Talkin' 'Bout That Outlaw X: Ti West's Body Horror-Cum-'70s Slasher Picture

X 

(Ti West, USA, rated R, 2022, 105 minutes) 

At its most basic level, the slasher film revolves around sex and death. By building his '70s-style horror picture around a pornographic film shoot, Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers) makes the connection between the two more explicit--pun intended--than usual. But wait, there's more! Sex isn't subtext in X: it's text. 

The action takes place in 1979 as a van full of adult film performers and crew members head towards a rental property somewhere outside of Houston, TX. If that sounds like a twist on the set-up behind Tobe Hooper's immortal Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), I can assure you that it is. 

There are few, if any, coincidences in Ti West's eight-feature filmography. If you think you've seen something before, you probably have, but the filmmaker has a knack for making his borrowings feel new. Beyond the van full of youngish people and the sun-blasted landscape, the gang passes a dead cow, en route to their destination, in the wake of its evisceration by truck. Not only is it a harbinger of things to come, but the mess of blood and guts evokes the abbatoir milieu of Tobe Hooper's film. Granted, there are no slaughterhouse workers in X, but the film does have a couple of leathery-faces… 

Wayne (The Ring's Martin Henderson), the porn film producer, had made arrangements with Howard (Stephen Ure), the property owner, before he'd met the guy or seen the place. It was a different time--no cell phones, computers, or internet searches. Had Wayne taken advantage of any of those tools, it's likely he would've made alternative arrangements, because Howard is one weird and creepy dude. He's also very, very old. 

The producer, a relentlessly optimistic type, doesn't let it get him down. He plans to shoot the film in the ranch house attached to the stable, and then split the scene. 

His companions include two couples: leggy blonde performer Bobby-Lynne (a very game, very funny Brittany Snow) and the laidback Jackson (actor and musician Kid Cudi) and junior director RJ (The Americans' Owen Campbell) and boom operator Lorraine (You's Jenna Ortega). Wayne's girlfriend, auburn-haired performer Maxine (Nymphomaniac's Mia Goth), rounds out the troupe. He believes the freckled coke fiend has "the X factor" that separates run-of-the-mill adult film performers from superstars. 

While the gang shoots a scene with Bobby-Lynne and Jackson, Maxine decides to take a dip in the lake. As she floats on the water, an Ophelia in the sun, a hulking alligator eyes her hungrily. It's another harbinger of things to come, but she has no clue. She slips back into her overall cutoffs, but before returning to the ranch house, she stops by Howard's home, beckoned by the ghostly figure at the door. It's his wife, Pearl, an elderly wraith (played by a certain unbilled actor) who looks at Maxine with a mix of curiosity, jealousy and…something else. She shows her faded photos from when she was young and pretty. Her whole life was ahead of her. Now it's not, and there's a sense that Maxine is a very unwelcome reminder. 

The young woman eventually takes her leave. She's rattled, but unharmed. The shoot continues, but it's increasingly clear that the younger people are being watched--and judged--by the older ones. The fire and brimstone televangelist (Simon Prast) constantly ranting from Howard and Pearl's B&W living room TV provides a glimpse into their Old Testament mindset regarding premarital sex (the film's cruel joke is that, though married, they're too decrepit to act on their sexual desires). Once things start to go wrong for Wayne and the gang, they go hilariously, disgustingly wrong.

West, who also wrote the script, co-edited the film with David Kashevaroff, and their cross-cutting creates a destabilizing effect. It's subtle at first before becoming faster and more insidious. The jump scares also prove incredibly effective; some of the best I've witnessed since Jennifer Kent's The Babadook. A haunting, choral-based score from Chelsea Wolfe and The Sacrament's Tyler Bates contributes to the film's dangerously sexy vibe, bolstered by FM staples from Blue Öyster Cult, Robert Palmer, and the like.  

By the end, West has put his own "porno chic" spin on the '70s slasher film, with all the requisite toplessness, but he's also made a horror film in which the scariest thing isn't a rusty nail or even a hungry alligator, but an aged human body. He's hardly the first director to do so, since Tony Scott, M. Night Shyamalan, and numerous others got there before him, but the combination of sex and old age--let alone the combination of sex and death--creates a particularly queasy kind of tension. You could call it ageist, and you wouldn't be completely wrong, but it sure got under my skin.

X opens on Friday, Mar 18. A prequel, Pearl, shot around the same time, is expected later this year. Images from A24, Fangoria, and Indiewire. 

They Got Him on the Run: Alien Boy Documents a Too-Short, Long-Remembered Life

I recently rescued this review, which was originally posted at The Stranger. It's from March 11, 2014.

Alien Boy, winner of the best film award at the 2013 Local Sightings Festival, begins with references to Portland bands like Poison Idea and the Wipers, but it isn't a music film. It's a documentary about police brutality and mental illness, since subject James Chasse, also known as Jim Jim, suffered from schizophrenia, a condition that inadvertently contributed to his tragic death. 

According to his parents, Chasse had a normal childhood until junior high, when things started to get weird. But music was a solace. He sang in a band and started a fanzine, The Oregon Organizm, to which notable writers like Joe Carducci (Rock and the Pop Narcotic) contributed. Chasse's girlfriend remembers that he would wear whatever he wanted, including women's clothing, for which he would get beaten up. It didn't deter him, but the demons in his head were another matter, and his behavior became erratic.

When Chasse told Greg Sage of the Wipers that he felt like an alien, the singer turned that admission into the song "Alien Boy" (it's fitting that Kurt Cobain shows up, via archival footage, as it's hard not to hear Nirvana's origins in that adolescent snarl and bass-heavy rhythm), but the Wipers connection ends there. 

Chasse maintained his friendships as best he could, but while his associates were finding their way in the world, he ended up in a mental institution and a series of group homes before eventually reentering society. Independence came with a price. When he neglected to take his meds, he would stop bathing, soil himself, and face rejection from the local establishments in which his parents, James and Linda, would attempt to catch up with him. They appear to have done all they could, but things would only get worse. 

And that's what happened: things went from bad to horrific when an arrest for suspected public urination turned lethal. The cops used excessive force and Chasse, who didn't receive appropriate medical treatment, died in police custody. The Oregonian and The Portland Mercury documented the ways police failed Chasse, including the untruths they told his family (former Mercury news editor Matt Davis appears in the film). It’s all pretty grim. 

In contrast to the officers' testimony during the ensuing court case, photographic evidence and surveillance footage—including disturbing audio—confirm that they acted inappropriately. Chasse may have run from the authorities, but he wasn't combative, he wasn't armed, and he wasn't on drugs. He died in 2006, but the findings of the internal affairs investigation wouldn't be released until 2010, while the family's lawsuit against the police bureau wouldn't be settled until 2011. 

As Linda puts it, "He didn't ever get to live the mainstream life of an average American man." All those avenues—college, a music career, a home of his own, etc.—ended when his illness kicked in. Consequently, there wasn't as much music content in this documentary as the title had led me to believe, but there's value here for viewers interested in the intersection of the police, their training, and the way we treat the mentally ill. At the very least, Chasse's death has helped to inspire change in the city of his birth. 

Alien Boy plays Northwest Film Forum through Mar 13 (no 9pm show on Mon). Breaking Glass plans to release the film on home video later this spring. Images from Oregon Live, Mental Health PDX, and PDX Monthly.

As it turns out, this review is still available on The Stranger website; I thought it had disappeared. Consider this a slightly expanded edition.  

Surrealistic Spies in Switzerland: Jean-Louis Roy's The Unknown Man of Shandigor

THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR / L'Inconnu de Shandigor 

(Jean-Louis Roy, Switzerland, 1967, 96 mins) 

With this stylish Cold War satire, Swiss filmmaker Jean-Louis Roy crafted his own unique Dr. No-meets-Dr. Strangelove hybrid. Nominated for the Palme d'Or, yet unjustly neglected for decades, the loopy results play more like one of those mod '60s films that inspired Austin Powers--say, The 10th Victim--than a big-budget Bond production. And that is definitely not a complaint.  

Roy, who cowrote the screenplay with Gabriel Arout and Pierre Koralnik (director of the hard-to-find Serge Gainsbourg musical Anna) alternates between French, Russian, and American operatives. He starts by introducing a grumpy, aquiline-nose man in a wheelchair, Professor Von Krantz (The City of Lost Children's Daniel Emilfork, looking a little like Miguel Ferrer), inventor of The Canceler XII3, a contraption that neutralizes atomic weapons. 

Though reporters clamor to interview the Professor, he can't be bothered, snapping at one rather large fellow, "You are a walking blob of sperm!" The widowed scientist shares an under-furnished, modernist villa with his albino assistant, Yvan (Marcel Imhoff), and his beautiful blonde daughter, Sylvaine (Marie-France Boyer, Agnès Varda’s La Bonheur), who attends to his every need. 

Another gent with a distinctive visage, actor-musician Serge Gainsbourg, clad in black suit and leather gloves, plays Le Chef des Chauves, the combination spymaster and music director of a band of bald musician spies clad in pseudo-beatnik outfits. In a particularly amusing sequence, one baldie instructs the others on the art of the disguise, except his personas--"a tragedian," "a duchess," etc.--are anything but inconspicuous. 

If The Unknown Man of Shandigor revolves around the futility of war, it's also a treatise on surveillance. Just as the spies, including Howard Vernon's Bobby Gun (great name), a Nazi-turned-American agent, train their sights on the villa, the Professor and Yvan spy on Sylvaine. In other words, they may be on the side of good, but they're not necessarily good people. (For those unfamiliar with the prepossessing Vernon, his amazing filmography includes Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Silence de Mer, Jess Franco's The Awful Dr. Orloff, and Jean-Luc Godard's visually similar Alphaville.) 

While the spies try to figure out how to swipe the Professor’s plans, Sylvaine pines for Manuel, a trench coat-clad figure from her past (played by Ben Carruthers from John Cassavetes' Shadows). Her possessive, controlling father seems glad that he disappeared from her life, but Sylvaine can't let it go. When she attempts to reunite with Manuel, the baldies spirit her away. 

Left alone in an unsecured beach house, Sylvaine makes her escape to the mythical Shandigor (represented by the storybook structures of Antoni Gaudí) to find Manuel. If it wasn't clear by now, the baldies are far more skillful at music-making than spy-craft. As for the increasingly unhinged Professor, he's convinced she'll return, and she will, but not for the reason he thinks, i.e. that she can't live without him. 

Along the way, the various factions attempt to eliminate each other: poisoned gases fill secret chambers, daggers fly across museum spaces, machine guns rat-a-tat at bowlers and chess-players--even "capitalist" rock & roll is wielded as a weapon. Eventually, most of these characters fade from view, and Roy shifts his gaze to a mysterious, amphibious figure with an advantage over all of the others in his attempt to steal the Professor’s plans. 

Roy made The Unknown Man of Shandigor in Geneva and Barcelona, and it's a remarkable-looking film shot by cinematographer Roger Bimpage, who had a fairly brief run (1954-1974). He remains best known, if at all, for his work with the director. I regret that he didn't get or take the chance to work more often. It may be completely coincidental, but I wonder if he wasn’t familiar with Seconds. His use of inky shadows and razor-sharp angles recalls James Wong Howe's disorienting work on John Frankenheimer's 1966 thriller. 

Alphonse Roy's score adds to the appeal, ranging from vibe-saturated passages to guitar reverberations to orchestral maneuvers bolstered by excitable choristers, though the most memorable musical moment arrives with Serge Gainsbourg's pipe organ-drenched performance of "Bye Bye Mister Spy." 

I've never seen a film that combines the more eye-catching elements from the French New Wave and German Expressionism quite like this one--and I haven't even mentioned the ravenous sea creature, the embalming sequence, or the Russian spy's pint-sized sidekick. As Samm Deighan notes in her commentary, the film "is absolutely its own beast--in the best way." 

The Unknown Man of Shandigor is available to stream exclusively via Projectr or see it on the big screen, for one night only, at The Beacon. Better yet, I recommend shelling out for the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray, which includes Deighan’s commentary, an essay from Chris D. of the Flesheaters (a known authority on cult cinema), new interviews, and a vintage made-for-Swiss-TV documentary. Images from Deaf Crocodile and Mubi. 

John Landis's Revival of the Sketch-Comedy Anthology: Amazon Women on the Moon

AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON 

(Kino Lorber, US, 1987, rated R, 85 mins)

Two years after the 1975 debut of Saturday Night Live on NBC, director John Landis got in on the sketch-comedy action with Kentucky Fried Movie. After a string of box office hits, including National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers (starring SNL's John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd), he returned to his run-and-gun roots with this unofficial sequel, which reunited him with director Robert K. Weiss, a writer on the 1977 film, along with Peter Horton, Carl Gottlieb, and Joe Dante of Gremlins fame.  

Amazon Women on the Moon duplicates the experience of watching late-night TV in the 1980s by combining a B&W Universal-style horror movie, grade Z science-fiction adventure, scare-mongering hygiene film, hokey paranormal program, and ridiculous commercials for useless products. 

Arsenio Hall, from another Landis hit, 1988's Coming to America, stars in opening sketch "Mondo Condo," which offers the most extravagant physical comedy, as the victim of a literally killer condominium. Other notable performers include Michelle Pfeiffer, from Landis's 1985 Into the Night, and her then-husband Horton as new parents baffled by Griffin Dunne's sarcastic OB-GYN in "Hospital" and Rosanna Arquette as a single woman with a high-tech system for screening prospective dates, like Steve Guttenberg, in "Two I.D.'s." 

The movie parodies include "Son of the Invisible Man" with Ed Begley Jr. as a nude scientist convinced no one can see him (they definitely can), Carrie Fisher as an Iowa innocent who gets a lesson about social diseases from Paul Bartel's Big Apple doctor in "Reckless Youth," and the title entry, "Amazon Women on the Moon," with Lana Clarkson and B-movie queen Sybil Danning as Amazonian lunarians who capture the hearts of three American astronauts, including John Travolta's brother, Joey (tragically, Clarkson's life would come to an end in 2003 at the hands of producer Phil Spector). 

One of the running gags, "Murray in Videoland," involves Lou Jacobi as a middle-aged man relaxing on his recliner in undershirt and boxers when he gets sucked into his TV. He ends up on the moon with the astronauts and at a funeral where a gaggle of insult comedians, including Rip Taylor and Henny Youngman, make fun of Belinda Balaski's not-so-dearly departed husband ("Critic's Corner / Roast Your Loved One"). 

Not all of the commercials work equally well, but standouts include Joe Pantoliano as a spokesman for "Hairlooming" and David Alan Grier as singer Don "No Soul" Simmons whose piano renditions of AM radio hits are exactly as soul-free as advertised ("Blacks Without Soul"). Further notable participants include Henry Silva, Ralph Bellamy, and Howard Hesseman. 

Though this Landis-produced project wasn't a critical or box office hit upon original release, it would find new life by way of home video and cable TV exposure, where it felt more at home than in a theater. 

This special edition includes a lively commentary track from Busted Guts podcasters Mike McPadden and Kat Ellinger, a fine featurette with Landis and Dante, dailies from Dante's archives, deleted scenes and outtakes, and sketches from Dante and Horton that didn't make the cut for thematic reasons, i.e. they're more amusing in theory than in execution. Overall: recommended.

Amazon Women on the Moon (Special Edition) is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Images from Qwipster, IMDb, and Movie Poster Shop.