avant garde – Horror Ghouls

Dr. Caligari (1989)

Posted on October 20, 2024October 20, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Dr. Caligari is experimenting with her patients at the Caligari Insane Asylum (or the C.I.A. for short). Among her many crazy patients, there’s Mr Pratt who is a cannibalistic serial killer, and then Mrs. Van Houten who is a nymphomaniac housewife. The doctor’s treatment? Mindswapping, of course! All done by transferring glandular brain fluids from one patient to the other. Nothing could go wrong here, nope, nothing at all. Of course, Dr. Caligari (who is, naturally, described as the descendant of the original Dr. Caligari from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) has her enemies like all geniuses do, and the married couple Mr. and Mrs. Lodger wants her experiments to stop and turn to their father for help. Problem is, that their father has a very high opinion of the doctor, and refuses to do anything to stop her. At least not at first. And when he becomes another victim to her mindswapping techniques which turns him onto a nymphomaniac transvestite, there’s not many people left to stop her. Except…maybe the patients themselves…

Dr. Caligari is a really, really bizarre thing to watch. It’s an avant-garde horror film with a lot of erotic scenes, released in 1989 and directed by Stephen Sayadian. As you can expect from the title, it’s some kind of pseudo-sequel to the famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from 1920. It was originally billed as Dr. Caligari 3000 for a short time when it debuted in select theaters, but after being released on VHS and Betamax, the title was shortened down. While it’s mostly a very obscure movie, it’s gotten a cult classic status. Despite the movie quickly falling into obscurity after its release, which shouldn’t be a surprise since this is so far from mainstream as you can get, Stephen Sayadian continued to direct X-rated movies up until 1993. As should probably be expected, several of the actors here also didn’t star in many other films after the 90s, including the lead actress Madeleine Reynal who only played in one movie prior to this one.

Now, how to properly explain this movie…well, what should be obvious is that the film is very much all about sex and deviance, but it never gets too graphic to be considered more than an R-rating. There’s some tits and nudity here and there, but nothing outright explicit. But one thing is for sure: everything here, and I mean absolutely everything, is totally fucknuts bonkers bizarre, with characters, scenery and dialogue that’s completely over the top in absurdity most of the time. Pretty much everything that’s said here is delivered in what I assume must be practiced monotony, especially the lines delivered by the titular character herself, and you’ll easily lose count of how many times the fourth wall is broken. Whenever a character opens their mouth to talk, it’s all a bunch of strained and artificial lines with very weird facial expressions to follow, often looking straight at the viewer. Mostly this was done on purpose, I guess, which adds to the very odd vibe throughout and gives a theater-play feeling to it. I have to give props when it comes to the special effects and scenery, the surrealistic insanity displayed here is something that must be seen to be believed. After all, a woman getting licked by a gigantic tongue sticking out from a wall of flesh isn’t something you see every day.

Dr. Caligari feels like some kind of wet fever dream Tim Burton could’ve had if he was locked up in a madhouse together with John Waters. If you want something truly bizarre that’s filled to the brim with naughty absurdities, then this one’s for you!

The movie was released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD by Mondo Macabro. It is also available on Shudder.

Director: Stephen Sayadian
Writers: Stephen Sayadian, Jerry Stahl
Country & year: USA, 1989
Actors: Madeleine Reynal, Fox Harris, Laura Albert, Jennifer Balgobin, John Durbin, Gene Zerna, David Parry, Barry Phillips, Magie Song, Jennifer Miro, Stephen Quadros, Carol Albright
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097228/

Skinamarink (2022)

Posted on August 18, 2023June 13, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

The year is 1995, and the 4 year old boy Kevin injures himself during a sleepwalking episode. We’re told he was taken to a hospital, and then brought back home. He and his 6 year old sister, Kaylee, then wakes up in the middle of the night and finds that their father has disappeared. And that’s not all…the doors, windows, and certain other objects also keeps gradually vanishing. The children, appearing to be more puzzled than scared, decide to sleep downstairs while watching cartoons. They soon realize that they’re not really alone in the house, after all.

Skinamarink is a Canadian experimental horror film from 2022, written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball in his feature directorial debut. Prior to this film, the director ran a YouTube channel called Bitesized Nightmares, where he would ask his viewers to write about their nightmares and he would create short videos based on them. Skinamarink was inspired by the most recurrent themes in the submitted nightmare stories, and he also recounts having had a nightmare when he was a child where he was in his parent’s house while the parents were missing, but there was a monster there. And a lot of people seemed to have shared a similar kind of dream. Before the feature film, he created a short film called Heck which was a proof of concept for Skinamarink. The film’s title might ring a bell for some, as Skinnamarink (aka “Skid-dy-mer-rink-adink-aboomp” or “Skidamarink”) is a popular preschool sing-along song from North America. He chose to alter the spelling a bit so children searching for the song would not accidentally find his film instead. The film was shot over seven days in 2021, in the director’s childhood home, using some of his old toys. It had a budget of $15.000 which was mostly crowdfunded. The film got widespread social media attention after one of the online film festival screenings caused the movie to become downloadable due to a glitch, and thus it was spread and this caused it to go viral.

And yeah…this is one of the times when the worn-out phrase “this movie is not for everyone” can easily be replaced with “this movie is for a select few”. It’s very experimental, and if you’ve never seen an arthouse film before you’re probably either gonna end up wondering what the hell this is, or snooze off within the first few minutes. For the right kind of audience, though, it’s prone to be a different experience. When we watched it, we pretty much knew what we were in for, and while some movies are best seen going in blind, this is definitely not one of them. If you’re aware of this being a very experimental and abstract film, hardly providing any plot, you’re in the clear. Then you’d likely to be prepared for the experience. In many ways, the film is quite demanding towards its audience and could easily have been considerably shorter. It’s like a nightmarish ASMR, but if you’ve ever suffered from night terrors and fear of abandonment during your childhood, I’m certain this film will click more into place for you. It’s a movie that through its experimental scenes and surreal vibes, draws upon the childhood fears of being left alone without a guardian. The soundtrack mostly consists of the TV screen, playing the tunes and sounds from old public domain cartoons, and this certainly gives off an eerie and surreal vibe. Some of these movies include Max Fleischer’s The Cobweb Hotel and Somewhere in Dreamland, as well as Ub Iwerks’ Balloon Land, and Merrie Melodies Prest-O Change-O.

Skinamarink is a movie where you really need to know what you’re in for. It’s a movie that’s more of an experience than a story (although there is some kind of story hidden there in a very subtle way). Other experimental movies like for example Begotten will feel fast-paced and easily consumed in comparison. But I can see how it can evoke the inner childhood fear in some people, irrational as though those fears may be and how aware we are of that fact.

And if you think Skinamarink was too abstract, experimental and slow, there is actually a 1967 movie called Wavelength where you’ll watch a long zoom of a window stretched over 45 minutes…

Writer and director: Kyle Edward Ball
Country & year: Canada, 2022
Actors: Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul, Jaime Hill
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt21307994/

Begotten (1989)

Posted on March 7, 2020September 12, 2023 by HorrorGhouls

Time for a fun movie for the whole family to enjoy on a Friday night with some pizza. Or maybe not.

Begotten starts inside a cabin where we see a disturbed, horrifying figure sitting in a chair, filmed in a high contrast of black and white. While the soundtrack consists of crickets, bird-chirping and distant heartbeats, we see that the figure starts to cut himself to death with a straight razor. A great product placement right there (haha). Feces stream down between his legs while he’s sitting bloody and dying in his chair, gurgling his death rattles. This is God we’re talking about, by the way. Out of his fresh dead body comes Mother Earth who uses God’s semen to impregnate herself, where we get served some hairy close-ups where she rubs his juice into her vagina. She wanders into an obscure forest landscape where she gives birth to Son of Earth. She then leaves him behind to some faceless nomads who drag the poor newborn (who already has the body of a grown man) like a rag doll, through a desolate landscape until he supposedly starts spewing out some of his organs. And this is just the beginning of a horrendous, surreal odyssey of pain, suffering, torture and death, that can be described as witnessing a painful fever nightmare from the subconscious mind of a strapped schizophrenic mental patient.

By reading the plot synopsis you learn that Begotten is an alternative retelling of The Book of Genesis, but without knowing this beforehand, one could easily assume watching an underground snuff film taken straight out from The Dark Web. The distinct, strong visuals is truly remarkable here, filmed in grainy black and white that sets the atmosphere from the very first frame. Shot on 16 mm on reverse-exposure, which is a picture effect you get on most digital cameras today, but back in the late 80’s when this film was made with analog stone-age equipment, this was a real artistic achievement. Director E. Elias Merhige experimented like a mad scientist to get the exact, withered, aged look by using sandpaper to scratch up the reel before shooting. That wasn’t good enough, however, and he used the rest of the budget of 33. 000 dollars to construct an optical printer during a long, tedious period of eight months. And each minute of footage generated by the printer took on average between eight and ten hours to complete. Phew, that’s some real dedication and patience right there.

Some describe this as simple as a nightmare captured on film, and an extended version of the cursed VHS cassette from The Ring, which I can pretty much agree with. Certainly not for everyone, and as far away from mainstream you could probably get. But it’s surely a uniquely deranged avant-garde filled horrific, nihilistic atmosphere with haunting images that will probably stick with your forever. This is also Marilyn Manson’s personal favorite film, which made him so impressed that he hired director E Elias Merhige to direct the music video for Antichrist Superstar and Cryptorchid. Another guy who liked the film was Nicolas Cage, who hired him to direct Shadow of the Vampire for his newly established Saturn Films. A great, underrated movie, by the way. After his second Hollywood studio film “Suspect Zero”, Merhige went back to the underground and made the short film “Din of Celestial Birds”, which is considered an unofficial sequel to Begotten. His recent creation is a short called Polia and Blastema, a surreal love story about two alien creatures. And from the few previews I’ve seen, it looks completely mind-blowing.

An official, yet very limited DVD was released back in 2001 by World Artist, which included a souvenir booklet, the original theatrical trailer, rare and never-before-seen movie stills, and production photos. It’s of course out of print, but can be found on eBay at different prices. It’s also available on YouTube.

Director: E. Elias Merhige
Country & year: USA, 1989
Actors: Brian Salzberg, Donna Dempsey, Stephen Charles Barry, James Gandia, Daniel Harkins, Michael Phillips, Erik Slavin, Arthur Streeter, Adolfo Vargas, Garfield White
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0101420/