This Weekend’s Film Festival – Foreign Fright

With Halloween nearly upon us, I took inspiration from the Eerie Books Blog's list of 50 Must-See French Horror Movies to dedicate This Weekend's Film Festival to foreign language horror films. We have a French, black & white, horror classic. From Austria, we have a frighteningly real story of mental torture. We have a genre-changing Japanese fright fest that curses TV viewers. Arriving from Germany, we have a 1970s remake of a classic silent horror tale. And we close with a chiller from Italy created by one of the country's masters.

Georges Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a twisted mad scientist tale. Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) is consumed with giving his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob) a face transplant following a car accident that has left her terrible scared. Her emotionless white mask with her gorgeous sad eyes peering out is a classic film image. She is tormented with the reality of how her father is getting the faces for his surgical experiments. As I said in my original review, "The film becomes a battle between the evil doctor and his good daughter, who is as much a victim of her father as the woman he lures to his castle in the woods." Bubbling under each frame is a sick sexuality as the father obsesses with his daughter's beauty and the doctor's assistant Louise (Alida Valli) obsesses about the brilliant scientist who barely pays her attention. While it's hauntingly gothic and eerily poetic, this film is all the more frightening because it feels like it could be real.

"[Michael Haneke's] FUNNY GAMES does not dwell on the bloody parts; it’s more interested in the emotional results of random violence," to quote my original review. Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering) are young sociopaths who pick Anna (Susanne Lothar), Georg (Ulrich Mühe) and their young son Schorschi (Stefan Clapczynski) at random to wage a game of psychological and physical torture on. Haneke breaks down the typical trappings of the horror genre and throws them on their ear. Paul often breaks the fourth wall and implements the audience in his game. Like Paul and Peter, the film is a cat and mouse chase between the director and the audience, but the director doesn't play fair. Through the realistic scenario, emotionally brutal performances and unconventional use of film techniques, FUNNY GAMES is a horror film that resonates with the viewer long after it is finished because it makes us contemplate the lines between real-life and screen violence.

Hideo Nakata's RINGU helps revitalize the horror genre around the world at the end of the 1990s. In starting the curse subgenre of horror, the ingenious film spawned many imitators but none of them have equaled the original's creepy tension. Reiko Asakawa (Nanko Matsushima) is investigating an urban legend about a cursed videotape that sends a phone call to its victims warning them that they will die within a week. When Reiko discovers that the curse killed her niece, she finds the tape and takes the curse upon herself. She enlists her ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) to help her get to the bottom of the mystery. As I said in my original review, "The [film] hints at the prevalence of technology and its growing control over us. While these issues can be found, they are not at the forefront. Nakata is more interested in creeping us out than damning our technology-obsessed culture." RINGU patiently builds dread over its course until arriving at its twisted conclusion.

Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE is a remake of F.W. Murnau's silent classic. Filmed simultaneously in both German and English, the film borrows from Murnau's vampire tale, Bram Stoker's DRACULA and real world horrors of Herzog's own design. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) sets out to Transylvania to sell property to Count Dracula, played in a sad, hungry performance by Klaus Kinski. Upon seeing a picture of Harker's wife Lucy, played by the gorgeous Isabelle Adjani, the Count is consumed with consuming the woman. As I said in my original review, "Dracula’s pale skin evokes images of death and decay, while Lucy’s snow white complexion brings to mind purity." The film is a battle between good and evil in the forms of Lucy and Dracula. But the cynic in Herzog won’t leave it at that working in the plague as Dracula arrives in Wismar. Herzog's evocative art film reminds us that life a simply a long arduous journey toward death.

From Italian horror master Dario Argento comes the closing film, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. In Hitchcockian wronged man fashion, Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is implemented in a murder. One night he witnesses a woman stabbed from behind a plate-glass window. "His desire to uncover the truth… is what drives the narrative," to quote my original review. First a suspect than viewed as a useful pawn by the police, Sam, along with his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall), find themselves in increasing amounts of danger the deeper Sam gets into the mystery. Argento builds tension over the course of the film by letting the audience in on information the characters do not have. From the editing to scene construction to the macabre paintings that play a key role in the plot, the film keeps the viewer enraptured and off-balance the entire way. Something is bugging Sam about that fateful night and it becomes a plague on the viewer's brain as much as the main character. The ending puts into question the assumptions we all make when we don't have all the facts.

To join in with this Halloween celebration simply head to the videostore, update the Netflix queue, check out HelloMovies.com for streaming sites, visit Zap2It.com for TV listings, or help out the site by buying the films on DVD or Blu-ray at the links below.