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. | Horror (2002) |
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I recall browsing the horror DVD shelves searching out the more strange looking, intriguing stuff and when somebody informed me that Dante Tomaselli was Alfred Sole's nephew (Alfred Sole being the director of the hugely underrated 70's shocker Alice Sweet Alice ) and that he had a weird dreamlike style of filmmaking, I was sold and forked out the $20 bucks for a movie called simply Horror that had on its cover an image of a rather resplendent black goat with a set of majestic horns and those typical goat eyes that seem to glow in the dark! Then the fact that this great goat wore a cross – the DVD cover itself was intriguing enough to investigate further, so that was that, and Horror by Dante Tomaselli was added to the burgeoning DVD collection bursting with the bizarre.
The opening shots of a young woman on a ladder attempting to take down some party light bulbs is filmed from strange angles creating a sense of foreboding, then the great black goat, bristling with ominous evil intent arrives with dubious intentions. It's not long before very strange events start occurring and the viewer is left trying to piece together what appears more and more like a puzzle that refuses to make sense. There is an abduction of the young girl by a man clad in black who carries her off in a sack, Texas Chainsaw style to an ominous house where his demented, cackling wife waits in anticipation of what will clearly be some very unsavoury activity. Turns out the girl is their daughter and that they are up to no good, shooting her up with drugs before worse, unseen activity takes place off screen.
Then, we are introduced to a bunch of young drug rehab escapees who are on the run in a beat up van having shot dead the security guard inside before making good their escape. They speak of an encounter with a preacher who provided them with magic mushroom and all sorts of dubious coloured hallucinogenic candy that the three men dive right into without any idea of what the candy might really contain. Typical reckless behaviour, but then we are talking about a bunch let loose from drug rehab after all, so their predilection to coloured pills is understandable. Soon weird stuff starts happening in the van as well as the drugs start to take effect and paranoia, drug trips and all sorts of dementia is let loose. One of the groups turns a hideous blue colour and starts puking fluorescent yellow muck as they arrive at the preacher's residence. But by what one can work out, though the preacher keeps turning up to comfort his granddaughter who is being abused by her parents, it also appears that he might be a little on the dead side. Now the new preacher is his son, but soon afterwards one of the group, tripping, shoots the abducted girls parents dead…but mayhem is just about to let fly in a huge way with the audience left clueless as to what might come next. The film is a plot-less, non linear mess that is supposedly supposed to click into place by the end but doesn't and the director is left explaining (on the commentary track) how horror and ambiguity go hand in hand and that none of his films ever have liner plots nor do they make any sense. He claims it is left to the viewer to make his own interpretation. Accepted that the film is meant to be the way it is, still it left this viewer frustrated at the garbled mess that it appeared to be. On the plus side, it is clearly evident that Tomaselli is more than adept at capturing some very arresting and eerie imagery on film and his soundtrack too is an asset. There are numerous set pieces that can be admired for their visual composition and their ability to create a sense of omnipresent evil that seeps through the film. The title theme described as “Herrmann on acid” is not comparable to the work of the master yet it is indeed full of menace and anxiety and sets the tone rather well for the wealth of visual weirdness to follow. The sequences involving The Amazing Kreskin are the most impressive due to his impressive quackery that really does have a mesmerizing effect. The film recalls the 70's horror cult classic Phantasm that had a similarly indigestible plot, yet Phantasm succeeded despite its kooky weirdness and deranged “plot” as the fragments built purposefully towards a tangible climax and pay-off while this film remains meandering and wallowing in its own senselessness and is unable to build towards a climax of any worth. Also, on the minus side, sadly the film makes little sense despite the fancy visuals and the acting too is patchy with some performers admirable and some rather plastic and unconvincing. In the end one is left with a feeling of having invested an hour and a half in a movie that fails to deliver in a satisfying manner. Maybe when it had become obvious that the film was not going to contain any semblance of a plot at all, it may have been better to give up. After all, admirable nightmarish imagery alone is nowhere near enough to provide a satisfying experience – and Horror managed to frustrate far more than it came close to satisfying.
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