All The Horror Films Of John Carpenter, Ranked

In honor of Halloween, I thought I'd take a break from my series of world horror cinema and look at the filmmaker best known for the slasher that everyone's watching tonight. 

Halloween is actually unique among Carpenter horror films in many respects, including the fact that it's technically not a sci-fi film. Science fiction is actually the genre in which he feels most comfortable, and I highly recommend you check out his other non-horror sci-fi films as well. Dark Star is really nutty and bizarre (and even inspired many great films of the seventies, including Jaws and Star Wars). Starman is also not just one of Carpenter's best films, but possibly one of the best science fiction films ever made. And that's saying a lot for a romcom!

But it's safe to say that all of Carpenter's films are science fiction, because they are all assumed to take place in reality. Even if it's about the end of days, and it's a biblical apocalypse film like Prince of Darkness, there is always the unspoken assumption in Carpenter's movies that these things are scary not because they defy logic and reason, but because they are totally possible! That's why he does it. 

You can tell that he loves explaining at length how something is plausible in the known universe we live in, so that it's all the scarier. There are a few exceptions (like Christine), but this is probably what defines the horror of John Carpenter. That, and it's usually pretty physical, with lots of blood and body parts (in this way, Halloween is also unique, because there's really not that much blood or violence in it at all). 

I will say no more. Here's all of them, ranked as I enjoyed them. 


11. Village of the Damned (1996)
Subgenres: Sci-fi, Alien
Availability: filenuke (has popup ads)

At least in terms of horror, this was, in my opinion, Carpenter’s first major failure. And it’s not kinda sorta bad. It’s train-wreck-in-the-Alps bad. I have no clue what he was trying to accomplish with this film. Was it a comment on the lack of empathy in the mid-nineties youth culture? Was it an homage to classic ’50’s sci-fi classics? Or was it merely something that paid the bills for a once-beloved filmmaker now falling out of favor? I’m betting on the latter. And I can forgive him for it.

The script has milk-toast dialogue, muddled and unconvincing philosophical digressions, contrived scenarios, and a totally unnecessary government subplot. The acting is passable for some characters, but is, for the most part, excrutiatingly bad. As in, I’d prefer water-boarding. And not bad in a fun way, either. It even has a preacher asking, “What about those who have no soul?” Give me a break. No preacher talks like that. Just a bad movie all around, I’m sorry to say.

10. Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Subgenres: Sci-fi, Action, Paranormal

Availability: ffilms

This movie is all style and no substance. I like the idea of ghosts that take self-mutilation to extremes when possessing bodies, and the alien-invasion-in-reverse premise is a neat idea. The only problem is that it's just not scary at all, and the acting is pretty terrible all around. There isn't even a James Woods or a Jeff Bridges in sight to make it watchable.

Whenever anything happens, I just think, "Ok, that happened." I would make suggestions on how the script could have been rewritten, but I have no idea what the film was trying to be in the first place (prison break, traditional ghost, mere spectacle, etc...who knows?!) But this line should tell you all the need to know (from the film's supposed heroine): "What if we blow up the nuclear power plant? That would cause a huge explosion, right?" 

End scene.

9. The Fog (1980)
Genres: Ghost, Zombie
Availability: ffilms.org

Carpenter’s second horror film basically has the same structure as Halloween, and it showcases a lot of the style that he is now known for. The fog that brings the ghosts of murderers back into a quiet harbor town is very cool to watch. 

But I agree with Ebert on this movie: it needs a better villain. It looks amazing, and the atmosphere created is very spooky, even if the music feels derivative. But I have no idea why the town is really being terrorized, or who is in danger. Is it the whole town, or just the descendents of those who murdered the victims who would go on haunting the town? 

It also doesn’t give the characters a whole lot to do. Jamie Lee Curtis plays a vagabond bound for Vancouver, but she does absolutely nothing. Even the radio DJ, whose location is in one hell of a cool place, doesn’t seem to have much to add other than shouting into a microphone. Her character could have been way more useful and interesting, not to mention the town’s inhabitants, whose reaction to the films events is largely absent. 

There’s no lesson learned, and there’s no “aha!” moment, where the town comes to grips with its newfound historical perspective. Again, this film looks amazing, but the story is lacking. Not Carpenter’s best work, but worth a look if you plan to use a smoke machine in your movie.

8. Christine (1983)

Genres: Supernatural, Ghost, Comedy
Availability: Putlocker (free, but you have to close some popups)

I believe we all owe John Carpenter an apology for hating on this movie when it came out, and for the legacy of hating this movie, and for throwing parties with popcorn and punch so that we can all hate this movie together. Poor Christine is just misunderstood, because I now believe, after rewatching it oh so many years later, that this is a comedy.

The premise is ludicrous, but Carpenter jumped at the chance to tell this story because, well, it paid the bills. After The Thing underperformed, this film was the best thing he could find. But the B-movie premise is actually perfectly suited for someone like him, who does his best work on a small scale. This film would have been the perfect opportunity for Carpenter to completely go the Michael Bay route for filmmaking. I mean, for a film about a haunted, homicidal hot rod, you’d expect there to be more car chases!

But there’s a lot to appreciate about the film. The biggest thing for me is how completely foreign some of the archetypes are nowadays. The bad guys are the greasers, while the moral center of the film is a well-mannered and loyal football player. The wimpy kid that everyone picks on actually turns out to be the anti-hero, and his descent into evil is fun. It’s also total understandable. It’s not a perfect film, but if you watch it like a comedy, some of the more silly killer-car stuff is a real treat. And the film even ends on a joke.

7. In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
Subgenres: Apocalypse, Cosmic
Availability: Putlocker

I have mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, the premise of an insurance fraud investigator being hired to find a horror writer whose work seems to be turning its readers into paranoid schizoids is quite intriguing. If the film suffers because of this premise, it’s a lack of timing. He’s making a Cold War-era horror film in the middle of the first post-Cold War decade. The image of an empty Everytown USA, with its creepy kids, menacing steeples, and implied moral panic would have done better at the box office, had it been made ten years earlier.

But my problem with the film is not the context, but what Carpenter fails to do with such a great idea. The sinister soundtrack of his earlier films is replaced with inappropriate pop rock songs, and other atmospheric elements found his classic films are also absent. This film just doesn’t feel like a Carpenter flick. It’s not really that scary, and the second half is unnecessarily confusing, with an ending that makes no sense at all. 

On the other hand, I do love me some Lovecraft. And this is one of the few films that sticks to the spirit of cosmic horror the way Lovecraft intended it. And there are grotesque ghouls and monsters aplenty in this flick. In that sense, at least, there’s enough classic Carpenter in this film to make it enjoyable.

6. Vampires (1998)
Subgenres: Supernatural, Action
Availability: Youtube

Carpenter’s take on vampires actually makes this now-tired creature scary once again. Prior to seeing this film, I can’t tell you how many times I had this exact thought: “If vampires have superhuman strength, how come none of them ever punch through someone’s chest? They could, couldn’t they?” And imagine my excitement when, twenty minutes into Vampires, this actually happens.

Aside from some unevenly written dialogue in the beginning, the story is very suspenseful, with fleshed out characters and realistic scares throughout. The peculiarities of the ritual involved in the climax seems a tad bit too clean, but by that point I didn’t care. I’d seen enough that I could forgive the film a few plot devices. Like the protagonist, I am also tired of seeing well-groomed and sentimental vampires, because that’s not scary. I want the ones that are pure evil, rip old ladies throats out, and don’t go down easy. I also love that this is basically a western, but with vampires. This time, Carpenter’s atypical music choice, the steel guitar, works perfectly.

5. Body Bags (1992)
Subgenres: Anthology, Comedy, Camp
Availability: Youtube

This movie is like Carpenter’s career interlude, where he takes a break from scaring the hell out of people to embellish the fun he and other horror greats have had scaring the hell out of people. It was intended to be the pilot for a TV show that Showtime paid for, but never ordered a whole series of. It’s an anthology show in the vein of Tales from the Crypt, and it’s a lot of fun.

The first story is the only real weakness of the film for me. It’s so painfully contrived, and if it had a bit more comedic timing and camp like the rest of the film, those contrivances might have worked in its favor. The second story seems like something out of a different movie entirely, until the disturbing reveal at the end. And the final installment, directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) was also enjoyable in the familiar, axe-murderer, drive-in-movie sort of way.

But despite the weaknesses, it’s worth it to see the many cameos. You know that Carpenter is not only a brilliant horror filmmaker, but also a highly respected one as well. He would have to be to get Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, Roger Corman and Tobe Hooper all in this movie! It’s like the who’s who of modern horror. And Carpenter himself narrates in a performance that was probably inspired by Beetlejuice, and with some snappy dialogue.

4. They Live (1988)

Subgenres: Sci-fi, Alien, Social Science, Comedy

Availability: putlocker

This is another Carpenter flick that developed a cult following, but did poorly upon its release. The fact that the film was critiquing Reaganomics in a time when Reaganomics was still popular might have had a lot to do with that.  But there's more to the film than its economic theory, which I personally disagree with (no one would argue, say, that Carpenter, being one of the goons theoretically profiting from such a premise, is doing anything wrong).

But leaving all that aside, I still find this film entertaining. The famous bubble-gum line is hilarious, the fight scene between Nada and Armitage feels so authentically simple, and you're never bored, even until the credits roll. 

My favorite moment in the film, though, is the moment Roddy Piper's individualistic drifter character realizes that aliens are running things. It happens early, and his response is to chuckle, like he's always suspected it, and to say, "It figures it would be something like this." This movie moves along pretty quickly, and it's such good fun.

3. The Prince of Darkness (1987)
Subgenres: Religious, Sci-fi, Zombie
Availability: vidbux

This is another one of Carpenter’s under-rated ventures into horror. After Starman, which was a legitimate but unsuccessful effort to gain prominence as a maker of science fiction with mass market appeal (such as the very similar ET), he apparently wanted to return to good old fashioned B-movie fun. And I’m grateful for it.

This movie is one of the best marriages I’ve ever seen of a legitimate, religious horror film about the Apocalypse, and high-level science fiction. The scientists in the film do their sciency thing long enough to convince us that demons are real and that we all missed the point of religion. Evil is not an intangible inner struggle, it is a physical substance that exists in the space between the things science has discovered. Oh, and Jesus was an extraterrestrial sent to warn us about it.

Once again, though, Carpenter takes what sounds like a hokey premise on paper, and translates it to something truly scary and bizarre. There is lots of foreboding music, horrifying set pieces, zombies that turn into bugs, and Alice Cooper. I won’t say that everything in this film makes sense, but it’s the sort of film that you can’t look away from. The last film that had a soundtrack this filled with the essence of cosmic dread was Contagion, so if you’ve seen that film, you know what this one’s like. It’s not Carpenter’s most accessible film, but true horror fans should definitely check it out.

2. Halloween (1978)
Genres: Horror, Thriller, Slasher
Availability: Youtube, Putlocker (better quality)

The mother of all slasher films will always be Psycho, but the film that set the standard for all the tropes used in modern slasher films was without question Halloween. It came before Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and all the rest. And you may be disappointed in me, but I hadn’t seen this film at all until I wrote this blog. That’s a whole, miserable childhood without Mike Myers to spook me into believing in the Boogeyman. 

Having seen all of Carpenter's horror films, you could almost say that Michael Myers' psychosis is just another manifestation of the cosmic horror that exists all around us. He takes great pains to set up the plausibility of the scenario, just like good science fiction does, and then it is all downhill. 

For a film that made the rules that are still followed in this genre, there is surprisingly little violence or gore. But all the conventions are there: sexually promiscuous teens, the detective hot on the trail (but ultimately useless), the virtuous and virginal Final Girl, the vegetable knife, and of course the mask. There’s always a mask. I really enjoyed this movie, and I think it still holds up today. 

1. The Thing (1982)
Genres: Sci-fi, Apocalypse, Alien
Availability: Putlocker (free, but you have to close some popups)

Ok, here’s a confession: I really used this blog as an excuse to talk about this movie. This has always been in my top 5 favorite horror movies of all time, and it still is. Not only did this terrify me as a child, but it still holds up. I get chills every time I watch it.

A lot of people don’t think of this film as being part of the Apocalypse genre, but Carpenter has said himself that he thinks of it as being the first in his “Apocalypse” trilogy (the other two being Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness). This is why Carpenter was so ahead of his time. Nowadays, when we think Apocalypse, we think asteroids, superviruses and zombies. But Carpenter did with this film what he does best: strip a story to it’s barest essentials. It’s a bunch of dudes trapped on an Antarctic station with a shapeshifting alien that could end all life on Earth if it makes it off the continent. That’s pretty damn Apocalyptic.

My favorite thing about the film is the monster FX. The least interesting (and, thankfully, least utilized) technique used in the film is stop motion. All the really cool stuff, however, was done with pretty much every practical mould and model you could make. For a fan of old-school, in-camera special effects, the ones used in this film are just delightful, and still hold up today. You would never see a film this creatively executed in today’s CGI-dominated industry. I could go on and on about this film, but I won’t. If you see no other horror film on this list, see this one. 

Dog-Thing says Happy Halloween!

Singing And Dancing With Ghosts And Zombies: A (Tragically Incomplete) Look At Bollywood Horror

Today is Diwali, which is the biggest holiday in India. So Happy Diwali! 

I made a special effort to review Bollywood films because the closest analog to Halloween in India is Naraka Chaturdasi (also known as Kali Chaudas and many other names). It falls on the second day of Diwali, which is a five-day festival that celebrates happiness, rebirth, and the triumph of good over evil. 

Diwali is huge. It's like Easter, July 4th, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all rolled into one five-day holiday. Naraka Chaturdasi was technically yesterday (Wednesday), but the main celebration of Diwali is going on today.

It’s hard for me to really speak with authority on the traditions practiced during Diwali or, in particular, on Naraka Chaturdasi. Part of this is because, being that India is a huge country, these traditions vary from region to region. It is the part of the festival where certain observers of the holiday ward off evil spirits with things like Rangoli patterns. In the small West Indian state of Goa, the people even burn effigies of Narakusura, the demon that was defeated by Krishna and Kali, to further symbolize good destroying evil. 

Kali: The Mother of all show-offs.

For those who know nothing about Bollywood, the most important thing to know is that it’s BIG. Like, Makes Titanic Look Like A Tugboat big. It’s also incorrectly assumed to represent the whole of Indian cinema, when in fact it is just one of many film industries in India. The word is a portmantau of “Bombay” and “Hollywood,” because it’s based in Bombay.

India actually produces more films than America (if you can believe it), and Bollywood films have more viewers than Hollywood. Indian films also make more money in America than films from any other country producing non-English-speaking films. And the popularity of these films is only growing.

If you have ever seen a Bollywood film, you’ve probably seen a lot of singing and dancing, with stories that involve lots of action, romance, comedy and (oddly) kidnappings! But these are actually “masala” films, which is just one genre out of many genres in India. They are so-named because, like the mix of spices, the films are a blend of many genres. They are also typically 3-hours long, so you’re kinda committing to an evening when sitting down to watch one.

Horror is a popular genre as well, as it turns out. There are so many that if you watch one a day, it may take you years to see them all. The ones I was able to actually find subtitles for and review were all pretty popular masala films, too. At least I think they are. 

Something that is true even of the films I tried to watch is that the biggest monster in Bollywood films is without a doubt the ghost. Being a people with very religious roots, the ghost story is as popular for them as zombies are for Americans right now. 

Here’s something interesting, though: Because the ghosts in these stories manifest physically and, in one case at least, become resurrected, you could say that zombies are a staple in Indian horror as well. The funny thing is, though, that there’s no Hindi word for zombie. 

I know it’s sad, but when it’s around Halloween and you hear about a country that has no word for zombie, it’s like finding out that some people have never seen snow. It just breaks your heart. 

Don't tell Sad Zombie. It might crush him.

Anyways, one of the biggest differences you notice between American ghost stories and Bollywood ghost stories is that all of the back story is given to you at the beginning. American ghost stories tend to be more investigative, like a detective story, whereas a Bollywood story is more like a parable, like the Prodigal Son.

Another big thing (I already mentioned) is that these ghosts can take physical form, and are not simply possessing bodies like in The Exorcist or The Shining. They are monsters that bite and kill, and sometimes they enslave people like traditional voodoo zombies used to.

This entry is going to be short, because I didn’t have enough time to find a copy of the other Bollywood horror films I wanted to look at, at least not with subtitles. It’s a shame, I know.  And considering how huge Bollywood is, I’m actually kind of surprised that this was a challenge at all.

So check out these three films. At some point in the future, I will revisit Indian cinema, and I’ll probably look at it by region. Until then, here are some spooky movies, courtesy of Kali And The Coffin-shakers.

Nagin (1976)
Subgenres: Fantasy, Folk Tale, Thriller
Availability: Youtube
Directed by: Rajkumar Kohli

Some might not call this a horror movie, but I think it is. It is the story of a mythical snake-woman who avenges the death of her lover. A group of six men are targeted, and one by one, she seduces them and kills them. 

What is interesting about the story is not so much the suspense of seeing if they stop her, but in the various ways in which she tricks them and ambushes them. At one point, she convinces a man to give into her by appealing to his upbringing as a poor man. The story is not just about some angry female spirit, but seems to be saying something about the various flaws and moral weaknesses in men. 

The other thing that's kinda trippy about this film is the production design. The sets and wardrobe all seem to be heavily influenced by 60's American trends and psychedelia. Overall, I thought this film was fun, even with the low production quality and cheap special effects. You know me and my love for cheap FX.

Jaani Dushman (1979)
Subgenres: Ghost, Musical, Melodrama, Comedy
Availability: Veoh

Directed by: Rajkumar Kohli

Another film by Kohli, this film was a huge hit in India, despite facing some resistance from the censor boards. It’s spawned a few sequels and one remake, but is still consider not just a classic horror film in India, but one of the great Bollywood films period.

If you watch the first thirteen minutes and are not totally hooked, there just might be something wrong with you. It has the familiar travelers-with-a-flat-tire-seek-help-in-spooky-mansion trope, but director Rajkumar Kohli makes it his own. It’s complete with the wind-swept and stormy sets, highly melodramatic music and cheesy over-acting for which Bollywood films are famous. 

Oh, and it has the creepy Kali-Ma dude from The Temple of Doom.

Where have I seen you before?
Do you sacrifice around here often?

There’s very little time to breath during the opening sequence. When the spirit living in the house explains that he killed his betrothed because she was planning to sleep with another man on their wedding night, he became forever a monster. His face appears in a large picture frame using (probably) rear projection, then he appears again, also (probably) using rear projection. 

The old-school special effects are also used wonderfully whenever the possessed person turns into a monster. Some might regard these effects as being bad, but I think it makes these scenes super creepy. In fact, one of the disappointments in the final scene is that these effects are not utilized as much, so it looks like a man in a monster suit. 

But the really innovative film technique is the quick editing, because it marries perfectly with the acting. At several points throughout the movie, the spirit of the murderer flips out whenever he sees a Bride to be in her red wedding dress. It accompanies a rapid series of zooms, creating lots of tension. 

There’s a lot to love, but like the other films on this list, you may have to love Bollywood to enjoy this whole film. Throughout the film, a series of awful arranged marriages end as the monster picks off the brides one by one during the procession to the wedding. A very funny outsider character in the form of a crazy schemer provides something of a Greek chorus, occasionally breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience directly. And best of all for an Alice in Wonderland lover like myself are all the Mad Hatter jokes made at the expense of a village that begins to look like something out of Salem.

I wish the relationships were a bit clearer, but that might be due to the fast pace, and I can only read subtitles so fast. At least one of the brides died before I realized who she was supposed to marry in the first place, so oops on that one. But overall, this movie was a lot of fun. Especially the beginning.

Purana Mandir (1984)
Subgenres: Ghost, Zombie, Religious
Availability: Youtube
Directed by: Tulsi and Shyam Ramsay

No list of Bollywood horror films would be complete without at least one film by the Ramsay brothers. They are perhaps the most well-known horror filmmakers in India, and because they churned out films as rapidly as Roger Corman, there are many of them. But several sources have suggested that Purana Mandir is, if not their best, at least the best example of their style. One blogger describes it as “the horror film of Bollywood.”

The story begins 200 years ago, when a demon named Saamri is captured by a lord and then beheaded. His body is buried behind a temple, while his head is locked up in chains and protected with the Trident of Shiva. But before he is beheaded, he curses the lord so that none of his female heirs survive child birth, and that if his head and body are one day reconnected, that the lord’s dynasty would end.

This movie proves that there’s nothing more romantic than slaying a demon in order to woo a girl. The songs in this movie seemed very eclectic for a Bollywood film, and there were some genuinely scary moments. The poor girl in the film seemed to suffer the bulk of the scares, so much so that I even started to wonder why the men always seemed to disappear right before the demon shows up. 

Top sign you're in a horror movie: The literal blood bath.

Some of the subplots are a little distracting and pointless, but one of them was at least disturbing in a good way. Towards the end, as the pretty young people are trying to find the recently resurrected Saamri and kill him, a cult shows up out of nowhere. They want to sacrifice the heroine and her lover to Kali, and then a super creepy Bollywood dance number happens. It might be the most interesting and original scene in the movie, even though I’m not really sure why it’s in there.

Overall, the film feels more like a genuine horror film with some musical elements added in. Other than the creepy cult song, the non-lyrical music is way more interesting than the songs. It’s intense, like an Argento soundtrack. There isn’t as much humor in this film as others on this list, but it’s fun to watch. It’s different. And I'm pretty sure some shots in Indiana Jones were totally ripped from this movie.

***

The films I have yet to see, but want to, are: Raat, Bhoot, Vaastu Shastra and Raaz. If you find any of those films with subtitles, send me a link!

Summoning The Dead, And Crazy Gentlemen With Scalpals: Russian Horror (part 2)

The Russian horror films I looked at in Part 1 were fun and big, but true horror fans might prefer this second list. It includes the artsier and more underground variety of horror films, some of which are so extreme and gruesome they might even give Tarantino nightmares. 

I’m not sure how to describe them, though. When I looked at French horror last time, I found the existence of an aesthetic that actually had a name. But I knew right off the bat that I wouldn’t be able to say the same for Russian horror because it would take less time to watch every Russian horror film that has ever been made than it would to watch the last season of American Horror Story.

Some of the movies on this list have things in common, and they are the things that are distinctly Russian. But what to call them?

They’re not Constructivist, because artifacts of modernity (cars, cameras, bomb shelters, etc) are usually regarded as sources of horror in these films, not praise. Constructivism also, being a Soviet propagandist aesthetic, favors order over chaos, and it lacks appeals to emotion. If anything these films are anti-Constructivist.

The emphasis on time and movement in films like the original Viy and in the films of Alexander Sokurov are somewhat Impressionistic. But guys like Sokurov would probably argue that, because the films exist for their own sake (he’s even gone so far as to say that the audience is irrelevant), they are probably counter to what Impressionism is about. 

Impressionism wants you to be aware at every moment that you are watching a movie, whereas these Russian films, if they want anything, it’s that you get lost in them. And this tradition of transcendent cinema in Russia is pretty well-suited for horror, if you think about it.

What I actually think these films recreate is old school Surrealism viewed through the lens of Russia’s existing legacy of Russian Symbolism. And as with any Symbolist movement, the truth is buried in metaphor and cannot be unearthed except through constant and close observation. It’s not cryptic, it’s just indirect. 

Russian Symbolism in particular really likes the color blue because of its connection to the heavens, so you see it everywhere. It’s as if the piece of art exists in another, transcendent plane of existence. It’s not sensual or emotional, it’s interested in your soul. And it’s deep as hell. 

When you combine that with Surrealism, an artistic style whose latency has to do with subconscious projections of our innermost desires and fears, it makes sense. I won’t go too much into all of that, but it’s definitely there, and it’s pretty bizarre.

At this point, I can think of at least one old college professor or two that might have already thrown a book at me by now were he reading this. But Surrealism is the closest analogue to what I know. I am a disciple of Lynch, after all.

But enough of me butchering art theory, onto the movies.

Viy (1967)

Subgenres: Fantasy, Folk Tale, Comedy, Religious

Availability: Youtube

Mosfilm was able to produce the first horror film in Russia by calling it a “folk tale,” which was permissible in the Soviet Union because folk tales were considered a part of Russian heritage (sorta), even if some censors disagreed.

This film was so much fun to watch, and I’m pretty sure it’s a comedy. It took me a while to figure the film out, and I think I can safely say that it is literally one big joke. The story is structured like a joke, with an actual punch-line at the end. Throughout the movie, one drunk seminarian is compelled to pray for a witch for three nights to save her soul. No one’s even really sure if he can do it, and a lot of the comedy comes from this.

The film has the comic feel of Evil Dead, the cartoonish farce of Monty Python, and what I believe to be a very cryptic Russian in-joke involving animals who are somehow onto us humans. But one thing is certain, the final ten minutes is worth the price of admission. (If you wanna cheat, you can go watch it on Youtube, but I won’t give you the link. No sir!)

But the old-school special effects were totally up my alley. I didn’t expect it, first of all, but it was also terrifying in that way only good horror movies are. Frankly, I’m amazed this film was even made. After all, it’s not just kinda sorta horror. It’s horror. 

So, um, we were trying to make a good entrance, but we kinda got a little stuck.

This is fantasy horror, and were it not for making the whole film feel like a joke based on an already-unbelievable folk story (from a Russian perspective, anyway), the Soviet film code might have prevented us from having this wonderful gem in the vaults. This film was also remade as Evil (2006), and recently as Viy (2014), which I review in Part 1.

Agony (1975)

Subgenres: Historical, Psychological

Availability: Youtube (Part 1 and Part 2)

It’s probably not surprising that one of the first horror films in Russia also happened to be a biopic about Rasputin. It took director Elem Klimov 9 years and several rewrites to finish the film, and another 10 years before the Soviet censors allowed the film to be shown in Russia for the first time in 1985. It was not the only film that put him in the cross-hairs of the censors. 

Though the film portrays him as a lunatic, which is in keeping with Communist ideology, the Communist authorities banned the film because it portrayed the Czar as merely weak and somewhat sympathetic (as opposed to downright evil). It also suggests that the Bolsheviks were not a big part of the Imperial family’s demise. This is actually true, they didn’t have that much of an impact, having in reality only become really active a year after the events of the film. But you know how it is with government censors and history.

In any case, Agony is a wonderful psychological horror film about one of the most terrifying personages of the twenty-first century. His influence over the Czar’s military strategy and over the Czarina’s home could be described as hypnotic or, as one could still interpret with ease after the credits roll, as being supernatural in origin. 

One scene in particular lets us in on the hypnosis, and a key ingredient is fear. In real life, everyone will stand and watch a lunatic hurt people, and they will do nothing if they are afraid of him. 

But his influence over these apathetic followers is very creepy, and you just want someone to stop him, or at least say something. This makes his notoriously drawn-out assassination all the more intriguing (even though his real life death was far more elaborate and painful than the one in the film). 

As a film, it could have benefited from better pacing. But the sets and music are wonderful, and the performance of Rasputin is truly terrifying. Western filmmakers might have taken his madness and cruelty further, but I enjoyed this version. It was just on this side of believable, and that makes it even scarier.

The Green Elephant (1999)

Subgenres: Z movie, Trash cinema, Extreme

Availability: Youtube

This underground Russian trash film is without a doubt the most disturbing film I’ve ever seen. It’s not for everybody, but then again I’m not sure if it’s for anybody. I'm reviewing it, though, in the off chance you're into this sort of thing.

It seems pretty clear that it’s about the tendency of war (or any situation that exposes people to extended periods of torture and cruelty) to turn people into monsters, and we see the monstrosity in all its detail. Anytime you’ve ever had a conversation about the evil things that men are capable of, imagination is all you need. 

But this film shows us how a person will regress into an infantile form of madness, and the performances depicting the most beastly, animalistic behaviors in men feel all too terrifyingly real.

Two Soviet Army soldiers are locked in a cell and begin to go mad in diverging ways: the one becoming a self-depricating and submissive infant, and the other a melting pot of pure rage. The film goes for the gross-out by showing us things like defacation, cannibalism and everything in between, all as if to say, “Cruelty begets insanity, which begets more cruelty.” The final twenty minutes takes this to its extreme conclusion.

And did I mention, this film was made by a woman?

Visions of Suffering

Subgenres: Experimental, Surreal, Supernatural, Psychological
Availability: Torrent only

This film is one of a few powerful horror movies from diamond-in-the-rough spookster Audrey Iskanov. Clear on the other side of the continent, there is a city on the Northeastern border of China nearly 4,000 miles from Moscow called Khabarovsk where he’s making some of the craziest horror movies you'll ever see in your life.

It is not surprising that a brilliant filmmaker would get a jumpstart on telling truly horrifying stories so far away from Moscow. Audrey Iskanov is Russia’s Cronenberg. His films are best described as ruthlessly inventive. They are difficult to watch, and he sometimes ventures so far out from convention that they become tedious in places, and most of this is due to undisciplined editing. 

But I would be lying if I didn’t think Iskanov wasn’t one of the most talented and original horror filmmakers living today, and he is only getting better with each film.

I had to do quite a bit of searching to find Visions of Suffering, but thank God I found a torrent of it. It’s one of the most original horror movies I’ve seen, and one that gives David Lynch a run for his money.

Hi.

The movie is the story of a guy who has nightmares while studying death (not so surprising), and some very bizarre happenings surrounding him and the disreputable dudes at a nightclub that his girlfriend hangs out with for some reason. The main guy has horrible dreams, but his reality is not much of a departure – his whole life is a nightmare.

That all doesn’t sound very original, but the execution is what make this film work. At first, I didn’t think I was going to like it at all. For ten minutes, all I imagined I would experience for the next two hours was some direct-to-video dreck that some pretentious film school drop out thought was impressive. How wrong I was.

Maybe that’s overstating it. Here: try this sample. If you like that, you’ll love this movie. 

Parts of this movie are truly terrifying, I’m not gonna lie. It’s like a really bad drug trip, with sequences of psychedelia in the vein of that famous sequence from 2001. 

But the film is not just original because of its camera techniques and use of multi-layered, asynchronous sounds (and a prog rock soundtrack a la Dario Argento films), but in the fluidity of the amorphous other. Whatever your favorite monster is, it’s here.

I’ve never seen a movie that utilized so many different kinds of monsters (and some that may not even exist, to be honest). There’s vampires (the old-school, Nosferatu kind, that is), zombies, aliens, incubi and succubi, parasites, machines, demons, bugs, scarecrows, and even just plain old rapey-lookin’ dudes in berets. The probably-alien, tick-looking things alone will give me nightmares, as will the flying, metal, weaponized gizmos that blow holes in your head Phantasm-style. 

The film brings together so many different elements into an experimental, Lynchian dreamscape, and to me most of it works. If you can get past some of the more low-budget moments and appreciate some of the things this film tries, I hope you’ll give it a whirl. I would watch this film again, though I probably won’t until I forget about the tick-looking things. Spoon doesn’t like ticks.

Philosophy of a Knife

Subgenres: Shockumentary, Mondo, Experimental, Extreme
Availability: Youtube (only Part 2, and it's not subtitled), or Torrent

Even though Iskanov’s next movie demonstrates more artistic vision and greater filmmaking mastery than the last, it is still even harder to watch than Visions of Suffering. Using an interview with a real-life WWII Vet, the film re-enacts science experiments that were performed on people at the infamous Unit 731.

The interview subject tells us story after story of what he knew about the infamous Japanese internment camp, where Japanese soldiers experimented on Russian soldiers. Though he didn’t witness any of the experiments first hand, he is our guide, and the only relief we get between scenes of torture.

This sort of thing doesn’t sound like fun to watch, and it’s not. But as a lover of cinema and all it’s capable of, I have to say I found some parts fascinating. The scenes tend to start out based in realism, but then they become something else. Other objects take on symbolic significance, and then it will completely let go and become surreal. In one scene, a particularly brutal experiment takes place in juxtaposition with a nurse cleaning the skin and flesh off of a human head. 

There... all better.

We see each and every gory step in the process, and its cross-cutting with the experiment made me immediately think of the French horror classic Eyes Without A Face. That film is also a surreal film about the loss of identity created by the trauma of war. 

There is a diary narration by a nurse at the facility, but the real story within the story is a soldier that begins to empathize for some of the prisoners. It becomes particularly heart-wrenching when the unit is forced to close and, not wanting to dehumanize her further, the soldier struggles with whether to let a prisoner go free. It’s one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. 

There are deep questions being raised in this film, if you can sit through it. I should also mention it is four hours long, too. And because I’m a glutton for punishment, I watched it all. I strongly feel that this film could have been much shorter, because the human element comes too little too late in the film. I think if you watch the first hour and the last hour, you probably won’t miss much. 

Faust (2008)

Subgenre: Fantasy, Surreal, Religious
Availability: Youtube, Netflix

Finally, this movie is probably the most accessible Russian art horror film. It is entirely in German, and it won the Golden Lion award, which is the highest award given at the Venice Film Festival (the oldest film festival in the world). This version of the German folk tale was made by Alexander Sokurov, best know for his impressive film Russian Ark. 

Russian Ark is a 90-minute movie filmed in one single take, and includes nearly 900 extras all wearing period garb. It’s the kind of thing that’s so impressive, it makes you re-evaluate your life decisions. I mention that film, because it sheds light on why his version of Faust is so interesting. 

Using time in such a unique way is not an accident for someone like Sokurov. He was Tarkovsky’s protege, and many regard Sokurov as being his spiritual heir. 

Tarkovsky, for those not familiar, is probably the most famous and accomplished Russian filmmaker, second perhaps only to Eisenstein. Ingmar Bergman believed Tarkovsky was the greatest filmmaker in the world in his day, and believed that he had figured out the language of film like no one else.

Film communicates with two things: time and movement. Those are two things that no other medium has. The closest would be music, and Werner Herzog has even said that film has more in common with music than any other medium, including photography.

Like Russian Ark, the story never stops. It has a stream-of-consciousness structure which doesn’t change its pace in any major way. It just continues, as the title character spirals outward into insanity. Sokurov doesn’t really seem to be interested in the metaphysical questions going on in the original myth, but looks at Faust more as a symbol for the great anti-hero. The devil doesn't really corrupt Faust so much as awaken a pre-existing ambition for evil.

If he set out to ask what led to the sort of madness that drives despots like Hitler to do what they do, he seems to be suggesting that the origin lies in our endless quest for rationality. Our questioning nature and curiosity gave way to the modern age, and what started out innocent enough ended in the loss of our soul. 

In fact, the first image of the film is of Faust cutting the man open to find his “soul.” Whether Sokurov is saying that the quest to find the soul is pointless because spirituality doesn’t exist, or if he is just saying that looking for it in the physical world leads one to maddening ends, I don’t now. 

But that's literally just one theme in this storyThere's so much to love in the film. For my money, the creepiest scene in the movie appears towards the end, and involves some walking dead people, a naked woman, some cats, and lots of uncomfortable silence. 

This is a puzzle film, and it’s a joy to figure out. The film goes by pretty quickly, and the character’s descent into lunacy is very well conceived and executed. I found the ending very satisfying, too, even if I don’t entirely understand everything that happened. The acting is wonderful, as are the music and set pieces. This is by far my favorite Russian horror film.