The Back of the Head of Dario Argento

I've noticed something in some of Argento’s movies, and I guess it's takes nerd to start noticing this, Argento’s fascination with the back of the head. Ok, we all know that there's shots of peoples head from the behind in almost all movies, but these shots are so distinctive. The shots a long and very clear and it feels like theres a purpose with them.

Do Argento want to tell us something?. Or at least hint something about the characters or whats going to happen. Or maybe it's nothing conscious, just something that dear Dario ads because he feels for it, without any deeper meanings.

So, I have five examples of this (I can probably find more). And beware, because these have major spoilers about (for example) the killers identity and other crucial plot points.

The first time I noticed it was in Nonhosonno, when the camera tracks behind the killers head and stays for quite a long time focusing on the back of the head. It's a nice touch, but feels very out of sync with the rest of the scene - as Argento just forgot to push the "edit out"-button. It just goes on and on and on…

The most obvious thought is that it tries to hint that the killers head would some minutes later be blown apart by the police. Or is it a strange way of telling us in the audience to "look" into the killers mind and be "one" with him.


In the underrated The Card Player there's a more difficult one to crack. It's the back of one of the police officers head during a scene where they try to find someone that's good at internet-poker at a game place. This is also a shot that goes on forever and then the scene continues. I have no real theory about this one and what I can remember if the police officer really has something important to tell us or to find.


Or is it just a clever and quite confusing red herring? I don't know really.

One of the finest and best used example is in the also underrated Stendahl Syndrome where we see the back of the head of Asia Argento. I'm not really sure right now, but it can be right after the incident at the museum where a character is killed or badly hurt (I must watch it soon again) at the end of the movie. You all remember the room filled with statues.


I see it so that Asia maybe subconsciously realize that she's the killer, she's the bad guy, and the camera just hangs on to her head so we're gonna have a chance to look into her. 

I also found a very early, but maybe not, example of this in Inferno. During the sequence in the university in Rome (?) where the witch shows up and confuses one of the pupils, there's a long shot of our heroes heads, of course the backside. It's probably just an odd choice in editing and some of it is to show that he's reading a letter - but it's very long, and the whole shot feels strange.


Below I also has four examples from Mother of Tears, and all these (there are more in the movie, but not so obvious) are shots where Argento lingers on the back of the head. In every case theres some tension going on. Something is gonna happen, or is just happening. 

Well, it's probably just me rambling a lot of crap. But I just observed these shots and felt like writing down my thoughts.

The Swarm (1978)

To fully understand the cheese-factor in The Swarm, just read these lines:

Oh, my God! Bees! Bees! Millions of Bees!

Dr. Andrews: Billions of dollars have been spent to make these nuclear plants safe. Fail-safe! The odds against anything going wrong are astronomical, Doctor!
Dr. Hubbard: I appreciate that, Doctor. But let me ask you. In all your fail-safe techniques, is there a provision for an attack by killer bees?

Houston on fire. Will history blame me, or the bees?

Attention! Attention! This is Miss Schuster. Please listen very carefully. A swarm of killer bees is coming this way.

By tomorrow there will be no more Africans... at least not in the Houston sector.

To quote Ian Friedman, the screen is alive with goofiness. I can honestly say that there's never been a movie so goofy, silly and absurd as Irwin Allen's The Swarm. Not that this is a bad thing, because it's very entertaining and though the directors cut clocks in at around two and a half hour, every second is filled with something that makes your heart warm and your brain empty.

Stirling Silliphant, a scriptwriter I like, probably wrote the script in his sleep and I doubt it ever was rewritten. The characters are so shallow and stupid, the dialogue seem to be - as you can see above - written by someone with an average IQ of ten. It's probably not Silliphant's fault, I guess we more can blame Allen who probably needed the script way to fast for his own good.

Another problem is Michael Caine. I love the guy (except that hair cut he always had at that time). First of all is the character written like a total fucking prick. Yes, you just want to punch that fucker in the face and piss on his corpse. He's such a smart-ass, so anti-humble and he's acting like an asshole to everybody, even the poor (yes, you actually are on their side when he's starting his bullshitting) military. The other problem is that Caine obviously hates this (probably well-payed) job. And it's easy to notice that most actors, except maybe Henry Fonda and Slim Pickens, reads their lines with a lot of disbelief, like they're wondering how the heck their agent could get them this job in the first place.

But still, The Swarm is such a goofy and fun movie. It's packed with action and disaster scenes - sometime with very crude effects, but also with some well made stuff too - for example the big swarms in the sky, good effect. The stunts are in glorious slow-mo, and all of them looks damn impressive. The famous train-accident looks exactly like toy train crashing and exploding like a... nuclear bomb or something that involves a couple thousand liters of gasoline! A lot of kids is getting killed too - while Olivia de Havilland is chewing scenery inside, safe from the killer bees! My favorite Bradford Dillman is good too, and makes the best of his little part. Ah, sorry, I almost forgot! Cameron Mitchell, looking a bit drunk, has a small part - mostly on a big TV-monitor. I hope that payed his way of living for many years.

It's hard to dislike The Swarm, and even if it was an enormous flop, it's still a heart-warming crazy motherfucker of a flick, from the master of disaster himself: Irwin Allen.

Visitor Q (2001)

Sometime all you need is a whack in the head with a huge stone, and everything will be alright. So seem the case with Visitor Q, Takashi Miike's ultra-lowbudget family-drama. It's a story about an ex-TV producer who wants to make a reality series about youth violence - but ends up raped by... and ice cream? Anyway, if that wasn't enough, the movie begins with a long sequence with him have sex with his daughter. His wife is a heroine-addict who is beaten bloody everyday by their teenage son - who are beaten and tortured by some other kids at school. One day the father is beaten in the head by an unknown man, brings him home and everything will change...

It's absurd to even write it, but Visitor Q is very old-fashioned. Close to conservative when it comes to family values. It's about a very dysfunctional family, who finds connection to each other by breast milk, necrophilia and murder. Throw in some shit-playing and you'll have a movie like no other. It's all made with a lot of comedy to, and when the infamous corpse-fucking scene comes it's so absurd that you just have a big fucking smile all over your face. Even when the shit comes pouring from the body and the fucking continues, because the shit works fine as lubricant!

Shot on video, both pro-equipment and with home video-cam, this is a beautiful movie that really takes advantages of the format. It might look cheap, but the story is so well written and funny that you'll forget that after the first scene. Actually, the first scene when the father has sex with his daughter is so long and realistic that even I feel awkward watching it. It almost feels illegal, or at least very private.

When the last scene comes, in the greenhouse with the blue plastic wrapped around our main characters and that nice song starts playing, it gives me goosebumps. It's so beautiful, so real, so stunningly emotional. A boy laying on a floor filled with breast milk, a prostitute daughter finally comes home. A dysfunctional family becomes maybe more dysfunctional, but accepts that and finally finds peace and happiness.

That's fucking movie poetry.

Femina Ridens (1969)

As you all know I have a tendency to fall in deep deep love with certain movies, like I've done many times in real life with real people. I get so into a movie that I have a hard time leaving it, if it has that special quality. Femina Ridens (or The Frightened Woman) is such a movie. If you watch it in a shallow way it's just a kitchy, fun, sexy sixties movie with cool music and fantastic sets. But it has a couple of twists that makes it so much smarter, darker and controversial than a lot of similar movies. It's just a waste of blog-space to say it's a cult movie. It's something so much more.

Dagmar Lassander plays Maria who, by a chance, gets invited to Dr. Sayer (Philippe Leroy). He soon shows his real face when he kidnaps her and forces her to be his personal sex-toy. Well, not sex in the practical way. More a doll - to the degree that he forces her to have sex with a doll-replica of himself! He abuses her physically and mentally, tortures her with threats and devices, water and by keeping her in a strange cell. He starts showing her photos for women he killed and explains that he wants to kill her, as the ultimate orgasm. But than a something radical happens, and... I don't want to write more. Watch it yourself.

Underneath the kitchy surface a complicated and dark sexual drama is hidden. It's deals with feminism, how men treats women and how women treats men - it's a puzzle of how humans are toying with each other, how roles suddenly can change and that people are more complex than we can imagine. None of the characters are stereotypes. They might seem so from the first look, but after a while we see layer after layer peel off, and suddenly our prejudices comes into the spotlight. What seems like the typical sleaze-fest becomes something more uncomfortable, something - maybe - true?

I wish I could write more about the twists, but I don't want to be accused of spoiling something, so I'll leave that. But in the end you feel confused. What is good and what is bad, if there's something so simple? There's no typical happy ending, not even in a surrealistic sixties way. It's a cruel hard world, in the middle of cool clothes, cars and wallpapers from an LSD-trip. It's like a reality mind-fuck.

Now, Femina Ridens is a perfect film when it comes to music, pictures, movements and acting. The script is wonderful by itself, original and intelligent. One of the highlights is the famous scene where Dr. Sayer enters a gigantic statue of a woman laying down, through her vagina. It was made by Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely och P.O. Ultvedt in 1966 and is one of the most famous Swedish pieces of art ever. Ultvedt also designed parts of the interior of Stockholms subway, and I have the pleasure to see his works everyday. One of the most unique things with Stockholm is the very arty subway, and I recommend a visit there - let me know if I can give you a clue to which stations you should visit. 

You know, I think some fans of "eurocult" has a problem admitting that their favorite directors actually had something to say. They think it's cooler to claim it's all fun, gore, action and surface. For me that's a lack of respect for those artists that worked in what we call "eurocult". I get angry every time I hear some idiot claim that Fulci was a hack - but still loves his movies because of the gore or the "cool incoherent plot". Those people just don't know what they're watching and shouldn't be allowed near anything else than... Independence Day and Pretty Woman. I've always liked and appreciate the intellectual approach that you can find in for example Fulci's work. Yes, hell - even Lenzi had it, not to mention other legends like Argento or Bava. I still think Fulci was the more political one of the more famous directors, but you can find layer after layer at almost all directors that has passion for their work. 

Piero Schivazappa is of course no different. This is the only movie I've seen so far from him, but it's also one of the most impressive "eurocult" movies I've seen in a very long time.

All things Thai in The Big Boss Part 2

Jack asked me if I could take a look at this post, which I recommend you all to do. It's some of Jack excellent writing, but also a clip from The Big Boss 2. A "sequel" to Bruce Lee's classic that stars Lo Lieh and "Bruce Le". Obviously it's some mystery around this movie, because it impossible to get - but one guy down in South Africa has a print of it and has posted ten minutes on ye' ol' internet.

What makes me interested in it, and that's the reason why Jack asked me to take a look, is that it might be Thai-actors in it. And yes, it is. It seem like a Thai-HK co-production, with Thai-producer Ekash Issaramananyakul involved, and this also means that some of the bigger parts is played by Thai actors. The main baddie was a little bit difficult. I recognized him way to much, and I had to ask Wise Kwai about it. He suggested Krung Srivilai, which probably is correct. Krung probably did hundreds of movies, but very few are listed on internet. According to IMDB he starred in two movies I've wanted to see a long time now, H-Bomb (together with Christopher Mitchum!) and 1-2-3 Monster Express, the biggest success in Thailand 1977. An action movie about a bus that can't stop or something like that (hrm... Speed... hrm...). You can read more about Krung at Thai World View.

The actress was harder, but I'm quite convinced that it's Preeya Roongrueng. She died in a car accident in 1984, but starred in 50 movies before that. I have no idea where I've seen her before - it's not one those movies listed on Thai World View anyway. That site also has information about what characters she used to play: "She often played role as นางอิจฉา (stereotypical character who does not hesitate to do bad things to the leading actress including trying to steal her boyfriend before wedding) or as ดาวโป้ (actress who always played the girl friend of the Mafia boss, the jealous woman, the temptress, the prostitute or the woman who dressed in sexy clothes)" - which seem to fit the little we see of her in Big Boss 2. But I'm not sure it's Preeya, but it's a theory anyway.

But if you have any other theories regarding the Thai-actors up here, please don't hesitate to comment.

Raging Phoenix (2009)

I'm very happy that Prachya Pinkaew and Panna Rittikrai tries to do something else than imitating Tony Jaa in movie after movie. They are wise enough to realize that there's only one Jaa and leaves the imitators to other companies. In the meanwhile they've been nurturing other talents, for example JeeJa Yanin. She had her big breakthrough with Chocolate, and in Raging Phoenix she's a full-fledged martial arts star in her own right.

JeeJa plays Deu, a very unhappy girl who's being dumped both by her boyfriend and the band she's playing with at the same night. Drunken and sad she's soon followed by some kidnappers (one of them is an evil transvestite - as usual in Thai cinema), but is saved in the last second by a strange gang of drunken fighters. All of them has suffered the faith of getting someone close being kidnapped by the same people, and now they spend their days drinking and fighting their way through all suspects. Deu is soon invited to be one of them, but her one-man-approach to finding the bad guys is not appreciated by the others. They're a team, and nothing else...

Raging Phoenix wasn't a big hit in Thai cinemas, which is a pity, because this is a great movie with a very original style. I guess the lack of success could be because of the depressing subject, women being kidnapped and the only thing that helps when fighting the baddies is being extremely drunk. The atmosphere is sad and downbeat too, which makes it cool because the colors and visual style of the movie is something completely different. The fighting is amazing, and except one fight (which feels like to much special effects), everything is perfect. It's like watching jelly fighting! Like animated monkeys or something. It's a mix between Drunken Monkey and drunken Muay Thai, Capoeira and Breakdance! It has to be seen!

Not that this is a perfect movie. It has non-stop action, and much of is it's great, but the last half gets more absurd - and it's nothing you can't small beforehand (pun intended) - and it's hard to take seriously because the subjects gets very strange and it's not explained. Not that I need explanations to everything, but here it would have been nice with some more details. It has a kinda open ending too, so if it had been a success I guess we would had gotten some answers in the sequel.

I still think it's a great movie and if you like really good (and a bit arty) Thai-action, this is the movie for you.

Desyat negrityat (1987)

The works of Agatha Christie has followed me since childhood. After I read all those Enid Blyton-books, the only natural way to go was Dame Agatha. Her books are way more well written and smart than a lot of people will recognize, and is filled with interesting analysis on the human psyche. "Curtain" for example, the last Poirot-story to be published (1975) was written forty years earlier, but still had a very dark streak in it. But her darkest novel was written in 1939, and it's of course "Ten Little Indians" (or "Ten Little Niggers" as the first politically incorrect title was). 

The story could also be an early blueprint for all those slashers and giallo's that came much later. Ten people, all of different gender, class, ages and style, are invited to an island. Almost everyone comes there because of different reasons, and are invited my the mysterious Mr U.N. He's not there though, but to servants who fix them dinner and also starts playing a record - where a voice tells them that they are sentenced to death! A couple of minutes later the first guest meets his death with poison, and soon they're all going down one by one, all after the old nursery rhyme hanging on the walls in every room...

Morality is of course that no one escapes justice, even if they regards themselves as innocent. But everyone is involved in a death of some kind, and more than a few of them also feels guilty because of this. Guilt is also the concept in every character, and is shown here with some very haunting flashbacks in black and white. Both those we see as weak and those who pretends are strong are haunted by the memories of their crime. It's a very grim story, and for the first time and cinema history, this Soviet version adapts the book exactly as in how Christie envisioned it. No happy ending here, no meaningless change of character names or killing methods. This is like reading the book, but with the help of brilliant Russian filmmakers.

Gone is the humor from earlier versions, and the characters sometimes feels to real and nasty. Because it's humans we're talking about, the most dangerous animal in the world. Like in the book more or less all murders are show off screen, but we're treated with a nice bloody touch during the first killing. The location by the way, is amazing. Shot in Crimea, using two famous landmark-mansions there: the Swallow's Nest and Vorontsov Estate. The places oozes with atmosphere, and even if the house seem a little bit smaller than I imagined it from reading the book, I can't think of any better location (it's also a miniature, shot in perspective to look like it's there for real, which looks good... but a bit cartoonish). Desyat negrityat is also filled with wonderful Russian actors who is perfectly casted and still is far from Hollywood in style and talent - they are just better.

Slow pace, but those 2 hours flies by fast with ten murders and always something new around the corner. The best Agatha Christie adaptation ever made, in my opinion.