Local Shops for Local People #1: Club Barber (Interview and Photographs)

Club Barber, owned and operated by Brody and Emma, is a relatively new barber shop in Grimsby which caters to providing an experience beyond a simple hair cut – including video games in the waiting area and semi-regular events featuring music and input from a variety of businesses.

In February, I visited Club Barber and spoke with Brody, spending some time in the establishment and photographing Brody at work with a client.

Like many similar businesses, Club Barber was disrupted by the nationwide lockdown but has since reopened with an expansion of the team.

The text of my interview with Brody is as follows.

PL: ‘How old is your business? What are your long-term aims for the business?’

Brody: ‘We opened Club Barber at the start of December [2019]. We plan to offer a different experience that people have never seen or experienced before when coming to get a haircut. We offer hot and cold drinks, we have an XBox with a few different games, we have a dart board, we play up-to-date music and have the latest magazines. We will also be hosting events where we will be collaborating with other local companies. Keep a look out on our social media platforms: Facebook and Instagram. We will soon be launching an online booking system so our clients can book which barber they would like to cut their hair, on a certain day and at a certain time. In the not so distant future, we would like another shop in the local area, and eventually expand out of town to other towns and cities. We are chiefly using social media to get our name out there as much as possible and to showcase what services we have to offer’.

PL: ‘What challenges have you faced in terms of establishing the business: for example, in terms of local authority regulations, attitudes of local residents)?’

Brody: ‘The main challenge we faced was with the local authority and having to wait for long periods of time in order to find out things such as acceptance of planning permision, etcetera. Just for us to change the outside front of the shop we had to wait 12 weeks. We were not even allowed to touch the paint colour!’

PL: ‘What response have you had from the local community? How would you describe your relationship with the local market?’

Brody: ‘The local residents have been very supportive and have helped us out massively, spreading the word and becoming return customers. We have not had any issues with anyone in the local area; we have had nothing but support’.

PL: ‘How could businesses like yours be better supported? What could help you to thrive?’

Brody: ‘Free local advertisements from the local paper would be great for new local businesses; also shops in the local area letting us put a small poster up. Some of them do, but some of the bigger chains don’t’.

Visit Club Barber on their website, Facebook page or Instagram account.

Ten Favourite Filmmakers

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Andy Milligan

Abel Ferrara

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Takeshi Kitano

Pete Walker

Sam Fuller

John Cassavetes

Satyajit Ray

Sam Peckinpah

Charles Burnett

(Okay, then, slightly more than ten 😉 .)

Lockdown Films – Part One.

Or; an utterly non-definitive list of films that may be relevant to the current lockdown.

(Though currently, the opening sequence from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968, feels like the perfect metaphor for everything.)

Where possible, I’ve included in my suggestions links to where films may currently be available on streaming platforms in the UK, for ease of access.

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

‘One has to make a living, at least until the plague claims you’.

Bergman’s tragic-comic tale of the encounter between a knight, Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow), returning from the Crusades and Death himself, during an era in which the plague is ripping through Europe, has a lofty reputation and first-time viewers are often surprised to discover that is incredibly watchable.

Beginning with Block challenging Death to a game of chess (‘The condition is, I live as long as I resist you. If I conquer you, you free me’), the story broadens in scope to paint a picture of various facets of medieval society, teased out and amplified by the constant threat of the plague: a traveling troupe of performers who, out of economic need, must still travel from place to place and perform amidst the spread of the plague; a presumed witch sentenced to be burnt at the stake by a group of religious zealots. Throughout, Bergman returns to the ongoing chess game between Block and Death, using this as a metaphor for life itself. The film also benefits from superb black and white photography by cinematographer Gunnar Fischer.

The Seventh Seal is by turns deeply tragic and incredibly funny, Bergman’s control of the material exemplary; and it’s easy to see why, and how, he became one of the greatest filmmakers in cinema history.

(Available on the BFI Player and on Amazon.)

Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976)

‘What would this person be in the Third Reich?’

This strange little film from the inimitable German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder sees a married couple, the parents of a polio-stricken daughter, retreating to a country house with their respective extramarital lovers – accompanied by their maid, her pretentious and sexually ambiguous son, the daughter and her nurse. In their own ‘lockdown’ in this isolated villa, this group’s multiple antagonisms reach a climax in some incredible verbal fireworks and emotional cruelty during a game of ‘Chinese roulette’ (which Fassbinder himself was known to play during parties). In Fassbinder’s world, every relationship is a battleground and every conversation is a firefight.

The photography, with a prowling camera and obtuse compositions, makes the most of the limited space, and the sense of claustrophobia is amplified by weird electronic doodlings on the soundtrack.

(Available to watch on the BFI Player and Amazon.)

Seeds (Andy Milligan, 1968)

‘It’s all in the family’.

A misanthrope whose anti-human sensibilites are deliriously documented in Jimmy McDonough’s superb 2001 biography The Ghastly One, Andy Milligan made Seeds in ’68, a year of cultural turmoil across the globe. Milligan had little interest in the mechanics of cinema: he was primarily fascinated by the theatre. This shows in his films, which are often photographed in a seemingly haphazard way and incredibly rough around the edges – but this arguably adds to their nihilistic charm.

Seeds focuses on a crippled, alcoholic matriarch who gathers her various family members together over Christmas. In this isolated house, the guests are murdered one by one by an unseen assailant. However, the mystery plot is secondary to the incredible verbal cruelty and utterly insane tantrums that the various characters throw, the cruel matriarch taking delight in humiliating her various family members. Women are predatory; sex is a bargaining chip, used as a tool to create coercion or to achieve dominance. Seduction turns to violence and vice versa; sex and brutality are virtually indistinguishable. The characters run the gamut: a maniacal youth, thrown out of school; a fickle priest who is far from devoted to the cloth; incestuous siblings who play games with one another and their lovers.

The distributors recut the film, retitling it Seeds of Sin, inserting some explicit footage and turning it into a sex picture, in the process damaging the flow of Milligan’s narrative. However, these added sex scenes jar wildly with the main thrust (if you’ll pardon the pun) of the film: Milligan’s films are generally anti-sex, representing coitus as degrading and filthy. Milligan’s original cut has since been reconstructed and is available on an excellent Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome in the States.

(The film is available in its entirety on Youtube.)

Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead (Giuseppe Vari, 1971)

‘Now you can’t buy anything with your money’.

Giuseppe Vari’s Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead (Prega il Morto e Ammazza il Vivo) came relatively late in the evolution of the western all’italiana/Spaghetti Western – certainly at the fag end of its boom period, during an era in which filmmakers were trying to imbue the Euro-Western with something ‘new’. Shoot the Living‘s ‘gimmick’ is its open fascination with the paradigms of post-war films noir and, particularly, John Huston’s stonking Key Largo (1948), which was a clear influence on the script for Vari’s picture.

Taking place almost entirely within a stagecoach station in which tensions simmer and allegiances shift, Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead features a typically stoic performance from Klaus Kinski in the main role. The film is played out largely in tense close-ups of the actor’s faces; the script is quiet, resorting to gunplay only when necessary. The minimalism in the locations is amplified by some inventive photography. (It deserves to be seen B-I-G, not on a small screen; and if you’re watching fillums on a mobile device, what kind of Philistine are you?)

(The film is available to watch in is entirety on Youtube.)

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)

‘It is when I see others degraded that I rejoice knowing it is better to be me than the scum of the people. Whenever men are equal […] happiness cannot exist [….] In all the world no voluptuousness flatters the senses more than social privilege’.

Pasolini’s notoriously challenging and often-banned last film, Salo revolves around a group of degenerate fascists, representatives of the ruling classes, who take the concept of ‘working from home’ to its extreme in the final days of the Second World War by retreating to a villa near the small town of Salo (the location of Mussolini’s headquarters). Once there, in their own self-imposed ‘lockdown’ as their regime crumbles outside, they subject a group of young people to a catalogue of abuse. Pasolini’s film is a denouncement of power and the manner in which it turns its Other into a commodity to be exploited through labour, divided and turned upon one another, and used and abused for the benefit of the senses and desires of the privileged.

Salo is based on the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, a book whose notoriety disguises the fact that most commentators seem not to have read it. An incomplete manuscript, de Sade’s book is a litany of cruelties. Pasolini also took inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy, in terms of the four segments of the film (Antinferno, Circle of Manias, Circle of Shit, Circle of Blood). It’s a perenially relevant film; wherever there is inequality, Salo will continue to resonate.

(A pretty solid Blu-ray release is available from the BFI.)

Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

‘Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio’.

Charles Foster Kane practised self-isolation and social distancing before all the cool kids did it.

A savage critique of the power of the press, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane is both astonishing on a technical level – from the opening montage to the deep focus photography and extreme long takes when Kane retires to Xanadu – and also seems increasingly relevant as the years pass. Based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, at the heart of the film is a veiled Faustian pact: Kane’s wealth and power comes at the cost of his family. It’s a deal that impacts on his humanity. (Welles had of course directed and starred in the celebrated 1937 staging of Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus.)

(Available for rental on Amazon.)

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

‘Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days’.

If you’re trapped in a house with your family and they are driving you up the proverbial wall, you will find much to connect with in Carpenter’s film about a shapeshifting alien-as-virus that rips through an Antarctic research station, shattering trust and instilling paranoia.

A remake of Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby’s 1951 The Thing from Another World (or, rather, a closer adaptation of its source novella, J W Campbell Jr’s striking Who Goes There? from 1938), Carpenter’s film is graced with some beautifully-lit and composed widescreen photography by Dean Cundey. The film is also anchored by a decidedly lowkey performance from Kurt Russell as the story’s taciturn and reluctant hero, R J MacReady. ‘I just want to go up to my shack and get drunk’, indeed.

(Available for rental on Amazon.)

The Social Distance: Week Commencing 23rd of March, 2020

Having already been removed from work last week owing to the fact that I fall into a ‘high risk’ category, I had already had several days of ‘social distancing’ (read: quarantine) before the whole of the UK entered a state of lockdown on Monday, 23rd March 2020.

(Working from home – recording and editing lectures for my students)

Schools closed on the Friday previous, which meant that children are being homeschooled. My own children are studying their after-school martial arts classes (which are being organised wonderfully by Samurai Hearts in Grimsby) at a distance, with their sensei using online platforms to live stream their lessons every evening into the homes of the children who attend the dojo and after-school clubs. The Samurai Hearts team are also providing the children with Japanese lessons, again streamed online, twice a week.

The near-constant hand-washing, which the government has advised all citizens to practice in order to prevent transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is taking a toll on skin. Both of my sons are lathering their hands in moisturiser and wearing cotton gloves (not unlike the ones I use to handle my negatives) at various points of the day.

(Gloves worn over moisturised hands by my eldest son, to counteract the effects of near-constant handwashing on his skin)

On Wednesday, 26th of March, Prince Charles tested positive for the Coronavirus. The BBC news report showed Charlie shaking hands with the general public at a recent event (during which the future king may very well have been incubating the virus) like a 21st Century variant of Typhoid Mary.

My family have also been taking part in ‘Body Coach’ Joe Wicks’ attempt to situate himself as ‘the nation’s P.E. teacher’ via his daily broadcasts on his Youtube channel.

And, of course, there is downtime…

The Social Distance: Day One

It’s difficult to think of oneself as ‘vulnerable’. However, owing to varous medical factors – and chief among these is chronic asthma, with which I have suffered (and been hospitalised several times) since early childhood – I have been labelled as ‘high risk’ within the context of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. As a consequence, I have been advised by the UK government to practice ‘social distancing’ – which, like the refusal of the authorities to use the SARS-CoV-2 label to describe the pathogen itself, seems like an example of Orwellian doublespeak. What it means is that like many, many other individuals with similar chronic health conditions, I have been urged to quarantine myself – for my own safety. I am urged to stay approximately two metres away from other people, for fear of contracting SARS-CoV-2, a situation which could potentially lead to my death.

Homage to Koudelka

As I said above, it’s hard to think of yourself as ‘vulnerable’. I am what might be described as a ‘strapping’ chap, 6 feet in height (ironically the distance I am supposed to keep from other people), though of recent years I lean towards the corpulent persuasion. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I’m 40-something but still feel about 15 when I wake up – and, to be frank, I continue to feel about 15 throughout most of the day. But ‘vulnerable’ I am, and many of my friends and colleagues who have also been advised to practice ‘social distancing’ are similarly difficult to perceive as vulnerable or ‘high risk’.

I have personal experience of pneumonia, which it seems is the possible end-stage in the contraction of SARS-CoV-2. I broke my quarantine to speak with some students today, as they were expecting me to deliver a class and I thought it would be unprofessional not to speak with them, and I told them about my own experiences with pneumonia; though this experience did not lead me to place my foot on the threshold of death, it certainly resulted in me knocking on death’s door. My oxygen levels dropped dangerously, I was placed on pure oxygen, and I was left with scarring on my lung tissue as evidence of this encounter.

More recently, I have a much more traumatic experience of pneumonia. My father died in November of 2019, following his contraction of a mysterious illness which, though doctors were unable to diagnose or cure it, gave him a terrible fever and led to him developing pneumonia. As his lungs filled with fluid and the effects of the pneumonia were compounded by other underlying conditions (atrial fibrilation, COPD), doctors decided to place him on terminal sedation. I stayed by my dad’s side for five days whilst his body failed. One wonders, given the mysterious nature of the pathogen which infected my father and led to his death, whether this may have been SARS-CoV-2. Beyond the realms of possibility? I doubt it.

I have been told, in no uncertain terms, to avoid going to my workplace and to work from home. Yet my children are still attending school (at least, until the end of the school day tomorrow) and I have to take and collect my two young sons from their educational setting. Of course, today this resulted in me coming much closer than two metres to many, many people. Additionally, my wife must still go to work. By ‘self-isolating’ from my workplace, my risk of being infected has fallen – but it’s far from nil, given my family circumstances.

On the other hand, practising ‘social distancing’ will have numerous other effects. Unable to take on freelance work, I am now entirely reliant on the income from my teaching job, which as an employee on a fractional contract is relatively small (under £15,000). Things will be tough economically. They may also be tough in other ways. Certainly, self-isolation may have an effect on people’s mental health. I make no bones about the fact that I have previously suffered from anxiety and depression, and have been on medication for such; in fact, can one ever say that one recovers from such an affliction? (And, unlike some who experience anxiety and depression, I am more than happy to label it as an affliction.) That said, I’m an anti-social sort of person, so having time to myself and working from home could have other benefits.

Communication with other people will be predominantly atomised and virtual. Will this be enough? On the other hand, this phenomenon has inspired my creative impulses, and I have several projects that I wish to pursue during my period of quarantine – including developing some teaching resources that I have wanted to develop for a long time. This afternoon, on my way home, I took my Weltaflex medium format TLR (loaded with a roll of Ilford’s FP4 Plus) and shot some photographs that I have wanted to take for a long time; these will no doubt find their way into one of the projects I am now planning.

Oh, and I also realised that giving yourself a haircut isn’t as difficult as I’d always thought it would be. Who’dathunkit?

More to come in subsequent days, but take care and be well…

Film Diary: RE-ANIMATOR (Stuart Gordon, 1985)

‘I gave him life!’

There’s no doubt that Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) has become an iconic horror film. An immensely effective black comedy that is anchored by a wonderful performance from Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West (to which Bruce Abbott is required to perform as straight man Dan Cain, who assists West in his… necromantic adventures), in hindsight Gordon’s film seems to owe as much to vaudeville comedy double acts (if Dan Cain is Bud Abbott, Herbert West is Lou Costello) as it does to the horror genre.

There’s a hint of inter-generational conflict, the young and up-and-coming West, a student of the prestigious Dr Hans Gruber in Switzerland, being set against the prideful Dr Carl Hill (a marvelously perverse performance by David Gale). Hill is the funding magnet for Miskatonic University, and has a Nietzschean obsession with the will and its location in the brain; in the R-rated cut (which excises some of the film’s more outrageous mayhem and adds some expositional scenes that were omitted from Gordon’s preferred, unrated, cut), this obsession manifests itself in Hill’s well-practised ability to control the will of others through hypnosis. Meanwhile, Cain is trying to curry favour with Carl Halsey (Robert Sampson), the Dean of Miskatonic University and the father of Cain’s lover Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton).

It seems that the intention was for Cain to be the film’s protagonist, and although Cain is perhaps the film’s most morally well-intentioned character, as in all vaudeville pairings the ‘straight man’ often seems more than a little ‘flat’; most viewers probably work their way into the narrative through West. West is quite clearly looney-tunes (the R-rated version also adds a scene in which Cain finds West injecting himself with the reagent, with the ferocity of a true junkie), but thanks to the exuberance of Combs’ performance, it’s difficult not to sympathise with him. West is a truly revolutionary figure, like a Bakhtinian clown whose appearance is distruptive to hierarchies and models of authority. Early in the film, he is shown disrupting a lecture given by Dr Hill through the snapping of pencils. (This results in Hill admonishing West, telling him – in a line delivered wonderfully by David Gale – ‘Mr West, I suggest you get yourself a pen’.) In the film’s climax, West assembles a horde of reanimated corpses, all given to enacting their own will, who threaten to tear down the establishment (in a metaphorical sense, if not in a literal one), after Hill’s sexual obsession with Megan comes to a head (geddit?) in a scene that, in the post #metoo world, seems even more deliberately cringey than it was during the Eighties.

Megan is a more mercurial character. When West first approaches Cain, asking to rent a room in Cain’s house, Meg suggests Cain turn him down; out of economic necessity, Cain accepts West’s proposition, however. Meg’s instinctive doubts about West are, the narrative proves, well-founded: West, it seems, kills Cain’s beloved pet cat so that West may test his reagent on it, then kill it once again when it comes back to life; and West is also responsible for alienating Cain from Dean Halsey’s affections, leading Cain into disrepute through his association with West’s activities. However, on the other hand Meg is also given to manipulating Cain’s will through a combination of histrionics, nagging and sex.

In retrospect, Re-Animator is a film about the revolution and the carnival, will and desire, the self and the institution. Some of its boundless energy was captured in Gordon’s next Lovecraft adaptation, From Beyond (1986). Back in 2016, I wrote a lengthy review of the Arrow Video release of Brian Yuzna’s sequel, Bride of Re-Animator (1990), which can be found here.

Viewing Notes. This viewing was via the ‘integral’ cut of the film (running 104:55 mins) on the German Capelight Blu-ray release. The Blu-ray set also includes the unrated and R-rated edits of Re-Animator. The ‘integral’ cut uses the unrated cut as its base and inserts into this the expositional footage unique to the R-rated cut.

This was my first time watching the ‘integral’ cut of Re-Animator. Having first seen the film in about 1990 via the UK VHS release, which contained a heavily BBFC-censored version of the unrated cut, I didn’t see the scenes exclusive to the R-rated edit until I managed to get hold of the Elite Entertainment 10th Anniversary LaserDisc release in the mid/late 1990s. Seen in isolation, as they are presented on that old LaserDisc release, the scenes unique to the R-rated cut ‘work’ in their own ways, and at least one of them (the scene in which Cain finds West self-administering the reagent in order, ostensibly, to keep himself awake) should arguably have been included in the unrated cut. However, in truth the ‘integral’ cut drags owing to the inclusion of the scenes of Dr Hill hypnotising various personages; part of the appeal of the unrated cut is its almost breathless pace.

The Capelight Blu-ray presentation is very good, easily eclipsing the old US Blu-ray release from Image Entertainment. I have not yet seen the Arrow Video Blu-ray released in the States, so cannot comment on how the Capelight release compares with that presentation of the film.

2020-7

Film Diary: LA VERITE (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960)

‘Is she on trial for promiscuity or murder?’

Essentially a courtroom drama with extended flashbacks, La verite was the penultimate film of the great French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (if one discounts Clouzot’s unfinished L’enfer). Sadly, Clouzot’s approach to filmmaking was eclipsed in the early 1960s by the filmmakers of the nouvelle vague, who had dismissed Clouzot’s approach as an example of the cinema de papa (fuddy-duddy cinema); already, by the time of the production of La verite, Clouzot’s measured style seemed in stark contrast to the immediacy of films such as Godard’s A bout de souffle and Truffaut’s Les quatre cents coups.

In this context, La verite seems like an attempt to channel the inter-generational conflict within the filmmaking world. Dominique (Brigitte Bardot Bardot) is put on trial for the murder of her lover, Gilbert (Sami Frey, in a role that nearly went to Trintignant or Belmondo, among others). Most of the film takes place in a courtroom, where Dominique and others give evidence either for or against the allegation that she killed Gilbert; these witness statements are presented via extended flashbacks, each of which is like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle – and each of which casts the relationship between Dominique and Gilbert in a slightly different light. The overall effect is not dissimilar to Rashomon: which of these versions of events captures the ‘truth’ (la verite)?

The trial is presided over by middle-aged men who struggle to sympathise with Dominique. Clouzot takes pains to show the selecting of the jury, an all-male group who come to the trial with their own prejudices. At the start of the trial, one of the jury members asserts that Dominique is a ‘bitch’ who will ‘get away with it’. In the flashbacks, we see the flighty Dominique falling in love with Gilbert, an uptight and earnest music student. However, as the story progresses we come to see Gilbert as manipulative and borderline abusive. Dominique and Gilbert are eternally incompatible, and the older generation struggle to understand their tribulations – especially those of Dominique.

Bardot excels in her role, which was written for her following her rise to stardom in the late 1950s. Behind the scenes, events were just as traumatic as those in the story, paralleling the production of another film produced in 1960, John Huston’s The Misfits. Whilst La verite was being made, Clouzot’s wife Vera, who had co-written La verite, suffered a mental breakdown, and would die of a heart attack shortly after production was completed. Bardot’s husband Jacques Charrier also experienced a breakdown, when he discovered that Bardot was conducting an affair with her co-star Sami Frey. Charrier attempted suicide, and following a dispute with Charrier, Bardot attempted suicide also.

Viewing Notes. The Criterion Blu-ray release contains a superb presentation of the film, in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1. The 35mm monochrome photography is captured excellently on the disc, with defined midtones and balanced highlights and shadows. The French dialogue is presented via a lossless track and accompanied by optional English subtitles.

2020-6

Film Diary: LA NUIT DE LA MORT! / NIGHT OF DEATH! (Raphael Delpard, 1980)

‘What do you think could go on in a place like this?’

A French gore film with more than a passing resemblance to Jean Rollin’s early 1980s work – though given Rollin’s standing as one of the few French horror/gore filmmakers of the mid-20th Century, this comparison is admittedly difficult to avoid – Raphael Delpard’s La nuit de la mort! (Night of Death!) reworks Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ‘eat the rich’ into ‘eat the young’. When reserved, respectful Martine (Isabelle Goguey) takes a job in a retirement home, she is coached by brash Nicole (Charlotte De Turckheim). Initially, she is told that the clients’ good health is owing to a strict vegetarian diet, but as the story progresses Martine comes to realise that her elderly charges are consuming something much less traditional (ie, the internal organs of young women), resulting in an artificially elongated lifespan.

Like Rollin’s David Cronenberg-esque La nuit des traquees (Night of the Hunted, also 1980), La nuit de la mort! focuses on an institution which, behind its respectable facade, facilitates all sorts of debauchery. The film’s depiction of cannibalism situates it on a sliding scale of movies that deal with the theme of anthropophagy – from the cannibalism-as-savagery motif of the Italian cannibal movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s (eg, Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox, 1981) to the satirical depiction of cannibalism at the heart of institutions such as family life in Bob Balaban’s Parents (1989). Here, in Delpard’s picture, the devouring of human flesh is used not just as a metaphor for inter-generational conflict but is also depicted as a form of vampirism; its ritualistic consumption is a source of rejuvenation and, possibly, eternal life. In the film’s focus on elderly inhabitants of a retirement home that consume the young proletarian women who work there, La nuit de la mort! owes more than a smidgen to the Countess Bathory legend.

La nuit de la mort! contains a particularly memorable scene of evisceration in which a naked Nicole is butchered by the elderly patients in her care. A remarkably authentic-looking dummy torso is cut open and real offal removed from it. It’s a potent, gruesome scene that anticipates, later in the film, Martine’s discovery of her friend’s butchered corpse in a wardrobe.

Apparently, though she’s very good here, Goguey was never comfortable acting on screen and preferred to work behind the camera: Goguey acted as an assistant director for Claude Pierson, in the era of Pierson’s transition from softcore to hardcore sex pictures.

Viewing Notes. The Synapse DVD release runs for 94:17 mins and is presented in 1.66:1, with anamorphic enhancement. The 35mm-shot feature looks very good. The French soundtrack is accompanied by optional English subtitles.

2020-5

Film Diary: COMBAT SHOCK (Buddy Giovinazzo, 1980)

‘It all looks the same. I can’t tell one place from another [….] I can no longer tell where one torture ends and the next begins’.

Marrying the disturbed-Vietnam-veteran premise of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) with the oddball depiction of domestic pressures of David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), Buddy Giovinazzo’s Combat Shock begins with some unconvincing footage of the Vietnam war and soon journeys to America. Once back home, Frankie – alienated from his father after being declared MIA in Vietnam – struggles with crime, poverty, his nagging wife and their mutated baby which cries incessantly. (The baby’s horrifying appearance is, we are told, a product of Frankie’s exposure to chemical weapons during his time in Vietnam.)

Where the ‘Nam-set opening is unconvincing, looking for all the world like it was shot in woodland or a park (which, no doubt, was the case), the film’s street scenes have a cinema verite-style authenticity to them. We see people hustling and struggling to get by, lining up at a soup kitchen, and seeking escape through drugs. Every relationship in the film is based on exploitation and manipulation: friends exploit friends; lovers exploit lovers. Frankie’s wife nags him incessantly; Frankie reaches out to his estranged father, with the aim of acquiring some financial help, only to find that his father has lost his business and is now in a nursing home.

The film continually crosscuts Frankie’s experiences in Vietnam with his life after returning home – not just to suggest that Frankie is ‘haunted’ by his experiences in the combat zone, but seemingly to establish an equivalence between his torture there, at the hands of a defined and identifiable enemy, and the more covert and socially-acceptable abuse he suffers at home. ‘I go back every day, dad’, Frankie tells his father. The film’s final sequences have an apocalyptic finality to them, which consolidates the film’s depiction of contemporary America as a form of Purgatory.

Viewing Notes. The Arrow Video UK DVD release contains both the shorter Combat Shock cut (running a little under 92 mins) and the longer ‘director’s cut’, titled American Nightmare (running 96:52 mins). The 16mm-shot film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1. A second disc containing numerous extra features is included in the package.

2020-4