeding ground for a vampire horde.

“Frostbitten” begins in 1944 where a Swedish voluntary detachment of the Nazi army is lost and freezing in the Ukraine wilderness. They take refuge in a cabin where the previous occupants have just fled (the fireplace is still hot). That night, one of them wonders how the former tenants left considering that the door and windows were all snowed in…

In present-day Sweden a girl named Saga is moving into a night-drenched town with Annika, her single mother. Annika is a doctor at a near-empty hospital where Beckert (you’ll have heard this name in the WWII prologue) is running some private genetic experiments. His patient wakes up from a year long coma and takes a bite out of Annika, his drugs get stolen for a wild high school party and just about everything that can go wrong does.

Banke’s brilliant premise and clever title were enough to get the DVD into my player, but the exhilarating opening scenes sealed the deal. It isn’t evident from the start, but the director has a crazy, offbeat humor that really works, perhaps because it never completely overtakes the action or horror. The post-modern wit and amazing spontaneity (a la “Scream”) is a welcome solution to the usual teen-horror traps and manages to avoid, subvert or cheerfully mask the expected genre clichés. I’m sure it’s already been said by others, but “Frostbitten” does for vampires what “Shaun of the Dead” did for zombies. I mean, how can you not enjoy a teenage vampire falling (and being impaled) on a wooden garden gnome and lamenting that it’s the “uncoolest” way to die?

Despite the nods, winks and smiles, Banke has a morbid streak and brash fatalism. Rarely does a teen horror movie get so overwhelming and hopeless. This is not a movie where the vampire is just a surrogate serial killer with a few super powers. Instead, they are a cross between an army and an epidemic, a force that is violent, powerful and nearly irresistible. “Frostbitten” sets a stake against your heart and keeps pounding it till the show is over.

Rank: 7
Title: Vampires in Havana
Director: Juan Padron

Country: Cuba

Year: 1985
Review:
Cult Cuban animation director Juan Padron made one of his most successful outings with “Vampires in Havana” (1985). The free-wheeling, chaotic adventure dashes through a crowd filled with popular genres, exotic ideas and surprising subtext with an energy and exuberance matched by the films many chase scenes and action pieces. Our hero, Joseph Amadeus Dracula is an anti-government, trumpet-playing ladies man with the charisma of an imperturbable rascal and the determination of an idealistic political posterchild.

The prologue introduces us to Joseph’s uncle, a top scientist working on a potion to cure vampires of light sensitivity. His early high-profile failures force him into exile but he continues to test new formulas on his unwitting nephew. Joseph grows up without ever knowing his true nature and spends most of his time playing subversive trumpet anthems and reassuring his rebel-compatriot girlfriend that he harbors no love for the VIP mistresses he “interrogates” undercover (and under covers). The truth is revealed in short order to the American and European vampire gangs and to the skeptical Joseph. Far from making the family rich and happy, the announcement triggers an elaborate series of assassinations and espionage. The American side tries to eradicate the formula to preserve their empire of simulated tropical nightclubs (which would flounder if vampires could visit real beaches), while the European consortium tries to steal the brew and market it as a wonderdrug.

The result is a clever, hilarious and often bawdy adventure with multiple threads diverging and merging over the course of a couple madcap days. Juan Padron is as good at providing an entertaining time for audiences as he is as at flinging stinging barbs at national and international socio-political targets. The script is full of puns and playful twists and is informed as much by period Cuban culture as it is by the more esoteric points of vampire mythology. Skilled vampire assassins show up that can transform into dogs or spheres of pure energy (that can pass through matter!), and all these unusual superhuman powers get foiled in amusing and creative ways.

The animation itself suffices for the story but clearly suffers from the budget restrictions and hesitant commitment to style. The film has the definite 70/80’s look of “Schoolhouse Rock” and a touch of caricature that’s too broad for the idiosyncratic premise. While not a terribly satisfying visual presentation, the film nevertheless has a pleasant feel and retro cuteness lost by slicker high-budget animations. The lightning pace and inspired story keep the faded look from seriously marring the experience.

Rank: 6
Title: Vamire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

Country: Japan

Year: 2000
Review:
“Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust” (2000) is a sequel to the 1985 original, both of which are based on Hideyuki Kikuchi’s long-running series of popular novels. The films take place in a strange, visionary universe more than 10,000 years in the future. Humanity consists of disorganized and squalid hamlets regressed to medieval conditions despite the decaying remnants of technological glory. The significant presence of mutant creatures and supernaturally gifted humans implies a past speckled with nuclear conflict although only the relatively-recent war against the vampire “Nobility” is explicitly treated. The Nobility has long been in decadent decline and has the few surviving grandmasters are hunted by powerful killers like D and the Marcus brothers.

D is an effeminate, aristocratic dhamphir who can daywalk, exert inhuman strength, leap over huge distances and call upon the powers of his unusual familiar: a demon spirit embedded in and named after his left hand. Left Hand is a cynical, independent-minded symbiotic mystery (no back-story or explanation are provided) with vaguely defined special powers useful for mild deus ex machinas. The Marcus brothers are a team of mercenary superheroes consisting of four brothers and Leila, a woman who eventually takes a liking to D. T

D and the brothers are both hired by a wealthy human whose daughter, Charlotte, has been kidnapped by the vampire Count Meier Link. Link has hired protection in the form of several demonic creatures, including a shape-shifter, a shadow-creature and a werewolf-variation. An episodic series of battles, ambushes and showdowns paves the road to a haunted castle, where plot complications, a maniacal vampire spirit and a rocket ship await.

Yoshiaki Kawajiri directs what may be the most creative vampire tale ever filmed, an epic that could never have been visualized without the fanciful excesses of anime. The dark post-gothicalyptic artwork is raging with atmosphere. Not one for subtlety (see “Ninja Scroll” [1993]), Kawajiri overwhelms our senses with imaginative sequences and sheer quantity, be it armies of mutant zombies, showers of arrows or rooftop seas of twisted crucifixes and castle spires. Every location has a memorable ambience. Each duel between D and a mutant legion of Link has a clever twist. Each character might not possess a very real, original or developed personality, but all of them at least have a unique and rousing ability for dispensing violence.

Kawajiri’s anime comes together quite well, with the art and story traveling hand in hand. Those who have not read the books (like myself) will find some of the motives obscure and a few of the events rather arbitrary, but the action, imagination and illusion of depth easily sustain the film. The 13 episode anime series “Hellsing” (2001) made similar attempts at outrageous vampire mayhem, but sorely lacked the creativity, variety and class that “D” possesses. John Carpenter also tried his hand at developing a team of vampire hunters not far off from the Marcus brothers, but his “Vampires” (1998) is a total mess.

Vampire Week Part 4

Rank: 20
Title: Hour of the Wolf
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Year: 1968
Review:
Bergman considered this his only true horror film (though much of his work is filled with psychological terror), and though it never uses the word vampire (neither does “Cronos,” “The Hunger” or “Near Dark” for that matter) there is reason to include it on the list. The ambiguity lies in the manifestation of vampirism which may be corporeal, but could just as likely be hallucinogenic or dream-vision.

Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) is a reclusive painter who is tormented by inner demons and apparently outer ones as well. He isn’t sure what to make of his unsettling visions or his fear, insomnia and erratic behavior as time and loneliness erode his sanity. His only comfort is his wife (Liv Ullman) who loyally tries to understand and empathize with her emotionally-distant husband – to the point where she begins to experience his hallucinations. These phantoms take the form of a faceless woman, who instructs Mrs. Borg to read her husband’s diary. The secret she finds inside splits their relationship apart and plunges them both into a deeper circle of hell.

Even by Bergman standards, the first half of “Hour of the Wolf” is pretty slow-moving stuff. The breakdown of marriage and existential crisis themes have been done better by Bergman both before and after, but the horrific visions are definitely worthwhile. They build towards a creepy crescendo in the film’s latter half, particularly when the action shifts to enormous castle. Therein lives an undead family of aristocrats, the only other occupants of the island, and a haunting dread that shatters the souls of our unfortunate protagonists.

The film is deeply personal, with references to Bergman’s youth and own marital difficulties. It’s far from biographical, considering that the tone is so other-worldly and the links to reality so tentative, but one can sense the director’s familiarity with the psychological circumstances. The B/W cinematography is beautiful though depressing. Every character, every prop and every acre of fallow earth seems cruelly blighted by an uncaring god. Don’t expect this film to cheer you up, but it might make you feel thankful you aren’t Borg or his wife.

The hour of the wolf, if you are curious, is the one just before dawn when most deaths occur and phantoms have their strongest hold.


Rank: 19
Title: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary
Director: Guy Maddin
Country: Canada
Year: 2002
Review:
See full review here.


Rank: 18
Title: Versus
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Country: Japan
Year: 2000
Review:
While “Versus” includes vampires and so qualifies as a vampire film, it could equally be counted as a zombie romp, samurai epic, yakuza flick or martial arts opus. In addition to a genre adoration that would do male teen proud, Kitamura demonstrates a hyperactive excitement for comic carnage taken to the nth degree, and his enthusiasm is infectious.

A reincarnated samurai-turned-yakuza thug escapes from jail to meet up with his trigger-happy gang in the aptly named “Forest of Resurrection”. When a dispute breaks out over a recently kidnapped girl, one of the flunkies gets killed and immediately returns as a zombie; that’s when it occurs to the gang that they’ve been burying bodies in these woods for years. The corpses take that reflective moment as their cue to rise from the grave.

An all-out frenetic battle ensues, with expressive, free-flying camerawork and uzi-rate editing. From this point on, the movie is essentially one continuous fight scene with government agents (hot on the heels of the escaped convicts) joining in along with vampires, demon lords and more. Flashbacks invite us to watch the waging of this war in previous centuries (allowing for some samurai showdowns), and the ending gives us a taste of the cyborg-enhanced future hell that awaits in the next iteration.

The outrageous excess and no-holds action is violent enough to offend parents and senators but is treated with an eye-winking nonchalance that makes it more amusing than terrifying. I’m not quite sure whether Kitamura knowingly satirizes low-attention-span action fodder, but he certainly outdoes it and makes us laugh in the process. Most of the shock and humor comes from the jaw-dropping gumption of the director and choreographer, who leave us constantly aghast that they went so far. The lack of realistic grounding does have its downside, though, and neither the characters nor the story pull the audience in. The two-hour running time easily exhausts its welcome, proving that pacing isn’t all about quick cutting and combat.

Best enjoyed with a bowl of popcorn and a group of friends who like kung fu and gunplay at least as much as horror.

[Image: First off, let me apologize for selecting the worst of the several poor DVD versions as my introductory image. I took one look and couldn't resist using it, although the film isn't nearly as cheesy as this cover would imply.]

Rank: 17
Title: Daughters of Darkness
Director: Harry Kumel

Country: Belgium

Year: 1971
Review:
One of the best and earliest of the lesbian exploitation vampire films, “Daughters of Darkness” remains one of the few in its denigrated subgenre to bear redeeming fruit. The plot loosely adapts from Fanu’s “Carmilla,” moving all the action to grandiose hotel eerily empty in the cold non-tourist season. Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig recalling her enigmatic performance in “Last Year in Marienbad”) and her nubile secretary/lover Ilona Harczy are the only guests. Though they look young and beautiful, the aging hotel clerk and a homicide detective recognizes the countess from her last visit, 40 years before.

Stefan and Valerie, a pair of runaway honeymooners whose marriage is already off to a bad start, decide to check into the relic of bygone majesty and try to relax in the dour village. Bored and brooding, Stefan and the three women lounge around in the opulent hotel lobby, where it quickly gets difficult to tell who is seducing who. Kumel languidly brews the tension over a fatally erotic undercurrent. Some dark secrets are exposed and the stage is set for a series of sexual power plays. Hardly any blood is spilt until the last act, when deadly emotions and frustrations boil to the surface and vengeance comes calling.

Kumel proves his superiority to Jean Rollins and Jesus Franco (the two better-known “luminaries” of the lesbian vampire subgenre) by giving audiences plenty of sexually-charged sequences and ample nudity without seeming as sleazy as his rivals. The cinematography is marked by dreary weather, crumbling sumptuousness and an old-world vibe torn by bold scarlet gashes (dresses, lips, blood). The acting is OK, led by the icy, elegant Delphine Seyrig, whose performance is echoed by Catherine Denueve in “The Hunger” (1983). The deep-seated unhappiness of the protagonists is allowed to mire in public view, while the mysterious allure of the countess’s siren beauty serves as a lure driving the others to wreck their lives against her shore.

Audiences expecting purely art-house antics or a maximum of blood and breasts will probably both find stretches of disappointment, but the balance means an arresting vampire film straddled on the art/exploitation borderlands. If you prefer more sex and less moodiness, try “Vampyres” (1974) (also called “Daughters of Dracula”), and for those who prefer the reverse, try the classier “Blood and Roses” (1960) or “The Hunger” (1983).

Rank: 16
Title: The Last Man on Earth
Director: Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow

Country: USA/Italy

Year: 1964
Review:
Vincent Price stars in this adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend,” the first of several versions that would include “Omega Man” (1971) with Charlton Heston and the upcoming “I Am Legend” (2007) with Will Smith. Though far from brilliant, this bargain bin (public domain) low-budget flick is surprisingly entertaining, grim and thoughtful.

Dr. Robert Morgan (Price) is the last man on Earth. He earned that distinction when an epidemic turned the planet’s population into vampire-zombie hybrids. Flashbacks detail the scramble for a cure, the mass burning of bodies and the final descent into post-apocalyptic collapse. Morgan, who is immune to the disease, has spent months foraging and staking by day and holding out in his suburban makeshift fortress by night. The army of undead foes he battles are not much of a serious threat; they shamble with the lethargic gait of brain-dead zombies and suffer the vampiric weaknesses of garlic, fire and light.

Eventually the doctor encounters another human and, lucky for him, it’s an attractive babe. She seems a bit unhealthy and behaves suspiciously, foreshadowing the inevitable catch: she’s actually an agent from a community of infected rebels who use regular serum treatments for temporary resistance to the disease. Her intentions aren’t exactly pure, but he uses his own blood to cure her anyway. The whole ‘flesh and blood granting salvation’ quickly spirals into a weird Jesus metaphor with a fittingly Biblical ending fit for long contemplation.

The empty, bombed-out sets owe their minimalism to budgetary constraints as much as any intentional evocation of an existential wasteland, but the results are powerful nonetheless. Like the monsters, the pacing is slow, but it helps capture the tedious, grinding half-life of the haggard hero. When things pick up in the final act, our patience is repaid with increased action, interest and symbolism.

“The Last Man on Earth” paved the way for many later psychological horror films especially 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead,” which has a similar look and setting. The inner torment of Morgan’s character is fairly severe. For starters, he witnesses his entire family die. Then there’s the former laboratory colleague that leads nightly zombie assault on his modest home; as a nasty reminder of Morgan’s failure to develop a cure. When he finally meets another survivor, he discovers that he’s already murdered some of her people in the past (mistaking them for vampires) and that she intends to kill him. The depressing tone continues into the ending, which holds little hope for humankind. However, a glimmer of redemption may exist for the new breed.