Eleven Ways from Wednesday

This flick turned up on a movie channel a few nights ago amid the seasonally gruesome October fare:

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

This modestly budgeted and unhyped horror film, directed by Trollhunter director André Øvredal, opened in theaters at the very end of 2016 to generally positive reviews. The movie begins with a grisly crime scene in a house in a rural Virginia county; this is the only scene in the movie that does not take place in the morgue. All but one of the bodies at the scene are mangled. The one exception appears pristine, and she is the only unidentified body in the house. The young woman, were she alive, would be pretty, though no one ever mentions that. The sheriff delivers the Jane Doe body to the morgue run by father/son coroners Tommy and Austin (Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch). The sheriff asks them to determine a cause of death by morning. Austin delays his date with his quirky girlfriend (Ophelia Lovibond) in order to help out his father. The autopsy reveals interior damage indicative of abuse and torture that is strangely inconsistent with the body’s perfect exterior. Occult symbols are on an artifact removed from the stomach. Odd things happen in the morgue including the radio resetting itself. A storm strikes, power fails, a tree blocks the morgue’s exit, and sound seems to come from another body stored in a locker. Austin should have gone on his date.

Weirdness and tension build nicely in this taut 86 minute film toward the final rush of action. It works as the kind of movie it was intended to be. I’m not the best audience for it, however. I never find stories that rely on supernatural elements to be scary. I’m willing and able to suspend disbelief for the duration of a movie of this genre enough to enjoy it on some level, but I don’t feel the suspension in my bones, and so miss out on much of the intended dread. That said, this is (once again) a pretty good film of its kind, so I’ll still give it a qualified Thumbs Up.

**** ****

There are horror movies for which I am a better audience. By and large they are films in which the threat is all too human. A list of ten follows. By no means is this my list of “10 best horror movies.” That would be a very different list and would contain better known titles. None of the following is likely to appear on anyone’s “10 best” list. They are just ten films with something to recommend them but nonetheless did poorly enough at the box office that they might have passed under the reader’s radar. Although a few of their plots do stretch credulity, none relies on the supernatural or physically impossible. Not all entries are scary. A few are anything but serious.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Jack Ketchum’s novel The Girl Next Door was made into this deeply disturbing movie that Stephen King called a dark-side Stand by Me. The book and movie were inspired by the very real case of Sylvia Likens who was tortured and murdered in a manner similar to what happens in this film. In the 1950s, Ruth takes in two distantly related girls when their parents are killed in a car accident. Ruth has deep psychosexual problems and is angered by the attractiveness of the older teen girl. Ruth orchestrates ever more vicious abuse of her with the help of her sons and neighborhood boys and girls. One neighbor boy, the protagonist, is basically a good kid but is tempted to observe the dark spectacle for too long, which then makes his own guilt an issue when he wants to intervene. The film is not for the squeamish – not because it is graphic (it isn’t, really) but because what happens largely off camera is horribly clear.

Orphan (2009)

This oddball variant on the “evil child” movie has very disparate reviews but I’m among those who think it works well. It’s hard to summarize without spoilers, but the ads for the movie at the time said, “There's something wrong with Esther.” Something indeed. A well-to-do Connecticut couple with two children of their own choose to adopt a talented young girl whose previous adoptive parents died in a fire. It’s a more multi-level and disturbing tale then that set-up leads one to anticipate.

The Killer inside Me (2010)

The seamy low-life characters of Jim Thompson’s marvelous novels are notoriously difficult to bring to the screen. There have been three attempts at The Killer inside Me. The most recent one with Casey Affleck and Jessica Alba is the most successful. The relationship between the sadistic cop, who enjoys getting away with mayhem, and the masochistic prostitute, who actually wants to be punished, is perverse long before it turns deadly.

Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill! (1965)

This cult classic B movie is superb trash. It is trash transcending itself. Though there is not a scene or word of dialogue in it that cannot be aired on daytime broadcast TV, the movie isn’t shown there because, collectively, the scenes and dialogue are definitely not for kids. There are killer strippers, a terrorized hostage, and (four years before Manson) a twisted murderous family in an isolated desert ranch. Russ Meyer, with pocket change for a budget, directed a quirky cast to make something special. Depraved, but in a good way.

Psychos in Love (1987)

This was filmed for $75,000 and one wonders where they spent all the money. OK, this is a bad movie. A really bad movie, despite the “cult” status. The fact that some people (my hand goes up) laugh at it doesn’t change that. Two psychotic killers find each other and discover that not only do they both like to kill but they both detest grapes. True love ensues along with copious gore. This is definitely not for everyone, but if your silly streak extends to a certain type of (I’ll say it again) bad movie, you might chuckle at this.

Kalifornia (1993)

This is the highest profile film on the list. It turns up frequently on cable movie channels. Kalifornia, starring Brad Pitt, David Duchovny, Michelle Forbes, and Juliette Lewis, explores the nature of evil. The difference between a “normal” person and a sociopath is not always obvious. Most of the time, they look, act, and talk alike. They aren’t always “in character.” Sociopaths can be kindly; normally kind people can be cruel. All of us are capable of lethal violence in certain circumstances. But there is a difference. Not all of us are casually brutal. Not all of us kill just for fun. The distinction between those who are this way and the rest of us may be narrower than we generally like to think, but the distinction is crucial. The parolee Early (Brad Pitt) is evil, if that word means anything, as his traveling companions find out too late.

Wild Tales [Relatos salvajes] (2014)

Quite a lot of harm in the world is committed not by bullies, though plenty of bullies exist and do cause harm, but by people who regard themselves as victims and lash out disproportionately. (Most mass shooters fall into this category.) Damián Szifrón’s Argentinean film Wild Tales has six stories of people who are unquestionably mistreated, but whose reprisals are, to put it gently, immoderate. (1) "Pasternak": All the passengers on a plane discover they know a flight crewman named Pasternak, and that he has a reason to bear each of them a grudge. (2) "The Rats": A waitress contemplates a creative use of rat poison when she recognizes a customer as the gangster who ruined her family. (3) "The Strongest": Road rage erupts between two drivers on a lonely highway. (4) "Little Bomb": A demolition professional has his life and career ruined when he fights with bureaucrats over parking fines and towing fees. (5) "The Proposal": A wealthy man’s son has a lethal hit-and-run accident, which a detective and a lawyer both see as an opportunity for extortion. (6) "Until Death Do Us Apart": During her wedding reception, a bride ascertains that her new husband had cheated on her with one of the guests. In all six stories the retaliation is so massive as to be the larger crime. Wild Tales is well-directed, well-constructed, well-acted, and full of graveyard humor.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Do you think the horror movie plot of "preppy college kids attacked and killed by hillbilly cannibals" has been done to death? Yes, me too: Offspring, Hatchet, The Devils Rejects, The Cottage, Wrong Turn (I –VI), etc., etc. So, it seems, did Eli Craig (writer/director) and Morgan Jurgenson (writer), the makers of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, so they turned the plot on its head. They present us with a classic horror set-up: exceptionally attractive preppy college lads and lasses are driving into deep backwoods hill country on vacation. At a gas station they cross paths with two rustics who own a ramshackle cabin near the lake where the kids are camping. In fact, the men are just a couple of completely harmless good ol' boys on a fishing weekend, but the college kids have seen so many teen slasher movies with redneck villains that they are frightened by the encounter. Later, when the two men rescue one of the girls who has had a swimming accident, the remaining kids misinterpret what they see. Believing the worst, the kids terrorize the hillbillies. Inadvertently, they kill one another. The script is clever, dark, and very funny.

The Doom Generation (1995)

In the 90s there was a bumper crop of ultraviolent films from mainstream directors and studios: Goodfellas, Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, and more. Most had something to say amid all the blood and gore. Nonetheless, I get the feeling Gregg Araki found what they had to say pretentious. Araki’s The Doom Generation is simply nihilistic. The meaning of its violence is that it is without meaning. While the three main characters (James Duval, Rose McGowan, and Johnathon Schaech) don’t go seeking violence, violence always finds them. It fazes them very little. Nor do they take sex seriously enough to be troubled much by jealousy in their bisexual triangle. They don’t much care that their lives are hell. (A careful viewer might notice that whenever they buy something the price is $6.66.) This in many ways is the harshest movie on this list. Be advised that though it has 61% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, those who hate it hate it with a passion.

Eating Raoul (1982)

Decades never quite know when they are over, and culturally the hedonistic 70s slopped over a few years into the 80s. This film is both of that era and a parody of it. The prudish couple Paul and Mary Bland have unsatisfying jobs, but he is a wine expert and she is an inspired cook. They want to open a restaurant but don’t have the money. They hit on a scheme of placing sex ads and then killing and robbing the people who show up because “These swinger-types always seem to have money.” The bodies are sold to a meat-packer. Then there are the cars in which the swingers arrived. Darkly funny.

**** ****

There is not enough October left for a longer list to be useful, but I’m sure something soon will turn up appropriate for November.

Trailer: Autopsy Of Jane Doe (2016)